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Inclusion of ''Useful'' Detail in Newspaper Coverage of a High-Level. Published by: ..... nity that failed to include information that could help the reader take action. .... the frequency with which at least some form (complete or partial) of enabling ...
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Inclusion of ''Useful'' Detail in Newspaper Coverage of a High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting Controversy Marshel D. Rossow and Sharon Dunwoody Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 1991 68: 87 DOI: 10.1177/107769909106800110 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/68/1-2/87 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com

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Inclusion of “Useful” Detail in Newspaper Coverage of a High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting Controversy By Marshel D. Rossow and Sharon Dunwoody In nearly three of four opportunities, newspapers covering a local high-level nuclear waste sitin controversy in Wisconsin provided enough enabling in ormation (detaiIs about people, places or things) to enable readers to follow up on the information. However, in only one-fourth of the o portunities did newspapers provide such complete in ormation that a reader could act immediately. This content analysis of 12 daily and weekly newspapers, combined with interviews with editors, also found that newspapers in less pluralistic communities provided a greater proportion of detailed enabling information in their stories than did papers in more pluralistic communities. Greater proportions of enabling information were also associated with legitimized sources and with editors who identified the siting issue as a major concern both to themselves and to their readers.

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>An important part of a newspaper’s job is to provide its audience with information about public affairs. In its most useful form, such information will not only apprise readers of relevant issues and events but also allow them to influence those issues and events. However, not all information is equally helpful. As Sears and Freedman point out, ‘It is obvious that information varies greatly in the extent to which it will serve a useful, practical purpose.”’ Yet the reader seeking useable information is often at the mercy of newspapers or other mass media to provide it. Tan2 and Severin and Tankard3 note that mass media provide modern societies with the information they need to deal with their environments. Similarly, Hage, Dennis, Ismach and Hartgen point out that the public, of course, needs accurate and timely information to make decisions of daily life...Without doubt, the news media are the principal providers of that information.’

>Marshel D. Rossow is Associate Professor in the Mass Communications Institute at Mankato State University. Sharon Dunwoody is Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An earlier version of this study was presented at the 1988 AEJMC convention in Portland, Oregon. Funding was provided by the Center for Environmental Communications and Education Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The authors thank Deb Van Wormer and Marian Friestad for assistance in data gathering and analysis. Vol. 68,No. 1/2 (Spring/%-

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JOURNALISM QUARTERLY Earlier, Schramm and Roberts observed that only the

media can provide us with much of the information necessary to enable public participation in government. Only the media can insure that this information is complete. Theirs is the responsibility of making sure that the public receives all available information about various issues before those issues are resolved ....'

Murch suggests that if people have access to useable information, they are likely to act on it. In a study of attitudes about pollution, for example, he notes that respondents indicated a willingness to take action but were uncertain about ways to become involved.' Sears and Freedman observe that people prefer information in which they find some utilitarian value.' And Tichenor, Donohue and Olien point out that citizens' public-affairs participation and decision-making abilities are related to the availability of information? Do journalists systematically provide information the reader might use as a springboard for action? This study investigates that question in the context of a specific environmental issue-radioactive waste storage in Wisconsin-and also considers what factors might induce journalists to offer information that readers can put to use. Lemert has called a particular kind of reader-useable content 'mobilizing information." He and his colleagues define mobilizing information as "any information which allows action by persons willing to do so" or as "information which allows people to act on those attitudes which they might already have."g The information typically might include such things as names, addresses, telephone numbers, times, dates and locations-i.e., information that would allow a person to contact a source or attend an event mentioned in a story. In examining content for mobiliiing information, Lemert, Mitzman, Seither, Cook and Hackett say that the general question asked of each item was whether it provided enough information for an individual to act on the attitudes h e or she might have toward one or more attitude objects in the itemm

In examining factors related to the presence of mobilizing information, Hungerford and Lemert in one study found such information in 20% of the stories they examined. About 45%of the information involved meetings, and only 9%concerned negative topics." Likewise, the 1. D

d 0. Em and JomthmL Freedman, sclcctive Expowe to 1nfonn.tiOn: A Critid Review: in Wilbur Donald E Fnbcrtq air. 7 l a Rarrr ad-& d M a s Coauuurimtk (Urban.: I h t i d t y of lltinois

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2 AkxuS.Tp1 M a s Caruricrrlk ?keo&ordRruod, 2rd ai. (NewYork:JohnW i l q ud Sau. lses),pp.

