Consultation Response - Media 12 - Cardiff University PDF 2 MB

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• For BBC radio: Today (7.30-8.30am), World at One, PM, Six O’Clock News (all Radio 4), 5 live Breakfast (7.30-8.30am 1 ). • For BBC online: Items on the ‘UK’ and ‘Politics’ pages at 5pm Mon-Fri. • For other television: Channel 4 News (inc. Sat, Sun), ITV News at Ten, ITV News (Sat, Sun), and one hour per day of Sky News (5-6pm Mon- Fri, 6-7pm Sat, Sun). Throughout this report we use the term ‘news item’ to denote a single unit of news coverage on a particular bulletin. This means that on some news programmes – especially radio – we may get more than one news item about the same news story. The term ‘story’, by contrast, usually consists of several linked but discrete news items 2 . So, for example, a story covered by all the news outlets in our sample will typically generate over a dozen news items. In most cases, we use the news item as our main unit of analysis, since it allows us to make comparisons between different news outlets. To complement the content analysis we carried out a number of case studies, allowing us to explore some issues in more depth. In addition, we monitored other non-network media outlets during the sample period – including the BBC news bulletins from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a relevant national newspaper for each nation – in order to look at the volume and range of stories that did not receive UK-wide network attention. We also examined three BBC current affairs programmes – Panorama (on BBC One), File on Four and Analysis (both on Radio 4) – covering the <strong>12</strong>-month period from October 2008 to September 2009. Finally, in the 2009 study we also examined the BBC One daily topical factual programme The One Show broadcast during the four week sample period for topics relevant to devolution. Overview When we compare news coverage of devolution-related issues – and the four nations generally – in 2007 and 2009, two points stand out. First, across most measures, our data suggest that BBC coverage was more sensitive to devolution in 2009 (and, indeed, to news from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland more generally) than it was in 2007. Second, this change is in contrast to other television broadcasters, where we found little evidence of enhanced or increased coverage of devolved issues. 1 In 2007, we looked at the Victoria Derbyshire programme on 5 live, although since the programme was not a traditional news format, it did not form part of the content analysis but was used as one of the 2007 case studies. 2 A chronological list of devolution-related ‘stories’ consisting of one or more items that were recorded during the sampling period of the study is included in the Appendix. 4
When we examined news across the BBC – regardless of whether it concerned devolved issues – we found a significant increase in the proportion of news items related to (or about) Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, especially on television. So, for example, in 2007 only 7.8% of news items on BBC television related to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. By 2009, this proportion had almost doubled to 14.2%. The increase on other television channels (ITV, Channel 4 and Sky) was much smaller (2.7%). The corresponding increases on BBC radio and online were 4.7% and 6.2% respectively. We found a similar increase in BBC reporting on location from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In 2007, 7.7% of BBC news reports came from reporters on location in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, compared to 4.6% on other channels. In 2009, this proportion had risen to <strong>12</strong>.3% on BBC television outlets and dropped to 2.8% on other television channels. When we looked specifically at news items relevant to devolution or devolved issues, we found that the proportion of news items about devolved issues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland increased on all BBC outlets, especially in online coverage (from 1.7% to 3.5% of online news items) and on television news (from 0.7% to 1.2% of BBC television news items). The increase in BBC radio was more modest (from 1.0% to 1.2% of radio news items). The proportion of such items on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky actually halved (from 0.6% to 0.3% on news items) suggesting that increases in BBC coverage cannot be attributed to a change in the general news agenda in the 2009 sampling period. Similarly, the proportion of BBC news items referring to devolved powers or authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland almost doubled between 2007 and 2009 (from 1.1% to 2.1%). By contrast, the proportion on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, remained at the same level (0.7%), meaning that by 2009 BBC outlets were three times as likely as ITV, Channel 4 and Sky to refer to the existence of devolved powers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Perhaps the most dramatic change was in the number of explicit or implicit references reporters made to devolved powers generally (across all four nations). In 2007 we found 71 references to devolved powers or issues on BBC news outlets. By 2009, this number had risen nearly sevenfold to 480. To put this into context, in 2007 we found one reference to devolution for every 50 BBC news items. By 2009, this ratio was up to one in eight. We also saw a rise in references to devolved powers on other channels, where the 2009 ratio of references to news items increased to one in 30 from one in 90 items in 2007. In 2007 we found very few examples of news items that used a ‘compare and contrast’ approach to the treatment of devolved issues across the four nations: the few comparisons that were made were passing rather than substantive references to different approaches taken by (at least two of) the 5
Page 1 and 2: Task and Finish Group on the future
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Panorama programme ‘Whatever Happ
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Subject Items Westminster Politics
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een mounting to sort out the discre
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The following package was much more
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Summary The One Show draws attentio
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8. Omissions Introduction In order
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Belfast Telegraph and on Newsline.
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had failed to implement one of the
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• Plaid Cymru AMs calling for a c
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12/10/09 Cycle route due for destru
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Scotsman 26-30 October (Week 2) Dat
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Western Mail 09-13 November (Week 3
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10/11/09 Stormont debate on policin
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expenses 14/10/09 Interview with Ch
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5. Categories for [Q14 - Devolved P
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England N. Ireland Studio Gen. UK W
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20. Sources speaking in news item (
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Sample 2009 Coder Instruction Bookl
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18. Specific inaccuracies - where t
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Subjects covered by stories from th
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NI Arrests 28-Oct 3 3 Criminal Conv
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Supplementary Subjects in Westminst
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Contents Page 1. Introduction and O
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parties etc.) rather than on questi
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This suggests that the BBC website
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pattern across media outlets (Table
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Health NHS 2.1 1.6 1.8 0.9 1.7 Heal
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outlets) 9 . Overall, 14% of storie
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Religion 3 100.0 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 3 S
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Equal rights 0 2 0 0 2 Health 13 0
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The Westminster focus of many of th
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3. Case Studies Introduction The pu
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Any confusion between England and t
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at One, which, after a brief mentio
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North Sea oil revenue goes to the T
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ITV News 1 0 6 0 3 0 2 0 0 0 BBC On
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Table 3.4: Number of times reports
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Graph 4.1: Frequency and percentage
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A high proportion of stories on New
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did not know who ran the Welsh Asse
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Three in ten BBC online stories wer
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four nations (15.9%) was broadly in
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partly be because our analysis, unl
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Table 4.13: Types of news items ass
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tanks, trade unions or the academic
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5. Current Affairs Coverage 2007 In
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URRY: It’s a scene being played o
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Some programmes referred to agencie
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BOWLBY: […] A deal to divide up t
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and now, after a decade of limited
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English are free to think seriously
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6. Five Live Phone-In Programmes (O
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Scottish caller commented that the
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Election Frequency % England 16 21.
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Westminster (together with the poss
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the wider general and election samp
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minutes. Andrew Cassell covered the
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Northern Ireland Political Process
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Political Process In the Scotsman o
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Omissions: Full List of Stories Tho
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kerb-crawlers in Scotland 17/10/07
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17/10/07 Former quango employees co
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following foot-and-mouth outbreak 2
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29/11/07 Child welfare - too many a
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put in whole questions such as “W
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would be helpful if the search coul
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10. Bibliography BBC (2003) The BBC
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11. Appendix A. Dates of Sample Ele
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C. Online Monitoring We monitored s
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E. Focus Groups Breakdown of groups
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) Can you describe the position tha
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9. Which of the following policy ar
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Election Sample Question Percentage
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