Appendix A: Comparative Data, 1992 data and 1998 data
Appendix B: World News for Public Television
In November 1998, more than 40 public television stations started airing a British evening news program, World News for Public Television, produced by ITN in London. While the program was not broadcast widely enough in its initial months to be included in the sample for this study, I did collect (for comparative purposes) tapes of World News for Public Television for the same two week period that this study covers. Following is a brief overview of the topics and sources on World News for Public Television between November 30 and December 13, 1998, along with comments about how this program compares to the public affairs line-up on PBS stations.
The sample included 96 stories (59 of which included on-camera sources); Table B1 shows the topic areas of these 96 stories. Since World News is billed as a program that specializes in international news for an audience in the United States, it comes as no surprise that 59.4 percent of the stories focused on international affairs; only 5.2 percent of the stories focused on U.S.-domestic political issues and 1 percent of the stories focused on economic issues. This stands in sharp contrast to the PBS public affairs line-up, where economic and domestic political stories accounted for almost three-quarters of the stories and international news was rarely covered.
Table B2 shows the geographic focus of World News stories; the largest number of stories focused on Western Europe (34.4% of stories), followed by the North America (24%). Still, World News did include stories about most parts of the world during this sample period.
There were a total of 136 sources in this sample of World News for Public Television, all of whom appeared in taped reports. Since World News did not include any panel discussions or interviews, there were no live sources. World News did not rely heavily on traditional “experts” to analyze events; among the sources, 76.5 percent were participants in the events being reported. This stands in contrast to the U.S. programs on PBS stations, where 51.8 percent of the sources were participants in the events, leaving much more space on the U.S. programs for analysis from experts and pundits. In addition, 77.9 percent of the sources on World News for Public Television came from outside the United States. Again, this is very different from the broader public television schedule, where only 11.2 percent of the sources represented perspectives from outside the U.S. (Table B3 shows the characteristics of these sources.)
World News for Public Television relied overwhelmingly on male voices, who constituted 83.8 percent of the sources. Women (16.2%) appeared less frequently as sources on World News than they did on the U.S. public affairs programs (21.5%). Government officials were the most frequent source category on World News; the majority of these were officials from governments other than the United States. Professionals accounted for one-quarter of the sources, but this was a somewhat different set of professionals than the U.S. programs relied upon. On World News, journalists (prominent analysts on public television) were among the least frequent professional groups to appear as sources, while doctors were the most frequent to appear. In addition, members of the general public were routine voices on World News, accounting for 22 percent of the sources. This figure is almost four times the comparable figure on the U.S. public television programs. And corporate representatives were much less visible on World News (6.8% of sources) than they were on the U.S. programs, appearing at roughly the same rate as citizen activists (6.1%).
This two-week sample leaves no doubt that, in some respects, World News for Public Television covers stories and includes sources that are less visible elsewhere on the public affairs schedule on PBS stations. In this sample, two differences stand out. First, World News highlighted international news and international voices, which are rarely included on public television’s public affairs programming. Second, World News generally employed a reportorial approach that focused on the voices of participants in events, eschewing the expert-oriented analysis and punditry that is so common on public television. One result of this approach was the more frequent inclusion of voices of the general public as sources.
In the long run, World News for Public Television may become a valuable addition to the public affairs line-up on PBS stations. But it is noteworthy that this news program is imported from Great Britain. For viewers, and this may be part of its attraction, World News is clearly not an American program; this is signified by the regular dose of news stories from Great Britain, the British accents of the anchor and reporters, and the daily national weather report for the entire United States.
The fact that PBS stations are turning to a British news outlet to strengthen their public affairs programming is instructive, suggesting the weakness of our public television system. The public affairs line-up on PBS stations is, in many respects, narrow and it is striking that programmers are looking outside of the PBS system, and abroad, for new public affairs programming. At the same time, importing news from British producers suggests where the public television leadership is looking for fresh perspectives, and does not bode well for those voices in the United States that are consistently underrepresented.
Read the whole study: The Cost of Survival: Political Discourse and the “New PBS“.
