Places in the News: A Study of News Flows 9780773582750

Table of contents :
Cover
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
Relation of news flow to other areas of study
Roots of news flow research
Philosophical context and methodology
The changing philosophical orientation
Research results
Future directions
The selections
CHAPTER ONE: Circulation of Newspaper News Within Canada
Filters that influence news-gathering and publication
Procedure
Description of news flows
Statistical analyses
Discussion
Conclusions
CHAPTER TWO: A Nodal Structure for a Set of Canadian Cities Using Graph Theory and Newspaper Datelines
Data set
Methodology
Analyses
Findings
Discussion
Further results
Discussion of anglophone-francophone differences
Conclusions
CHAPTER THREE: Parochialism Among Canadian Cities
Analysis
Interpretation
Summary
CHAPTER FOUR: Analyzing News Origin Profiles of Canadian Daily Newspapers
Methodology
Results and interpretation
Summary and conclusion
CHAPTER FIVE: Cultural Affinity Displayed in Canadian Daily Newspapers
Methodology
Results
Conclusion
CHAPTER SIX: United States News Flows to Canadian Newspapers
News flows and geographical theory
Empirical studies and conceptual framework
The news-gathering and publication process
Research expectations
Method and procedure
Amount and content of United States news
News content and origin
Region- and state-to-newspaper flow
Newspaper groupings
Conclusion
CHAPTER SEVEN: Spatial Pattern of World Events in Canadian Newspapers
Methodology
Overview of international news flows
News flows to newspapers by regions and countries
Newspaper groupings
Conclusion
CHAPTER EIGHT: Factors Influencing International News Flows
Factors in news flows
Methodology
Findings
Discussion
Conclusions
CHAPTER NINE: Canadian Urban Hierarchies
Data base and method
Findings and discussion
CHAPTER TEN: Who Talks to Whom: Éliteness Among the World's Nations
Previous studies
Éliteness
Other indicators of who talks to whom
Discussion
REFERENCES
References

Citation preview

Places in the News

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Places in the News A study of news flows H. G. KARIEL L. A. ROSENVALL

Carleton University Press

^H^ Carleton University Press Copyright © H. G. Kariel and L. A. Rosenvall, 1995 This edition copyright © Carleton University Press Inc., 1995 Printed and bound in Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publications Data Kariel, Herbert G. (Herbert George), 1927Places in the News: a study of news flows Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88629-259-X 1. Journalism — Canada. 2. Canadian newspapers. I. Rosenvall, L.A. II. Title.

PN4908.K37 1995

071M

Carleton University Press 160 Paterson Hall Carleton University 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6

Distributed in Canada by Oxford University Press Canada 70 Wynford Drive Don Mills, Ontario Canada M3C 1J9 (416) 441-2941

Cover design: Cover art:

Typeset by:

C95-900036-4

Stan Bevington, Coach House Printing "Typewriter 1983," Aquatint on zinc 22.4 x 30.3 Hugh Mackenzie With permission of the artist Cover to Cover, Ottawa

Carleton University Press acknowledges the support extended to its publishing program by the Canada Council and the financial assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. The Press would also like to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their assistance.

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Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements

xi xv

INTRODUCTION Introduction Relation of news flow to other areas of study Roots of news flow research Philosophical context and methodology The changing philosophical orientation Research results Future directions The selections

1 3 5 6 11 14 16 18

CHAPTER ONE Circulation of Newspaper News Within Canada 25 Filters that influence news-gathering and publication 28 Procedure 32 Description of news flows 33 Statistical analyses 45 Discussion 51 Conclusions 52 CHAPTER TWO A Nodal Structure for a Set of Canadian Cities Using Graph Theory and Newspaper Datelines Data set Methodology Analyses Findings Discussion Further results Discussion of anglophone-francophone differences Conclusions

55 56 56 59 61 66 66 69 69

CHAPTER THREE Parochialism Among Canadian Cities Analysis Interpretation Summary

73 77 77 79

CHAPTER FOUR Analyzing News Origin Profiles of Canadian Daily Newspapers Methodology Results and interpretation Summary and conclusion

81 81 82 88

CHAPTER FIVE Cultural Affinity Displayed in Canadian Daily Newspapers Methodology Results Conclusion

91 92 94 96

CHAPTER SIX United States News Flows to Canadian Newspapers 99 News flows and geographical theory 99 Empirical studies and conceptual framework 100 The news-gathering and publication process 101 Research expectations 104 Method and procedure 105 Amount and content of United States news 106 News content and origin 110 Region- and state-to-newspaper flow 111 Newspaper groupings 114 Conclusion 116 CHAPTER SEVEN Spatial Pattern of World Events in Canadian Newspapers 119 Methodology 120 Overview of international news flows 122 News flows to newspapers by regions and countries 124 Newspaper groupings 130 Conclusion 132 CHAPTER EIGHT Factors Influencing International News Flows 135 Factors in news flows 136 Methodology 138 Findings 139 Discussion 141 Conclusions 145

CHAPTER NINE

Canadian Urban Hierarchies Data base and method Findings and discussion

147 148 153

CHAPTER TEN

Who Talks to Whom: Éliteness Among the World s Nations Previous studies Éliteness Other indicators of who talks to whom Discussion

157 158 159 160 162

REFERENCES

References

165

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List of Tables and Figures TABLES 1 Newspapers used for the study 7 2 News content by category 10 3 Newspapers sampled 32 4 City-to-newspaper flows 34 5 Province- and territory-to-newspaper flows 36 6 Dateline rankings for all newspapers by city 39 7 Dateline rankings for all newspapers by province or territory 40 8 City-to-newspaper flows per 100,000 population 41 9 Province- and territory-to-newspaper flows per 100,000 population 42 10 Coefficients of correlation and observations with large residual values for the relation between the number of items in a newspaper from a city and the population size of that city 44 11 Coefficients of correlation for the relation between the number of items in a newspaper from a city and the distance to that city 46 12 Coefficents of correlation and observations with large residual values for the relation between the number of items in a newspaper from a city and the population size of that city, and the distance to that city 47 13 Coefficents of correlation and observations with large residual values for the relation between the number of items in a newspaper from a city and the population of that city divided by the distance to that city 49 14 Matrix of dateline flows 58 15 Rank of cities based on the total number of datelines appearing in all newspapers 61 16 Number of distinct flows for each city for all analyses 62 17 Hierarchy of centres by orders and dominance of flow for the analysis using the newspaper with the largest circulation 67 18 Hierarchy of centres ranked by number of links and dominance of flow using the newspapers with the largest circulation 67

Rank of cities based on the total number of datelines appearing in all newspapers, using the francophone newspapers 69 20 Hierarchy of centres by orders and dominance of flows for the analyses focusing on anglophone and francophone differences 70 21 Hierarchy of centres ranked by number of links and dominance of flow for the analyses focusing on anglophone and francophone differences 70 22 News items contained in newspapers 74 23 Largest number of news items from a city 75 24 News items contained in major Canadian daily newspapers 85 25 Percentage of news from different sources according to three ways of categorizing cultural affinity by major Canadian daily newspapers 95 26 U.S. region-to-newspaper flows 108 27 U.S. news by content category and by newspaper 109 28 U.S. news flows by content category and region of origin 112 29 International news flows by content category and region of origin 121 30 World region-to-newspaper flows 123 31 International news by content category and newspaper of destination 125 32 Correlation matrix between all variables 140 33 Countries under- and overpredicted in two or more analyses on the basis of population size, gross national product per capita, value of trade, and éliteness 142 34 News content by category 148 35 Éliteness rating and the number of embassies located in various countries 160 19

FIGURES Selective news coverage 27 News flow from observation to perception of reality 27 The flow of news between news source and newspaper showing source and destination filters and indicating feedback 29 4 City news flows 37 5 Provincial news flows 38 6 Flow diagram 60 7 Example of break in order of flows 60 8 First-dominant flows 63 9 Second-dominant flows 63 10 Third-dominant flows 64 11 Fourth-dominant flows 65 12 Fifth-dominant flows 65 13 Changes created by using English-language newspapers 68 14 Changes created by using French-language newspapers 68 15 Cluster analysis dendrogram of newspapers 87 16 Cultural affinity dendrogram I 93 17 Cultural affinity dendrogram II 93 18 Cultural affinity dendrogram III 94 19 Sources of U.S. news in Canadian daily newspapers 105 20 Cluster analysis dendrogram by content category 116 21 Cluster analysis dendrogram by source region 116 22 Cluster analysis dendrogram by region 131 23 Cluster analysis dendrogram by category 132 24 Relation between population and the number of news i terns 141 25 Relation between amount of trade and the number of news items 143 26 Relation between gross national product per capita and the number of news items 143 27 Relation between éliteness and the number of news items 144 28 Canadian urban hierarchies by news content category using the newspaper with the largest circulation in each city 149 29 Changes in the urban hierarchies using French-language newspapers in Ottawa and Montreal 152 30 Changes in the urban hierarchies using English-language newspapers in Ottawa and Montreal 153

1 2 3

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Acknowledgments "V\7Te express appreciation to the Canada Council and the Social W Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for grants in support of the research; our graduate students, especially Veronica Baig, for spending many hours gathering the data on which this research rests; Harold Wimmer for his helpful comments on a draft of the article concerning a nodal structure for a set of Canadian cities; Nigel Waters and Peter Herrem for their constructive comments on the article, "Who Talks to Whom"; and the staff of the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary for typing, duplicating, and preparing maps and photographs. We also appreciate the professional assistance given by the staff of Carleton University Press.

