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There are others ways in which the relationship between news content and audiences have been theorised (for an account see Philo and Miller 2000) I will concentrate here on the above perspectives as I think elements of each of these can add very importantly to a developed understanding of this issue. In making this case I will draw upon three major studies which were undertaken by the Media Group at Glasgow University. They all focussed on news content and public understanding of the developing world. The first was a study of television coverage of the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994. This was undertaken together with the Overseas Development Institute and the role of the Media Group was to analyse the major themes in news content relating to the crisis. We worked jointly with Lindsey Hilsum (now the diplomatic correspondent of Channel 4 News) who at the time was working in Rwanda as a journalist. She contributed to the report by writing about the production processes which influenced editorial content (Philo et al., 1999). The second study was of news coverage of the subsequent war in Zaire. The study was undertaken jointly with the Save the Children Fund and its purpose was to analyse the range of explanations in news coverage which was being made available to viewers (Beattie et al., 1999). There was a good deal of concern at this time amongst NGOÕs and government departments that public understanding of crises in Africa and in other parts of the developing world was severely limited and that one reason for this might be the nature of television coverage. Our third study in the area was undertaken for the Department For International Development (Glasgow Media Group 2000). This study focussed on television reporting of the whole of the developing world and examined which countries, issues and types of events were covered. We also selected a number of case studies for detailed analysis. These were examples of the more frequent categories of TV news coverage of events, including for example conflict/war/terrorism and disasters such as earthquakes. The method employed in these content studies is a version of thematic analysis and consisted of a detailed examination of the language and visuals of news reports. The purpose is to examine how key themes emerge in TV news reporting and how they are used to structure and develop stories. In practice the news text is broken down into separate references (phrases or sentences) which relate to the range of themes which are covered in the story. A numerical account of these is also given, which allows some judgements to be made about the dominance of specific themes. For the DFID study, explanatory and contextualising references were identified in order to assess how much the content might assist audiences in understanding development issues. For the same reason we also examined other types of television format such as cookery and travel programmes and other documentary output. This work on content was accompanied by an extensive audience study which was conducted using focus groups. We interviewed a total of 26 groups, selected on criteria of age, income, ethnic background and gender (total 165 people). The purpose of the interviews was to identify patterns of understanding and belief about the developing world and to trace the origin of these, in for example, media accounts or from other sources such as schooling or peer groups. We also wished to examine how media products might work to compel audience attention, to entertain and create lasting images as well as how they might produce more negative responses from viewers. The DFID study was undertaken in close contact with senior production staff from the BBC, ITN, Channel 4, Sky and Discovery Television. As a result of these links with broadcasters, there was a further pilot study in which senior journalists worked directly with a focus group. In this extension of the study, the journalists took part in the group discussion to investigate issues of audience interest and comprehension and how these might be influenced by changes in the structure and content of news reporting. There are three key issues emerging from these studies which I will outline here: 1. That the decision made by broadcasters (on commercial criteria) about what viewers would desire to watch have in the long run produced very negative responses in TV audiences towards the developing world. 2. That audiences are misinformed about the developing world because of the low level of explanations and context which is given in television reporting and because some explanations which are present are partial and informed what might be termed “post-colonial beliefs”. 3. That a change in the quality of explanation which is can radically alter both attitudes to the developing world and the level of audience interest in the subject.
Programme editors are driven by audience interest, but this can lead to a fixation with home, leisure and consumer items instead of the broader agenda. (3WE, 2000: 160). His words find an echo in the comments of George Carey of the production company Menton Barraclough Carey: I try and guess what the audience wants. Most people switch on to be entertained not to get a message. Instinctively I feel domestic stories will be more interesting than foreign ones. (3WE 2000:159). The point is spelt out more forcefully by Steve Hewlett, Director of Programmes at Carlton Television: I know from past experience that programmes about the developing world don’t bring in the audiences. They’re not about us, and they’re not usually about things we can do anything about. (3WE 2000:159). Commercial criteria are now a key consideration for programme makers and this comes down in part to providing what they assume the audiences will want to watch. As Charles Tremayne, controller of factual programmes at Granada TV puts it: We’re past the days of giving audiences what they should have now it’s all about what they want. (3WE 2000:159). But the assumptions made are not necessarily well informed about why audiences watch and what conditions their level of interest. As Alex Holmes, editor of the programme Modern Times at the BBC admits: Audience interest is very important, second only to a good story, but we don’t know exactly what people want. I imagine what they want. ItÕs blissfully unscientific on Modern Times! (3WE 2000:159). One consequence of these assumptions on audience interest has apparently been the drastic reduction of factual programming about the developing world. A report by Jennie Stone for 3WE concluded that the total output of factual programmes on developing countries by the four terrestrial channels dropped by 50% in the 10 years after 1989. (Stone 2000:4). Our own study showed that when the developing world is featured on the news a high proportion of the coverage related to war, conflict, terrorism and disasters. This is especially so for the main television channels with over a third of coverage on BBC and ITN devoted to such issues. Much of the remaining coverage is given over either to sport or to visits by westerners to developing countries. For example, in our sample the Bahamas were in the news because Mick Jagger and Gerry Hall had visited and some countries were featured simply because Richard BransonÕs balloon had floated over them (Glasgow Media Group 2000:20-21). Programmes such as BBC2’s Newsnight and Channel 4 News had a wider coverage of
