Swasy, Alecia (author / Washington and Lee University)
Format:
Article
Publication Date:
2016
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11222
Notes:
Online from Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Florida. 3 pages., Observations based on analysis of thousands of articles spanning 50 years from 1964-2014. Findings prompt the author to observe that reporters given the chance to travel to remote areas have done a terrific job of putting a face on the plight of the rural poor."
Via UI Library subscription., Study aimed to provide tools to improve the quality of journalism regarding ethical issues that concern our relationship with nonhuman animals. Explored the role of news media (two years of coverage by the New York Times newspaper, U.S., and El Pais, Spain) in constructing perceptions of nonhumans used for food and their treatment. Results showed that both newspapers played a major role in concealing the nonhumans' cruel treatment, but a distinction can be drawn between the crude speciesism of El Pais and the camouflaged, more deceptive style of the New York Times.
23pgs, Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of newspaper coverage of chicken meat production in the UK to find evidence relevant to the normative expectations of the democratic role of newspapers as forum for public debate, by means of a two-stage framing analysis of 766 relevant articles from seven outlets. We found mutually disconnected episodic coverage of specific issues whose aggregate effect is consistent with the diffusion rather than the structuring of public debate. Newspapers here afforded polemic rather than the systemic contestation expected. The polemic contestation we found, with diffusion of public debate as an emergent political effect, troubles the assumptions subsequent to which it is possible to argue for the democratic role of newspapers.