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Introduction CC^T^ ere .^ ^ world does fa news come from?" This poignant W question was once posed in large type in the heading of a fullpage advertisement for the Calgary Herald. The answer, also given in the ad, was, Anywhere—everywhere. Each issue of The Herald carries news from the most diverse places, for example: Washington, Israel, Monterey, Ethiopia, Toronto, Caracas, New York, Tokyo, Rijeka, London, Quebec, Moscow, Victoria, Los Angeles, Lisbon, Medicine Hat, Paris, Chicoutimi, Madrid, Bari, Eskimo Point and many other important or obscure places around the globe.

Not only does news come from virtually any place, but it also covers a vast variety of subject matter and is treated in innumerable ways. The last twenty years have witnessed a growing concern about the future direction of the mass media. To millions of people, the media may appear to present the news as it happens in impartial and unbiased ways with little consideration of its effect on individuals who may influence what is portrayed. At the same time, concern is expressed about issues such as: what is considered "newsworthy"; the effects of news-management; the future role of newspapers; cultural effects of the domination of news from one country on the inhabitants of another; and recent trends in making news more entertaining, producing what is sometimes aptly termed "infotainment." The media have received little persistent, coherent attention outside of a few individual scholars and schools of communication. Yet, the field of communication studies is vast by any standard, dealing with a broad range of topics including media agenda-setting, instant expert analyses,

2

Places in the News

the roles of older adults and minorities, gender stereotyping, third world news, electronic news gathering, cable news, the effects of advertising, legal aspects of news publishing, and the change from hot type to video screens. Other topics of study have included: the future of the daily newspaper; the role of foreign correspondents; bias in content and unethical reporting; the role of newspapers in shaping public opinion; factors influencing the amount of news that is printed and in which parts of the newspaper; which news is fit to print; who reads what; and the origins and destinations of news. This enormous diversity is further complicated by the fact that the media are often controlled differentially by advertisers, politicians, and owners. At times these issues have provided a significant opportunity to bring some segments of the media problématique to a high level of attention. Such was the case when the Special Senate Committee on Mass Media (1969, 1970) and the Royal Commission on Newspapers (Kent Commission, Canada, 1981) held their hearings. The material contained in this monograph focuses on the origin and destination of news in Canadian daily newspapers. This collection has been prepared with the full realization that the fragmentation, scope, and complexity of the newspaper milieu would prohibit an exhaustive, closely analyzed treatment. Indeed, readers will quickly perceive many shortcomings and omissions from a comprehensive consideration of the topic. This itself lends weight to our recommendation that more study be undertaken. The present study was motivated by a recognition of four factors: (1) people s often limited perceptions and understanding of the world, which stem from their seemingly constricted knowledge about what is located where; (2) the apparent bias in the types of news that are emphasized or down-played; (3) the preponderance of American news in Canadian newspapers compared to other foreign news; and (4) the interest that we and and other geographers have in the world around us. Related goals were to try to understand more completely the news-gathering and publishing process, the role of the media in shaping a persons image of the world, and the importance of geographical factors. The research was designed to investigate the origin and content of the news items appearing in daily newspapers in Canadas major centres and to explore such questions as the following: Which countries and cities provide the preponderance of news? Which countries, regions, or cities are

Introduction

_

3

seldom mentioned in news coverage? How important are such factors as cultural affinity, population size, gross national product, physical distance, or the relative standing of nations in the eyes of others in accounting for news flows? How parochial or internationally-minded are different major centres, as judged by newspaper content? What are the spheres of influence of various urban centres and how does this vary by news category? How pervasive is American news in Canadian newspapers? RELATION OF NEWS FLOWS TO OTHER AREAS OF STUDY

Research on news flows is not only part of communication studies (Schramm, 1960; Hiebert, Ungarait, & Bohn, 1987), but is also an integral part of the more encompassing and expanding geography of movement and information flows (Lowe & Moryadas, 1975; Jakle, Brunn, & Roseman, 1976; Haggett, 1977). It includes aspects of spatial interaction (Olsson, 1965; Taylor, 1975) and geographic diffusion (Brown, 1981) and relates to the study of environmental perception, inasmuch as people in many instances create cognitive or mental images of the world s regions, cities, or nations based on the news that they receive (Deutsch & Merritt, 1965; Goodey, 1974; Perry, 1984). The individual perceptions of editors, reporters, publishers, and other gatekeepers who determine what news is worthy of being printed in the limited amount of space available also play a role in the ultimate perceptions formed by readers (Worthington, 1971; Stewart, 1980). Newspaper readers across Canada and the world may unwittingly form their view of Halifax, for example, through the eyes and ears of a Canadian Press reporter recently arrived in that city, whose culture and experiences are derived from a different part of the country. The effects of the components of time and space on the world s landscapes have been studied for some time, but the significance of information flows must now be added to the equation in an attempt to understand global patterns. Abler, et al. (1975) stressed the geographical implications of time-space and cost-space changes brought about through advances in communications technology, and speculated on the effects these changes may bring to our urban structure. They noted that peoples perceptions about distance, space, and time are often more important for spatial organization than the realities of the actual landscape. Jakle, et al. (1976) likewise supplied additional directions for research in their focus on the spatial characteristics of mass media information flows and the impacts such flows have on the diffusion of innovations, particularly the

4

Places in the News

way diffusion from innovation centres helps to account for place-to-place variations in the distribution of goods, people, and ideas. They stress that innovation acceptance depends on awareness, and that awareness is substantially influenced by the mass media. Burgess and Gold (1985) explored a series of avenues by which geographers could profitably study the media and demonstrated the contemporary and historical insights that could be gained. They also aimed to persuade colleagues and students that the media have as much to say about the nature of places as do scholarly journals. Zonn (1990) presented media research conducted by geographers on a wide-ranging number of topics from IMAX theatres to images of Australia in published works. These essays centre on the portrayal of "place" in various forms of mass media and are structured around four elements: (1) the medium and its associated image; (2) the place being portrayed; (3) the perceiver of the images or the audience; and (4) the individual or collection of individuals who created the image. Brunn and Leinbach (1991) showed how individuals from many sub-disciplines can combine their efforts under the rubric of communication and information. The authors considered topics ranging from global interdependence to social and cultural aspects of communication changes. Their central theme is that worldwide information and communication networks have caused some places to diverge, others to remain static, and some to become further removed from the centres of networking. They noted that new communications technologies have not reduced economic disparities among nations, but in some cases have actually increased them. As indicated above, perceptions and images that individuals hold of places and people is most often based on information obtained from the media, especially that contained in newspapers, since newspapers still provide the bulk of news information that may be digested reasonably thoroughly at an individuals leisure or on the way to or from work (Fletcher, 1981). The importance of perception and images in the decision-making process was stated clearly by Boulding (1959) when he discussed relevant variables in determining relations among nations: "It is what we think the world is like, not what its really like that determines our behaviour" (p. 120). Similarly, we may believe that Montreal or Italy has a high crime rate because of the perceptions generated through the media, whereas the crime rate may in fact not differ much from that in other places.

