Volume 7, Number 2

TELEVISION NETWORKS FAIL TO CRITICALLY ANALYZE FEDERAL BUDGET

NATIONAL TELEVISION NEWS COVERAGE OF THE first budget of the Liberal government failed to critically examine and clarify the most substantive issues concerning their economic program.

Spending cuts the main focus of budget analysis

Over three quarters of television coverage of the budget was purely descriptive and offered little analysis or comment. From the day the budget was released, February 22, 1994, and for the next two days, both the national news broadcasts of CBC and CTV television covered the budget highlights as put forward by Finance Minister Paul Martin in his parliamentary speech. CTV's main focus was on spending cuts which received almost three quarters of the network's attention to the budget. On CBC, spending cuts were also the single most discussed issue. However, as figure A indicates, CBC focused less on the spending cuts than did CTV.

Click here to view Figure A: Assessments of the Liberal Budget

Network analysts say Martin cut too deep

Only 21 statements on CBC and 14 on CTV actually assessed the spending cuts. On CBC those assessments were twice as likely, and on CTV three times as likely, to criticize the cuts for going too far as to criticize them for not going far enough.

CBC and CTV failed to highlight that government spending will increase under Liberal government

A fundamental flaw in television's analysis of Martin's budget was the lack of scrutiny of Martin's revenue estimates. Contrary to Martin's assertions that his party is cutting spending, the Liberal budget plan indicates that spending will in fact go up from $160.3 billion in 1993-94 to $163.6 billion in 1994-95. This is a real increase in spending, even after projected inflation has been factored in. This increase was not highlighted, and in fact was not even mentioned in network coverage of the budget.

Television news did not make clear that what the Liberals were really talking about was a reduction in the projected expenditure increase of the former Conservative budget and that Martin's economic program is in many respects similar to the Conservative one.

In a number of ways the Martin budget plan parallels the last economic statement of the former Conservative government. The similarity was not outlined in television reports. For example, CBC did not show that many of the Liberal proposals outlined by Martin constituted a continuation of the economic initiatives set in motion by former Conservative Finance Minister, Don Mazankowski on December 1992. Neither network pointed out the similarities between the infrastructure program proposed by the Tories ($2 billion spending over five years) and that proposed by the Grits ($5 billion over three years). Considering the criticisms launched against Mazankowski's economic statement of December 1992, it is surprising that the media did not pick up on the similarities between the two financial documents and did not criticize each to the same extent.

Liberal UI reforms downplayed

One could argue that the reason television news missed the similarities in the two budgets was that in their coverage of Mazankowski's economic statement they were too consumed by the UI reforms. In 1992, attention to UI adjustments comprised over one-third of CBC and over half of CTV's attention to the budget. The Tory infrastructure program was never mentioned. Essentially, by focusing on such a narrow issue in 1992, journalists were unable to make meaningful comparisons with this budget, and thereby failed to provide their audiences with a much-needed context and explanation.

In 1992 Finance Minister Mazankowski's UI reforms were vilified by both CBC and CTV. In fact, the analysis by reporters suggested that the Liberals, had they been in power, would have been more compassionate to the unemployed. For example, on the December 3, 1992 CBC Prime Time, Keith Boag concluded his story with the following analysis: "It's been a long time since the opposition had an issue like this one. For months they've plugged away on unemployment, they've complained about high interest rates, small economic growth, and so on, but this is different. This is an issue that's simple and easy to communicate. And it's something they can point to and say would be different if they were the government." Similarly, Karen Gross' concluding statement of the same day was: "The opposition believes the government miscalculated badly. These changes will carry a huge political cost and critics claim this move proves what they've been saying all along--that the Tories care more about business than they do about people."

It is ironic that Martin's cuts to UI were given so little coverage when he made more cuts to UI than did Mazankowski a year previously. Mazankowski's unemployment reforms were portrayed as socially retrograde during coverage of last year's mini-budget. In contrast, Martin's UI reforms received scant attention on CTV (2 percent), and only 11 percent of CBC's focus. Further, only two statements indicated that the reforms went too far. Incidentally, CBC aired only two statements that argued that the reforms hadn't gone far enough. This critical analysis is in stark contrast to the 40 statements on CBC and 45 statements on CTV in 1992 which argued that Mazankowski's UI Reforms were going to harm all sorts of people.

