Consultation Response - Media 12 - Cardiff University PDF 2 MB

BBC Radio 37.1 37.4 +0.3
BBC Online 11.2 12.2 +1.0
Total 100
(N=4,687)
100
(N=5,177)
Although the inclusion of 5 live Breakfast added a new programme to the
sample, Table 2.1 above shows that this did not alter the balance of coverage
on the different outlets. We isolated the 5 live data to see if they exerted a
disproportionate influence on the results for BBC Radio across various
measures used in Sections 2, 3 and 4, and found that there was no significant
change where it was removed. For example, of the total number of items in
which devolution was the main subject on BBC Radio (dealt with in Table
2.5), the removal of 5 live data from the analysis alters the final result by just
0.1%, and less than that for the BBC as a whole.
News relevant to devolution (news items that involved topics or issues where
responsibility has been devolved) accounted for 9.8% of the total sample
(505 out of 5,177 news items). This proportion was higher on BBC outlets,
where 11.3% (445 out of 3,953) of news items were relevant to devolution.
This represents a modest increase when compared to 2007, when 8.7% of
BBC news items were relevant to devolution (or 7.7% across the whole
sample). We examine these items in more detail in Section 3. In this section,
we identify how – and how often – each nation appears in the news overall.
We began by establishing which nation a news item related to (or was about)
within the UK, regardless of whether it concerned devolved issues. So, for
example, a crime story in Manchester was classified as relating to (or about)
England, while a story about flooding in Pembrokeshire was seen as relating
to (or about) Wales. If we exclude international news or news items about
the UK as a whole, the 2007 study found that news items related to Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland accounted for 11.5% of coverage between them.
As we noted in the 2007 report, there are no precise benchmarks with which
to evaluate the spread of stories across the UK. The concept of news value is
unhelpful, because it is vaguely defined, imprecise and contested (thus any
objective measure of the number of newsworthy events that occur in specific
locations is impossible). However, our 2007 report did note that the coverage
of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on news outlets did not reflect the
population of the UK or the distribution of the audience. This is not to say
that population should determine the volume of coverage, simply that in 2007
England was given significantly more coverage than might be explained by
the distribution of the UK-wide audience.
Table 2.2 below suggests that while England remains the dominant source of
news items, the distribution has shifted, with the proportion of news items
related to the other three nations increasing (especially in relation to
Scotland) from 11.5% in 2007 to 18% in 2009 and the proportion of news
items relating to England decreasing. Again, while we cannot assume a
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