Introduction

5

ROOTS OF NEWS FLOW RESEARCH

The origins of much of the research on news flows over the last several decades can be traced to two monumental studies published in the 1950s: the International Press Institutes The flow of the news (1953) and UNESCO's How nations see each other (1954). These investigations provided the first comprehensive look at the pattern of international news flows and indicated clearly the disparities then extant. Subsequent scholars, primarily Scandinavians, formulated theories to account for the observations (Östgaard, 1965; Thorngren, 1967; Sande, 1971; Hester, 1973). Others throughout the world built upon their work and provided an ever-growing body of research encompassing numerous disciplines and spanning many countries. What appear to be the earliest major works analyzing the geographic or spatial pattern of places mentioned in the news were produced by Cole and Whysall (1968) and Cole (1969). They studied the places in the news as presented by the BBC, Pravda, and the Eastern Daily Press of East Anglia. Not surprisingly, they found that such world capitals as London and Moscow were mentioned more frequently than other places. Cartograms were constructed to provide a visual expression of the frequency with which places were mentioned. Goodey (1974) obtained comparable findings when he used a similar technique to analyze an issue of Time ^nd four issues of Rolling Stone, a popular music magazine. Walmsley and BrookerGross also studied the flow of news, complementing our own studies. Walmsley s (1980, 1982) investigation of news flows extended the analysis into questions of news production. The broad conclusion was that news reportage is spatially-biased; for example, Australian newspapers in each state give prominence to its own affairs. Brooker-Grosss work on the historical relation between newspapers and their hinterlands in the southeastern United States provided valuable insights on several topics. By tracing the historical evolution of technological changes in news services she found an organizational shift from the local to the national level (198 la). Concerning the spatial aspects of newsworthiness, she concluded that Washington, D.C. news predominates, and is almost entirely concerned with national government affairs and politics, including the Supreme Court. The news from state capitals does not play a significant role, but newspaper news to a significant extent reflects the metropolitan hinterland of the city of publication. She concluded that geographic stereotypes and place accessibility to the network news system

6

Places in the News

reinforce and are reinforced by the resulting news product (1983a, 1983c). In other studies (1981b, 1983b) she found that some news is news because of perceived interest in the event while other news is news because it is new. In this historical setting, the small-town newspapers were neither "provincial" nor independent, but rather depended upon external sources to define the news. As Tunstall (1971) observed, the findings of news flow studies are sufficiently extensive to make summarization virtually impossible. The Niagaras of words and pictures comprising the constant flow of news result from the interaction of supply and demand. On one side of the interaction are the news organizations and the machinery that delivers the news, and on the other side are the readers with their often fickle and insatiable news expectations. Indeed, news is a commodity not unlike other goods that are exchanged in the marketplace (Desbarats, 1990). Because it was not feasible to examine all questions, places, or newspapers at once, the present research started with an investigation of the spatial origin of news published in major Canadian newspapers and the pattern of news flows within Canada. Background information about Canadian newspapers, reporting, and publishing was obtained from the findings of individuals who had studied these topics. They include the various submissions presented to, and reports of the Special Senate Committee on Mass Media (1969, 1970), particularly those on the Canadian press by Sutherland, et al. (1969), and on Canadian newspaper practices by Spears (1970), and items on Canadian newspapers and news flows by Hart (1963), McDayter (1971), Scanlon (1973), Robinson and Sparkes (1977), Sparkes (1978), and Stewart (1980). The hearings of the Royal Commission on Newspapers (Kent Commission, Canada, 1981) and the wide-ranging selections contained in The News: Inside the Canadian Media (Zwicker & MacDonald, 1982) provided additional information about Canadian news and news publishing. Bibliographic background material relating to the specific topic of each selection is cited in the individual selections contained in this volume. PHILOSOPHIC^ CONTEXT AND METHODOLOGY

The initial research goal was to describe and analyze the flow of news to major Canadian newspapers. When we started in the 1970s, our philosophical approach to the topic was that of positivism, which consists of describing and analyzing observations in order to reveal general patterns.

Introduction

7

This approach, incorporating the scientific method, builds on empirical observation, involves the formulation of hypotheses to be tested, and eventually leads to the development of generalizations or laws that can be used to predict, or at least to anticipate, events that occur if the generalizations are valid. The basic objective is to describe the conditions under which the object of interest occurs or how it works, on the premise that the generalizations provide a potentially satisfactory explanation. This approach was consistent with the climate of geographical work at the time (Davies, 1972; Cloke, Philo, & Sadler, 1991; Walmsley & Lewis, 1984). Its focus on general patterns, principles, or generalizations contrasted with an earlier emphasis on individual occurrences, uniqueness, or exceptionalism (Schaefer, 1953). It was part and parcel of the quantitative or scientific revolution taking place in geography at that time (Burton, 1963). Using the methodology of positivism, the research needed to be organized systematically along lines that would permit replication. Thus, variables had to be identified, a reliable sampling process had to be determined and implemented, criteria for selecting newspapers to be studied had to be Table 1. Newspapers used for the study BRITISH COLUMBIA

ALBERTA

SASKATCHEWAN MANITOBA ONTARIO

QUEBEC

NEW BRUNSWICK

NOVA SCOTIA PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND NEWFOUNDLAND

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Regina Leader-Post Winnipeg Free Press Toronto Globe and Mail* Toronto Daily Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Windsor Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil Fredericton Gleaner Saint John Telegraph Journal* Halifax Chronicle-Herald Charlottetown Guardian St. Johns Evening Telegram

* The Toronto GlobeandMail'and the Saint John Telegraph Journal were used in Chapters 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 in order to include an additional province with more than one centre and to have two newspapers of similar importance published in the same language in the same city.

8

Places in the News

chosen, and data had to be gathered. It is presumed to be an objective and scientific procedure that allows little room for subjectivity (Kemeny, 1959; Nagel, 1961). This systematic organization involved, first, a selection of major Canadian cities, and then a choice of newspaper or newspapers in each city. A year was selected from which to draw a random sample of days on which Canadian newspapers publish. The entire issue for each day for all newspapers was examined, and only news articles, including photograph captions, were noted. The datelines of news items were used as indicators of the source of the news contained in the articles following them. Initially, 19 newspapers published in 17 major Canadian centres were selected. In other stages of the research, with the inclusion of the Saint John Telegraph Journal and the Toronto Globe and Mail the number of newspapers rose to 21, published in 18 centres (Table 1). Although the selection of cities in this sample was based on different criteria from those used by Maxwell (1965), most of the ones chosen were among those classified by him as either "major metropolitan centres" or "regional capitals." Approximately one-half of Canada's total population resided in these cities. The newspapers were those with the largest circulation in each of the following centres: the federal capital, all provincial capitals, and all cities with a population of more than 100,000. Generally speaking, the study used only newspapers with a circulation of 50,000 or more. Both population and circulation figures were taken from the Ayer Directory (1971). Newspapers in these 17 cities were augmented by a French-language newspaper in Ottawa and an English-language one in Montreal so that the two official languages would be represented in these important centres. The Saint John Telegraph Journal was included so that an additional province would be represented by more than one newspaper, and the Globe and Mail was added because of its national status. Unfortunately, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record was not part of the analyses because it was unobtainable either in the original or on microform. The Montreal Star and the Ottawa Journalhave ceased publication since the research commenced. The entire issue of each newspaper was scanned for datelines. Local items, even though they carry no datelines, were also included. Photograph captions were considered to be news items, and since they carry no datelines they were assumed to originate at the place identified in the caption. Although it might be appropriate to change the term "dateline" to "placeline," because the identifier that generally prefixes news items contains

Introduction

9

only the name of the place from which that news was transmitted, general practice precludes this option. The term dateline arose before the days of electronic news transmission, when news took days or weeks to travel long distances and many items carried dates several days or weeks previous to the date of publication, along with the names of the places from which the dispatches were sent. Because our concern was with the flow of news, items such as editorials, syndicated columns, and letters to the editor were disregarded. Other studies, in similar fashion, have also concentrated on selected portions — for example, obituaries (Zipf, 1946), editorials (Klein & Maccoby, 1954; Kobre, 1953), the front page (Foster, 1937; Kayser 1953; Kingsbury et al., 1937), or letters to the editor (Foster & Friedrich, 1937). The one-year period, August 1, 1972 to July 31, 1973, was chosen as being close to the time when the research commenced. From this one-year period, a random sample of 31 dates was selected, representing 10 percent of all days on which Canadian newspapers publish. The data base of 86,352 news items is probably the largest sample in any Canadian newspaper-related study. This sample size is apparently more than adequate for the study of newspapers. Stempel (1952) found that increasing the sample size beyond 12 in sampling a full year of daily newspapers did not produce marked differences. News items were placed into one of 12 content categories (Table 2). Because the categories are not entirely mutually exclusive and many longer articles qualify for inclusion under several headings, subjective judgments were sometimes necessary. Some political news, for example, might equally well be categorized as human interest or as crime. It was decided to include most of such news under political and economic news, depending on its context. Items were also categorized by area according to the following criteria: (1) city of publication, in the case of local items that carry no datelines; (2) the 18 cities in the study; (3) cities near the 18 specified above that appeared frequently in the newspapers for that city (for example, Lethbridge in the Calgary Herald); (4) all Canadian provinces and territories, excluding the cities described above; (5) major cities and all states in the United States; and (6) all other countries and their major cities. Different areal aggregations were used for different analyses. For international news, datelines were grouped by country and 11 major world regions. For American news, datelines were aggregated into nine regions

