Does a change in media ownership have an impact on health reporting?

A case study on the change of ownership of the Daily Express Newspaper in 2000.

Methodology

By Olivia Shortall

Strengths

Weaknesses

Literature Review

Ethical ConsiderationsDue to the use of focus groups in this research project, ethical consideration must be taken due to the interaction with people. One possible issue that may arise could be due to whistleblowing - sta� being interviewed may be less inclined to disclose information or be honest in fear of causing problems at work. This could lead to inaccurate answers - however, if it is a group discussion, hearing other people speak could encourage individuals to also engage. The best way to prevent this issue from limited the validity of the research would maybe be to build up an honest relationship between participant and researcher to ensure openness.

Focus Groups:The qualitative method, consisting of organised discussion (Kitzinger 1994), enables the research to draw upon personal beliefs, experiences and attitudes to the move from United Nations. Sta� who were part of the transition between United Newspapers and Northern and Shell will be interviewed with open questions in groups of 5 e.g. How have you perceived changes in your job role? This will be to assess whether they noticed a change in editorial judgement and direction regarding health reporting, between May 1999 and May 2001 for the Daily Express Newspaper.

Content Analysis:Content analysis, a method speci�cally intended for the study of messages (Lombard, 2002), is a key research method for this study because it enables quantities to be drawn from qualitative information. Every daily copy of the Daily Express newspaper, from May 1999 to May 2001, needs to be examined - the unit of analysis was each health news article. Each news article in the sample will be coded in terms of general topics such as the NHS, diseases, risk factors etc. Once coded, you can compare what is more prominent or more common.

The news organisation, Northern and Shell, purchased the Daily Express Newspaper in November 2000, from United Newspapers for £125 million – following a rapid change in sales. Both owners of these organisations (Richard Desmond of Northern and Shell and Baron Stevens of Ludgate of United Newspapers), described as careless (Greenslade, 2000), had di�ering political interests and so it seems important to address whether factors such as this could in�uence the news produced. The Daily Express has become a supporter of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), acting as a �nancial backer, and closely follows the party line – this leads to question whether such political involvement can have an impact on the content of news produced. The choice of focus on health reporting follows on from the BBC article published in 2000 stating that the tabloid media (including the Daily Express) unfairly stigmatises mental illness. This research project aims to determine whether a change in ownership directly a�ects the health news that is produced. This will be achieved by analysing the theory of framing, the coding of health reporting and the in�uence of media ownership.

Barnett, S., 2004. Media ownership policies: Pressures for change and implications. Paci�c Journalism Review, 10 (2), 8.Bartlett, C., Sterne, J. and Egger, M., 2002. What is newsworthy? Longitudinal study of the reporting of medical research in two British newspapers. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 325 (7355), 81-84.BBC, 2000. Media 'unfairly stigmatises mental illness' [online]. BBC News Online: BBC News Online Health. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/635415.stm [Accessed Bucci, M. and Mazzonlini, R. G., 2003. Big science, little news: science coverage in the Italian daily press, 1964-1997. Public Understanding of Science, 12 (1), 7-24.Fairclough , N. and Wodak , R., 1997. Critical discourse analysis. Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, 2, 258-284.Godler, Y. and Reich, Z., 2013. HOW JOURNALISTS THINK ABOUT FACTS. Journalism Studies, 14 (1), 94-112.Greenslade, R., 2000. Media: Tabloids for sale, Pounds 200m ono. Two careless owners: United News & Media seems hellbent on selling o� the Express, Sunday Express and Daily Star. But who will pay a small fortune for titles that make no money? Available from:

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgin&AN=edsgcl.75693840&site=eds-live&scope=site [Accessed Hájek, R., Štefaniková, S., Lab, F. and Tejkalová, A. N., 2015. Czech Journalists' Refreshed Sense of Ethics in the Midst of Media Ownership Turmoil. Media & Communication, 3 (4), 52-61.Johnson, B., 2003. Can nothing derail the Express train? Marketing Week, 26 (26), 14.Kitzinger, J., 1994. The methodology of Focus Groups: the importance of interaction between research participants. Sociology of Health & Illness, 16 (1), 103-121.Kiwanuka-Tondo, J., Albada, K. F. and Payton, F. C., 2012. Media ownership and news framing: An analysis of HIV/AIDS coverage by Ugandan press. African Journal of AIDS Research, 11 (4), 361-371.Lombard, M., Snyder-Duch, J. and Campanella Bracken, C., 2002. Content Analysis in Mass Communication. Human Communication Research, 28 (4), 587.McKnight, D., 2012. HENRY MAYER LECTURE 2012: THE MARKET POPULISM OF RUPERT MURDOCH. Media International Australia (8/1/07-current), (144), 5.Pritchard, D., Terry, C. and Brewer, P. R., 2008. One owner, one voice? Testing a central premise of

newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership policy. Communication Law and Policy, 13 (1), 1-27.Scheufele, D. A. and Tewksbury, D., 2007. Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media e�ects models. Journal of Communication, 57 (1), 9-20.Schi�rin, A., 2010. NOT REALLY ENOUGH. Journalism Practice, 4 (3), 405-416.Sjøvaag, H., 2014. Homogenisation or Di�erentiation? Journalism Studies, 15 (5), 511-521.Swain, K. A., 2005. Approaching the Quarter-Century Mark: AIDS Coverage and Research Decline as Infection Spreads. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22 (3), 258-262.Tang, L. and Peng, W., 2015. Culture and health reporting: A comparative content analysis of newspapers in the United States and China. Journal of Health Communication, 20 (2), 187-195.Tankard, J. W., 2001. The empirical approach to the study of media framing. In: Reese, S. D., Gandy, O. H., Jr. and Grant, A. E., eds. Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world. Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 95-106.Willis, E., Ham, C. D. and Rodgers, S., 2014. Ethnic, Mainstream Papers Di�er on Health Reporting. Newspaper Research Journal, 35 (4), 21-39.

