EVERY NIGHT CANADA'S national television news programs, CBC's "National" and the "CTV News," select a dozen or so stories to broadcast to the nation. This nightly line-up presents Canadians with an image of their country and its place in the world. And with over two million viewers, these programs have significant influence on public sentiment, governments' plans and policies, and other news media.

Television news, like all news media, can report only a limited number of the hundreds of newsworthy events occurring each day in Canada and elsewhere. The story at the top of the news is implicitly labelled the most important, while events not reported are therefore deemed insignificant. CBC's "National" claims that its determination of what to report is guided by the mission "... to be indispensable to Canadians by providing them with information they need to understand and control the major changes influencing their lives."[http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/about/mission.html] Similarly, CTV's motto is "making sense of your world."

In 1997, the National Media Archive tracked all CBC and CTV national television news coverage to examine the news selection process and the information Canadians receive on their TV sets. Last month's On Balance reported the initial findings of this study; this month we examine the news broken down by geographical regions. What news did we receive about Canada, the US, Asia, Europe, etc., on national TV last year? What international stories dominated the news? How did CBC's and CTV's news coverage compare? Did the networks fulfil their self-declared mandates?

Click Here to View Figure A
Click Here to View Figure B
Click Here to View Figure C

One difference between the public and private broadcaster is the news format: CBC provides fewer reports (an average of 10-12 per newscast), and more in-depth reporting, while CTV provides a broader variety of short stories with an average of 14 to 16 reports per newscast. In 1997, CBC aired 3,482 reports over 312 days, of which 60 percent (2,049 reports) were filed by a CBC reporter. In contrast, "CTV News" aired 5,535 reports over 364 days, of which 40 percent (2,202 reports) were filed by a CTV reporter. Brief anchor-narrated reports, particularly on international news, were more prevalent on CTV.

News about Canada and its provinces or territories is shown in figure B. These reports account for 63 percent of CBC and 55 percent of CTV's total 1997 news coverage. Slightly over one-half of CBC and over one-third of CTV Canadian news reports focused on government and politics. Crime and catastrophes—namely, natural disasters and accidents—ranked second on both networks, and accounted for 18 percent of CBC and 20 percent of CTV. Social and economic news ranked third, with 12 percent of CBC and 16 percent of CTV news coverage.

In 1997, the "CTV News" aired 2,276 international news stories, accounting for 41 percent of that year's news. Similarly, CBC's "National" and "Sunday Report" broadcast 1,196 <%0>news stories about the world beyond Canada's borders, accounting for 34 percent of all 1997 reports.

Figure C gives the regional breakdown of these reports. On CBC, news about Europe ranked first, accounting for 32 percent of international news reports. On CTV, news from the US dominated international coverage, accounting for 38 percent of international reports. The United States was the number two region on CBC (27%), while Europe was the number two spot on CTV (30%).

The Middle East was third on CBC (12.2 percent) and fourth on CTV (8.9 percent). Asia and India were fourth on CBC (11.5 percent) and third on CTV (10.2 percent). Other regions accounted for less than 10 percent of international news reports.

Click Here to View Figure D

This differed from CBC where diplomacy ranked first (29%), followed by entertainment news (23%) and governance (21%). International stories about crime and catastrophes ranked fourth on CBC's "National" and "Sunday Report" programs at 14 percent.

Obviously, CBC's approach to international events is more serious than CTV's. Entertainment, crime, and catastrophes comprised over 50 percent of CTV's international news coverage, while news about governments, diplomacy, and defense comprised 34 percent. On CBC, entertainment and tragedies accounted for 37 percent while governance and foreign affairs accounted for 50 percent—the opposite trend to CTV.

The top US stories on CBC in 1997 were the O.J. Simpson civil trial (16 reports), the Oklahoma City bombing trial (11 reports) and the Gianni Versace murder (8 reports). The top stories on CTV were also the Oklahoma bombing (28 reports), followed by Versace (23 reports), and O.J. Simpson (19 reports).