10

Places in the News

and the major cities. For the study of parochialism, data were aggregated for local, provincial, national, and international locations. In the study of the effect of French and English cultural affinities, the world s countries were divided into three realms: (1) all French-language countries including former French colonies and areas of French influence; (2) all Englishlanguage countries including former British colonies, former Commonwealth countries, and areas of British influence; and (3) all other countries, excluding the United States. The research embodied several statistical methodologies. Correlation and regression analysis, as well as the gravity model of spatial interaction, were used in describing and analyzing the flow of news among Canadian Table 2. News content by category CATEGORY Political and economic Law and crime Accidents Catastrophes Ecology and resources Science, medicine, and technology Sports Business and financial Consumer affairs Social aspects of life

Entertainment Human interest

CONTENT

Politics, general economy, trade, treaties, elections, legislation, and diplomatic relations Crimes, preventative measures, civil suits, prisons, and police forces People-caused accidents involving people directly or indirectly Natural occurrences involving the environment, such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, avalanches Environmental problems and natural resources where impact rather than the economy is the main thrust Discoveries and their development Sports Business and financial Cost of living, price controls, "rip-oflfs," and consumer education Holiday travel, religion, fashion, women's liberation, modern living, education, and sex revolution Arts, literature, films, music, and plays Deaths, engagements, weddings, suicides, amusing incidents, and activities of prominent public figures

Introduction

11

centres. Cluster analysis was applied to determine the relation between news origin and cultural affinity in these newspapers and to group them according to similarity in news origin and news type. Graph theory was utilized in a study of Canadian centres to obtain an urban hierarchy both by total news and by news-content category, and experts' ratings of perception of nations were used to determine their éliteness or status. THE CHANGING PHILOSOPHICAL ORIENTATION

Over time, both the discipline and our research subtly and slowly changed their philosophical orientation as greater emphasis was placed on humanistic and qualitative aspects of the topics that were investigated (Cloke, Philo, & Sadler, 1991; Johnston, 1985). We incorporated this changing emphasis into our investigation of the qualitative and subjective notion of the éliteness of nations in accounting for international news flows. It was believed that this perceptual characteristic would account for the quantity of information flows and communications among nations. Although we used this qualitative concept, we were still sufficiently bound to our positivistic orientation that we formulated an operational definition and quantified the concept. Although we did not pursue meanings or significances, we would likely do so now. This change in philosophical orientation may have come about because geographers became emotionally dissatisfied with the types of answers obtained through use of the scientific method, arguing that its use is dehumanizing, because it fails to give adequate attention to people as complete human beings (Ley, 1980). It also glosses over the subjectivity of the researcher, overlooks intentionality in human action, reduces questions of meaning to questions of technique, and lays too much emphasis on human passivity. There may also have been other reasons, such as that thinking abstractly and mathematically is not everyone's fancy or within everyone's grasp, and that the complementary nature of the answers obtained with different approaches was poorly understood. Approaches also change over time, just as topics that are investigated change, because researchers simply become weary of taking one approach or investigating a particular topic. They may feel that they have learned enough to satisfy themselves for the time being, they may have run into difficulty pursuing the approach or topic further, or they may consider other ways or topics to be more relevant. Such swings of the pendulum are common to research endeavours.

12

_J*laces in the News

Geographers began seeking answers to different kinds of questions. Rather than looking for generalizations or principles that decision-makers could apply within a policy context, they pursued such questions as how people felt about issues and what should be done about them. Researchers were urged to consider the topical context and the broader framework of human value; it was deemed limited for the researcher to supply only objective information (Kariel, 1972; White, 1972). Moreover, it became the practice among researchers to be more prescriptive. Using the present context as an example, it would be considered insufficient simply to know which variables account for the amount and type of news originating in different places, the extent of cross-border or cultural affinities, the proportion of news from France, Britain, or the United States, or the fact that people make news. Even an understanding of the news-gathering and dissemination process would not be likely to satisfy some researchers. Rather, it would be important to state that the proportion of American news in Canadian newspapers should be regulated because it dominates foreign news and Canadian cultural values could be eroded. As may be surmised, such dissatisfactions lead to continual debates. Stated broadly and simply, the task of positivist geography is to identify separate assemblages of phenomena, and to describe and account for them by invoking general principles by determining how the observed phenomena form and are part of general patterns (Schaefer, 1953). Humanistic geography, on the other hand, relates to regional geography and singularity. In the present context, this would involve discussing the nature of an individual newspaper or a particular news communication flow rather than general patterns. This direction is a search for meaning and wholeness, where the whole is considered to be greater than the sum of the parts. This holistic perspective is different from the holism associated with systems theory; it is not functional, but dialectical and contextual (Ley & Samuels, 1978), and includes a symbolic environment (Tuan, 1978). A more humanistic approach, it was argued, would provide a satisfying and "real" (not more complete) understanding. While some geographers continued to engage in research using the positivist philosophy and the associated scientific method, which focuses on analysis rather than synthesis, others extended their research to other philosophies and definitions of knowledge. Within cultural, social, or human geography, attention began to focus on what are often referred to as humanistic philosophies, which had their foundation in the middle

Introduction

13

ages. These approaches stress the power of human beings. Individuals are raised above the laws of nature and free will is given greater rein. The aim is to explicate and interpret the meanings that lie behind action. Humanistic geography therefore focuses on subjective elements, meanings, or the interpretation of those meanings about places, people, or, as in this case, newspapers. The search for the human interpretation or the human meaning of the information or the technical knowledge derived from scientific research represents the hermeneutic perspective (Gould, 1985). In contrast to the goals of positivism, humanistic approaches focus on the ways that place and environment are experienced. Instead of treating humans as uniform and mechanical inanimate objects that neither feel emotions nor construct meanings, these approaches identify and report on the ways that people, in all their individuality, interpret and give distinctively human meaning to places and landscapes (Harrison & Livingstone, 1982). For newspapers, this would mean interpreting the meaning or significance of their content matter. Within humanistic approaches, meanings are considered crucial influences on behaviour and thus are necessary to achieve a satisfactory understanding. Since meanings are produced within structures and modes of organizing society, one must appreciate the mechanisms within which an individual is operating to understand how that person acts. This involves placing a study in its social context and deriving explanations for observations of the ways in which humans mediate the operation of underlying structures. Examples of context are the salience of profit and the importance of status in a capitalistic society and the importance of contributing to the common good in other societies. In Canada, regardless of whatever other mechanisms or structures may exist, newspapers must make a profit, at least in the long run. Hence; they need to publish news of the type, from the sources, and with the content mix, that will sell. Editors adopt a format that they hope will increase readership. They place certain items on the front page, include columnists' analyses and background information, and pursue other avenues according to whether they think these are the elements that readers desire. Other motives and mechanisms and structures also operate to varying degrees. Since editors and publishers also wish to be seen as providing a public service and want to shape public opinion, newspapers provide a mix of items, such as comments on the contribution of environmental organizations, news of local church or religious events, columnists' background analyses and opinion pieces, editorials, letters to

