Glasgow Media Group

This paper examines key issues in the relationship between television news content and the manner in which audiences respond to it. In past research this relationship has been analysed from various theoretical perspectives. Some have seen news content as essentially ideological and as having the power to limit and structure audience belief (Glasgow Media Group 1976, 1980, Philo 1990, Herman and Chomsky 1998). Others have seen the news as a constant recurrence of routinised journalistic practice (Rock 1973, Enzensberger 1974). Still others have seen news content as primarily directed by commercial criteria, based on assumptions about what audiences 'really' want to watch (Stone, 2000). There is also a strong current in contemporary research which suggests that media are engaged in the mass production of social ignorance. This is well expressed in the title of Danny Schechter's The More You Watch The Less You Know (1998)

There are others ways in which in which the relationship between news content and audiences have been theorised (for an account see Philo and Miller 2000) I will concentrate here on the above perspectives as I think elements of each of these can add very importantly to a developed understanding of this issue. In making this case I will draw upon three major studies which were undertaken by the Media Group at Glasgow University. They all focussed on news content and public understanding of the developing world. The first was a study of television coverage of the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994. This was undertaken together with the Overseas Development Institute and the role of the Media Group was to analyse the major themes in news content relating to the crisis. We worked jointly with Lindsey Hilsum (now the diplomatic correspondent of Channel 4 News) who at the time was working in Rwanda as a journalist. She contributed to the report by writing about the production processes which influenced editorial content (Philo et al 1999). The second study was of news coverage of the subsequent war in Zaire. The study was undertaken jointly with the Save the Children Fund and its purpose was to analyse the range of explanations in news coverage which was being made available to viewers (Beattie et al 1999). There was a good deal of concern at this time amongst NGO's and government departments that public understanding of crises in Africa and in other parts of the developing world was severely limited and that one reason for this might be the nature of television coverage. Our third study in the area was undertaken for the Department For International Development (Glasgow Media Group 2000). This study focussed on television reporting of the whole of the developing world and examined which countries, issues and types of events were covered. We also selected a number of case studies for detailed analysis. These were examples of the more frequent categories of TV news coverage of events, including for example conflict/war/terrorism and disasters such as earthquakes. The method employed in these content studies is a version of thematic analysis and consisted of a detailed examination of the language and visuals of news reports. The purpose is to examine how key themes emerge in TV news reporting and how they are used to structure and develop stories. In practice the news text is broken down into separate references (phrases or sentences) which relate to the range of themes which are covered in the story. A numerical account of these is also given, which allows some judgements to be made about the dominance of specific themes. For the DFID study, explanatory and contextualising references were identified in order to assess how much the content might assist audiences in understanding development issues. For the same reason we also examined other types of television format such as cookery and travel programmes and other documentary output. This work on content was accompanied by an extensive audience study which was conducted using focus groups. We interviewed a total of 26 groups, selected on criteria of age, income, ethnic background and gender (total 165 people). The purpose of the interviews was to identify patterns of understanding and belief about the developing world and to trace the origin of these, in for example, media accounts or from other sources such as schooling or peer groups. We also wished to examine how media products might work to compel audience attention, to entertain and create lasting images as well as how they might produce more negative responses from viewers.

The DFID study was undertaken in close contact with senior production staff from the BBC, ITN, Channel 4, Sky and Discovery Television. As a result of these links with broadcasters, there was a further pilot study in which senior journalists worked directly with a focus group. In this extension of the study, the journalists took part in the group discussion to investigate issues of audience interest and comprehension and how these might be influenced by changes in the structure and content of news reporting.

There are three key issues emerging from these studies which I will outline here:

That the decision made by broadcasters (on commercial criteria) about what viewers would desire to watch have in the long run produced very negative responses in TV audiences towards the developing world.
That audiences are misinformed about the developing world because of the low level of explanations and context which is given in television reporting and because some explanations which are present are partial and informed by what might be termed 'post-colonial beliefs'.
That a change in the quality of explanation which is given can radically alter both attitudes to the developing world and the level of audience interest in the subject.

