Media Formats and Television News Coverage
When events take place in foreign countries information has the capability of traveling toward us at horrendous speeds. Not only is it fast, it is also amazingly convenient and often equally convincing. As we view this feed in our living-rooms or at our desks, seldom do we have a single thought about it being produced or even written. We admire its efficiency, as well as its intrinsic ability to keep us updated, without analyzing how it got to our fingertips. A simple analysis of media formats in the evening news reveals a scheme for making and producing international news rather than only gathering and reporting the news. To better understand this scheme I looked at the media coverage of North Korea immediately following President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech in which he named Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an “axis of evil.”
To begin this analysis I used the Vanderbilt TV News Archive to collect stories. To accurately analyze the media formats used to produce stories related to U.S. foreign policy, I gathered all twenty ABC evening news clips from the day Bush announced that North Korea was part of the axis of evil (January 29th 2002) until North Korea announced it would negotiate with the U.S. regarding its nuclear weapons program (October 18th 2002). These clips along with their characteristics were then entered into a spreadsheet. Characteristics for the clips included duration, location in the newscast, general topic, country in focus, the reporter’s name/location, and any speaking sources or visuals. After coding each article, patterns were established by looking at common characteristics within this group of news stories.
From the study of North Korea, it was clear that Americans didn’t get more than just a small tidbit of information about North Korea in the evening news during a time it was needed most. The longest evening news story that even mentioned North Korea in 2002 was five minutes and ten seconds. Within the stories, U.S. government officials appeared as 66% of the speaking sources and of all the sources only 12% were people from outside the U.S. Only half of the stories had sources other than a reporter, of those, 88% were American. Other troubling observations include the fact that Peter Jennings was the only reporter for 45% of the stories, 75% were shot in the U.S. and 55% were produced in the studio only. One story out of the 20 was filmed from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and only one story had a North Korean analyst as a speaking source. Other than these exceptions, all of the other clips came from as far away as Alaska and were mainly filled with Bush doctrines.
When studying this material we must begin to interpret why we it is being produced in this manner. Well there are many answers to this question; my main focus is the format of the television news medium. Just by looking at the average duration of the clips, we can surmise that these stories were specifically selected because they fit in a short time slot. Another characteristic of the television medium is paying someone like Peter Jennings large sums of money for his professional television appearance.
Possibly the most startling thing I found was the way the news was presented by a large majority of Americans. Of the stories I selected, 90% were about America and what actions needed to be taken against North Korea. Other than three short stories, all of the news that was presented during this period came directly from U.S. government sources. This routine of gathering news from the Iron Triangle (The White House, State Department, and the Pentagon) and other Western sources caused the iconic phrase axis of evil to be the over-arching theme of North Korea from a western standpoint. A few other things that stood out about the routine of these stories was the way they were clustered with stories from other axis of evil or Asian countries and the fact that they were all covered from the same America vs. North Korea angle.
One key factor in this study that can’t be over looked is the accessibility aspect of North Korea. Very little news slips out of the country causing for an overwhelming amount of speculation. Another accessibility issue with North Korea is a poor cultural understanding that is compounded by differences in aspects of everyday life. Part of the problem with the news outlets seems to be driven by the commercial pressures of needing to attract advertisers and enhance a patriotic reputation, however other problems also exist. Budgets seem to be the key player in these stories. The fact that 75% of the stories about a foreign country are coming from within the U.S. is outrageous. The lack of foreign correspondents and international news outlets appears to have been filled by short, wholesale news segments and U.S. government officials. Even when it was utterly important that Americans receive the facts about what was taking place in a foreign region, television news coverage was far below par, and failed to deliver an accurate report of the international news.
Works Cited:
ABC Evening News: 1/30/08 – 10/18/08
Journalists and experts weigh in on media coverage of North Korea – (http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=33016)