14

Places in the News

the editor, and investigative reporting. Humanism is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of approaches, three of which have attracted special attention in geography: phenomenology, existentialism, and idealism. Phenomenologists argue that people cannot be independent of the world, that they come to know the world through their own consciousnesses, and, therefore, that social scientists must study how people experience the world. According to existentialist theory, relations with the environment give meaning to peoples existence. Existentialism attempts to restore the concrete, immediate experience of existence to a position of prominence in the study of the interaction between people and their environment. The philosophical position of idealism is that the activity of the mind is the foundation of human existence and knowledge and that the world can only be known indirectly through ideas; there is no "real" world that can be known independently of mind. Realism links the empirical world to the actions of individuals interpreting social structure. A realist explanation of an individual empirical event is considered to result from intentional action, where an individual interprets the mechanisms that govern society. Positivists would possibly counter this by stating that this is simply part of the system in which the action is taking place and the system needs to be specified. This counterargument does not satisfy those who do not appreciate or pursue the scientific method because it is too "objective," does not consider feelings or people, nor does it include other characteristics of the humanistic approach. Human geographers would also argue that mechanisms are changing, and so are the conditions in which they operate. Implications of these approaches for the study of newspapers are indicated below. RESEARCH RESULTS

The selections contained in this volume are significant for several reasons. They not only reveal interesting factual information, and provide answers to crucial questions, but they also provide valuable insights about the news carried by Canadian newspapers and substantiate what journalists, such as Peter Worthington (1971), have written about the Canadian press. "In particular, the emphasis is on parochial news—the observation is that international news is routine whereas local is 'hot stuff Canadian newspapers (as opposed to Canadian people) are more concerned with parochial events than they are with international happenings. Newspapers probably lag behind the real interest of the people—just as politicians usu-

Introduction

15

ally do" (Worthington, 1971, p. 57). In addition, news is essentially crisis coverage, and newspapers place little emphasis on analysis. A story is more likely to be printed if it can be reduced to simple terms, concerns a controversial topic, or involves violence or disasters, or large loss of life, property, or money. Those areas where crises occur are represented more frequently than others. Furthermore, numerous items used as fillers contain oddments of information that may originate virtually anywhere. Finally, because of their composite form and because they are presented in the sequence they were researched, these selections illustrate the rarely portrayed unfolding of a research project—how lines of investigation follow from one another and how investigators pursue ideas as their instincts and spirits move them. They also illustrate how the investigation began with hard data and, because of insights obtained, led to inclusion of perceptual or soft data, which tended to be the more significant. Methodologically, this material illustrates the use of the scientific method in research about communication and information flows and the use of one data set for a variety of analyses. In general, the results provide knowledge about, insights into, and an understanding about such items as the following: which newspapers publish what type of news and which origins they favour; the emphasis on local news with the concomitant down-playing of provincial, national, and international news; the relative importance of Canadian metropolitan centres in the the country's urban hierarchy; the nature of cross-border affinities to the United States; English and French cultural ties among the nations newspapers; and similarities and differences existing among the nations newspapers. The information concerning the amount of news that newspapers across the country report about cities other than those in which they are located can be transformed from geographic into newspaper information space (see Figure 1, p. 27) (Gould 1985). In a practical and immediate sense this knowledge can increase the effectiveness of publishers, advertisers, editors, and other gatekeepers in providing a suitable content mix, allow comparisons of newspapers with each other, and provide a perspective for a particular newspaper. The research results also provide a sound baseline for comparisons with future situations. More imaginatively and provocatively, it could lead into new directions.

16

Places in the News

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

By building upon what is known, future research could extend our understanding by pursuing a combination of methodologies. It could follow the positivistic path already taken in order to obtain a more complete understanding of the news-gathering and dissemination process and the role and value of newspapers in society. Another possibility would be to pursue more closely the humanistic, or post-modern bent, focusing on the significance, meaning, and implications of newspapers and their content (Folch-Serra, 1989). Such an approach would place higher priorities on values, feelings, wholes, and synthesis, rather than on understanding how a system works. Research could also become more policy-oriented and prescriptive by including recommendations that could help alleviate perceived problems and, it would be hoped, help to achieve the type of responsible media that the public envisions. More specifically, additional research could investigate and make recommendations regarding such questions as: How are newspaper readers influenced by what they read, and what is the underlying meaning, significance, and symbolism of the news that is published? What perceptions and values do readers form about people, places, and things, or about practices of English and French language usage by reading newspapers, and how much stereotyping takes place as a result? What functions do such perceptions and values serve, and what is their significance or desirability? What is the significance of the domination of international news by news from the United States? Do readers object to this dominance, possibly because they are envious or resentful, but actually want to know about events taking place there? What techniques do gatekeepers employ to influence, select, or control the news that is published and read, for what reasons do they do so, and what is the significance of this situation? That is, how are peoples perceptions and values influenced by news-management or propaganda? Such a line of investigation would deal with what newspaper readers read, what they would want to know more about, how they would like to have the news treated, and to what degree they vote with their eyes, that is, read only what they are inclined to read. A case in point was the purchase of The Denver Post by the Los Angeles Times in 1980. Times management attempted to change the Post from a folksy regional newspaper to an upscale one by emphasizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous, rather than the problems of the down and out. They almost put the Post out of

Introduction

17

business with this strategy and soon sold the Post to Texas-based purchasers because they couldn't run it profitably. Also, recent studies suggest that people may not be as interested in far-away events of human tragedy as editors preparing front pages and national newscasts assume (Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, 1993). How is a particular issue or theme treated, such as aboriginals, gender, abortion, sexual harassment, free trade, euthanasia, child abuse, environmental concerns, an ethnic group, land claims, the drive for autonomy, or particular personalities in sports, government, business, entertainment, or the environment? What is the treatment of news from a particular part of the world, such as the Arab, Scandinavian, or South American countries? What are the implications of recent developments such as changes in the geographical aspects of news, the movement toward making news entertaining, or the emergence of new journalistic thrusts, such as U.S. Today, which not only is available in many places worldwide, but also has had its colourful and creative format copied by numerous other newspapers? How does the role, importance, influence, and nature of newspapers in smaller centres compare with those in larger places (e.g., the Lethbridge Heraldvs. the Calgary Herald)! What is the significance of readers' knowledge base? Our research suggests, for example, that persons living in smaller cities, provinces, or countries have the potential to be the most broadly informed, because they not only have the means to know what is taking place in larger or more important places, but also what is happening in their own smaller, isolated, and out-of-the-way locations. Conversely, those persons potentially least informed about the rest of the world would be likely to live in such important centres as Toronto or Ottawa. Paradoxically, these cities were identified as significant in the nodal structure analyses of urban centres using newspaper datelines. By studying this suggested collection of research possibilities, it soon becomes apparent that it could be expanded and extended to the greater field of communication studies. Consideration and pursuit of these issues could be used as a basis for recommending what newspapers should publish—what tasks they should perform and what role they should play. We suggest that newspapers should provide more positive leadership in achieving a responsible humanity and a healthy planet. This could be accomplished by including a context within which to assess news stories (Suzuki, 1992) and providing greater insights into the range of human experiences through more balanced news-coverage concerning the reality

18

Places in the News

of human existence and the nature of the natural world. It would require including articles on such topics as peoples frailties and strengths, the good that people do, the beauties of life and nature, serenity, joy, love, faith, the arts, and the morality of human equity. It would mean decreasing or possibly ceasing the obsession with the here and now, politics and economics, the sensational, wars and conflicts, how many people have died or suffered, how much money has been lost or squandered, and how the earth has been raped by human greed. It would also imply elevating the "Man in the Street" to the status of hero. Newspapers should also establish and voluntarily follow a code of ethics and become leaders for a more human existence and a more peaceful world. Although we realize that this is idealistic, is it too much to ask? Are we asking the impossible? Not at all; only the difficult to achieve. Following Fritjofs dictum in The Turning Point (1982), we believe that such a revolution is essential in helping to bring about a solution. Newspapers could help infuse a sense of humanity and reverence for nature into human existence by providing a sense of being who we are. Reaching beyond ourselves to realize something worthwhile—to strive for a Kantian philosophy, a Schubert quintet, or a Titian painting—presents a clear, but not unattainable, challenge. THE SELECTIONS

The following is a synopsis of the research selections in the order they appear in this monograph. Because this is the order in which the research topics were investigated, it illustrates how one research avenue leads to the next, and how it is helpful for researchers to focus sequentially on one topic at a time. Circulation of newspaper news within Canada. This chapter introduces the research project and deals specifically with the amount and type of news from various places contained in Canadian daily newspapers. It provides a comprehensive overview of the research and its methodology and gives background information about the filters that operate in selecting the news coverage and publication, since not all events that occur are reported nor do they always appear in print. This selection also describes and analyzes Canadian news according to city-newspaper flows, province/ territory-newspaper flows, and total flows from each city or province to all newspapers. In order to determine the relative importance of population