There is a widespread belief in broadcasting that audiences are not interested in factual programming on the developing world. This is the conclusion of a study of the beliefs and attitudes of broadcasters by the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Trust (3WE). This study was commissioned by DFID to run parallel to our work and an extensive sample of 38 senior broadcasters, commissioning editors and programme makers were interviewed. The responses in these interviews highlighted the issue of audience demand and the assumptions which were made about this within broadcasting. As George Alagiah, a senior BBC journalist, notes:

Programme editors are driven by audience interest, but this can lead to a fixation with home, leisure and consumer items instead of the broader agenda.

His words find an echo in the comments of George Carey of the production company Menton Barraclough Carey:

I try and guess what the audience wants. Most people switch on to be entertained not to get a message. Instinctively I feel domestic stories will be more interesting than foreign ones.

The point is spelt out more forcefully by Steve Hewlett, Director of Programmes at Carlton Television:

I know from past experience that programmes about the developing world don't bring in the audiences. They're not about us, and they're not usually about things we can do anything about.

Commercial criteria are now a key consideration for programme makers and this comes down in part to providing what they assume the audiences will want to watch. As Charles Tremayne, controller of factual programmes at Granada TV puts it:

We're past the days of giving audiences what they should have - now it's all about what they want.

But the assumptions made are not necessarily well informed about why audiences watch and what conditions their level of interest. As Alex Holmes, editor of the programme Modern Times at the BBC admits:

Audience interest is very important, second only to a good story, but we don't know exactly what people want. I imagine what they want. It's blissfully unscientific on Modern Times !

One consequence of these assumptions on audience interest has apparently been the drastic reduction of factual programming about the developing world. A report by Jennie Stone for 3WE concluded that the total output of factual programmes on developing countries by the four terrestrial channels dropped by 50% in the 10 years after 1989. (Stone 2000:4). Our own study showed that when the developing world is featured on the news a high proportion of the coverage related to war, conflict, terrorism and disasters. This is especially so for the main television channels with over a third of coverage on BBC and ITN devoted to such issues. Much of the remaining coverage is given over either to sport or to visits by westerners to developing countries. For example, in our sample the Bahamas were in the news because Mick Jagger and Gerry Hall had visited and some countries were featured simply because Richard Branson's balloon had floated over them

Programmes such as BBC2's Newsnight and Channel 4 News had a wider coverage of issues such as trade and politics but it was clear that the focus for mainstream TV news was more likely to be on dramatic and negative images of the developing world. The 3WE study for example found that although coverage had declined overall, the reporting of disasters had actually increased by 5% (Stone 2000:15). When disasters are covered journalist select news angles and visual images which they assume will compel audience attention, e.g. news of an earthquake will feature scenes of destruction, chaos, visuals of collapsed buildings, frantic rescue efforts and appeals for help. These become the basic themes of earthquake/disaster coverage. For example, we analysed news of the Colombian earthquake in January 1999 and showed how it featured these elements. But there was very little said on the country itself or of what distinguished this crisis, or about what it meant to the society other than it being simply a horrific occurrence. There was nothing said on the impact of the earthquake on Columbia's coffee growing region or the long term economic repercussions on unemployment and investment. Coffee was being planted as an alternative to cocaine so there were potentially also very great consequences in terms of the development of the drug trade. As we noted, the focus of television on pictures and extraordinary visual moments to illustrate the crisis, had led to a neglect of context and explanation. But if Columbia was to be seen and understood as anything more than a disaster area, then it is important that its people be shown as having a history, politics, economy and everyday life which both pre and post-date the visual images of an earthquake. (Glasgow Media Group 2000:60). This does not mean that journalists should avoid reporting the terrible human consequences of such an event. The problem arises when these are the only themes in the coverage and they become routinised and occur each time there is a similar disaster. Then, for the viewer there is in practice little to distinguish one such crisis from another in the developing world other than the name of the country. Such stories and those of conflict and violence are visually striking and in fact constitute a high proportion of the coverage. So it is not surprising that viewers perceive the developing world to be not much more than a series of catastrophes.

Another key problem with such coverage is the very limited nature of explanations which are given (if at all) of events such as political conflict and war. In our study of TV news coverage of the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994, we found a very large number of references (122 in our sample) which stressed the scale of the flight and the huge number of people involved but gave no account of why any of these events were occurring. We hear of 'the exodus of a nation', 'Rwanda on the verge of catastrophe', 'there is a flow of people. some hundred thousand people have fled. at the rate of 4000 an hour', 'you can see only a portion of this mass of humanity at any one time. a million desolate people' (BBC1 2100 18th & 19th July 1994). We found only 27 references which gave any explanation of what was occurring. Many of these were very limited and sometimes incorrect as in the suggestion that the refugees had 'fled the killing in Rwanda' (BBC2 Newsnight 18 July 1994). This is unclear in the sense that the Hutu refugees actually contained the militias who had perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda. They were not therefore fleeing from the genocide but from the consequences of it, in the sense that they were seeking to avoid retribution. (Philo et al 1999:215).

