Category: Media

Why did media ignore flooding in Louisiana?

While parts of Louisiana became literal islands, much of the country was cutoff from the story by scant media coverage.

Reporters are lining beaches along the Florida panhandle this morning, making sure their mics pick up as much wind as possible as Tropical Storm Hermine approaches. It’s the top story on every morning news program – the journalistic convention for landfalling tropical systems (what do I mean? I wrote this lead last night, then confirmed with a quick flip through the channels over breakfast).

A few hundred miles west, Louisiana is still recovering. Some areas only recently arose from the flood waters that first submerged them three weeks ago. Personal possessions line streets in garbage heaps. Many schools are still closed.

The scope is staggering. Over 100,000 homes flooded in and around Baton Rouge and Lafayette; 13 people killed. When the waters crested, many small towns had become islands, separated from hospitals, gas stations, and grocery stores.

I know this largely because of family and friends on Facebook. From the outset, locals accused media of ignoring the story. We have to be careful about this – Southerners can be thin-skinned about perceived attacks from “the mainstream media,” including those greatly distorted or possibly fabricated.

[Related: Did ESPN Commentators Call Mississippians Poor?]

But I had to admit, I wasn’t seeing much coverage either. And eventually, the media turned a critical eye on itself. The New York Times waited three days to move their staff writer in New Orleans to the scene of the devastation 75 miles away. Public Editor Liz Spayd lamented the paper’s aggregation of media reports instead of conducting original reporting, concluding that “A news organization like The Times – rich with resources and eager to proclaim its national prominence – surely can find a way to cover a storm that has ravaged such a wide stretch of the country’s Gulf Coast.”

Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather took to Facebook to blame television news for choosing “the easy ratings of pundits playing the schadenfreude game in air conditioned studios” over sending reporters and resources to the flood zone.

I don’t have empirical data to analyze the amount and prominence of coverage compared to other natural disasters (though it’d be a fun study; anyone want to help?). For now, I’m relying on anecdotal evidence and observations of those in the industry. And that tells me the flooding in Louisiana was, and continues to be, drastically underreported.

Why?

To try to begin answering that question, I did my usual media scanning, and asked two meteorologists to help me fill in the gaps.

Continue reading “Why did media ignore flooding in Louisiana?”

Sunday morning talk shows and portrayals of public opinion during the 2012 presidential campaign

The 2016 presidential campaign has been unique thus far, to say the least. It makes the 2012 cycle look downright boring. Yet, one aspect of the 2012 campaign that stood out to me was the use of public opinion polling by media to frame the race.

This paper was presented August 7, 2016 at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minn. An early version was presented February 27, 2016 at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Midwinter Conference in Norman, Okla.

The 2016 presidential campaign has been unique thus far, to say the least. It makes the 2012 cycle look downright boring. Yet, one aspect of the 2012 campaign that stood out to me was the use of public opinion polling by media to frame the race. Leading up to Election Day, it seemed pretty clear that President Obama would have the electoral votes to win a second term. Election forecasting guru Nate Silver thought so, and most polling data agreed.

However, a completely different picture was painted in conservative media – at least in a few anecdotal instances. Fox News contributor Dick Morris infamously predicted a “landslide” victory for Mitt Romney, while Karl Rove’s refusal to accept Obama’s victory-sealing win in Ohio made for awkward Election Night coverage for the cable news ratings leader. Both had evidence on their side – poll numbers that made it look like Romney was indeed going to win Ohio and the White House. But those polls were in the minority, and they were wrong.

This matters. Previous research suggests that publishing of public opinion polls can actually influence public opinion, and eventually, voting. To be fair, these findings have always been tough to untangle. Does a poll showing a candidate with a big lead create a bandwagon effect where everyone wants to vote for the inevitable winner, or does it spur an underdog effect in which the losing candidate’s supporters mobilize to close the gap? Does depicting a close race boost turnout, while voters skip out on a projected blowout? There’s evidence of all of these. Continue reading “Sunday morning talk shows and portrayals of public opinion during the 2012 presidential campaign”

Teaching media literacy in a world of active shooters

I teach in a world of active shooters.

Whenever I teach a university-core communication course, I always include a bit of media literacy, even if it’s a speech/interpersonal-oriented class. If this will be the only exposure non-majors receive to the discipline, I believe one of the most practical skills I can teach them is how to be wise consumers and distributors of information.

This is how that played out in a classroom in Arkansas.

Continue reading “Teaching media literacy in a world of active shooters”

Katrina 10: Two stations, one studio

As someone who studies media, I was fascinated by local coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Television stations in the affected region began broadcasting uninterrupted coverage ahead of the storm, and many continued for almost a week afterward.

