Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

This study indicates that National Public Radio and Pacifica, despite their “alternative” origins, produce news programming that is largely grounded in the same journalistic values and routines as “mainstream” commercial broadcast journalism. A content analysis of NPR's All Things Considered and Pacifica Radio News, however, found several significant differences between these two producers of public radio news in the United States. Pacifica broadcast a higher percentage of stories dealing with governance and stories with an international focus, and presented a higher percentage of officials and activists as sources than did NPR.

The book industry historically has been characterized as caught between two seemingly conflicting goals: to contribute to the cultural life of the society and to make a profit. As the most influential medium for information about books, the text of the New York Times Book Review reflects that conflict and marks the boundary between books as culture and books as commerce in a way that maintains an artificial distinction between high and low culture.

This historical study of the “Seven Sisters” magazines examines whether, when women are in editorial control, sex-role stereotyping is found less often in magazine content. Findings indicate that the presence of women editors did not reduce stereotypical portrayals in the magazines studied, but did increase positive portrayals of women.

This study measures and discusses the relationship between journalists and official sources in times of crises. The author analyzes New York Times coverage of the Panama invasion and finds that although the Times provides a forum for criticism, it allows the government to define the parameters of the debate.

This case study of an Alabama newspaper's series on infant mortality and of subsequent changes in related state health services shows that the series helped increase public support for policy changes to reduce infant mortality and created pressure on the governor and legislators to make those changes. Factors that seem to have affected the series' influence include expert agreement on solutions, the existence of supportive private citizen groups and public officials, Alabama's political situation, the newspaper's location in the capitol city, widespread distribution of series reprints, editorial and reporting follow-ups, and publicity when the series won a Pulitzer Prize.

This article presents African Americans' criticisms of how they are portrayed in daytime serials. In addition to desiring an increase in the numbers portrayed, critics condemned the whitewashing of African American characters and storylines and the lack of diverse roles. Because the findings support the existence of a racially separate world view, the author suggests that African American viewing practices should be analyzed within a framework of historical and contemporary black culture.

A sample of 105 hours of network daytime soap opera programming from 1989–90 was analyzed for depictions of sexual behaviors, safe sex, and pregnancy. The content analysis indicated occurrences of sexual behaviors were slightly lower than previous studies showed. A few discussions about safe sex (prevention of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS) were found. Because these discussions of sexual health issues were not found in previous content analyses, soap opera programming may be beginning to reflect a trend toward more responsible portrayals of sexual behavior. Although most characters engaged in these activities were Caucasian, in their thirties, and not married to each other, the occurrences of married partners in these depictions were increasing.

In December 1837, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett announced to his readers that he had decided to dispatch special correspondents to report on armed uprisings in Canada. His decision constitutes one of the earliest uses of war correspondents by the American press, and it was part of a developing practice to draw on contributors specifically engaged to furnish newspapers with reports from afar. While other papers also sent correspondents to cover the Canadian conflict, the Herald stood out because of the structure and organization of its news gathering efforts.

Fewer than a third of the 684 homicides committed in Chicago in 1987 were reported in either of the two metropolitan Chicago dailies. Both papers, as expected, were more likely to cover “high amplitude” crimes that involved more than one victim. They were also more likely to report homicides if the offender was male and the victim female, and less likely to do so if the victim was African-American or Hispanic. Additional factors affected whether an individual paper would cover a story. Once selected for coverage, only the “amplitude” factor consistently predicted the prominence a story received.

This article compares model characterizations and activity portrayals of blacks and whites in modern cigarette and alcohol advertising. An analysis of 418 cigarette and alcohol ads appearing in eleven magazines from June 1990 through June 1991 revealed a world in which blacks and whites smoke and drink separately, seldom encountering one another. Despite this segregation, black and white portrayals are similar in terms of sexual suggestiveness and involvement in erotic or romantic activities. However, noteworthy differences also exist. For example, blacks are more often portrayed in leisure activities while whites are portrayed at work. Femininity is a more dominant theme in black than in white representations, while masculinity themes are more dominant in ads with white representations.