6870.

3. W a m r J. Sevsin md JunesW. Tmlurd Jr. C a m u r i c d k 7 h o v i c c orip*r.Mdhods, k, ?nd ed. (New YWL:

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Oregon researchers have found that mobilizing information is most likely to be present in positivecontext items-issues that enjoy community consensus-and is often missing from controversial and negative context items. They suggest that mobilizing information may be omitted from controversial contexts because journalists consider reporting such information to be a departure from objectivity." Lemert and Larkin observe that mobilizing information is "notably absent" in political news, is often withheld in public affaiis contexts, and is seen by editors a s a partisan act of endorsement a s well a s simply dull reading material." This study makes two distinctions between our approach and that of Lemert concerning audienceuseable information. Fit,to reflect the process that underlies such material, we refer to the information as 'enabling" rather than 'mobilizing." The primary objective of the local press in covering the radioactive waste issue in Wisconsin, editors in this study said, was not to incite action or mobilize the readers but rather to inform them about the issue and to help them act on the information if they were so inclined. Thus, "enabling" seems to better describe the role of information the press provided. The information made it easier for readers to follow up on their feelings about the issue, but as a whole it did not intentionally mobilize them or prod them into action. As Bybee points out, such information facilitates rather than motivates action; it results in action only when there is a predisposition to act." The second distinction is the way we measure enabling information (EI 1. In earlier studies, EI was tallied as either present or absent across the range of topics presented in a medium. Rather than dichotomizing the information in this way, we measure it ordinally-as complete, partial or nonexistent. This lets us gauge not only the existence of EI but also, to a limited extent, its comprehensiveness. F i y , instead of examining EI across a range of topics, in this study we examine it within the framework of a specific issue-radioactive waste disposal. High-level nuclear waste disposal seemed an ideal laboratory within which to explore the press' use of enabling information. On the one hand, it is the kind of issue that should generate much EI if newspapers are trying to fulfill the philosophical mandate described above. The topic is one of the most sensitive environmental issues on the American agenda, and there is a growing insistence by the public that it have a voice in resolving the issue.'s On the other hand, high-level nuclear waste is a contentious issue with the potential for much conflict. And Lemert's research shows that reporters seem unwilling to include EI in their coverage of conflictive topics. 12 Juna B. h a t ud Muguerite Gemmn Ashma, 'Extent of M o W i Inbrmation m opinion and N m Maguiner ,* J a n d k Ouorftriy. 60:657 (Winter1983)) J; m e r 6. h a t md Roxmr J. Cook, 'Mobiliring IndamP'mmBrodcrt EditaiahrdTtcc Spuch' M m .'/owdo/Bmadc&h&. m.495(Wmter 1962). l3.Lrmat d Luldno#. d . p . 5 0 ( . 14. Carl R Bybcc. ' M a Infomution and Reader Involvrment An Empirical Tea.' JanJinWrkdy, 5 8 . OlutIuUn 15. Stmly M. N d y dJohnA. H e w 'public Mihder Towud Rdi& W ' in Qurk. A Wdkcr, k o y C. Could md Edward J. Woodhwr.edr. Tw Hd lo H a d # ? (New Hnm Yale Univaity P r e ~ 1983); , Dorothy S. &bet& 'public Puticipation in Nudear Wutc hhugrment Pow. A Brief Hi.toriul Overview: in WJlian R Frcudaburp ad lhgene A. Rou.cdr,A*lic R.pcliar lo Nrclr.r Ikrr ( Boulder, Colo.: Watview Ra.

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90 JOURNALISM QUARTERLY Tichenor, Donohue and Olien16 have spent decades exploring the relationship between community structure and the press' approach to conflict In this study we shall utilize one of their macro concepts, community pluralism,17 as well as an individual-level variable, editor attitudes, as predictors of newspapers, use of enabling information. The RadioactiveWaste Issue