In comparing CBC's and CTV's coverage of the two budgets, it is evident that while CTV's style did not change between the two governments, CBC's focus certainly did. In 1992 and this year, CTV selected one issue, and made it the prominent issue. In 1992 that issue was the changes to Unemployment Insurance; this year it was cutbacks. Roughly the same number of statements were used to describe the budget in both instances--130 statements in 1992 and 121 statements in 1993. In contrast, CBC's number of statements examining the budgets went from 435 in 1992 to 291 in 1993. That represents a 40 percent decrease in the volume of coverage. And while in 1992 CBC focused primarily on UI changes and cutbacks, this year it provided more discussion in many different areas such as jobs, cutbacks, and tax increases.

The major difference, however, between this budget and the Mazankowski economic statement is the lack of critical analysis. In 1992 neutral statements comprised 53 percent of CBC and 35 percent of CTV attention to the budget. Negative assessments of the budget comprised 33 percent of CBC and 43 percent of CTV total attention to the budget. In contrast, this year neutral statements comprised 78 percent of CBC and 76 percent of CTV total attention. Assessments constituted less than one quarter of network coverage.

Post-budget coverage superficial

The proportion of coverage that resulted from reporter or anchor statements increased slightly from the 1992 budget. However, the sources who commented on the budget were notably different. For instance, opposition comments, which comprised 6 percent of CBC and 22 percent of CTV sources' accounts of the Mazankowski economic statement, dropped to 5 percent of CBC and 9 percent of CTV sources' statements about the Martin budget. Coverage of Mazankowski's economic statement included extensive post-budget comment of the Liberal and NDP positions. On the other hand, neither network paid much attention to Lucien Bouchard's or Preston Manning's criticisms of the budget. Each politician received less than two minutes of air time the day of the budget, and only nominal coverage the day immediately following. Considering the diminished role of the opposition in criticizing this budget, there was definitely a lack of in-depth coverage.

CTV's coverage more factual

Overall, CTV's coverage of the budget was more critical than CBC's. Keith Morrison, sitting in for Lloyd Robertson, stated: "Martin says this is just the beginning, `wait until next year,' but other politicians were saying this was the time to make cuts. Martin, they said, was too soft on the deficit." Similarly, in her report, Leslie Jones said, "for all his tough talk, in his maiden budget the Finance Minister took cautious--critics say--timid first steps on the road to economic renewal. Paul Martin has spent as much as he cut."

In contrast, the introductory remarks of CBC's Pamela Wallin were: "Well, the government has changed, but the slashing and cutting has not stopped. The first Liberal budget in more than a decade takes aim at reducing the government spending and raising more money through taxes."

Apart from the difference in television's substantive coverage of the last Conservative government budget and the first Liberal budget, there were stark differences in the tone of the reporters. Probably the most glaring example was the interview Pamela Wallin and Peter Mansbridge conducted with the two finance minsters. In Mazankowski's interview, Wallin and Mansbridge were cool and business-like. Their demeanour was combative. In the exchange with Paul Martin on the other hand, their tone was much lighter. The two hosts were positively bubbling, and the interviewers and guest exchanged jokes and laughter. Contrast that mood to a year earlier where Pamela Wallin invoked the critics on both the left and the right to grill Mazankowski. Paul Martin's interview was far less intense and the "critics" were never invoked in the discussion.

While it may seem trite, the best way to illustrate the differences in the tone of the two interviews is through a comparison of smiles. In 1992, Pamela Wallin smiled in her interview with Don Mazankowski 6 times for a total of about 9 seconds. Peter Mansbridge did not smile, and Mazankowski had one slight grin for less than a second. This year, in the interview with Paul Martin, Pamela Wallin smiled 14 times for a total of 24 seconds, almost three times as many smiles. Mansbridge also was more friendly. He smiled three times for 13 seconds. Paul Martin returned the smiles six times for 9 seconds.

When will the honeymoon end?

One expectation of the national media was that the new Liberal government's honeymoon period would end with its first major economic proposal. This expectation has not materialized. Television's lingering infatuation with the new Liberal government isn't over yet judging by the genteel tone and passive manner the CBC took vis-à-vis the Martin budget. The general impression one got was that television news didn't hold itself up to a very high standard of analysis, nor did it take a consistently critical approach in its task of assessing the merits and liabilities of this budget as compared to those of the former Conservative budget.

Last year the CBC fairly oozed disapproval of Mazankowski's economic statement, focusing as they did on critical sources who expressed negative feelings about Mazankowski's UI reforms. This year the coverage was not just qualitatively different, but also quantitatively different. The coverage was less extensive, and the avuncular mood conveyed by the smiling faces of Mansbridge and Wallin during their interviews of Martin was in marked contrast to the more sober, formal interview they conducted with Mazankowski.