Introduction

19

size and distance in explaining the number of times that major cities appear as datelines in newspapers, the city-to-newspaper flows were analyzed using the spatial interaction model. This analysis also points out the importance of perception by noting that readers* perceptions differ from reality as well as from the events observed by correspondents. The role and significance of perception in international communication is explored further in the last chapter, "Who talks to whom?" Nodal structure for a set of Canadian cities using graph theory and newspaper datelines. Having studied the general news flows within the country, we thought it would be intriguing to investigate the spheres of influence exerted by Canadas urban centres as shown by news flows. The analysis was based on the assumption that the circulation of information has a regular pattern, reveals interconnections among centres, and helps to integrate a territory or area. Using the total number of newspaper datelines as measures of the frequency with which news from various centres appeared in a newspaper of a particular city, a nodal structure, or national hierarchy of centres, was identified by means of graph theory. In the resulting ordering Ottawa was the undisputed pinnacle of the hierarchy. The ranking of other centres was generally in the following descending sequence: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Halifax. Provincial subgroups of centres also emerged at lower orders of the nodal structure, such as between Victoria and Vancouver. Because nodal structures reflect the type of flow on which the analysis is based, and political and economic news constituted 43% of the total number of datelines, it followed that Ottawa, as the prime news generator, would surface as the most important centre. It remains for a subsequent study to investigate which structure would surface by analyzing news by content categories rather than the total number of news items. Parochialism among Canadian cities. Not surprisingly, people frequently comment critically on either the dearth or the surfeit of international or local news carried in a particular newspaper. Examining the origin of news in the various newspapers, we were struck by the fact that local news was dominant in all newspapers, followed by provincial news; news from other provinces and countries appeared less frequently. This implies that individuals regard their own local area, city, province, or country as being more important than neighbouring or more distant ones. This phenomenon

20

Places in the News

may be called provincialism or parochialism, with provincialism being the more appropriate term for Canada. As a result of this observation, we examined the amount of news generated in a given city that does not flow out of that city because it is of purely local interest. This approach contrasted with that in the previous analysis of the urban structure, which focused on the amount of news that travels from one city to another and the subsequent news linkages among cities. Two measures were used to determine the degree of parochialism among Canadian cities: (1) the number of external news datelines, defined as the total number of datelines from a given city appearing in newspapers in all other cities in our sample; and (2) the number of purely local interest items, defined as the largest number of news items from a city appearing in some other newspaper subtracted from the number of local news items, expressed as a percentage of the number of local news items. Since these two measures had a strong negative correlation, it was concluded that parochialism was inversely related to population size, and that the relative importance of a given city as a political, financial, commercial, or industrial centre must also be taken into account. In a broader context, events taking place in some cities, St. Johns, for example, are almost outside the awareness of Canadians living in other areas, whereas Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal loom large in the consciousness or perception of those residing in all parts of Canada. Analyzing news origin profiles of daily newspapers. The research efforts next shifted to the opposite end of the spectrum: the world view as portrayed by the percentage of international news carried in daily newspapers. This led to consideration of various non-local perceptual distances, that is, provincial, national, and international. It soon became apparent that certain newspapers were similar with respect to the origin of the news they carried, while others differed considerably in their patterns of news coverage. The decision was made to investigate these similarities and differences in news origins to determine if they could be used to group the newspapers. The results indicated that despite considerable variation among newspapers, local news always dominated, with international, national, and provincial news following in that order. Using cluster analysis, the newspapers fell into six distinct groups, each with its own commonality. These groupings were based on group similarities relating to the location of the city of publication and with respect to: (1) isolation from the politi-

Introduction

21

cal, financial, industrial, and cultural heartland of the country; (2) the amount and importance of news generated in various types of cities; (3) linguistic affinities as reflected in the location of newspapers, their readership, and news sources; and (4) cultural and trade ties. Cultural affinity in Canadian daily newspapers. Analysis of the similarities and differences among newspapers revealed other anomalies between and among French- and English-language newspapers. This phenomenon was ascribed to cultural ties, an idea that has been studied by other researchers who had focused on pairs of individual countries where cultural affinity was masked by other factors. It was decided to test this concept within the bounds of the strongly bilingual milieu of Canada, where non-cultural factors could be considered relatively constant. Using cluster analysis, the cultural affinity of both English- and French-language newspapers to news originating from English- and French-culture countries was examined. The results showed that Canadas newspapers display remarkable cultural affinities toward their readers' respective cultural homelands. United States news flows in Canadian newspapers. In some of the research discussed above, American news was examined as part of the international news, where it constituted fully 49.8% of the total foreign news. This overwhelming percentage warranted a separate analysis. The origin of news had not previously been analyzed according to news types or content categories, that is, whether news was concerned with sports, accidents, law and crime, ecology and resources, politics, social aspects of life, etc. American news provided an excellent opportunity to consider the news both by place of origin and by content. The most striking observation was the dominance of a few regions (the Mideast, Washington, D.C., and the Far West) and the lesser role of regions about which the least amount of news was printed (New England, the Southwest, the Plains, and the Rocky Mountains). Within the nine regions, news sources were overwhelmingly dominated by a few states or cities, such as California and Los Angeles in the Far West. Cross-border affinities on a state and provincial level, such as between Maine and Nova Scotia, Ontario and Michigan, and Alberta and Montana, were also present. Although American sports news generally played a major role, it was no surprise that political and economic news ranked first from Washington, D.C. The Victoria Colonist

22

Places in the News

differed most from other newspapers in that it contained the most news from the western United States. The French-language newspapers differed from English-language ones with respect to their larger percentage of American sports news. Spatial pattern of world events in Canadian newspapers. After investigating American news, it became apparent that international news from the rest of the world should be examined using the same methodology, that is, by incorporating eleven world regions along with the twelve content categories. It was found that news from Europe and political "hot spots" in other parts of the world provided over 70% of the news. Moreover, political and economic news, together with human interest and sports news, accounted for nearly 70% of the news by content categories. When newspapers were grouped according to region of news origin and by news content category, a remarkable degree of similarity was observed among all Canadian newspapers. The research also provided a considerable quantity of detailed information about the amount and type of news originating from the more than 170 countries around the globe. Factors influencing international news flows. After we described international news flows, a natural next step was to attempt to analyze these flows. Although other researchers had proposed a number of political, economic, physical, and psychological factors that could possibly explain international flow, the more persistently suggested factors had not been tested statistically. We therefore decided to take this step. Since physical distance between the country of news origin and the country in which the items are published did not appear to be a relevant factor, except possibly for rather short distances, this variable was not used. Population size was considered to be important, because the preponderance of news items printed would most likely be from nations with larger populations. The amount of trade between nations and a nations gross national product per capita were also used as variables, because they had been suggested by others as significant explanatory factors. The fourth variable was a country's relative standing in the eyes of others. Data was obtained by soliciting status ratings for each country from a panel of experts: geographers in Canada and the United States with a topical proficiency in political geography. The analysis showed, surprisingly, that status was overwhelmingly important in accounting for the amount of news from a given country car-

Introduction

23

ried in Canadian daily newspapers. Residuals from regression—countries that were consistently over- or under-predicted—were also examined, and the deviant cases were studied. The finding that standing was of overwhelming importance led to a later research project. Canadian urban hierarchies. This chapter expands on the analysis of a nodal structure for Canadian cities. In the earlier study, which focused on total news flows, it was pointed out that the flow of specific news categories might well result in different hierarchical structures. It has often been found that when all-encompassing variables are disaggregated into their components, greater precision results and new structures may be revealed. Therefore, the original study was extended by disaggregating total news flows to determine the nature of the hierarchies resulting from analyses by content categories. The findings confirmed that Canada is a highly centralized country with three major heartland cities, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal as the dominant seats of power, not only in the economic sphere, but also in most other human activities. The few other intra-regional connections that exist are less dominant. Thus, aside from purely local news, newspaper readers throughout Canada are far more likely to find news emanating from the three major centres than from centres in other provinces or regions. This pattern of news origin undoubtedly tends to form and perpetuate Canadians' general lack of knowledge about many parts of the country, to foster the perception that anything worthy of note happens only in the heartland, and to reinforce the notion that power is primarily in the hands of those in a few locations. Who talks to whom: Éliteness among the world s nations. The findings discussed in this concluding chapter were an outgrowth of the work on factors influencing international news flows, where éliteness of a nation was found to be the most important criterion for news selection in the Canadian press. Éliteness is fundamentally subjective, since it is based on individual perceptions. Since this variable was more important than any objective data in understanding news flows, it might also account for other interactions and communications among the worlds nations. We suggested that additional subjective variables may well shed more light not only on news flows, but also on other important topics, such as how the Global Village operates and how understanding and co-operation among countries can best be pursued and realized.