In a subsequent study, we analysed media coverage of the events of 1996 in which the refugee camps on the borders of Rwanda were dissolved by the Rwandan army and the Hutu militias fled to the interior of Zaire leading eventually to a full scale war in that country. This news coverage contained many more references to the genocide in Rwanda and its link to the refugee exodus. By November 1996 it was quite frequently stated on the news that Hutu militias had perpetrated massacres upon the Tutsi population. But an explanation at this level is still very limited. To state simply that Hutus have massacred Tutsis does not move far beyond explaining the events as a 'tribal conflict' between what may be assumed by the audience to be 'primitive' peoples of Africa. As we showed, Africa was referred to on the news as a place of 'tribal conflict', 'tribal enemies', 'ethnic war', 'insanity', 'chaos' and 'anarchy', inhabited by 'wild men'. Against these descriptions are put explanations of why the West is concerned about military intervention in the region. For example:

Reporter : There remained extreme caution about being sucked into the region's blood-thirsty politics'

On ITN the people of Africa were compared to the topography of the landscape which they inhabited. The volcanoes were described as being 'far more predicable as the people they watch over' (ITN 2200 18 Nov 1996). One difficulty with accounts such as these is that Africa tends to be seen as a country rather than as a continent with many different cultures which have complex political and economic histories. As Lindsey Hilsum has shown, in her account of the genocide, Rwanda was a highly organised and disciplined society. She describes the hierarchies and the social structure of the country:

A group of households comprised a cellule; every cellule has a spokesman who reported to the conseiller who was in charge of the next administrative unit up the ladder, the secteur. and so on to the highest reaches of the government. unlike most African capitals, Kigali remained small and largely immune to urban drift; Rwanda had pass laws stricter than those of South Africa.

As she noted the Swiss government had given more money to Rwanda than to any other country in Africa, because they saw a society that was as disciplined as their own and in which there was very little corruption. It was exactly because Rwanda was so highly organised that the Hutu military regime was able to put into effect such an appalling genocide in such a short time. As she writes:

The same efficiency - the discipline and order so admired by the foreign aid workers - meant that when the orders came of 7th April for the killing to begin they were usually obeyed.

As she commented to us in an interview, many journalists found it difficult to understand this because of their own preconceptions about Africa:

Most journalists couldn't believe that Africans could be so organised - they couldn't recognise the genocide for what it was. Rwanda was more similar to Nazi Germany in that there was a group with an extremist, racist ideology. They defined other groups as the enemy because of the historical relationships between the ethnic groups, in the way that there were reasons for the Jews being chosen. Politicians manipulate relations between the different ethic groups and turn them into ideology. In Rwanda to stay in power, they exterminated the other group.

But in the absence of more complex social and political explanations, it is possible to fall back on images of 'tribal passions'. The BBC for example showed shots of Africans dancing in grass skirts at a border post, and described them as 'the wild men of the murderous interahamwe militia'. (BBC1 2100 1 Nov 1996). They were not in fact Rwandans at all but were apparently Zairian border guards who had dressed in this way in order to insult the Rwandan army. It was a very misleading image of the conflict but it was very widely used both in this country and abroad. We found, not surprisingly, that the assumptions made by many journalists tended to be held within the general public. In a pilot for the DFID research I asked a focus group what image came into their minds when they heard the word 'tribe'. They replied that it would be people with grass skirts and spears standing in front of huts. At the end of that group meeting I explained to them something of the history of Rwanda and commented that the Hutu military regime in 1994 had killed all opposition groups including moderate Hutus, Belgium nationals and soldiers with the UN as well as the Tutsi population. In Butare, a city in the south of the city which was known for its tolerance and liberalism the Hutu students and lecturers at the University were killed because they were assumed to be in opposition to the Hutu government. One woman in the focus group commented 'Oh you don't think of them as having universities'