This content analysis evaluates political topics and themes of televangelist Pat Robertson's high-profile news program The 700 Club during the early months of the 1992 presidential campaign. Considered the media arm of the Religious Right, this program was found to go against the trend of increasingly political and less religious content observed in earlier analyses of equivalent episodes during the 1983, 1986, and 1989 seasons. In addition, political topics were addressed more neutrally than in the past. The study discusses the possible impact of an increasingly competitive telecommunication environment on religious broadcasters.

Few changes in journalism ethics have been as dramatic as the proliferation of codes of ethics in newsrooms. Yet little has been done to assess how codes of ethics shape journalists' behavior when they are faced with real ethical problems. This study explores that question by looking at the role that codes have played in real cases in three separate newsrooms.

Although a perception exists that student newspapers are commonly intimidated by administrators over news content, this study indicates that the actual affect is relatively small. Advertisers have had even less success. Just 4.3% of advisers nationally have complied with administrative requests not to publish news articles, and only 12.2% believe there is a link between administrative funding and news selection. This national survey (n=233) also indicates that advisers at two-year colleges and private institutions are significantly more willing to comply with administrative news requests than are those at other institutions.

Drawing on social system and reference group theory, this study hypothesized that top editors at large newspapers would be more satisfied with their jobs than top editors at small newspapers. Editors on larger newspapers were expected to be more satisfied because increased role specialization gives them greater autonomy, their salaries are higher, and their jobs are more prestigious. A national probability sample of top editors at daily newspapers in the United States supports the hypotheses that editors at larger newspapers are more satisfied and that autonomy is a mediating factor, but income is not related to job satisfaction.

In this study students read and rated twenty newspapers for enjoyment, readability, and attractiveness. The newspapers' efficiency of transmitting information was also tested through knowledge recall questions. The regression analyses generally show that students preferred papers that used accompanying materials, such as pullout quotes and many, though smaller, photographs.

This study tested the influence of two techniques of providing contextual geographical information in foreign news stories - the traditional method of weaving it into the text and the increasingly common method of including a map with the story. Results of the experiment indicated that newspaper readers' understanding of the geographical context of a foreign event can be increased either by building geographical information into the text or by including a map, but the most effective technique is the redundant one of providing geographical information both in the text and via a map.

A number of studies have investigated the impact of U.S. television programs on foreign audiences. A meta-analysis of these studies reveals a small, but statistically significant, association between exposure to U.S. entertainment programs and attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of foreign audiences. When taking study characteristics into consideration, only language of the questionnaire produced a significant difference in correlation size, with studies using English questionnaires displaying a larger effect. Also, contrary to the assumptions of a uniform effects model, the findings indicate that the magnitude of the relationship depends upon the type of dependent measure.

This study evaluates women as constructivists – viewing knowledge as contextual and experiencing themselves as creators of knowledge – and as proceduralists – seeking gratification in pleasing others and applying objective procedures to obtain knowledge – in relationship to success as academics in broadcast communications. How these women define success, how their epistemology influences self-defined success, and what factors prevent success are the study questions.

A between-groups 3 × 3 factorial experiment (N=516) tests effects of message type and source reputation on judgments of news believability, judgments conceptualized as source credibility (judgments about the source), and assessments of apparent reality (judgments about the message content). Three indices combining measures of source credibility and message apparent reality emerge from a factor analysis, comprising judgments of (1) source truthfulness and message accuracy, (2) source expertise and message representativeness, and (3) source bias and personal perspective. The results show that a more innocuous message results in more positive judgments of believability, but the reputation of the source has no direct effect on believability judgments, nor does it interact with message type. It is concluded that at least some publics base judgments of news believability more on judgments of the apparent reality of message content rather than on the reputation of the media source.

In research on effects of message variables, it is generally necessary to examine responses to actual messages that represent, embody, or instantiate the values of the variable of interest. Researchers have lately become attentive to problems of confounding in the use of individual concrete messages to represent abstract theoretical contrasts, and replicated treatment comparisons are increasingly common in communication research. How to treat the replications factor in the statistical analysis remains controversial. Whether to treat replication factors as fixed or as random hinges on what is assumed about the relationship between abstract treatment contrasts and their concrete material implementations. We argue that reflection on this relationship justifies a general policy of treating replications as random. Two circumstances in which fixed-effects analyses might seem attractive (the case of matched-message designs and the case of experimental manipulations occurring outside of messages) are considered, but it is concluded that these situations also require random-effects analyses.