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This book is a critical examination of how newspaper and television journalists reported three catastrophes. The focus is on the processes by which journalists identified news sources and gathered data, on the professional values of the journalists and on the ways that those values contributed to or interfered with good reporting. The book is based on examination of several thousand newspaper and television stories, on surveys of more than 600 journalists and their sources, on evaluations of news accounts by independent experts, on personal visits to the sites of the catastrophes, and on interviews with more than 100 reporters, correspondents, producers, editors, and their sources.
The scholarly goal of the book is to provide a theoretical understanding of the process by which reporters gather information for these kinds of stories and thus to identify changes in the journalistic routine that might encourage more accurate and comprehensive coverage of public issues. He shows how television reports sometimes influence the ways print reporters structure their stories, an effect he calls journalistic priming. He examines the ways in which Pulitzer Prize-winning stories are different from others, and attempts to integrate reporters' and sources' comments with the theoretical literature. This is the first book-length effort that uses a single research design to compare how both print and television journalists covered several major events, and to examine the interrelationship between the television and newspaper reporting. Other scholars often ignore one or the other, as though the two media operated independently.
List of contents
Catastrophes and the News Media
How Events Become News: The Search for Truth
"This is What's Left of Yellowstone Tonight": Urban Reporters and Wilderness Fire
The Unthinkable Happens: Oil in Prince William Sound
A Prediction Comes True: The 1989 "World Series" Earthquake
News Practices and Catastrophes: Reporters, Symbols and Public Myths
Reporters and Experts: Strategies for Better Journalism
Appendix: Details of the Research Methods
Bibliography
Index
About the author
CONRAD SMITH is Associate Professor of Journalism at The Ohio State University. A television photographer and editor in the early 1970s, he was frustrated by the failure of his efforts to portray events accurately and enrolled in a Ph.D. program hoping to learn why that was so difficult. His research about journalists and their professional values have appeared in Journalism Quarterly and the Journal of Broadcasting.
