Researching risk and the media

How the mass media report social statistics: A case study concerning research on end-of-life decisions

“…The high profile of the coverage also reflected the particular authority of numbers for journalists (Schmierbach, 2005) and the mutation and number laundering processes described enabled the magnitude (Harcup and O'Neill, 2001) and certainty (Kitzinger, 1999) of the story to be increased. Stories about assisted dying, and of doctors becoming implicated in this, have been an ongoing feeding frenzy (Bell, 1991) in the British press in recent years, so the research reports provided additional fodder to satisfy this appetite.…”

“…Boyce (2007) describes the related phenomenon of 'pack journalism', evident in coverage of the MMR vaccine controversy, whereby journalists anxious not to miss out on what their competitors are getting, copy each others' reporting practices. Kitzinger (1999Kitzinger ( , 2000 notes the preference in health reporting for strong claims and certainty over tentative findings and equivocation, as well as the impact of pre-existing news 'templates' which provide journalists with a stock of standard story forms (for example, 'another child abuse story', 'another motorway pile-up story') into which new events can be fitted. Harcup and O'Neill (2001) note that 'magnitude' (in terms of the number of people involved or the size of the impact) is an important news value, providing an insight into why large numbers are often preferred to small ones.…”

“…Kitzinger (1999) points out that judging media coverage by assessing the accuracy with which official or scientific information has been transmitted misses the point that the role of the media is largely to offer a forum for raising issues as matters for public debate. Scientific reports may act as a stimulus for 30 this, as was arguably achieved by media coverage of the results concerning sedation, which up until that point had not been debated in the public arena to any great extent.…”

Framing Environmental Risks and Natural Disasters in Factual Entertainment Television

“…Such claims are not entirely uncontested (e.g. Kitzinger, 1999), yet more widely accepted is the view that in "the course of reporting major events as they unfold the media provides metaphors that ineluctably promote particular readings of these events" (Miles and Morse, 2007, p. 366).…”

“…As Kitzinger (1999) points out, however, "the important questions are not do the media 'play up' or 'play down' risk-but which risks attract attention, how, when, why and under what conditions" (p. 62, original emphasis). For instance, research suggests that the use of emotive and spectacular imagery of natural hazards and extreme weather in news 5 media reporting of climate change might positively mobilize audiences to 'affectively respond to climate change' (Lester and Cottle, 2009, p. 929).…”