References:

There hasn’t been an extensive deal of research on the change of ownership of British tabloid newspapers and so this research has an original angle to go from - in particular on the way that health reporting is covered.

This project has a strong case study which forms the basis of the research - it provides a unique opportunity to compare two time periods of the same text in order to see whether there is a direct relationship between change in ownership and health news produced. The independent variable (the Daily Express newspaper) is the constant whereas the owner of the paper changed from United Newspapers to Northern and Shell.

There is a clear set time frame to conduct the research over which allows for the research to be conducted speci�cally.

The Daily Express newspaper is daily and so even for a year sample, that still means that there will be hundreds of newspaper prints to go through and analyse - extremely time consuming.

Obtaining a year’s worth of newspaper copies could prove to be a challenge. The whole basis of the research relies on this and so this would be a major issue if the access is not available. This research project narrowly focuses on health reporting and so the results found will not be able to be applied generally as a theory of media ownership a�ecting all news.

Another issue is that with content analysis, there could be many other variables which could impact the type of health news produced, besides media ownership such as government changes, health outbreaks etc.

Critical Discourse Analysis:Critical discourse analysis regards `language as social practice' (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) - therefore this study requires such analysis of language in order to see if there is a di�erence in social practice due to media ownership. This study will analyse the way the NHS is written about in reports to see if the language style changed after the ownership change. The sta� generally remained the same and so it will determine whether any changes were the result of new owners.

To provide background for the study, a review of framing theory, a review of framing theory, media ownership and the factors that in�uence health reporting follows:

• (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007) - Framing is based on the assumption that how an issue is characterised in news reports in�uences how the issue is understood by audiences. As a macro construct, framing refers to the manner of presentation that media organisations use to present information. As a micro construct, framing describes how people use the information and presentation modes when forming impressions.

• (Tankard, 2001) – regards frames not only as composed of informational content, but also of catchphrases, depictions, metaphors, exemplars or visual images.

• (Kiwanuka-Tondo, 2012) – Framing theory can be applied to analyze trends in health reporting. Government owned newspapers used di�erent frames more prominently than privately-owned newspapers – demonstrating the in�uence of media ownership.

• (Willis, 2014) – General audience newspapers commonly frame public health issues as the responsibility of individuals, while Hispanic newspapers assign more institutional-level blame.

• (Tang & Peng, 2015) - Health reporting has the potential to educate the public and promote health behaviors. This study explores the theory of individualism - people in an individualist culture (e.g. The U.S), emphasize independence and the achievement of personal goals, whereas those from a collectivist culture tend to give priority to group goals and value interdependence.

• (Bartlett, 2002) – In health reporting, newspapers are selective in the type of health news produced e.g. the study found newspapers ignored research from developing countries.

• (Swain, 2005) – Much of society’s understanding of health issues comes from the media. Some journalists accept responsibility for informing the public about issues, but most do not see public education as part of their role.

• (Bucci, 2003) – the public opinion is that the media are often overtly accused of a negative, antiscienti�c attitude, in their coverage of health and science.

• (Sjøvaag, 2014) – The reasons for owning content-producing media can be roughly categorised as inspired either by economic motives, by political motives or by publicist motives to contribute to the welfare of civil and political society.

• (Schi�rin, 2010) – Journalists often feel pressure from their superiors to publish speci�c content – even when it may be the case of ‘extreme partisanship’.

• (Hájek, 2015) - addresses the shift in the ways journalists perceive their roles and ethical responsibilities before and after ownership changes in the Czech Republic. There is no doubt that the type of media ownership in�uences at least to a certain extent the daily work of journalists as well as their outcomes. Media ownership underlies many of the internal and external factors and in�uences that shape the working conditions of journalists in particular and the journalistic profession in general.

• (Godler & Reich, 2013) - Our �ndings indicate that conditions of ownership produce variance in journalists’ takes on reality depiction i.e. how journalists think about facts.

• (Barnett, 2004) - The nature and process of ownership in�uence is not an easily measurable or even observable phenomenon - Most of the time, the in�uence is subtle and di�cult to observe.

• (Pritchard & Terry & Brewer, 2008) - Activists depict the “corporate media” as a grave threat to democracy. The vital social, political and cultural functions of the media ultimately �ow from their content, not from their ownership structure.

• (McKnight, 2012) – Signi�cant agenda-setting power can be exercised at state level. When a political party is in opposition, it is most dependent on coverage in the news media.

In�uence of media ownership:

Health Reporting:

Framing: