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Executive Summary Coverage in Context How Thoroughly the News Media Report Five Key Children’s Issues A study commissioned by the Journalism Center on Children & Families on Children and Families the Journalism Center on Children & Families on Children and Families Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park February 2002 Research conducted by: Dale Kunkel, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara; Stacy Smith, Ph.D., Michigan State University; Peg Suding and Erica Biely, University of California, Santa Barbara
Overview of the Study Along with its mission to serve as a training and resource center for professional journalists, the Journalism Center on Children & Families on Children and Families has informally monitored how the news media cover children’s issues for nearly a decade. We have done so largely by anecdote, thanks to our vast national network of print and broadcast journalists. However, as we approach the Center’s 10-year anniversary, we are moving beyond the anecdote to offer a more scientific look at how the media cover critical child/family issues. Most previous studies of media coverage of children have been largely descriptive in nature. They quantify coverage by answering questions such as: How often are children the focus of news reports? Which topics are covered, and how often? Is the coverage “front page” or “top of the news” in presentation? Yet past studies have rarely measured the depth or content of coverage. In addition to descriptive information, the Center wanted to know how thoroughly the news media report children’s issues. When covering single events, do the media include information that provides a broader perspective on the issue? Which topics include more of that critical context, and which don’t? Those questions are the focus of this research, which is the largest empirical analysis of child-related news coverage produced by the scientific community. The study examines five key topic areas that researchers say are of critical significance to the well-being of children: child abuse/neglect, child care, child health insurance, teen childbearing and youth crime/violence. To assess news coverage, the Center, which is a program of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, commissioned Prof. Dale Kunkel, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, to design a content analysis study. The Center then commissioned Child Trends, one of the nation’s top research firms studying children, to summarize the most important background information currently available for each topic. Kunkel’s team used those briefing papers as a basis for evaluating the level of context reported in stories on each topic. In part, this study mirrors the findings of previous research that examined which child-related topics receive news coverage. For example, two of the five topics — youth crime/violence and child abuse/neglect — dominated news coverage about children. Indeed, these two subjects collectively account for more than 90 percent of the stories in this study. (See Key Finding 1.) In contrast, teen childbearing, child health insurance and child care were consistently overlooked by the print media, and almost invisible on national television newscasts. Even the nation’s most prominent newspapers on average deliver no more than a story or two per month across all three of these “nonviolent” topic areas. We believe the study breaks new ground in its evaluation of the depth and content of news coverage on child/family issues. To wit:
In two topics — child care and teen childbearing — at least three out of four stories included some of the contextual information identified by Child Trends. Coverage of child health insurance, however, was moderate on this measure, with 36 percent of those stories including some of the important background information. (See Key Finding 2.)
News coverage that addresses child health insurance almost always focuses on policy, while stories about child care and teen childbearing do so at least moderately. By contrast, fewer than one in five stories about youth crime/violence and child abuse/neglect address policy perspectives. (See Key Finding 3.)
Of stories on youth crime/violence, child health insurance and child abuse/neglect, at least nine of 10 were breaking news as opposed to so-called “trend” stories. In contrast, stories on teen childbearing and child care are less related to breaking news. (See Key Finding 4.)
When examining only trend stories about youth crime/violence and child abuse/neglect, context was infrequently reported (24 percent and 34 percent respectively). However, every trend story about teen childbearing and child health insurance, and three-fourths of trend stories about child care, included larger context. (See Key Finding 5.) Kunkel and his researchers evaluated coverage in 12 major newspapers from across the country and from newscasts on four national television networks. They examined 1,065 newspaper editions and 354 television newscasts that appeared from April 21 to July 20, 2001. Only stories that matched any of the five topic areas were further analyzed. The newspapers were selected for inclusion in the study based on broad geographical representation as well as diversity of ownership. The three television broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) were chosen for national reach, as was CNN, the leading cable news network. NEWSPAPERS IN THE STUDY TELEVISION NETWORKS IN THE STUDY The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ABC Chicago Tribune CBS The Daily Oklahoman NBC The Denver Post CNN/10 p.m. EST half-hour news Houston Chronicle Los Angeles Times The New York Times The (Portland) Oregonian USA Today ## The Miami Herald Note: Broadcast networks’ nightly national Star Tribune (Minneapolis) newscasts were analyzed, as were CNN’s
The Washington Post
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