Public Attitudes and Press Coverage of the Environment,
1968-1996
By Glynn R. Wilson
A Master's Thesis
Accepted and Signed August 15, 1995
Updated and presented at the Midwest Association of Public Opinion Research annual conference in Chicago, November 21-23, 1997.
Reese-Phifer Hall, home of the University of Alabama College of Communication
The University of Alabama Graduate School
Master of Arts in Journalism
This thesis tracks trends in public opinion regarding the environment and concurrent trends in New York Times coverage of the environment from 1968-1994 in an effort to shed light on the relationship between the national media agenda and the mass public agenda. Findings indicate a peak in Times coverage of the environment-and a peak in public interest in the environment-in the early 1970s. That period is followed by a relatively steady decline in interest and coverage until 1988. Times coverage, and public interest, made a strong comeback in the late 1980s, then peaked on the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day in 1990. By 1991, however, the Persian Gulf War and the economic recession dominated the attention of the media, and public attention and mass opinion turned away from the environment throughout the election of 1992. This longitudinal study helps fill a gap in the literature on the agenda-setting model of media influence on public opinion. Further research into Times influence on coverage by other news organizations is suggested, and a practical method is recommended for comparing the national newspaper of record with other newspapers, magazines and television news.
Walter Lippmann was perhaps the first to recognize and criticize how the mass media help to perpetuate the "stereotype of progress" and in the process create a culture potentially destructive of the environment. In an unquenchable desire to dominate, conquer, and control nature, he said, humanity has "expanded industry furiously at reckless cost (to) natural resources . . . The habit of thinking about progress as 'development' has meant that many aspects of the environment were simply neglected." While Lippmann has been quoted extensively on a number of subjects and in a variety of formats, in his 1922 classic Public Opinion he issued a warning that has been largely ignored. He wrote,
There comes a time when the blind spots come from the edge of vision into the center. Then unless there are critics who have the courage to sound an alarm, and leaders capable of understanding the change, and people tolerant by habit, the stereotype (of progress), instead of economizing effort . . . may frustrate effort and waste men's energy by blinding them. (p. 108)
Luckily, the shelves of The University of Alabama's Gorgas Library contained a very old and tattered original edition of Public Opinion that I was able to latch onto in the first months of my return to Tuscaloosa to attend graduate school after a 10-year hiatus in the "real world."
I may not have stumbled onto this find, or many others, without the suggestion of Dr. Edward Mullins, Dean of the College of Communication. In fact, without a few words of encouragement from him in 1982, when I was a senior undergraduate student and he was a professor on his way to becoming dean later that year, I might never have become a journalist. And it is most likely that without his support, I would not have had the courage to apply for and gain admission to graduate school or to find myself in a position to research and write this thesis. Of all the people I could thank for this modest effort, he stands alone at the top of the list.
I could not have done the content analysis portion of this thesis without the willing and cheerful aid of another member of my committee, Dr. Yorgo Pasadeos, who was there to solve problems and issue commands when the statistical knowledge was temporarily beyond me. I would also like to thank Dr. Jim Taylor for his insightful review of this manuscript and input on the committee.
I also must issue my sincere thanks to Maury M. Breecher, MPH, ABD, who endured many hours with me on the learning curve aiding my transition from the style of a Southern journalist to academic research and writing.
I would be remiss if I left out the others who helped me code the data for this thesis. Thank you Rachel Hardy, Laurie Lattimore, and Michael Braunstein. You took some of the load off.
To the powers that be at The University of Alabama, especially those who control the money for the College of Communication and the Museum of Natural History, I am indebted for the assistantships that helped me make it financially through the graduate program. To paraphrase Edward O. Wilson on the inclusion of his work, The Naturalist, as the two-millionth book purchased for Gorgas Library, this has been a humbling and an enlightening experience.
Table of Contents:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
Statement of the Problem
Literature Review
Research Purpose
Research Questions
II. METHOD
Content Analysis
Public Opinion Measure
III. RESULTS
Content Analysis
Public Opinion
IV. DISCUSSION
Political/Historical Analysis
Quantitative Analysis
Further Research
REFERENCES
Problem Statement
When and how the mass media cover broad issues of general societal concern and how that coverage relates to public opinion are interrelated problems that have engaged researchers for decades. For the past quarter century a few scholars have looked at when and how the mass media cover environmental issues, and what effect that coverage has on audience attitudes (e.g. public opinion) during certain key time frames (Atwater, Salwen and Anderson 1985; Hansen, 1990; Murch, 1971; Wanta and Hu 1993). The primary problem to be investigated here involves when and how The New York Times covered environmental issues over the course of almost three decades, and how that coverage relates to what public opinion data show to be the public's agenda-at least on what the mass public considers to be the most important problem facing the nation at given times. A secondary purpose was to investigate in some detail how The New York Times covered an important, emerging issue.
It is assumed that agenda-setting, one of the most widely utilized systematic and quantitative research orientations in recent years, is a useful framework from which to look at this problem (Wimmer and Dominick, 1991). While some researchers may be critical of agenda-setting for its lack of some theoretical properties, those engaged in agenda-setting research counter that it is a "work in progress" (Mullins, 1994).
The Times was chosen because of its documented agenda-setting power not only on the nation's elite public, but also for its leadership role in setting the overall coverage agenda for other news organizations (Jordan, 1993; Wanta and Hu, 1993). [1]
Whether the Times covers particular environmental issues may well determine whether the issues get covered at all by other news organizations. How the Times covers environmental issues may influence how other news outlets cover them, and perhaps whether the public at large comes to believe an issue is worth tackling with public resources. If this holds true, it may also hold the key to whether certain problems are addressed by governments and industry. Considering the global importance of the planet's ecology to the future of society, it seems imperative that scholars across disciplines, especially in the field of communication, come to understand how this process works. This thesis is an attempt to make a contribution to the field of agenda-setting research by establishing a practical method of studying press coverage of the environment and public attitudes about the environment over extended periods of time and with diverse media. While only The New York Times is studied here, the coding scheme devised could be used for large and small newspapers, magazines, and television news, for later comparisons with this study.
