Environmental Stories Define Problems, Not Solutions

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2004 by Major, Ann M, Atwood, L Erwin

An analysis of Pennsylvania newspapers shows that most environmental stories focused on issues such as sewage, water pollution and land development, not on issues such as global warming.

Shoemaker and Reese1 argue that the news media are the primary source from which most people obtain their knowledge of the world's events and issues, and studies focusing on environmental news have confirmed that news is the public's primary source of information about environmental issues and problems.2 According to Tuchman, news disseminates "information that people want, need and should know," and "news organizations both circulate and shape knowledge."3 This study examines how environmental issues are reported in the news as problems and the claims that are included to support or refute those asserted problems.

This content analysis examines a sample of 841 environmental news stories drawn from 69 Pennsylvania daily newspapers focusing on 11 environmental issues.4 According to studies of social problems, individuals or groups recognize conditions of discrepancy and then define those conditions as problems.5 The identification of problems is a political process and is far from monolithic because what is recognized as a problem for some groups and individuals is not necessarily a problem for others. Defining social and political problems is a negotiated and socially-constructed activity and the news media play a critical role in legitimating6 and shaping the definitions of environmental issues over time.

When an environmental problem that impacts a community is recognized, most residents must rely on government and scientific sources for information about the problem and potential solutions.7 Claimsmakers actively work to define conditions of discrepancy in an effort to make those conditions meaningful to the community. The primary claimsmakers include community activists, local corporate interests, local and state governments and the news media.8 In their efforts to define problems, claimsmakers not only define problems but also assert statements of value to justify problem definitions or conditions of discrepancy. As claimsmakers, reporters and editors employ journalistic values in selecting sources and defining issues.

This content analysis examines how 11 environmental issues reported in the Pennsylvania daily press were defined as problems and how story sources and environmental and news values were related to problem definitions. Instead of selecting stories about specific environmental issues such as global climate change, this content analysis focuses on general environmental news, which provides a glimpse into the nature of environmental issues that are covered on a daily basis in the press.

Defining Environmental Issues as Problems

This study employs the concept of the problematic situation as a means of operationalizing how an environmental issue or problem is defined.9 Because the news media confer legitimacy on problems as they emerge on the public agenda,10 most of the news that is reported is assumed to be problem-focused as a result of the values that editors and reporters use in determining what is news. For example, a state environmental agency's investigation into a manufacturing plant's release of chemical byproducts into a local river may be transformed into the problem of a loss of clean water and damage to a trout habitat in a local newspaper story. The study of how issues are transformed into problems in news stories provides a way of examining not simply those issues but also the meanings that reporters, editors and other story sources ascribe to those issues.

To better understand how issues are constructed as problems in the news, Edelstein and his colleagues developed the framework of the problematic situation from a review of the educational, problem-solving research." Communication performs an important role in transforming a social problem from the abstract problem stage to the problematic situation wherein the problem is defined, the stage where a problem takes on meaning that then can be shared in the communication process. Furthermore, the transformation of an issue into a defined problem may be perceived from an individual and / or societal perspective in terms of how individuals and larger social groups construct the meaning of problems.12 In comparing news content analyses with survey data, Edelstein et al. found a positive correlation between journalistic constructions of general social and economic problems and audience constructions of those same problems across four cultures.13

Problem Definitions

The coding scheme outlines six problem conditions based on meaning categories found in the problem-solving literature.14 Issues in the news can be described or defined in a story without any stated discrepancy or reference to a problem. In this case, the issue or statement would be defined as "no problematic situation." A problem defined in terms of something once possessed or valued that is now gone is a "societal or individual loss of value." An "individual or societal need for value" arises when the problem is constructed in terms of an individual or social need that must be fulfilled to end a situation of discrepancy.