A key finding of our research was that the images which audience groups recalled of the developing world were overwhelmingly negative (including famine, poverty, refugees, war and conflict). The source of these images was given routinely as the media (press and television) as in this comment from a woman in a focus group in London:

Well every time you turn on the TV or pick up a paper, there's another (war) starting or there is more poverty or destruction. It is all too much

It was also clear that children's attitudes had been influenced very strongly. In this example, teenagers discuss travel programmes about India. They believed it would not be worth having them:

1st : Not on India.
2nd : No one goes there so why do they want to?
3rd : It is not a popular tourist attraction because in India they have always got problems.
2nd : It would be a holiday nightmare if someone went to India. The houses are full of bugs.
Moderator : So it doesn't sounds appealing to go there?
2nd : The swimming pools are full of cockroaches and stuff.
3rd : There is always terrorists over there anyway.

A small number of people had experienced living and working in the developing world or in occupations which gave them a different perspective. As one woman from Glasgow commented:

I do some voluntary work for Oxfam so I hear a lot about things from there. I mean, you wouldn't believe half of what is going, really positive things, I mean that you wouldn't hear about anywhere else. I watch the news sometimes and think oh yeah, here we go again, why don't you tell us about the people who are trying to change things and the huge advances that are being made.

In the sample as a whole, 10% claimed an active interest in development issues while 25% said they had no interest at all. Amongst the remaining people there were varying levels of interest and concern for what were seen as the problems of the developing world (Glasgow Media Group 2000:3). A second key finding of our research was that most of the people in our sample had a very low level of understanding about events in the developing world and there was widespread confusion over what was happening there and why. The extraordinary mixture of ideas in popular understanding of the developing world is conveyed in this exchange between 15 year olds in London who are discussing the issue of third world debt:

Moderator : Does anybody know anything about or has seen anything on TV about the debt campaign?
1st : The what?
2nd : Yes.
Moderator : Removal of third world debt.
1st : No.
3rd : Is it 50p a month and you can help them?
2nd : We pay them and they don't pay us back.
4th : You get to help a child and all that stuff.
5th : Pay 50p a child.
2nd : Do they owe us?
6th : They owe us twice the amount.
2nd : We will never get it back.
1st : They haven't even got an economy.

For the great majority of the people in our sample the workings of the world economy were simply a mystery. Organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank were recognised as names that were frequently mentioned but we found that there was very little knowledge about what these institutions were or how they operated. These are typical exchanges:

Moderator : Do terms like the World Bank mean anything to you?
1st : Yes, but not very much.
Moderator: International Monitary Fund?
1st : Yes, IMF. They always say the same sentences but there is never much explanation about who controls them or whatever else and how they operate as a body. They talk about them as though everyone knows what they are.

1st : I have heard the initials IMF but I couldn't tell you what it is or what it does.
2nd : It is to do with money, something to do with trade and economics or something.

1st : The IMF is something to do with currency, isn't it? It lets you get money in another country easily. I don't know any more than that.

People in the groups readily admitted that they simply did not understand the news and thought that the external world was not being properly explained to them. As one group member expressed it:

I have a constant sense of not being properly informed about background to issues and things like that.

In other groups it was commented that television presumes an understanding which may not exist. One person spoke of his experience in watching news about East Timor:

Sometimes with the East Timor thing, it is assumed you know exactly what is happening. but I don't know what is happening.

Some of the groups also identified a key issue in the organisation of television journalism, which might be termed the 'half way through problem'. This is when journalists covering a long-running story tend to assume that their audience has watched the full sequence of reports, and so they do not need to repeat background issues mentioned in earlier reports. But in practice audiences come into stories at different points in the sequence. If they have missed the explanation that may have gone out two days before, they will have difficulty following the next series of reports. As this group member comments, the critical issue for him was to catch a story when it is 'young':

It is whether or not you catch a story young, like the first time it has been on or whatever, then you will follow it through. If you hear about it and you haven't seen it on the television you tend to not know much about it.

There is now some recognition of these problems by professional broadcasters and a desire to find new ways of structuring news and other programmes so that viewers may be better informed. The 3WE research project recorded these comments from Ian Stuttard a documentary producer at the BBC:

The whole angle is wrong. We look at the results of things most of the time instead of the causes. Wars rather than the arms trade is an example of this so we're conditioned to think of the developing world in a distorted way because we don't look behind the scenes. It's a challenge because viewers are less politically aware (this isn't helped by television!), and because 'causes' are not always very visual. How do you film money-laundering and arms deals? But it can be done!

This is an account of a pilot study in which senior BBC news personnel took part in focus group discussions. The purpose was to investigate how changes in the structure and content of programming might affect audience comprehension and levels of interest. In the event, Vin Ray, the world news editor and David Shukman, a world news correspondent both took part. The method used for the focus groups had three elements. First, the group was given a series of still photographs which had been taken off screen from an actual news story. The story was chosen in conjunction with the BBC and they also provided the video material which was used for the taking of the still pictures. These were chosen to represent the main elements of the story and this selection was done in collaboration with a BBC news journalist. In the research exercise, the focus group members are asked to look at the photographs and then to imagine that they are journalists and to write their own news story using only the pictures as a stimulus. The story is then read out but the group and there is a brief discussion about the sources of information which they have used and their level of knowledge of the area. In the second part of the session the actual news item from which the photographs were taken was shown to the group. This was then followed by a moderated discussion which focussed on six specific points:

What was the knowledge base which was used for the story which was written by the group members?
What was their level of comprehension of the issues involved in the story?
How much was added to their understanding of the story by the viewing of the actual news item?
What would need to be added to their knowledge to produce a better understanding of the issues involved?
How does the manner in which the content of the story is shaped or presented affect levels of interest?
How might such interest by affected by changes in presentation and content?

Using this method we conducted two groups in Glasgow and then a third in Bath in the south of England, at which the BBC journalists were present. At this meeting the journalists joined the group midway through the discussion and the whole of the meeting was filmed by the BBC. In all, there were 20 people in the groups (two of six, one of eight people). They were 'naturally occurring', in that their members normally worked together. The first Glasgow group were janitors, the second office staff, while the Bath group were postal workers.

The news story which was used for the groups featured the continuing conflict in Angola. It was presented by David Shukman and had originally been broadcast over two nights on the BBC news (3rd & 4th May 2000). The first part of the story dealt with the human effects of the conflict and the tragedies caused by land mines. Shukman reported that a million people were trapped in one part of Angola and could not escape because the roads were mined. There were images of children in hospital who had suffered appalling injuries. The report ends with the story of three sisters who had all lost limbs because of land mines:

This family of refugees has had to learn how to cope. First, this sister lost a leg to a mine, looking for water. A few months later, a second sister suffered the same fate. Then a third sister lost both her legs searching for food. They're surviving but they're scared.

I think so often about being disabled - and of course the war keeps going on and so we feel maybe we don't want to live anymore

The second report looked at the ongoing war and at some of the reasons why it continued. There is a brief history of the conflict given and Shukman notes that it began as a cold war struggle between east and west. The report then showed mounds of weapons to illustrate claims made by the Angolan government that they were winning the war against UNITA. Shukman comments that the war has its own momentum:

It is a conflict without an obvious end, there is no attempt either at a peace process. The suspicion is that there are people on both sides actually keeping the war going, for money.

As he goes on to comment, Angola has immense natural riches. The rebels of UNITA control the diamonds, while the government controls huge reserves of oil. He notes that America buys more oil from Angola than from Kuwait. The report then shows people in churches and a bishop praying for peace and an end to the corruption which is fuelling the war. Shukman then comments that:

Much of Angolan's wealth goes on weapons but some goes on extravagance like this new presidential palace which is hardly ever used and huge sums simply vanish into private hands.

The Angolan Defence Minister is then interviewed and he admits that senior figures are stealing, but nobody tries to stop them:

Minister : 'Imagine you are an investigator who accused some hot shot minister of pinching the money, you'd just be banged up in prison. Lots of Angola's money is just flowing outside to bank accounts in Europe and Switzerland - it's a dreadful situation'.

This corruption is then contrasted with the fate of the refugees from the war. A woman from a refugee camp is interviewed talking about the fate of her own children. A spokesman from the UN is then interviewed and Shukman notes that 'the UN accuses the Angolan government of wasting its money'. His final comment summarises the central theme of the report:

Once this country profited from peace, now a few profit from war and there are many who suffer the consequences.

"They have skills to rival any market research organisation, combined with a name independent researchers would die for." ~ The Sunday Times

"They have skills to rival any market research organisation,
combined with a name independent researchers would die for." ~ The Sunday Times