From a theoretical standpoint, the findings presented here may bring a broader understanding of how the press functions in a democratic society when it comes to informing the public about what kinds of actions to take about important issues. It would be possible to utilize the methods developed here to keep a constant watch on press coverage of the environment and public concern for the environment and to draw conclusions at any given time that would be useful for social scientists and journalists alike. From a practical standpoint, media practitioners may better understand their agenda-setting power on these types of issues and may make informed, conscious decisions about when and how to cover them.
Literature Review
When, how and with what affect the media cover issues in the news, and how that coverage relates to the public agenda (measured in recent years by surveys), are topics that have intrigued researchers for much of this century, beginning roughly with the publication of Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann (1922). It was early postulated that the mass media (in those days large circulation daily newspapers, magazines, radio, and films) had a powerful and direct effect on public opinion. In the context of the Times, during and after World War I, the effects of propaganda were feared (Lasswell, 1927). In the late 1930s and early 1940s, researchers came to a different conclusion: that people tended to be more influenced by local opinion leaders than directly by the press (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948). This is commonly referred to as the limited effects model of mass communication.
Researchers in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, however, came up with a new formulation for the media's power to influence public opinion. McCombs and Shaw and others began showing how mass media (large newspapers, magazines, and television) affect public opinion by setting the public agenda, not by telling people what to think, but by influencing what issues people tend to think about or believe are important (1972). This original agenda-setting study compared issues covered by North Carolina newspapers with survey research ranking what the public felt was important during an election cycle, and found a near perfect positive rank order correlation between the two (.97).
In this vein, researchers have studied when and how environmental issues are depicted in media content, using many of the same techniques, methods, models, and theories employed by other scholars in sociology, psychology, political science, and communications. Much of this research has focused on media effects on public opinion, using the agenda-setting model in place of a more theoretical orientation, for example, the step-flow influence model.
A number of studies, for example, documented an "explosion" of environmental news stories during the early 1970s, and again in the late 1980s, in newspapers, magazines, and on television (Atwater et al., 1985; Howenstine, 1987; McGeachy, 1988; Greenberg, Sachsman, Sandman, and Salomone, 1989; Stocking and Leonard, 1990). Some researchers focused on the agenda-setting role of the mass media in shaping public opinion on environmental issues (Littlejohn, 1992). Others looked at specific news organizations such as the Associated Press, and at whether it fulfilled a traditional adversarial role in covering specific environmental events, in this case the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound (Dyer, Miller and Boone, 1991). Several studies demonstrate that while the press may set the public agenda under certain circumstances and for certain issues, special interest groups also can set the media agenda on other issues, including pollution and the environment (Weaver and Elliott, 1985; Olien, Tichenor and Donohue, 1989; Gwinn, 1990).
There are studies with conflicting findings as to when the media have the power to influence public opinion-that is, on what kinds of issues the media may penetrate the "blind spots" and galvanize public opinion by putting pictures inside people's heads (Lippmann, 1922). Researchers have put forward a number of hypotheses concerning media effects in reaching the public, on abstract versus concrete issues (Key, 1964; Yagade and Dozier, 1990), on substantive issues as opposed to subjects to which people bring their own convictions, and issues far away compared to issues close to home (Murch, 1971). Atwater and associates (1985) found that the primary reason people attend to environmental stories was to monitor events likely to affect their daily lives.
Zucker (1978) took issue with some scholars for clinging to the limited media effects model for much of the 20th century. He posited a variable news media theory to replace limited effects, in part drawing on studies using agenda-setting models and indirect effects. Based on the premise that the news media have the ability to influence public opinion on some issues more than others, Zucker asked: Under what conditions is the news media's influence on the public at its maximum and minimum? Surveys of public opinion (Gallup's most important problem question) were compared to television coverage of key issues. He concluded counterintuitively that when an issue intrudes into people's daily lives, the media have less of an effect on what they think about it.
There are also conflicting studies in the area of where the masses get most of their information on public affairs. Some researchers argue that people get most of their information from television (Westley and Werner, 1964; Murch, 1971; Zucker, 1978; Greenberg et al., 1989). Some argue that people first get their information about the environment from newspapers, and then from conversations (Bailey, 1971). Others say more people get their local news, including news about the environment, from newspapers, but that more people get national news from television (Atwater et al., 1988; Stempel, 1991). Yet the documented agenda-setting power of the Times has been shown to affect the opinions of the nation's elite public and to predict coverage by other news organizations (Jordan, 1993; Wanta and Hu, 1993).
Different researchers have also looked at how long it takes for an issue to gain prominent coverage before it penetrates the mass agenda. Salwen found that it took 5 to 7 weeks of media coverage of environmental issues before they became salient on the public's agenda (1988). Others have reported similar findings using time periods of 4 weeks prior to public opinion surveys (Wanta and Hu, 1993) and 2 weeks (Stempel, 1991).
Others have been critical of the press for dependency on elite sources (Smith, 1993). Lacey and Longman (1993), among the first to analyze press coverage of the environment using computers, came at the problem from the angle of "public access to the environmental debate" (p. 207). After examining British newspaper coverage of specific environment and development issues, they argued there are few grounds for optimism that the press will sustain or deepen its reporting on these issues. Ultimately, they argued that the press does educate the public about the importance of the environment, yet they call the process "highly selective" (p. 207). They say the press manages to set the public agenda "often in contradiction to espoused editorial policy," (p. 207) and that environment and development issues often receive less coverage as their significance goes up.
Wanta and Hu (1993) examined 15 categories of international news in four news media, The New York Times, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and compared the coverage with public opinion (measured by Gallup) from 1975 to 1990. The purpose was to test the agenda-setting impact of news on public concerns. The authors found that stories with high levels of conflict produce the strongest agenda-setting effects and that individuals are "more susceptible to agenda-setting effects" if they are "highly uncertain about the issue" and if the issue "is highly relevant to them" (p. 260).
Other surveys are in agreement about one crucial element in the debate. Hansen (1990) argued that the mass media can be an important component of agenda building on environmental issues, while Lowe and Morrison (1984) concluded that a sympathetic attitude on the part of media "professionals" is an important element in ensuring media coverage of the environment. Rossow and Dunwoody (1991) also found that editors' attitudes and their perceptions of reader attitudes may determine whether coverage of environmental issues contains complete "enabling information" for citizens to adequately participate in the democratic process, and influence public policy with regard to the environment.
One researcher traced the backlash against environmental news reporting in the early 1990s (Ritchie, 1993), although no political or economic context is presented. The scholarly literature is not yet up-to-date on this point. Many leading environmental journalists have written in the trade press about an apparent backlash against consumer/environmental groups, and against reporters on the environmental beat (Environmental Writer, June, 1994, May 1995; Sagan, 1994; Carmody, 1995). This was apparently orchestrated by the U.S. corporate community, and politicians allied with big business. This, they believe, resulted in a cutback in proactive environmental reporting in some regions of the country by some news organizations and in more skeptical or critical prodevelopment coverage of the environment by other news organizations.
Research Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine news media coverage of environmental issues from the late 1960s through the mid-1990s; to point out significant differences and trends in coverage, and to examine relationships, if any, between the amount, play, and slant of environmental news as reported in The New York Times (and presumably other news media) and public concern for the environment. Enough time has now passed since the environment first became an issue of significant national concern to study the communication process in some depth. Most of the detailed, content analysis, and public opinion studies in this field, were either published or conducted prior to 1989, before the peak period of environmental coverage, activism, and awareness in the 1988-1990 time frame. It was thought that it would be revealing to see how coverage related to public opinion during this period, and to see how it changed during and after the Gulf War, an event that dominated news coverage for a time.
This study differs from others in a number of ways. A comprehensive set of categories and variables was coded in a way that should add integration and a better understanding of the complex issues involved. For instance, this study looked not only at the number of stories but also their length and play, and at the number and types of sources quoted; it also looked at story slant-whether each article could be judged as essentially proenvironment, prodevelopment, or neutral (that is, balanced or objective). And it looked at whether or not each news item included citizen cues showing the public how it might become more involved in preserving the environment. While others have measured salience cues (Wanta and Hu, 1993) and enabling information (Rossow and Dunwoody, 1991)-two ways of framing how the media signal public involvement-they for the most part concentrated on local issues in local media. This study fills a gap in the literature by concentrating on a national medium, and a national measure of concern. It is a longitudinal examination of national media, concentrating the analysis on periods when survey data show that large numbers of the public felt the environment was the most important problem facing the nation. This study takes into account the most important and revealing periods in the early 1970s, the late 1980s and early 1990s, periods critical to an understanding of coverage of and public concern about the environment. These periods have been largely ignored by communications scholars and those with a quantitative perspective, although many sociologists have documented trends in the environmental movement from a more qualitative perspective.
Research Questions
Press content. In the interest of exploring the circumstances and time frames under which a national medium will cover environmental issues, and how that coverage might relate to public interest in the environment, this thesis focuses on a number of related research questions. It is important to state for purposes of later data analysis that once a decision was made as to the time frame for the study, all environmental articles in the Times were coded. Thus, the media content studied constitutes a more of a census than a sample in the strictest statistical sense.
The inquiry focused on the following questions:
(Q1) From 1968 through 1996, the period during which the environment emerged as an issue of significant national concern, how much coverage did The New York Times devote to the environment in the 30-day period leading up to the dates when Gallup Monthly reported starting a survey containing the standard most-important-problem question? Did this coverage vary over time?
(Q2) What kind of emphasis did the Times place on coverage as determined by a measure of article length? Did this measure of emphasis vary over time?
(Q3) What kind of emphasis did the Times place on environmental coverage as measured by placement of articles above or below the fold? Did this measure of emphasis vary over time?
(Q4) What kind of "slant" is reflected in Times coverage as measured by whether content was proenvironment, prodevelopment, or neutral? Did this decision-making process vary over time?
(Q5) How much of the Times coverage during this period could be classified by type as proactive as opposed to reactive? Did this style vary over time?
In addition to looking at dimensions of Times coverage with differences and trends over time, the study examined a number of attributes of Times environmental news coverage as a whole, in part to establish a benchmark for later comparisons with other news organizations. The following two questions were designed to shed light on coverage of the environment by the recognized national newspaper of record and the implications this holds for journalism in America, and on the national environmental debate.
(Q6) What kinds of sources did the Times consult in its coverage of the environment? In other words, to what extent did the Times rely on government and science experts, business and industry sources, consumer and environmental group sources, and average citizens?
(Q7) How often did the Times provide cues to its readers on how they might become involved in working on behalf of the environment?
Public opinion
(Q8) How interested was the public in environmental issues as determined by responses to Gallup's most-important-problem question? Did these responses vary over time?
(Q9) Finally, and the key question in terms of the agenda-setting focus of this study, are there relationships between Times coverage patterns over time and public opinion responses to the standard most-important-problem question? If so, what are they?
This study examines 30-day periods, leading up to the first day of a survey in which the Gallup firm asked: What is the most important problem facing the country today? Every even year was chosen from 1968 through 1996, primarily as a limiting mechanism and to ensure that election years were included for later political analysis. It was felt that a longitudinal trend analysis of the entire period was needed to fill a gap in the literature.
