How did you find that out? transparency of the newsgathering process and the meaning of news

This paper investigates the transparency of journalists' methods of newsgathering in New Zealand. By examining media coverage of genetic engineering, the study reveals that reports lack explicit markers of place, time and means by which the information has been obtained; the paper explains how this ambiguity leads to disappearance of context and it demonstrates that there is a link between the use of sources and the precision of news. It also discusses how the disappearance of newsgathering transparency alters knowledge about a subject, and indicates that the process might be related to a specific, Anglo-American understanding of objectivity that resists the practice of "interpretative" reporting. Keywords: genetic engineeringjournalismnewsgatheringobjectivitytransparency Notes 1. This paper is part of a PhD thesis in progress, "Media Coverage of the Environment: the influence of journalism professional norms on public debate about genetic engineering in New Zealand". 2. For more detailed overview of development see the Royal Commission's Report (Royal Commission, 2001). 3. The New Zealand Herald (circulation 208,419) is a top-quality daily, published in Auckland, with a stronger emphasis on business than politics. It describes itself as a daily that promotes "a progressive approach to economic and social policies"; The Dominion Post (circulation 98,229), published in Wellington, covers national, political and business news, supports the right side of the political spectrum; The Press (circulation 90,828), regional newspaper published in Christchurch, the biggest city in the South Island, strong orientation to local and regional news, promotes itself as a daily that "targets special interest groups such as farmers and business people" (circulation source: New Zealand Audit Biro of Circulation, 30 September 2004). 4. Initial results of the content analysis of all articles published on the GE issue show differences in coverage in relation to the size of the newspaper and in relation to the community they are based in: the most interested in the "hot topic" was the largest newspaper; the newspaper from the business capital of New Zealand was the most eager to persuade (proportionally it had the biggest number of opinion pieces); the newspaper from the political capital of New Zealand used a conflict story-telling frame more often than the other two, etc. 5. The day when the first articles about the release of the Report were published in the press. 6. The LexisNexis database search engine selected all articles where the phrase "genetic engineering" appeared. The following were excluded from analysis: letters to the editor—they do not directly reflect journalistic practice, the subject of the content analysis; "briefs", news items shorter than 50 words, these texts are the front-page announcements of the news content inside; ads and advertising (paid) articles as the content belongs to the commercial and not informative part of newspapers (the section that is the subject of this analysis). 7. The study relies on Bell's (1991, p. 57) classification of the ways journalist assemble the news: interviews (face to face or by telephone); public addresses; press conferences; written text of spoken addresses; organisationally produced documents of many kinds; reports, surveys, letters, findings, agendas, minutes, proceedings, research papers, etc.; press releases; prior stories on topic, either from own or other media; news agency copy; the journalist's notes from all the above inputs, especially the spoken ones. 8. Sources have been identified by listing all individuals, groups and institutions that originated messages stated in the day when the Royal Commission's Report was reported in the press. The following sources were identified: Greens (all references to the Green Party and its members); Government (Prime Minister, ministers, all governmental departments); Science (individuals and institutions described by using different modalities of the word science such as scientist, scientific organisation, science institute); Business (individuals, groups and institutions attributed as companies, business representatives, business interest groups); Organic farmers (all individuals and groups referred to as organic farmers); Federated farmers (representatives and organisation); Environmental groups (Greenpeace, GE Free New Zealand, attribution "environmental group" or "environmental activist); Life Sciences Network (representative or group), Maori (explicit attribution Maori). The Life Sciences Network belongs to the science as a code, but is separated to identify its presence in the media coverage and compare its discourse, in future research, with the discourse of editorials published on the GE issue. The Life Science Network was a pressure group, "society found to promote biotechnology" in 2000. 9. Miller and Riechert (2000, p. 46) stress "competing stakeholder positions" where the term stakeholders refers to the multiple groups in the policy-making process that stand to win or lose as a result of a policy decision. 10. Two inter-coding reliability checks were conducted using Holsti's formula: C1,2 is the number of category assignments both coders agree on, and C1 = C2 is the total of category assignments made by both coders. The first time, the level of agreement was 92 per cent. The discrepancy was related to category code science inside the category "sources". One coder classified the AgResearch institute as science, the other as business. Why disagreement about AgResearch? Because, AgResearch is both a commercial and scientific institute. A closer look into the articles reveals that scientists from AgResearch were consulted as sources for the GE issue although most of them were talking about the commercial section of their work and advantages of GE. The first reaction was to revise the coding schedule for greater clarity and diversified science into "commercial science" and "pure science" but it turned out to be a slippery field because there is no formal or firm criteria to identify what is commercial and what is pure science. In addition, one more "science" source was already there as a separate category: Life Sciences Network. The confusion was a reflection of a huge and hot debate that polarised New Zealand scientists. The definition "science" is then refined to include all individuals, groups or organisations that are described by using some form of the word science. In the second inter-coding reliability check the level of agreement was 98 per cent; it is considered as satisfactory. 11. The study follows Krippendorff's (Citation1980) model of using a discourse approach in news media research in addition to classical content analysis. 12. The author expressed reservations in relation to the sample size of the survey because only 30 per cent of responses were obtained but presents some of the results. The study indicates that US journalists are more worried for the profession (more US than New Zealand journalists agreed with the assertion that the differences between reporting and commentary had become blurred in recent years) but "in a number of cases, there was a remarkable agreement" (Lealand, 2004). 13. "U.S. citizen might receive in each news medium a broader and more impartial picture of what the different interest groups have to say…", while in continental Europe journalists "…might go directly to what they might think of as analysis, interpretation or evaluation and skip the common carrier role of presenting fairly the arguments of all sides" (Donsbach and Klett, 1993, p. 80).