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Manufacturing Concern: Endnotes by Jim Boyce

 

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1 .Although the focus is on physical victimization there will also be some overlap with related issues like death threats and the fear of violence.

2.Males were nearly four times more likely to commit suicide than females in 1988 and died more violent deaths. They were five times as likely to kill themselves by hanging, strangulation and suffocation, and more than ten times as likely to use firearms and explosives (Statistics Canada 1988:176-178).

3.1 have focused on physical violence for similar reasons: it is easily distinguished from other types of violence, is the source of many statistical studies which can be measured against media coverage and keeps this thesis to a manageable size. Additional types of violence are identified in the final report of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women, which cites financial, psychological, sexual and spiritual violence (Marshall and Vaillancourt 1993:7), and by DeKeseredy and Hinch who cite “corporate violence.., in the form of pollution, unsafe products and hazardous working conditions [which] results in far more death and injury than does conventional violence” (1991:97).

Because I will rely on studies, reports and surveys to gauge the scope of media coverage, the victims examined in this thesis are “reported.” It should be acknowledged that some, and perhaps most, violence goes unreported (Canadian Centre For Justice Statistics 1992:17). This should not be problematic since the media also uses these same sources.

4.Similar sentiments have been expressed more recently by van Dijk who writes that headlines “define the overall situation and indicate to the reader a preferred overall meaning of the text” (1988:40).

5.Other texts reiterate these sentiments when they state that “above all else, a headline must be accurate” (Stovall et al. 1984:162) and a “headline’s most important function.., is to tell the reader what the story is about” (Berner 1991:153).

6.Unless otherwise noted, emphasis within quotes is presented as found in the source being cited.

7.In November 1993, I sent a letter to the editors of the seven newspapers being examined (to be specific about their titles, I contacted four editors-in-chief, two managing editors and one editor). I received five responses. In each case, my letter was passed to another staff-member, namely, two news editors, two assistant managing editors and an ombudsperson, Robert Walker of The Montreal Gazette, who answered with a column (“What does the headline need most? Clarity and accuracy” 13 December 1993:B3). These responses, except for that of Walker, are indexed in the bibliography as “Paperl,” “Paper2,” etc.

8.Similar responses were given to the related but more direct question, “To what extent do headlines represent the content of articles?” The news editors wrote that headlines should “sum up as accurately and concisely as possible the central thrust of the story” (Paper2 1993) and “they should do so 100%” (Paperl 1993).

9.Bell notes that while scientists are not “disinterested parties in their judgements,” science news “is less concerned with self-image and advancement than, for example, party political news” (217). In another study, Ryan and Owen, in an attempt to measure how accurately eight metropolitan newspapers portrayed social issues, sent a questionnaire to the main source of 247 “issue-oriented” articles, namely, those concerning “a timeless social problem” rather than a particular incident (193 responded). The respondents could choose 36 possible errors. Twenty-five per cent cited “Misleading headline” (the fourth most common problem) and 14.8 per cent cited “Inaccurate headline” (tenth most common) (1977:29). The findings appear to be overstated given that the responses overlap one another and it is unclear whether headlines were considered to inaccurately portray social issues rather than article content. This overstatement is also suggested by the fact that each of the 16 more common errors were found in 10 per cent of the articles.

10.This finding is based on a sample of 29 articles 

11 .Titles in textbooks have been found to have a similar effect. Citing previous research in the field, Krug et al. write that “In general, titles may help make ambiguous text more comprehensible and help readers establish a point of view to guide the encoding and retrieval of text” (1989:112). Niegemann also found some evidence that “titles related to a specific part or aspect of the text in question may bias memory in a selective way...” (1982:398). Citing studies of educational material which “found that whatever elaborations are given to a central topic, recall is not better for a long text with many details than for the summary or outline of such a text,” van Dijk writes that “for news discourse, this would suggest that reading the headlines and the leads would produce the same recall effects as reading the whole news stories” (1988:152).