The situation was particularly unique at WAPT, the Jackson, Miss. ABC affiliate (which, full-disclosure, I would later work at for a brief time). The night before landfall, they welcomed sister Hearst station WDSU from New Orleans, and for days, the two news teams covered two cities on one network.

Hearst issued this release in September of 2005, describing the scene at WAPT and in Jackson generally. It doesn’t appear to be available online anymore, so for the 10th anniversary of Katrina, I’m reposting it below:

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HURRICANE KATRINA
Candy Altman
Vice President, News/Hearst Television
09/13/05

It is Wednesday …the first Wednesday after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. There is a frantic energy in the air and the halls are crowded at WAPT in Jackson Mississippi, where there is no running water and phone service is barely operable. I turn the corner walking swiftly toward the WDSU makeshift newsroom, and there I see the story of Hurricane Katrina in a microcosm. Longtime New Orleans anchorman Norman Robinson, a rock of a man in personality and stature, is crying uncontrollably. It’s his 8-year-old granddaughter. He can’t find her. She is the light of his life, and she was staying in an area damaged by the storm

And so goes another day in the new world of WDSU-TV, Hearst’s New Orleans television station. Reporters, photographers, producers, technicians all covering a story that dramatically impacts their own lives under working conditions which can best be described as primitive. Forced out of their home base by the threat of rising floodwaters and a tide of violence, the television station never stopped broadcasting, whether it was over the web or over the air. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. This coverage re-creates the meaning of service to the community.

Continue reading “Katrina 10: Two stations, one studio”

(Some of) What we learned through a health intervention program for elementary school children

aejmc15Papers presented August 7, 2015 at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, Calif. Information about accessing specific papers available by visiting the Academia page on dylanmclemore.com.

Recently, researchers with the University of Alabama Health Communication Lab spent two weeks with second- and third-grade children at a racially diverse public elementary school. We conducted a health intervention, leading physical education activities, talking about health and nutrition, and using new technologies to encourage physical activity and healthy diets. These are a portion of those findings:

Media Effect on Children’s Health

Media use is a popular target of blame for childhood health problems, particularly obesity. It is widely assumed that media use limits exercise by increasing sedentary activity, though most studies find that media simply displaces other types of sedentary activity. A second proposed media effect is that media content (especially advertising) teaches unhealthy attitudes and behaviors regarding nutrition. And while content analyses of children’s television programming find enough sugary snacks to rot your teeth, it’s less clear how effective those messages are at influencing children.

We asked children in our health intervention to report how often they consumed various media (not just television – a limitation of many prior studies). Turns out, pre-existing media use did not significantly moderate intervention effects on attitudes or knowledge. Perhaps more surprising, media use did not affect baseline values before the intervention. In other words, whether children were glued to their screens or were playing outside, what they knew and how they felt about exercising and eating healthy was roughly the same.

Existing studies largely emanate from medical disciplines, where many of the measures are behavioral or biological, and assume a powerful media effects paradigm that has been disputed for over 50 years. This study, grounded in communication theory, rebuffs the century-old powerful media effects paradigm and suggests that media influence on the formation of children’s knowledge and attitudes is less evident.

Active Video Games

As part of the physical education intervention, children took a break from real-life play to engage in active video game play. Using a series of sports training games for the Wii, we measured children’s heart-rate, as well as self-reports of enjoyment and exertion. One of the papers to come out of the Wii sessions focused on the efficacy of active video games as a physical activity option for African American children. African American children are typically less physically active than White children. Two causes were particular relevant to the present study – negative attitudes toward physical activity and limited access to quality places for such activity.

We found that the Wii games each resulted in increases in heart rate mimicking that of real-life physical activity. This was true regardless of gender or weight status. Even better, children enjoyed playing the games, and reported desire to continue to play. However, real-world play could not be disregarded. For at least one game – a basketball drill – perceived efficacy at real basketball predicted enjoyment of the simulated game. The results suggest that active video games might provide alternative physical activity spaces that are enjoyed and desired by African American children.

Tablet-Sized Portions

Children used an iPad app designed by the researchers to keep track of the foods they ate at each meal. Compared to pre-intervention measures, children’s nutritional knowledge significantly improved as they thought about the types and portions of food they ate. The results suggest that the interactivity offered by touch technologies may make for an accessible, appealing way to not only present nutrition information to children, but to engage them with it.

Taken together, we learned that the various unhealthy messages in media may not be as impactful as widely believed. However, interactive media offer viable routes to engaging children in exercise and learning about nutrition.