Content Analysis
The first phase of the study began in the fall of 1994 with the collection of New York Times articles on microfilm. All environment related articles were collected over a selected 30-day period in every fourth year from 1968 through 1992. After the committee approved the thesis proposal, minor changes were made in the coding plan and the final data were gathered during the spring of 1995. The final study added the years 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, and 1994, resulting in data covering every other year from 1968 through 1994. The year 1996 was later added during the fall of 1997.
Because of the widespread practice in previous agenda-setting research of choosing from 2 to 8 weeks of coverage leading up to public opinion surveys (see literature review and bibliography), 30 days seemed to be an adequate time span for this study. The author thoroughly scanned the Times on microfilm for the entire 30-day period leading up to and including the first day of each survey.
Environmental stories in the past have been defined as "news items relating to mankind's unintentional disruption of the ecological system" (Atwater et al., 1985), and as "elusive hazards" (Wilkins and Patterson, 1990). Webster (1979) defines the environment as "the complex of climatic, edaphic, and biotic factors that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine is form and survival." For the purposes of this study, an environmental story was defined broadly to include any news story, editorial, or column that has as it's primary focus some aspect of the global, national, regional, or local environment. This could be primarily a political story about the need for government action to foster clean air or water, a science story having to do with a study revealing health threats from a particular pollutant, or virtually any story one would expect an environmental beat reporter to cover. It also included a few business stories, which primarily dealt with the economic impact of pollution, and a few legal stories, which dealt mostly with prosecutions for environmental crimes or Supreme Court rulings involving environmental legal disputes.
All environmental articles were copied and assigned an identification number for coding and statistical purposes. These included articles from the front page, inside pages, editorials, opinion columns, the science section, and the Sunday Weekend Review section. Primarily for convenience, and due to time and resource limitations, the Sunday Magazine was omitted from consideration. The New Jersey and Connecticut zoned editions were not considered because of their limited geographic scope. Letters to the editor, gardening features, and the like were not considered because the overriding interest in this study was to look at hard news, and to determine what news reporters and editors themselves considered newsworthy and of interest to the broader public. Nelson Bryant's "Wood, Field and Stream" column in the sports section was included if it contained environmental issue commentary.
The unit of analysis for this study was the article or story. Photographs and graphics were not coded separately, although the presence of related artwork was taken into consideration in calculating the length variable. Measuring the actual length of all articles was considered, but rejected, because of the impossibility of developing a formula that would have taken into account changes during the 26-year span in both Times type size and microfilm size. In addition, some of the early microfilm was so damaged that to make a legible copy required enlarging the article several aperture settings. The author and three independent coders analyzed equal numbers of stories, and an intercoder reliability check was performed.
Operational definitions. The environmental stories were selected by the author and copied for analysis. The unit of analysis was defined as any article, column, or editorial in which the environment was the major thrust of content.
The categories of the content analysis were defined as follows:
(1) Length: Was the item of major length, medium length, or minor length? Major was defined as taking up between a quarter and a half-page (1 full column) of text, including photos, graphics and jumps. Less than a quarter page but more than an eighth of a page constituted a medium article. Minor articles were less than an eighth of a page.
(2) Play: Was the item above or below the fold on the page?
(3) Slant: Was the item proenvironment, prodevelopment, or neutral, that is balanced equally between both sides? For example, an item about the Exxon Valdez oil spill could be considered proenvironment if it dealt with the permanent damage done to the environment by the spill, as prodevelopment if primarily about Exxon's efforts to clean up the spill, and neutral if equally weighted on the two foci.
(4) Source: On whom did the writer rely for the information-a government agency, study or official; an independent scientific study or expert; a business or industry official; a representative of a consumer or environmental group; or one or more average citizens?
(5) Type: Was the item reactive, defined as a breaking news story, or was it proactive, defined as an investigative or enterprising look at an issue or problem? Did the paper simply react to a news event or pseudo news event, or was there a clear decision to develop a story from the background and interests of the news organization?
(6) Citizen cues: Did the article contain information giving the reader a possible action to perform to participate in the democratic process, such as to call or write a member of congress, join an environmental group, car pool, recycle, or vote?
(7) Public opinion measure: (Taken from the Gallup Polls as reported in Gallup Monthly for every two years from 1968 to 1996), "What is the most important problem facing the country today?"
Coding plan. Three independent coders were recruited and instructed, and a reliability check was performed on 10 percent of the articles and corresponding code sheets. A program was written in the statistical package SPSSX to allow computer translation of the coded information into statistical terms, and to allow for crosstabulation of the independent and dependent variables. Most variables were crosstabulated by year. Others were totaled as a percentage of the whole. Later analysis was conducted using SPSS for Power Macintosh. A Pearson row correlation was performed on the three key coverage emphasis variables.
Public Opinion Measure
A number of surveys, including Gallup and The New York Times Survey, have looked at public concern for the environment in great depth. The problem being studied here, however, required a consistent public opinion indicator over a long period of time. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Gallup began reporting the exact dates surveys were conducted. The results of the surveys, and the dates, were therefore taken from Gallup Monthly. For the years 1968-72, however, Gallup did not report the exact dates of surveys in its monthly publication. A call to the Gallup research library was sufficient to obtain those early dates. Next, the surveys were thoroughly scanned for incidents when the environment, or some variation (such as pollution and the environment, air and water pollution, etc.) popped up as an issue of significant national concern.