12.Similarly, Marquez writes: “many readers may not read beyond the headlines of many news stories, and their knowledge or opinions of certain news events may thus depend on the accuracy of such headlines” (1980:31 while Stovall et al. state: “readers often will read nothing about a story except the headlines” (1984:163). 

13 .Other studies of headlines have found that font type affects reading speed (English 1944:229) and that it takes longer to read ambiguous headlines although readers ultimately carry only one meaning forward (Perfetti et al 1987:706-707).

l4. Beginning in 1993. The Canadian News Index was merged with The Canadian Magazine Index and The Canadian Business Index to form Canadian Index.

I 5.The following editions are indexed: the final edition of Calgary Herald, The Montreal Gazette and Winnipeg Free Press, the metro edition of The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, the morning edition of The Halifax Chronicle Herald and the “4 Star Edition” of The Vancouver Sun.

16.The Toronto Star is cited as the paradigm example (Bain 1981:70).

17.The other is The Toronto Sun.

18.These circulation figures are averaged from the December 1989, December 1990, June 1992 and July 1993 editions of Canadian Advertising Rates and Data. Each edition is based on rates from nine months earlier (for instance, the June 1992 figures are based on the six months ending with March 1991). The exception is The Globe and Mail whose circulation figures are based on December of the previous year. Only circulation figures for the Metro edition of The Globe and Mail were used (the Provincial and National editions were omitted). The Toronto Star figures are for circulation within the “Designated Market.”

19.The Royal Commission on Newspapers provides the following facts:

*  Almost all Canadian adults read daily newspapers during the course of a week. They read an average of 6.4

issues per week.

*  Only 11 per cent of Canadian adults do not read a daily newspaper during a week.

*  More than half of all Canadians (54 per cent) have a strong newspaper affiliation. These are adults who

strongly agree that “newspapers are a regular part of my daily life.”

*  Canadians say they spend an average of 53 minutes, in total, reading daily newspapers on weekdays, and 66

minutes of weekends (Kubas 1981:11).

20.They continue to state that the findings were consistent “whether we measured interspousal violence by means of the overall violence scale or by the severe violence scale” (429), which includes categories such as “kicked, bit, or hit the other with a fist,” “hit or tried to hit the other” and “beat the other up” (417). They acknowledge that there are several explanations for their findings (for example, self-defence) but that the “consistency with which this pattern [of husband abuse] emerged in our data requires further empirical scrutiny” (429).

21. Olasky, for example, examined 150 years of print media coverage of abortion and found vast changes over time, from the relative silence of the 1860s when newspapers made profits from abortion advertisements (1988:14-25) to the support by major newspapers like The New York Times, during the late-1960s, of at least some form of legalized abortion (103-112). Martindale studied the portrayal of blacks in the major newspaper of four American cities. He concluded that the press failed to put the civil rights protests of the 1 960s into historical context (1986:97) and gave “a much more complete and representative portrayal of black life” in the 1970s (107).

Analyzing Canadian newspaper coverage of issues such as the Gulf War, the American-Canadian Free Trade agreement and the Oka crisis, Winter claimed that “media portrayals are highly consistent with corporate interests” (1 992:xiv). In a chapter entitled “The Socialist Hordes”, he writes that the print media were overwhelmingly negative in reporting and commenting on the deficit-increasing, first budget of the Ontario NDP (173) but had little criticism for the deficit budget of the federal Conservative government (178). Other studies have criticized many different aspects of newspaper reporting. Shepherd and Barraclough found that the coverage of suicides in a high circulation British newspaper tended to give “violent deaths and deaths of younger people... more and bigger reports, and more dramatic headlines” (1978:286). Simon discovered that six major American newspapers gave more coverage to “the 1982 war in Lebanon than they did to the Civil War in 1975 and 1976 in which more lives were lost and the destruction and chaos was equally great” (1983:14), while Burton and Keenleyside stated that coverage of the Middle East by the Canadian print media during the mid-I 980s was rarely put into historical context (1991:371) and focused overwhelmingly on violence (373).