PETER MANSBRIDGE'S INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS

December 2, 1992
"Mazankowski has been finance minister for about 19 months, and for most part it's been a dismal 19 months for the economy. But it is part of the finance minister's job to set policies, to make things better. Don Mazankowski joins us now from Ottawa. Mr. Mazankowski, as you well know, 1.6 million Canadians are out of work. I'm sure for many of them today was a day of some hope, initially to see what you were gonna say, hoping that they'd get back to work somehow, but the message from you today seemed to be to them that they're probably gonna remain unemployed for at least another year. You're even talking about cutting some of their benefits under U.I. 1.6 million Canadians. How are they supposed to take any satisfaction out of what you said today?"

February 22, 1994
"Mr. Martin, you know, I'm sure a lot of those people we just heard from the various conferences picked up their paper this morning, as did many other Canadians, saw that picture of you strapping on those construction boots, heard the advice that the prime minister gave you as he gave you those boots as a present yesterday: `get Canadians working again.' Now, we look at the unemployment forecast figures for this year, '94, next year, '95-11.1% this year, 10.8% next year-how do you say to Canadians that you're getting them working again, when you look at those numbers which aren't that different from what we've seen the last year?"

METHODOLOGY

Results are based on 11 CBC Prime Time and 9 CTV News stories from February 22 to February 25, 1994. All stories appearing during that time were coded, representing a total population rather than a random sample of stories.

Further information or details on the coding design and methods may be obtained by contacting the National Media Archive.

National Media Archive Director Invited to Act as International Expert to South African Independent Media Commission in Upcoming Elections

IT IS WIDELY BELIEVED THAT THE UPCOMING South African election will be the most important election of this century. For the first time in that country's history, there will be full participation by all racial groups. In view of the 40 years in power of the previous government, many concerns and issues have been raised in South Africa about the ability and the need to provide a free and fair electoral process. One of the many components of checks and balances to ensure a fair process is the monitoring of the media. The Independent Media Commission was established by law to ensure "equitable treatment of political parties" by broadcasters and in state-financed publications. In this respect, the South Africans confirmed what many in democratic societies believe is an influential and vital component of freedom--the media.

South Africa's commitment to examining the press is perhaps unprecedented anywhere in the world. The legislation governing the Independent Media Commission requires that it monitor all broadcasting services in the country--four television stations and 25 radio stations broadcasting in 11 different languages.

The IMC was required to "establish criteria to manage and arbitrate standards for judging the application of equatability." Particular problems in the South African context are the absence of a previous free and fair election, the absence of a tradition of balanced coverage of political party positions within the media; and the lack of broad public confidence in national broadcast institutions.

In addition, the Commission will need a well-resourced capacity to investigate and adjudicate complaints, utilising the criteria mentioned above. This will involve a major exercise in data collection and analysis. This itself requires early decisions on devising and implementing a system of data gathering and establishing standardized criteria on how to categorize material.

The Canadian role in monitoring the media was established and emphasised in many areas. One component, the Media Monitoring Project, was funded in part by the Canadian International Development Agency. The National Media Archive was invited by the Commonwealth to assist in developing the system of data gathering and to provide expertise on categorizing the material. Once the data collection and categories were established, our role was then to assist the monitoring bodies in data analysis and technical support.

While the existing media monitoring projects had provided crude attempts at content analysis, the information provided was either too narrow in focus, or too dependent on subjective criteria to be of sufficient use for the IMC. The issue of whether these analyses could hold up in court was a major concern.

Two groups were selected to submit raw data to the IMC: The South African Communications Service (SACS) and the Media Monitoring Project (MMP). SACS was able to provide detailed figures on the amount of broadcast time each party was afforded, but could not provide assessments of what was being said about the parties. Their time analysis was very sophisticated: broadcasts were fed into a software package which digitized the sound and broke the content into 20 second intervals.

The MMP lacked the technical sophistication of the SACS project and also had a different analytical objective, i.e., they were concerned with the issue of what was said about the different parties by the media. Unfortunately, the system used by MMP was too informal to be relied upon in any legal framework.