The nuclear waste issue in Wisconsin had simmered for several years while rumors circulated that the state's geological deposits made it a potential host site for a secondary high-level repository. The rumors erupted into a full-blown controversy in mid-January 1986when the US. Department of Energy announced that 20 locations in seven midwestern and eastern states had been selected from an original list of 235 possible sites for t h e repository. T h e locations included two in Wisconsin. During the next five months, the DOE held several briefings and hearings in the state before a predominantly hostile audience of state and local officials and citizens, including native Indians whose land was central to one of the sites. About 270 people, all but one opposed to the repository or asserting a lack of faith in the DOE, testified at the hearings." Faced with unflagging opposition to the siting plan from government officials, public interest groups and private citizens in the affected states, DOE announced in late May 1986 that it was abandoning the secondary site selection process to concentrate on a primary site in the West. But for nearly six months, communities sitting on top of two geologic areas in Wisconsin had lived with the prospect that a high-level nuclear waste repository could be built beneath them. D u r i i that time, the federal government provided a host of newsworthy opportunities. The intensity of opposition and the government's reaction to it created an opportunity to look at the way newspapers in the two affected regions in Wisconsin provided information about the story. Hypotheses

We devised four hypotheses for this study, two of them concerned with macro-level influences on information and two focusing on the effects of editors' individual attitudes. In a series of studies spanning more than 20 years, Tichenor, Donohue and Olien have demonstrated that the community structure within which mass media are embedded is related to patterns of organizational behavior; i.e., media coverage of issues is dependent on the structural characteristics of the communities in which those media operate. They call their primary structural concept pluralism, or the degree of heterogeneity of a community. They and others have found degree of heterogeneity to be related to a number of coverage patterns, among them that newspapers in more homogeneous (low-pluralism)

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communities tend to sidestep disruptive information and focus on more consensual information in an attempt to maintain the social fabric.s Lemert, Mitzman, Seither, Cook and Hackett report that journalists are less likely to include e n a b h g information in stories that deal with negative or controversial topicsmAll this might suggest that newspapers in low-pluralism communities would seek to deter readers' involvement in a controversy by providing less enabling information than the press in h x h pluralism settings. But another factor must be considered. In cases where controversial material currnot be avoided, as was the case with the nuclear waste dispute, the small-town press may tend to give the material high prominence-particularly when the controversy pits the local community against an outside force and involves a low level of internal dissent?' Thus, there appears to be a difference between the coverage of a divii sive controversy and of one about which there is community consensus. Whiie the press in the low-pluralism community generally is averse to divisiveness, it may give disproportional attention, compared with its high-pluralism counterparts, to matters on which the community takes a stand against the larger world. Given the low-pluralism community's general desire to promote consensus and its specific need to maintain a uniiied front against the nuclear waste repository, we hypothesized: Hypothesis 1: In a situation involving a high degree of community consensus, newspapers in low-pluralism communities will provide more enabling information. and in greater detail, than newspapers in high-pluralismcommunities.

In other words, newspapers in homogeneous communities will be more likely to provide enabling information that will promote community consensus and help the community to stand as one against an outside threat, i.e., the repository. Less concerned with community consensus, newspapers in heterogeneous settings will focus more on the controversy itself than on information that might bring readers together in a common cause. Many researchers have observed that journalists rely on socially legitimized sources of information for much of their news. Hungerford and Lemert noted in one study that 'coverage of environmental news revealed an unusually high dependence on governmental news sources." They suggested that journalists viewed business and activist sources of environmental information a s less dependable. Rubin and Sachs found that journalists sometimes view ecology activists as too ideologically committed to be reliable sources.p Sachsman discovered that a majority of environmental stories in the San Francisco area were based on press releases, "frequently those of government agencies."p Fishman found that reporters routinely collect story material from what 19. Clarke N. Olirn, George A. Donohue ud Phillip J. Tichmor, 'Community Structure ud Media Use.' ad ed. -, 56. U5456 Wumn 1978); Maria Jmowib.Tlu Comlvllify Rro h Q (Ma (Quuro:umvadty of QIlcvo Rer.1967). pp. 7571. ao.Lemerf Mitnnm. sdther. coolr .ndHrLett. d.,p. 725. 21. JmwikOp. , d.. p. 77. 22. Dwid M. Rubin .nd Dnid E s.ch8,?he Envirmunentd Informdon Explodm The Praa Dircovsl the Envirommt' in M a s M d a #ad fh# Eavimam#afsVol. 2 (Stanford: Sanford University Education Rcsourcer I n h m l m Certer, 1971), ch.4. 23. David 8. s.chrm~.'Public Rclrtionr Idumce on Coverage of E m i r o n m a t in Sm F n n c i r o Area,' /orndh.,