Many of these studies see media coverage as influencing the public. Olasky wrote that “the press helps to set public agendas [on abortion] and often grants legitimacy to various groups,” pointing out that it is not a one-way endeavour: 

“it is evident that wielders of ideas and power, including intellectuals and public relations men and women, set agendas for the press, which responds as frequently as it initiates” (1988:150). Martindale stated: “despite inadequacies in their coverage, the media helped considerably to advance the [black] civil rights movement of the 1960s” (1986:10), while Winter credited negative press coverage of the Ontario NDP with their quick decline in popularity polls (1992:xviii).

Media bias continues to be well-documented. The magazine, Lies of Our Times, which focuses primarily but not exclusively on coverage by The New York Times, contains articles arguing that the media covered up Iraqi civilian casualties during the Gulf War (March 1991:3), that the serial killing of forty-three prostitutes in San Diego received less media attention than other killings (Nocenti 1991:11), that the killing of Catholics by loyalists in Ireland received relatively little coverage in comparison to the killing of Protestants by the IRA (Flanders 1994:17-18), and that the “Canadian print media argued that the Ontario election did not reflect a vote for the NDP, but a vote against the Liberals” (Bernard 1991:18-19).

Content magazine focuses on the Canadian news media. In a 1981 article, a reporter outlined the relationship between the local media and a mining company in Sudbury after a series of deaths at a mine (the company was an advertiser and sponsor of the media) (Lowe 14-25). Another reporter described working at The Intelligencer in Belleville where favorable stories were published about major advertisers, sometimes on the page facing those business’ advertisements (Aisling 1981:35).

Other studies look at media coverage more generally. Bozell and Baker argue that the North American media has a Liberal bias. They cite surveys which find that journalists are three to four times more likely to identify themselves as liberals than conservatives: one survey of 151 business reporters from thirty publications found that “54 percent... identified themselves as Democrats, barely 10 percent as Republicans” (1990:39-40). They claim that liberal sources are cited more often (27-29), that media companies are far more likely to donate to liberal organizations (86-95) and that they disproportionately cite those organizations in their news media (95-98). Lee and Solomon, to the contrary, argue that the media reflect corporate and conservative interests. They cite a 1980 survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors: “Thirty-three percent of all editors employed by newspaper chains admitted that they would not feel free to publish news stories that were damaging to their parent firm” (1990:96). In a chapter called “Press and Prejudice,” they argue that the media stereotype blacks, and ignore white-collar crime in preference to violent crime, alcohol-related problems in preference to drug-related ones, and issues affecting women (228-253). These conflicting conclusions about bias in the Canadian media are well-known. For instance, Black writes “It is not a question of one newspaper against another, much less of liberal against conservative reporters, but of the liberal or in some cases radical-liberal press against the other elements of society, the considerable majority, in fact” (1981:245). In response, Raudsepp writes that Black’s concern is that “proprietors and publishers may be losing their grips on the steering mechanisms” when the “real villain in journalism.., is the contemporary organizational structures of the media,” structures which are based on profit-making (1981:255). 

22.Chomsky and Herman emphasize the gender of these victims. 

23.Saskia Sutmoller was editor of the 1989 volume and co-editor in 1990 with Tom McGreevey. McGreevey edited the 1991 volume and was followed by Nina Atwal in 1992. Atwal is the present editor.

24.The bracketed information provided with each headline cited includes the date (in order of year, month and day), newspaper and page of publication. Newspapers are designated as follows: CH (Calgary Herald), GM (The Globe and Mail), HCH (The Chronicle-Herald), MG (The Montreal Gazette), TS (The Toronto Star), WFP (Winnipeg Free Press) and VS (The Vancouver Sun).

25.Half-numbers are used since some headlines are found in two of the CNI categories selected for this thesis.

26.Although groups one and four contain “literal” references to violence, I have distinguished group four as “neutral” to avoid confusion.

27. Two things should be noted here. First, references to these events which fulfill the criteria of the first category have been included there. Second, although there are many events related to gender and violence, particularly at the provincial and municipal level, it would be impractical to isolate all of them since many would involve only one or two headlines and others would likely be overlooked.