The initial task of the National Media Archive was to provide technical support in bringing the two methods together. The task was threefold: to make use of both types of information; to provide consistency in themes and coding criteria; and to train IMC officials in providing analysis based on the raw data.With the assistance of the National Media Archive, MMP and SACS worked closely together to establish the criteria for identifying themes in coverage. For example, was a particular story about security services, townships or participation in the campaign? Identifying the themes provided a way to harmonize both projects and make them work within the IMC framework. Upon consultation with other international experts, the MMP decided to adopt the National Media Archive's system of data analysis. The MMP felt that our method provided sufficient detail to be of use to the IMC, and yet could also withstand intense scrutiny. Most important for the MMP was the ability of our method to provide meaningful analysis of the direction and specifics of the content.

In our next issue of On Balance, we will provide some preliminary findings of the way in which the South African election campaign is being presented by the various local media using the methods developed by the National Media Archive and employed by the South African Media Monitoring Project.

Portrayal of Police in Canadian News

THE ESCALATING CRIME RATE HAS BECOME OF vital interest to Canadians. Television reports of child abuse, violent crime and property crime are increasing. Judging by the proliferation of American tabloid-type television programs, such as Top Cops, Code Blue, and Inside Edition, television news is preoccupied with criminal activity. CBC's Tom Alderman reported on this phenomena on November 5, 1992: "Cops have been taking a lot of flak lately, but in prime time TV, it's a whole different story. There, they are heroes. Turn on your set just about any night of the week and you're sure to come across actual footage of brave, beleaguered police officers trying to keep the streets safe for us honest citizens. The reality-based cops show--that's the hot number in TV this season--programs that recreate and document police heroics."

While these American programs take a fairly positive view of the police force, what is the nature of coverage on Canadian television news? In this first in a series of reports on crime, the National Media Archive begins its research on the image of Canadian police in national news. Subsequent reports will examine the debate on marijuana use in Canada, violent crime and crimes involving property.

Television's coverage of police emphasized racism in police force

Interestingly enough, when television news reports on Canadian police it tries to "hook" the audience by asking whether the police acted as transgressors. Over one-fifth of both networks' reasons for airing a story on the police over the past five years were as a result of allegations of police discrimination. These stories focused on Quebec and Ontario where police were being investigated for the shooting of black citizens. For example, on 29 January 1992 Peter Mansbridge reported on The National: "Montreal police admitted today that they failed, that they made some big mistakes in a big case. It was the shooting of an unarmed black man. Last summer, 24-year-old Marcellus Francois was killed, shot by a police officer, in a case of mistaken identity. Today, the police department released its internal report on the shooting. It says there were errors in judgment and an absence of discipline." Similarly, on the 5 May National Karen Webb reported: "To Toronto's black community the list has become a litany: Wade Lawson, shot and killed while fleeing in a stolen car, officers acquitted; Sophia Cook, shot in a car stopped by police, charges dropped; Marlon Neal, shot after running a radar trap, officer acquitted. In the last five years, those three, plus four others. And then early Saturday morning, Raymond Lawrence, shot and killed while threatening an officer with a knife. Community leaders like Bev Folkes say many young black people believe the police shoot first, ask questions later."

Click here to view Figure B: TV Attention to Canadian Police

Police stories focus on police as transgressors

Negative stories about the police force were not limited to allegations of police discrimination. Police corruption, criminal activity by the police, internal police investigations and policing of police were reported more frequently than were stories on the police fighting crime. For example, on May 4, 1993, Peter Mansbridge reported: "Big cities breed big problems, problems the police must deal with. But what if one of the most urgent problems is the police force itself? For years, Winnipeg's force, one of the largest in the country, has grappled with charges of corruption, racism, and low morale. But it has a new chief now, a former mountie, lured out of retirement eight months ago to take on the job of fixing the force. As Sasa Petricic reports in a behind-the-scenes look at this troubled unit, he's Winnipeg's hired gun."

Some of these stories were as a result of extraordinary events such as the Martensville sex scandal where five police officers were accused of child sexual abuse.

METHODOLOGY ON POLICE

Results are based on 27 Prime Time News, 31 National, 3 Journal and 5 Sunday Report stories as well as 65 CTV News stories from January 1, 1992 to June 30, 1993. All stories appearing during that time were coded, representing a total population rather than a random sample of stories.

Three researchers were employed in coding the news stories. The researchers were selected on the basis of their differing political views. To assess the clarity of the research instrument and measure consistency, tests of inter-coder reliability were conducted throughout the procedure. A high level of intercoder reliability (0.87) was obtained.

Any disagreements in assessments by researchers were discussed, and the rating was changed until consensus was reached on all stories.

Further information or details on the coding design and methods may be obtained by contacting the National Media Archive.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.