Content Analysis
Intercoder agreement tests were performed on a sample of 10 percent of the articles coded, about 60 out of 604 articles. Reliability coefficients ranged from 100 percent (most cases) to 80 percent in rare cases, with relatively low agreements occurring only on the news peg and slant variables. At least 95 percent agreement was reached in most instances, giving the author confidence that the coding scheme was sufficiently valid and reliable. On the variables day of week, newspaper section, geographic focus, play of story on the page, length of story, and year, the intercoder reliability coefficient was 95 percent or better. On the variables type of coverage, slant of story, number and type of sources, and number and source of citizen cues, the intercoder reliability coefficient was 90 percent or better. On the news peg variable, the overall intercoder reliability coefficient was 90 percent, although one coder dipped down to 80 percent in one year's 30-day sample.
Over the 28-year period, 641 environmental articles were identified. The answer to Q1 can be found in Table 1 and Figure 1. Notice the peaks in article frequency in the periods between 1970 and 1972 and in 1990, and the downturns in the number of articles from 1974 to 1986 and from 1992 to 1994. The number of articles climbed again in 1996, although only slightly.
We will return to these peaks in later discussion of the relationship between Times coverage and public opinion about the environment.
Table 1
New York Times Environmental Coverage, 1968-1994
Year Number of articles
1968 43
1970 60
1972 65
1974 40
1976 36
1978 43
1980 42
1982 40
1984 38
1986 29
1988 33
1990 60
1992 40
1994 33
1996 37
Table 2 shows the breakdown of Times' article lengths over the years. Major and medium length articles were collapsed into a single category of more than 10-inches and less than 10-inches.
The answer to Q2 appears to be yes. The Times did devote more space to the environment in some years than it did in other years. As we will see later, stories tended to be longer when public concern was higher. A distinct trend showed up with an increase in major length environmental articles, and a corresponding decrease in minor length articles, from 1968-72, and again from 1986-88, although some percentage increase of the change in the later years may be attributed to a general trend in Times layout, with more major articles with art and fewer "fillers."
Table 2
New York Times Item Length by Year
Year Major/Medium** Minor*
1968 77 23
1970 84 17
1972 82 18
1974 65 35
1976 78 22
1978 58 42
1980 83 17
1982 80 20
1984 79 21
1986 76 24
1988 97 3
1990 83 17
1992 90 10
1994 85 15
** More than 10 inches
* Less than 10 inches
Table 3 and Figure 2 show the breakdown of the play of Times environmental articles on the page over the years. A majority of environmental stories appeared above the fold over the course of this study, an indication that covering the environment has long been a priority at the Times. Part of this is an artifact of newspaper layout, however, since most articles on inside pages appear above advertisements on the page. This is obviously not true on page one or section fronts.
This trend reverses itself in the 1992 period, however. And while there is no doubt that the Gulf War, the 1991-92 recession and the 1992 election dominated the news during this time frame, this finding seems to lend some credence to the possibility that a backlash against the environment took place at the Times during this period.
Table 3.
New York Times Item Play by Year
Year % Below the fold % Above the fold
1968 21 79
1970 12 88
1972 31 69
1974 22 78
1976 25 75
1978 25 75
1980 22 78
1982 30 70
1984 29 71
1986 21 70
1988 24 76
1990 28 72
1992 55 45
1994 24 76
1996 13 87
Table 4 and Figure 3 show the trends in proenvironment, neutral, and prodevelopment slant in Times environmental coverage. This finding demonstrates the Times long-term committment to covering the environment in a proenvironment or neutral fashion. Notice the peaks in proenvironment coverage in the 1970 to 1974 period and in 1988, and the more neutral periods from 1974 through 1986. Since the 1992 election, Times coverage appears to be back on the proenvironment track.
Table 4
New York Times Item Slant by Year
Year Proenvironment Prodevelopment Neutral
1968 44 7 49
1970 72 3 25
1972 60 3 37
1974 65 10 25
1976 47 3 50
1978 44 9 47
1980 45 10 45
1982 44 3 57
1984 53 2 45
1986 35 3 62
1988 67 0 33
1990 42 3 55
1992 65 0 35
1994 70 6 24
Table 5 and Figure 4 show trends in news slant, or reactive versus proactive coverage of the environment. While most of the coverage was classified as reactive over the entire study period, notice the increase in proactive coverage in the period between 1970 and 1972, during 1980, and between 1988 and 1990, and the more reactive peaks in 1982 and 1992.
Table 5
New York Times Type of Content by Year
Year Reactive Proactive Other
1968 86 14 0
1970 72 28 0
1972 65 29 6
1974 75 18 8
1976 83 17 0
1978 77 12 12
1980 64 33 2
1982 98 2 0
1984 68 29 3
1986 48 52 0
1988 42 58 0
1990 53 43 3
1992 93 7 0
1994 52 48 0
1996 61 38 1
In answer to Q6, and in support of previous research in this field, the Times relies heavily on government and expert science sources when covering the environment. A majority of sources identified in this study were either government officials or science experts. To a lesser extent, the Times turned to sources from environmental groups and industry about equally, to the exclusion of average citizens, or as some have described them, real people (see Table 6). This finding supports research showing how the mass media relies heavily on expert and government "elite" sources (see Literature Review). It also provides a baseline for future research.
Table 6
Use of Sources in Times Environmental Coverage
Source Percent of All Sources
Government/Science 52
Business/Industry 16
Consumer/Environmental 16
Citizens 7
In answer to Q7, the Times rarely provides direct cues showing citizens how to participate in the democratic process to aid the environment (see Table 7). The few cases of citizen cues which did show up in the collected articles were usually in editorials and opinion columns. Government officials and science experts were occassionally quoted telling citizens how to become involved. Only rarely were cues provided by industry representatives, environmental groups, or citizens.