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Chapter One CIRCULATION OF NEWSPAPER NEWS WITHIN CANADA Tohn Locke, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, sagaciously j remarked that without a knowledge of geography gentlemen could not fully understand a newspaper (1702/1968). This astute observation is probably even more valid in our age of sophisticated technology, when news can be communicated from one location in the world to many other centres almost instantaneously, and newspapers can print news from a variety of world cities within a single issue. On a given day, however, no two newspapers publish exactly the same news from the same places. The pattern of news origin in the Vancouver Sun will be noticeably different from that in the Regina Leader-Post or Montreals La Presse. For instance, news of a trade agreement between New Zealand and Japan might be printed in the Sun, whereas the Leader-Post and La Presse might not mention the event. It is obvious that all newspapers have different spatial patterns in their news coverage. But how does one newspaper differ from another in the spatial origin of its news, and what are the factors that help to explain this geographical pattern? Basically, this work is an investigation into the geography of information and communication, using newspapers as an example. It relates to four major topics: information flows, diffusion theory, spatial interaction, and environmental perception. Both new developments and routine activities in business and industry depend upon information flows. Information is a valuable commodity, since it represents power and the ability to increase earnings. Persons in all occupational fields rely upon a constant flow of information to keep abreast of developments. Ideas in geography, for example, are derived from information This chapter originally published in The Canadian Geographer, Vol. 22, 1978, pp. 85-111.

26

Places in the News

transferred from group to group and from generation to generation. Information flows are also recognized as being important to regional development. As Hägerstrand so aptly stated, "all human action takes place in a cross-fire of information" (Hägerstrand & Kuklinski, 1971, p. v; see also Törnqvist, 1970; Glacken, 1973). Similarly, information flows are essential to the diffusion of innovations, for without information passing from person to person there can be no diffusion of ideas from one area to another (see Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1966; Gould & Törnqvist, 1971; Hägerstrand, 1966; Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971). In the study of spatial interaction among people and areas, newspaper items and telephone messages have been used as indicators of personal contacts that facilitate the flow of information (see Mackay, 1958; Nystuen & Dacey, 1961; Simons, 1970; Zipf, 1949). Such studies are based on the gravity model, which employs both distance and population variables to estimate or predict the degree of connection or interaction. Within the present context as well, both of these variables are thought to assist in determining the amount of news from different places that is found in a particular newspaper. The images and cognitive maps that people form of various places are based on information they have received about those places. In general, the more knowledge a person has of a place, the more accurate his perception of it will be, although it is admittedly possible to acquire a large amount of misinformation. Newspapers are one important source through which people learn about the world. Together with other news media, they expose readers to information about places they may have never visited. Thus the amount of information about other areas that reaches a reader will help to establish his perceptions, images, and cognitive maps of those places and areas (Goodey, 1974; Gould & White, 1974). The overall purpose here is to investigate the spatial origin of news published in major Canadian newspapers and the pattern of news flow within Canada.1 This study also deals with the process by which newspapers bring information to their readers. Since the flow of newspaper news is one constituent of the overall flow of information within the country, knowledge about it sheds light upon the information network in Canada. Some questions that might be asked and are investigated in this study are: What is the relative importance of the various urban centres and provinces as news sources? How

27 Figure 1. Selective news coverage. A: the hypothetical location of 41 possible news events B: those events reported on in a particular newspaper

Figure 2. News flow from observation to perception of reality.

28__

_ _ Placesjn_ the News

dominant are the larger cities? What is the effect of bilingualism on news flows? What is the relative importance of population and distance, as suggested by spatial interaction theory, upon news flows? What is the spatial pattern of news origin, and how does it differ from one newspaper to another and from one area to another? FILTERS THAT INFLUENCE NEWS-GATHERING AND PUBLICATION

Some understanding of the process by which events that happen around the world become published in daily newspapers is essential to interpretation of the data on news flows. On any given day, only a small fraction of all the happenings that occur in the world are published in any newspaper at all, and many of those published in one newspaper do not appear in others. The accompanying map (Figure 1) illustrates this phenomenon. The location of all news events that might have occurred in a hypothetical area is represented by A. Only a portion of these events appears in map B, which shows the location of the events reported in a particular newspaper. This reduction in numbers may be thought of as being the end result of passing the news through a series of filters: it is first collected from multifarious sources, then funnelled to newspapers, and finally disseminated to the public in printed form. At each step of the process filters act to eliminate some of the potential news items. Furthermore, the reader reads the newspaper selectively, which in turn affects his perception of the external world. A schematic representation of the total process shows where our study—which is concerned with the first half of the process, from news source to news dissemination—fits into the larger scheme (Figure 2). Source Filters The process of gathering, disseminating, and selecting news items involves a number of steps. 1. A person, usually a correspondent, has to be present at the source to report an event. An event not observed is like the sound of a tree falling in the forest when no one is present—as far as people are concerned, it may as well not have happened. Since it is not possible to have correspondents at all possible locations when news occurs, they are assigned where important events are likely to happen, such as in political centres, large cities, or where special events are scheduled. Thus smaller cities or towns, especially those that are not political centres, would be less likely to have events

Chapter One

29

Figure 3. The flow of news between news source and newspaper showing source and destination filters and indicating feedback.

reported even though they might be as newsworthy as those occurring in places where correspondents are stationed. In addition, reporters can be dispatched temporarily to other places where events have occurred or will likely occur. If a particular newspaper or group of newspapers determines that it would like more news coverage of some area of concern than that provided by the news agencies, it can hire or assign its own correspondents to supply deficiencies. For example, the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal jointly use the services of a correspondent based in Ottawa to cover federal news of special interest to Albertans. Likewise, a group of newspapers, such as those owned by the Southam Press, share correspondents, who supply all newspapers in the chain with news items from a particular area. Since the Canadian Press is a cooperative organization, member newspapers can also request from it special coverage of a distant news event that is of particular interest to their readers—for example, the visit of the local mayor to another city. These requests for specially placed correspondents and extra coverage act as feedback loops to the overall news selection process, enabling newspapers themselves to affect the spatial pattern of news origin (represented by the reverse arrow in Figure 3). From our observations, it appears that an area where a major news event has taken place tends for some time afterward to generate more news of all types, and consequently more datelines, than might be warranted by the original event. This echo effect results from a correspondents lingering on the assignment, waiting for news to develop

30

2.

3.

4.

5.

Places in the News further or for the situation to de-escalate. In order to justify his continuing presence, he may file stories not necessarily directly related to his original reason for going to the area. Another source of news is press releases by business firms, government agencies, and social groups. The writers of these dispatches are analogous to reporters or correspondents in the overall process. Even if a correspondent is present when an event occurs or is reported by the public to the press, he will not necessarily write a story for transmission to either his own newspaper or the wire service. Even if he decides it is worthy of publication in his own paper, he will not file it with the wire service unless he thinks it is interesting or important enough to be used in at least one newspaper besides his own. His judgment will be based on previous experience, tempered by his personal preferences and biases. At the office of the news agency, someone assesses each item and decides whether it should be transmitted regionally, nationally, or internationally, if at all. The Canadian Press has established several regional bureaus: Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Vancouver. Items stay within the city's region of origin unless they are designated by either the correspondent or the Toronto office as of national importance. The national office can also change a correspondents designation in either direction: from regional to national or from national to regional. The manner in which news agencies organize their territory for news transmission acts as a filter because it determines the area within which unrestricted news flows occur. For the Canadian Press, a filter exists for news crossing regional boundaries. If the regions were to be defined differently than they are at present, or if there were no regions, as is the case with the United Press, different patterns of dateline origin might be found. The language in which a news report is filed can also act as a source filter, because translation is time-consuming and costly. Francophone newspapers outside of Quebec receive items in French directly, just as anglophone newspapers within that province receive English items untranslated. Although the Canadian Press and some of the major Canadian newspapers have translators, an item is more likely to be printed if it can appear in the original language than if it must be translated.

