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Comparative Case Study: Newspaper Source Use on the Environmental Beat

2000; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/073953290002100102

2376-4791

Stephen Lacy, David C. Coulson,

Risk Perception and Management

Governmental and business sources dominate coverage of the Clean Air Act. Consumers and environmentalists are seldom used as sources. Sources are an integral part of news reporting. Those who have access to journalists often determine what becomes news. Typically, sources representing government bureaucracies and corporations have more impact on what becomes news than ordinary citizens.(1) Research during the 1970s concluded that coverage of traditional bureaucratic beats, such as police and city hall, resulted in a narrow range of official sources gaining access to news pages. This limited access caused the press to miss and misunderstand some of the biggest stories of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the women's and environmental movements.(2) During the 1980s and 1990s, some newspapers expanded their definition of beats to include non-governmental and non-geographic issues and events.(3) The motivation was to be more inclusive of sources and to expand the definition of news. A wider news net would allow more people and organizations to participate in setting the public agenda. However, adding topical beats, such as the environment and science, does not necessarily guarantee that the use of sources will change. Reporters may apply the same standards for source selection on topical beats as they apply on older beats. This study analyzed newspaper coverage of federally mandated motor vehicle emissions standards to examine source use on the environmental beat. The purpose is to determine whether specialty reporters covering this topical beat used more diverse sources than general assignment reporters writing environmental stories. In addition, this study compares source use by reporters writing environmental stories to patterns of source use found in studies of the traditional beat system. Considering the growth of environmental reporting(4) and the importance readers and newspapers place on major environmental stories,(5) research on environmental sources seems both timely and warranted. This is particularly true in the context of past studies that focused little attention on source use in environmental reporting. Literature review Research has connected newspapers' dependence on beat coverage with reporters' lack of diversity in source selection. Beats provide a useful, if narrowly focused, way of systematically checking for newsworthy events and efficiently screening information for news articles.(6) Beats create a bureaucratically constructed universe that defines reporters' exposure to news sources and the meaning and relevance of that exposure.(7) Likewise, use of sources from organizations associated with a reporter's beat makes the sources' organizations seem more legitimate to the audience and often leads to exclusion of less popular ideas from other sources.(8) A few studies have focused on use of beat sources in distinct areas such as the environment. Media coverage of environmental risks and an environmental disaster showed heavy reliance on government and corporate officials. Environmental activists were used much less frequently.(9) In contrast, during the old-growth forest/spotted owl conflict in the northwestern United States, the voice of official business and government sources was somewhat muted by those directly involved in the issue. The three major television networks quoted timber industry workers more often than they quoted non-timber industry sources. This source preference may have reflected the immediacy of the workers' message - jeopardy of losing their livelihood.(10) Research that looked at reporters covering national security issues found evidence of traditional source-choice bias. Reporters used bureaucratic sources far more often than non-governmental ones who had expertise in national security issues.(11) Even when sources highly knowledgeable about a topic are used, such as a professional in a given field or an individual directly involved in a conflict, methods for source selection are questionable. …