Balance and Fairness in Broadcasting News, 1995
Download PDF:
Balance and Fairness in Broadcasting News PDF7.28 MB
Date published: April 1995
Researchers/Authors: Judy McGregor and Margie Comrie
Scope
- Analyzes programmes from 1985 to 1994
- Measures variables in news stories such as time allocation, sources used in news stories and their affiliations, attribution of story material, geographic focus, emotive language and tone of news
Methodology
- Content analysis
- TVNZ, TV3, Morning Report and Mana News
- 915 stories sampled
- 2025 sources in news stories
Results
- 39% of stories political, 25.8% related to crime and 16% health stories
- Amount of crime news in stories sampled increased for television news 18% to 41% (TV One news); 40.9% to 53.6% (TV3 news)
- Political stories decreased across the years studied
- Health news increased in proportion of the stories sampled
- Low numbers of Māori-related news stories were reported
- 60% of crime stories sampled relate to a crime incident or to court reports, and court reporting shows a general increase in television news
- 45% of stories used one source only, 25% used two sources, 15% used three sources, and 15% used between four to nine sources
- 25.4% of the 2025 sources spoke for themselves, 34.1% were cited and 40.6% both spoke for themselves and were cited
- 18.8% of the 2025 sources recorded were interviewed so that questions and answers were broadcast
- 88.5% of the questions judged as very appropriate or appropriate in the context of the stories in which they were asked
- Majority of cases (81.6%) the interviewer’s tone of voice was rated neutral, 12.5% as positive and 5.6% as negative
- Three of the four broadcasters relied overwhelmingly on Pakeha sources
- Sources of news stories sampled revealed a strong gender bias with 80.6% of sources male and 19.4% female
- General increase in stories containing controversy across time
- Of the stories containing controversy, 47.2% rated fair in terms of inclusion of relevant sides of the controversy in the story, 21.6% judged to be neither fair nor unfair and 31.2% rated unfair
- TV3 features were judged to be most fair in terms of inclusion
- Emotional language was coded as occurring 33.9% of the stories overall and increased over time
- 86.1% of stories were found to have dealt justly and fairly with every person taking part in or referred to in the story
- 47.6% of stories coded containing fact and opinion, comment and analysis