Table 7
Citizen Cues in Times Environmental Coverage
Source of Cue Number of Cues Percentage of Cues
Writer 36 63
Government/Science 14 25
Business/Industry 3 5
Consumer/Environmental 3 5
Citizen 1 2
TOTAL CUES 57 100
Public Opinion
The first mention of an environmental issue on a national opinion survey came in 1968, when Gallup reported that a percentage of respondents identified "sanitation: garbage, sewage" as a problem. Only in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996, did some variation of the environment make the most important problem list (see Table 8). Only the even years are reported here. In 1970, 4 percent said "air and water pollution" was the number one problem. This finding came from a January survey reported in the February issue of Gallup Monthly.
Table 8
Percent Naming Environment No. 1 Problem
Year Public Opinion
1968 0
1970 4
1971 4
1972 5
1974 0
1976 0
1978 0
1980 0
1982 0
1984 0
1986 0
1988 0
1989 4
1990 8
1992 3
1994 2
1996 3
Five percent of respondents reported some variation of "pollution and the environment" as the top problem in late July, 1972. The issue disappeared from the list in 1974. It did not make it back until 15 years later in 1989 when 4 percent of those surveyed named "pollution/ecology" as the number one problem. The peak year for national public environmental concern occurred in 1990, when a full 8 percent of those surveyed said "environment/ pollution" was the number one problem facing the nation. This represents more than 2 million people. In 1991 it fell to 3 percent, where it leveled off in 1992 and 1993. By 1994, the issue had dropped down to the top concern of only 2 percent of the people, then leveled out at 3 percent when this data was updated in 1996. This still represents a little more than half a million people, however, within a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
In order to better understand the relationship between press coverage of the environment and public concern for the environment, some of the key variables in this study were combined in Table 9 and Figure 5.. Notice the clear pattern that emerged in the period from 1970 to 1972 between the number of proactive articles that ran above the fold on Times pages and the percentage of the public naming pollution and the environment as the number one problem facing the country at that time. This graphically demonstrates a positive relationship between the press and public agendas in the early 1970s with regard to the environment, and lends support to the agenda-setting model of mass communication. When the frequency, play and proactive nature of environmental coverage was up, a higher percentage of the public was thinking about and express concerned about the environment. A Pearson row correlation revealed a significant relationship between the number articles and the level of public concern (p = .001; see Figure 5). None of the other variables is statistically significant.
Table 9
Public Opinion and Key Times Coverage Variables
Year No. of Articles % Above the fold % Proactive % Public Opinion
1968 43 79 14 0
1970 60 88 28 4
1972 65 69 29 5
1974 40 78 18 0
1976 36 75 17 0
1978 43 75 12 0
1980 42 78 33 0
1982 40 70 2 0
1984 38 71 29 0
1986 29 70 52 0
1988 33 76 58 0
1990 60 72 43 8
1992 40 45 7 3
1994 33 76 52 2
1996 37 87 38 3
The picture in the late 1980s and early 1990s is more mixed, yet notice the peak in public concern for the environment in 1990 and the number of articles the Times ran in the 30-days leading up to Gallup's public opinion survey in 1990. The environment dropped below the fold in a majority of cases in 1992. Environmental coverage became much less proactive during this period. Notice that the number of articles also dropped, and that the percentage of the public naming pollution and the environment as the top problem dropped from 8 percent in 1990 to 3 percent in 1992, to 2 percent in 1994, and leveled out at 3 percent in 1996. This differs sharply from the 1970s, when the environment dropped below one percent on Gallup's most important problem question. This suggests that the baseline level of public concern for the environment is at a higher level after a half-century of specialized news coverage.
In order to fully understand the trends identified by the quantitative portion of this study, and to place New York Times content and public opinion in the context of the times, further political and historical analysis of was necessary.
Political/Historical Analysis
During the selected 30-day period in January, 1968, when 43 items were identified as environmental articles, much of the coverage involved local air and water pollution issues, such as the debate over a new sewage treatment plant on the Hudson River, or international coverage, such as the use of agent orange as a defoliant in Vietnam. Sprinkled throughout the Times coverage of the environment in 1968 were articles on atomic energy, waste and radiation threats, oil spills, wetlands protection, agriculture and population issues, pollution in Lake Michigan, and national spending for conservation. Ralph Nader of Public Citizen began to appear on the national scene pushing for seafood inspection and lead-free gasoline. And the Sierra Club was fighting publicly with Georgia Pacific over the protection of redwood trees in Northern California.
Certainly there were a number of people in the U.S. who were concerned about the environment during this period, yet the environment had not yet emerged as the number one problem to enough people for it to become a factor on national public opinion surveys.
During a corresponding 30-day period in January, 1970, when 60 environmental articles were identified, Times coverage of the environment ranged from oil spills, nuclear radiation threats, and pollution in the Hudson, to the need for protecting wilderness areas. The issue that received by far the most coverage during this time frame, however, and the issue that hit the front page most prominently, was the need for a reduction in air pollution from automobiles. Top industry leaders, including Henry Ford, 2d, joined the chorus of voices calling for "fume-free cars." In a special business and technology section published on Sunday, January 11, 1970, Times editors asked the question, "Is the present agitation for restoring the environment-and end to air and water pollution and so on-a political fad, or will the substantial cost of fighting pollution have to be added to the costs of doing business?" The Ford chairman responded:
the problem of environmental pollution by far the most important problem facing our company and the entire automobile industry during the decade ahead. I have committed the Ford Motor Company to minimize pollution from its products and its plants in the shortest possible time (New York Times, Sunday, January 11, 1970, B1).
Even President Richard Nixon, the voice of big business and laissez faire Republicans, committed a major portion of his State of the Union speech in 1970 to the pollution issue, surprising Times editorial writers and columnists, and most likely the public at large. Any detailed discussion of this issue would also be incomplete without mentioning that in late January, the Environmental Teach-In ran its first full page advertisement in the Times promoting the first Earth Day celebration, which was officially held on April 22, 1970. The push was on from the environmental community. The press and a certain segment of the public responded.
By July 1972, when surveys showed that 5 percent of the American public believed the environment was the nation's most pressing problem, the Times ran 65 environmental stories-the peak in environmental coverage by the Times for the entire 268 year period of the study. Much of this coverage focused on an international conference on the "human environment" held in Stockholm, Sweden. The United Nations voted to allocate $100 million for preservation efforts on June 15, 1972. The next day a list of 26 principles was adopted, including a recommendation that all atomic weapons production and testing be eliminated. Senator Gaylord Nelson continued his fight against pesticides. Asbestos made the news in 1972, and the Times kept up with the expansion of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the group of scientists and activists which sued to ban the production of DDT in the U.S. To understand the Times' depth of commitment to the environment in those early years, it is worth mentioning that political columnist Anthony Lewis made the trip to Stockholm, Sweden to cover the UN conference and that columnist Tom Wicker felt the urge to go backpacking in the Mount Washington range and to write about it. From Pinkham Notch, New Hampshire, he wrote, "Some writers say there are really only three stories-man against man, man against nature, man against himself . . . " (Today that lead would read much differently in terms of gender, and in terms of nature. A fourth story would have to be added-humankind attempting to work in harmony with nature).
The environment disappeared from the public's viewing screen in 1973 when Watergate, a historic and unprecedented presidential resignation, the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, rampant unemployment, double digit inflation, and the first OPEC oil embargo gripped the nation. Long gas lines and the energy crisis dominated the headlines-and public consciousness and concern-throughout the remainder of the decade until the American hostages were seized in the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran. In spite of then-President Jimmy Carter's attempt to re-focus the nation's attention on the environment on the 10th anniversary of Earth Day during the presidential election of 1980, the nation was more concerned with international terrorism and the economy, according to Gallup surveys. Ronald Reagan won the day, and the presidency, and appointed James Watt to head the Department of Interior.
In part a reflection of public concern, and in part the natural selection of news priorities according to traditional news values, Times coverage of the environment dropped to 40 articles during the sample period in October, 1974. The general trend remained down through 1988 (see Figure 1).
During 1988, in the aftermath of the revolution of the intelligentsia in the Communist world, the breakup of the old Soviet Union, and the destruction of the Berlin Wall, then-President George Bush declared the Cold War over. No major recession loomed on the economic horizon. As is often the case in the United States, it seemed people were searching for an enemy. They found one in late March, 1989, when one Captain Hazelwood made the fateful decision to take a bottle of whiskey below deck and turn the Exxon Valdez over to his second mate. The giant supertanker laden with crude oil ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and began to spill its load of millions of gallons into the sound. The giant oil slick spread out over hundreds of square miles, killing all manner of marine wildlife and ruining the fishing and tourism industries of the area. The press, including the Times, jumped on the story. So too did the nation's environmental groups and politicians of every stripe. We met the enemy, and it was Hazelwood and Exxon. The public responded.
By April, 1990 and the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Day, 8 percent of the public said environment/pollution was the number one problem facing the country. The Times once again began devoting more energy into covering the environment. The number of articles in the 30-day period leading up to Gallup's survey in May jumped back up to 60, the exact same number identified in the corresponding period in 1970. Whistleblower protection, Bush's recruitment of William "Mr. Clean" Ruckelshaus to EPA, automotive emissions, the need for cleaner, alternative fuels, oil spills in the New York area, the Hazelwood trial, declining species diversity, wetlands losses, a new and improved Clean Air Act, acid rain, declining rain forests, overflowing landfills, mountains of nuclear waste, global warming, and green investing, all received major coverage and play in 1990. Even a long feature on "The Green Movement in the Fashion World" hit the front page of the Times on Sunday, March 25. Michael Oppenheimer penned an op/ed piece which ran on March 27 under the headline "From Red Menace to Green Threat." He made the case that the big four environmental issues of our time-global warming, ozone depletion, deforestation, and overpopulation-in effect replaced Communism as the number one threat to international security, and that European governments and industry were in the process of moving these issues to center stage, while the U.S. fell behind.
Once again in 1990, as it happened in 1970, the business section of the paper reflected this trend. On Sunday, April 1, 1990, came this item.
Fund managers say environmental housekeeping has become the world's top priority and that each time there is another environmental scare-the Exxon oil spills, radon, asbestos, acid rain-the public calls for tougher regulations and higher public spending. Public opinion has given birth to this industry, and it's accelerating," Mr. (Donovan) McKercher said. (He was the portfolio manager of Oppenheimer's Global Environmental Fund, launched in March 1990).
Just as many business leaders jumped on the green bandwagon in the early 1970s, some came out for the environment in the late 1980s and 1990, most notably the head of Conoco Oil, who appeared as the keynote speaker at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in New Orleans and called on all oil companies to clean up their act. Other businesses began using environmental backdrops for their advertising campaigns and began pushing "environmentally friendly" products, such as recycled paper and phosphate free soap. Other business leaders fumed at the environmental activism and behind the scenes searched for a way to reverse the trend. The "Wise Use" movement was born.
Then in August 1990, Suddam Hussien threatened to annex Kuwait and its vast petroleum reserves. No amount of blustering from the Bush administration could dissuade him. The invasion happened, and a massive airlift of U.S. military personnel and hardware was orchestrated into neighboring Saudi Arabia. The war began in early 1991 and ended six weeks later. The president's popularity set records at the 95 percent public support range. The nation's attention was focused, once again, on the availability of oil, not on its environmental consequences. By the time Bush's popularity began to fade, primarily because of his compromise with Congress on the tax issue, which seemed to break his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge, the nation's economy was in recession and the 1992 presidential election was on in earnest. It is impossible to say exactly what single issue swayed the electorate to place another Southern Democrat back in the White House after 12 years of Republicans, although the choice of fellow Southerner and environmentalist Al Gore Jr. as his vice presidential running mate certainly seemed to help Bill Clinton carry the day.