Another key problem with such coverage is the very limited nature of explanations which are given (if at all) of events such as political conflict and war. In our study of TV news coverage of the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994, we found a very large number of references (122 in our sample) which stressed the scale of the flight and the huge number of people involved but gave no account of why any of these events were occurring. We hear of «the exodus of a natio», «Rwanda on the verge of catastrophe», «there is a flow of people … some hundred thousand people have fled … at the rate of 4000 an hour», «you can see only a portion of this mass of humanity at any one time a million desolate people» (BBC1 2100 18th & 19 th July 1994). We found only 27 references which gave any explanation of what was occurring. Many of these were very limited and sometimes incorrect as in the suggestion that the refugees had «fled the killing in Rwanda» (BBC2 Newsnight 18 July 1994). This is unclear in the sense that the Hutu refugees actually contained the militias who had perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda. They were not therefore fleeing from the genocide but from the consequences of it, in the sense that they were seeking to avoid retribution. (Philo et al., 1999:215). In a subsequent study, we analysed media coverage of the events of 1996 in which the
Reporter: There remained extreme caution about being sucked into the region’s blood-thirsty politics (BBC1 2100 1st, 8th and 13th November 1996). On ITN the people of Africa were compared to the topography of the landscape which they inhabited. The volcanoes were described as being “far more predicable as the people they watch over” (ITN 2200 18 Nov 1996). One difficulty with accounts such as these is that Africa tends to be seen as a country rather than as a continent with many different cultures which have complex political and economic histories. As Lindsey Hilsum has shown, in her account of the genocide, Rwanda was a highly organised and disciplined society. She describes the hierarchies and the social structure of the country: A group of households comprised a cellule; every cellule has a spokesman who reported to the conseiller who was in charge of the next administrative unit up the ladder, the secteur … and so on to the highest reaches of the government … unlike most African capitals, Kigali remained small and largely immune to urban drift; Rwanda had pass laws stricter than those of South Africa. (Hilsum 1995;165-166). As she noted the Swiss government had given more money to Rwanda than to any other country in Africa, because they saw a society that was as disciplined as their own and in which there was very little corruption. It was exactly because Rwanda was so highly organised that the Hutu military regime was able to put into effect such an appalling genocide in such a short time. As she writes: The same efficiency – the discipline and order so admired by the foreign aid workers – meant that when the orders came of 7th April for the killing to begin they were usually obeyed. (Hilsum, 1995:170). As she commented to us in an interview, many journalists found it difficult to understand this because of their own preconceptions about Africa: Most journalists couldn’t believe that Africans could be so organised - they couldn’t recognise the genocide for what it was … Rwanda was more similar to Nazi Germany in that there was a group with an extremist, racist ideology. They defined other groups as the enemy because of the historical relationships between the ethnic groups, in the way that there were reasons for the Jews being chosen. Politicians manipulate relations between the different ethic groups and turn them into ideology. In Rwanda to stay in power, they exterminated the other group. (Interview 24 April 1998). But in the absence of more complex social and political
explanations, it is possible to fall back on images of “tribal
passions”. The BBC for example showed shots of Africans
dancing in grass skirts at a border post, and described them as «the
wild men of the murderous interahamwe militia». (BBC1 2100 1 Nov
1996). They were not in fact Rwandans at all but were apparently Zairian
border guards who had dressed in this way in order to insult the Rwandan
army. It was a very misleading image of the conflict but it was very widely
used both in this country and abroad. We found, not surprisingly, that
the assumptions made by many journalists tended to be held within the
general public. In a pilot for the DFID research I asked a focus
group what image came into their minds when they heard the word
“tribe”. They replied that it would be people with
grass skirts and spears standing in front of huts. At the end of that
group meeting I explained to them something of the history of Rwanda and
commented that the Hutu military regime in 1994 had killed all opposition
groups including moderate Hutus, Belgium nationals and soldiers with the
UN as well as the Tutsi population. In Butare, a city in the south of
the city which was known for its tolerance and liberalism the Hutu students
and lecturers at the University were killed because they were assumed
to be in opposition to the Hutu government. One woman in the focus group
commented «Oh you don’t think of them as having universities»
(29 June 1998, St Albans Group). |
Greg Philo is now Professor at the University of Glasgow
- Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He is also, Research Director,
at Glasgow University Media Unit (Glasgow Media Group). Philo G. (with the Glasgow University Media Group),
Bad News, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), |