28.The exception is 1989, before the category Violence Against Women was introduced, when 13 of the articles were categorized in Violence and one was categorized in Crime and Criminals -- Media Coverage. 

29.In the case of this second type, one reader suggested I check the content of the articles to ensure they were linked to the contextual events I have chosen. Of the 40 (out of 43) I located, all were linked.

30.One article was deleted from the total since it concerned child victims.

31. Four headlines were omitted since they emphasized children as victims and two were omitted because they dealt with non-physical crime.

32.In headlines emphasizing women as victims we find cases where the same article or issue is published in several newspapers on the same day as well as headlines focusing on traits other than gender, such as ethnicity. Such cases are not as frequent as with headlines on male victims and cannot be seen to reduce the gap in coverage between female and male victims.

33.A notable exception is the fall of 1992 which contains 10.9 per cent of total coverage compared to 15.5 per cent in 1991 (this gap is slightly larger when we consider that coverage increased in these two years). Despite this, it contains more coverage than any other season except for the fall of 1991.

34.There are also sizable changes in coverage during other seasons but these appear to be linked to a particular event rather than ongoing trend. For example, the difference between the winter of 1991 and winter of 1992 is partially due to headlines on the National Panel on Violence Against Women.

35.Near-equal rates of husband and wife abuse have also been found in other studies in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. See the following for additional information on, and critiques of, these studies: DeKeseredy (1993), DeKeseredy and Hinch (1991), Steinmetz (1981), Steinmetz and Lucca (1988) and Straus and GeIles (1986).

36.That men may also engage in defensive violence is not addressed. Steinmetz and Lucca write that women’s “use of physical violence on their husbands has carefully been avoided” (1988:233).

37.King makes a similar point in terms of male victims of sexual assault, writing that while women may have difficulty revealing assaults the “stigma for men may be even greater... in a society which expects its male members to be self-sufficient physically and psychologically” (1992:10; also see Freeman-Longo 1989:194).

38.Given that women are statistically more likely to be victims of sexual of violence and are, at the least, perceived to more likely be victims of domestic violence, it should be noted that we would expect greater coverage of women in terms of these two types of violence (although whether we should expect it to the degree that it is found is another matter).

39.The effect is seen to be based on the type of media involved: “Television has been more related to fear of crime; print, to people’s knowledge abut crime and adoption of crime preventive actions” (1992:96).

40. The effect works both ways: “criminal justice officials... may react to what they have seen and heard in the media or act in anticipation of how they expect the media will respond” (1992:101).

41 .These four polls find women are between three and three-and-one-half times more likely than men to report being afraid to walk at night. The percentage of women afraid to walk at night ranges from 50 to 56 per cent while that of men ranges from 15 to 18 per cent.

42.Segal writes that men are “no more potential rapists than they are potential house-breakers, potential drug takers, and so on” (1990:5).

43.For example. despite statistics showing a great deal of husband abuse, I could find no mention in government or academic literature of programs or shelters for men who are battered, although there were 98 programs for men who are batterers (Health and Welfare 1991: Table of Contents). The only service I located was a self-help group in Toronto. The director of the program told me that his was the only organization helping battered men in North America (Easton 1993, 1994).

44.As Ericson et at. note, “sources and journalists also converge to the extent that journalists rely upon sources to function as ‘reporters,”’ with sources gathering and presenting information, and the reporter essentially working as an editor, deciding which of the information to use (1989:6). 

45.In this sense, we should be careful not to see the media as a soothsayer but part of a complex process that influences public perceptions and public policy.

46.This socialization is recognized by many, including Thompson who sums it up succinctly. Boys begin learning from birth “a set of attitudes and behaviours about what it means to be a man.” Among these are the ideas that “it is unmanly to express fear, appear vulnerable, and be unwilling to ‘fight’ and, conversely, that it is manly to be stoical, deny pain, take extreme physical risks, and engage in combative, often hostile activities that can lead to stress, physical injury, and even early death” (1985 :Introduction).

 

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