By July 1992, Times coverage dropped back down to 40 articles, equivalent to the levels in 1974 and 1982. By August 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil-the largest ever gathering of government officials and environmentalists-was over. But at least one quotation from the conference is worth noting. George Gallup Jr. called the rise in environmental consciousness during the late 1980s, in the United States and the rest of the world, especially Third World countries, "one of the most dramatic shifts in global opinion in modern communications history" (Gorrie, 1992, D6).
By then the presidential race was in full swing. It is instructive to discuss the first environmental article that appeared in the 1992 sample period. It begins in the top center of page one on Saturday, August 1, under the headline, "BUSH AIDE ASSAILS U.S. PREPARATIONS FOR EARTH SUMMIT." The aide was William K. Reilly, named to head the EPA shortly after Bush won the election of 1988 with the promise that he would be "the environmental president." Reilly had a strong environmental record and affiliations with some of the nation's largest and most powerful environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation. He circulated a memo within the EPA, which was subsequently leaked to the Associated Press, that assailed Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, and the White House staff for its handling of the Rio summit. In a nutshell, at first Bush said he would not attend, then he changed his mind and showed up late. Reilly said in spite of being a world leader in environmental protection and conservation, the U.S. came under heavy criticism at the summit for committing few resources and people to the effort and for its refusal to sign a treaty committed to biodiversity. Bush, a transplanted Texan and former oilman, and Quayle, who organized and headed the probusiness Council on Competitiveness, were clearly not in the mood to promote the environment at the expense of big business.
Gore, and to some extent Bill Clinton, used this weakness against the Republicans and managed to take the White House with a minority of the popular vote, but a majority in the electoral college. Gore made news in the Times during this period by calling Bush a hypocrite on the environment.
By January, 1994, Times coverage of the environment dropped to 33 articles in the selected period, a tie with 1988 for the 26-year low. Public opinion dropped to a base of 2 percent. The environment was still an issue at the Times, and among the public, however, as demonstrated by the numbers in 1996. The environment beat was still an institution in it's own right, both from a political and science perspective.
Quantitative Analysis
It is impossible to say with certainty what persuaded a large segment of the public that the environment was a top concern in the 1970-72, and again in the 1988-90 period, just as it is impossible to say for sure what exactly swung the election for the Democrats in 1992. Some of the first relationship can no doubt be attributed to the environmental groups and their public relations efforts in both instances. In 1970, President Nixon's proenvironmental message probably had some effect on public opinion. But in both instances, it is likely that at least some of the public concern can be attributed to heightened press coverage. Perhaps the issues covered by the press would not have been covered without the push from activists, yet it is possible that the president would not have taken the stance he did without the strong position staked out by the press. Suffice it to say that working in concert, the public became concerned, and some positive action was taken. By 1972, lead was on the way out of gasoline, the toxic chemical pesticide DDT was banned for manufacture and use in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency was created, and the first Clean Air and Clean Water acts passed Congress and became law.
It is not hard to understand from the analysis presented here why the press and the public were less concerned about the environment for most of the 1970s and 1980s. The environmental course of the nation seemed to be set in a positive direction by the actions taken by the government and industry in that heady period between the first Earth Day in 1970 and passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Other stories intervened. Watergate, the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, inflation, unemployment, the hostages, crime, education, declining moral values, all seemed so important. And they were.
But in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany-and in the aftermath Exxon Valdez disaster-the environment made its way back onto the press and public agendas. During the early Bush years, the new Clean Air Act was passed and children across the country were exposed to a plethora of environmental education programs, which should show up in the next generation of public opinion.
It cannot be determined without interviewing key editors at the Times whether there was a conscious effort to downplay the environment during the 1992 Gulf War period or whether the big news of the war and the 1992 election simply bumped it below the fold. But the trends that show up in Table 9, Figure 2 seem to answer affirmatively that the Times was affected by a backlash during the period of the Gulf War and the 1992 election. It is also worth noting that one environmental reporter, who had covered the environment aggressively, was replaced by another, who began covering environmental issues with more skepticism. [2]
Further Research
Perhaps a more detailed look at press coverage and public opinion in the late 1980s and the early 1990s could more definitively look at the backlash theory. Many questions were left unanswered by this study, such as how the Times compares to other newspapers around the country, as well as news magazines and television. That information could be obtained in the future through a content analysis of other newspapers; the major U.S. news magazines; and national television networks, including CNN, which has demonstrated a commitment to covering the environment on par with the Times. It would be useful to study some of the national chain papers, comparing conservative papers more hostile to the environment with papers that have demonstrated an advocacy or leadership stance in covering the environment. Ultimately, a comprehensive paper will be done to show the distinct nature of the media's agenda-setting influence in this specific area of national and international concern. [3]
Questions about media motivations for covering the environment, along with reader/viewer motivations for attending to media messages about environmental subjects, will have to be left for later surveys and case studies.
Although many researchers use the Times and assume it plays a role in setting the agenda for news organizations around the country, the literature lacks a definitive study showing how this works. A perfect case exists in Times coverage of the dioxin issue. When one of the nation's leading environmental reporters took it upon himself to report that dioxin-a highly toxic stew of chemical compounds produced in pulp and paper bleaching and hazardous waste incineration-was not a major threat to human health, numerous news organizations took his lead and reported the story. A few months later, a report that had been suppressed by the Bush administration was released by the EPA showing that dioxin was indeed a major cancer causing agent. The Times suffered severe criticism from the American Journalism Review (1993) and other quarters for its handling of the story, yet criticism in the journalism trade press was too little and too late to offset any possible side effects the Times story and its wire version had on public opinion. [4]
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End Notes:
Copyright 1997 Glynn R. Wilson. All rights reserved.