Chapter One

31

Destination Filters At the final destination of the news items two factors act as filters: judgments made by the editorial staff, and the wealth and size of the newspaper. Although editorial decisions are possibly the more important of these two components of the destination filter, they are easier to identify than to evaluate. The editors are responsible for selecting news items to be published from among the many items competing for the available space. Their experience and background are often the only criteria for making the decisions under the pressure of deadlines and press schedules. Thus datelines in newspapers reflect the editorial staffs perception of their readers' interests and desires, as well as the type of news they believe the readers should obtain. This perception is based on the editors' own values, interests, experiences, and contacts. It is tempered by additional factors such as consideration of the image or personality the editorial staff or publisher wishes the newspaper to portray and possible pressures from local political or business interests. One editor might consistently slight particular types of news, such as conservation news, which he fears might offend or damage business interests. Such biases can greatly influence content of the editorial pages and decisions to hire or place correspondents. Distance can also influence editors' decisions. For example, an editor of a British Columbia newspaper might include a story from Alberta, whereas a newspaper editor in Newfoundland could reject the same item in favour of one from nearby Nova Scotia. The size and affluence of a newspaper, as determined by its circulation and the amount of advertising carried, also act as news filters, because they influence both the amount of news coming into the newsroom and the space available for printing news items. Interestingly, the amount of advertising varies throughout the week, which affects the space available for news items, although the number of items published remains relatively constant. The difference is compensated for by shortening items on days when news space is at a premium. Another factor is that more news comes into the editorial offices of large or affluent newspapers than of small or less wealthy ones, because the former can afford to subscribe to more news agencies and to purchase more news from them. The Canadian Press, for example, offers three different services, which vary in the amount of news transmitted. A small newspaper can choose to receive and pay for fewer items than a larger one. On the whole, fewer items tend to appear in the smaller newspapers, which have less news space.

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Places in the News

PROCEDURE _,__ _ _

In studying the flow of information to newspapers throughout Canada, datelines were used as indicators of the source of the news contained in the articles following them.2 Datelines of 19 selected Canadian newspapers (Table 3) from a sample of 31 dates over a one-year period were collected. These data were then analyzed in order to determine the relation of population and distance to news flows between those cities where the selected newspapers were published and from all provinces and territories to those cities. The selection of newspapers to be studied involved first a choice of major Canadian cities to be considered as destinations of news flows, and then the choice of a newspaper or, in two instances, newspapers within each city. Both political importance and population size were taken into account. Since political news constitutes a relatively high proportion of all news, the federal capital and all provincial capitals were chosen. In each city, the newspaper with the largest circulation was selected. In Ottawa and Montreal two newspapers were chosen, one French and one English. Further details about the sampling system appear in the introduction to the present study. Some areal aggregation was carried out in the process of data collection and tabulation, and more was done for certain of the analyses. The Table 3. NEWSPAPERS SAMPLED*

British Columbia Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Alberta Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Saskatchewan Regina Leader-Post Manitoba Winnipeg Free Press Ontario Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit

Quebec Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil New Brunswick Fredericton Gleaner Nova Scotia Halifax Chronicle-H eraid Prince Edward Island Charlottetown Guardian Newfoundland St. John's Evening Telegram

* The Toronto Globe and Mail and the Saint John Telegraph Journal-were added for the research reported in Chapters 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10.

Chapter One

33

major categories were: (1) city of publication, i.e., local items, which carry no datelines; (2) the 17 cities in the sample; (3) for each of the 17 cities, nearby cities that appeared frequently in the newspapers for that city—for example, Lethbridge for the Calgary Herald, (4) all Canadian provinces and territories, excluding the cities described above; and (5) all other countries, by country. Neither the local items nor those from outside Canada were used in the portion of the study reported here. DESCRIPTION OF NEWS FLOWS

Our observations on the news flows between Canadian places illustrate the first half of the news flow process discussed above and depicted in Figure 2. These flows also reflect the workings of the filters that lead to the diverse pattern of news origin among major newspapers published in Canada. The news flows that we examined can be considered on two areal levels: city-to-newspaper and province-to-newspaper. City-to-newspaper flows The city-to-newspaper matrix shows the proportion of Canadian datelines from 16 major Canadian centres appearing in each of the 19 newspapers under study (Table 4). The dominance of Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal datelines in each newspaper can be discerned readily. The federal capital alone accounts for an average of about 22% of all datelines and occupies first position in all but three: Quebecs Le Soleil,where nearby Montreal just edges out Ottawa, and the London Free Press and the Hamilton Spectator, both of which show the proximity and influence of Toronto by giving that centre the lead over Ottawa. Several examples illustrate the influence of bilingualism upon news flows. For the two Ottawa newspapers, in the French-language Le Droit Montreal ranks first, with 19.4% of the datelines, whereas in the Englishlanguage journal Toron to is first, with 24.2%. A similar pattern appears in the two Montreal newspapers. Although both give first position to Ottawa, the English-language Star places Toronto second and the city of Quebec third, whereas the French-language La Presse favours Quebec over Toronto. In Quebecs Le Soleil, also a French-language newspaper, Montreal has a higher percentage of datelines than either Ottawa or Toronto. After Ottawa, the two most populous centres, Toronto and Montreal, occur as datelines most often: each occupies second place in several newspapers.

Table 4. CITY-TO-NEWSPAPER FLOWS: THE NUMBER OF DATELINES FOR EACH CITY AS A PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL CANADIAN DATELINES IN EACH NEWSPAPER

City of origin

Newspaper of destination B.C.

Alta. Sask. Man. Ont.

P.O. N.B. N.S.

p.n.i. Nfld.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Regina Leader-Post Winnipeg Free Press Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil Fredericton Gleaner Halifax Chronicle-Herald Charlottetown Guardian St John's Evening Telegram

Total Canadian datelines 801 1496 1687 1562 1930 1162 1550 1957 1578 1175 1044 1456 680 899 1107 657 1918 940 1269

16.1 2.5 3.1 2.1 1.2 0.9 1.4 1.5 2 8 1.6 0.8 0.9 2.4 1.2 0.9 0.8 1.2 1.6

19.2 7.0 8.4 5.8 3.9 2.6 3.0 3.7 5.6 4.1 1.6 3.4 4.0 3.0 5.2 2.1 3.5 3.5

3.6 3.1 _ 9.1 3.5 3.6 1.7 1.4 1.1 2 1 1.9 0.5 1.9 3.2 1.6 1.8 0.7 0.7 1.3

4 1 3.9 13.0 5.4 3.7 1.6 2.4 2.5 3 2 2.2 0.5 1.8 3.9 1.3 3.2 1.0 2.1 3.2

1.2 0.1 2.2 2.6 1.9 0.6 0.8 0.8 1 4 0.9 0.3 0.6

Q'.S 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.6

1.9 2.5 3.6 4.0 6.1 .0 .9 .5 0 .8 .2 1.2 2.6 2.6 2.1 1.3 1.4 1.7

0.1 0.3 0.2 O.I 0.1 0 _ 1.2 0.9 1 4

o'.s

0.2 0.1 0.4 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.2

0.2 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.3 1.5 1.2 0.9 1.1 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.1 0.5 0.2 0.2 0.2

05

9.9

13.0 15.1 16.0 14.8 14.7 18.5 24.2 25.2 | 7 1.2 24.2

0.4 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.6

0.3 0.6 1.3 0.3 1.2 0.3 0.4 0.3

8.4 9.8

17.6 11.8 13.7 7.0

12.2 12.5

22.6 19.2 23.2 23.8 15.4 20.8 23.0 17.4 19.3 28.0 _

29.8 27.8 26.4 17.5 18.5 18.5 18.0

7.7 7.5 9.4 7.2 7.9 8.3 7.2 9.4 9.6

14 1 13.8 19.4 _

29.0 9.3 4.8 9.8 6.3

1.0 1.1 1.5 1.5 1.4 1.9 1.0 1.6 1.0 3.2 3.7 8.5

21.5 11.1 1.1 0.6 0 1.6

0 0.3 0.1 0.6 0.2 0.2 O.I 0.1 O.I

02

O.I 0.2 0.7 0.4 0.4 _

0.9 2.0 0.3

1.5 1.2 1.1 1.4 1.4 1.7 1.0 0.7

1 2

2.2 0.8 1.9 1.5 1.2 4.4 5.5 4.1

0 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.6 0.1 0 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.3 0 0.3 0.2 0.8 1.0 _ 1.0

Chapter One

35

It should be noted that Montreal is second only in the Toronto and Ottawa newspapers, where, of course, it can be second rather than third because there is no competition from Toronto datelines in Toronto newspapers or from Ottawa datelines in Ottawa. Here again, the influence of language appears: Toronto has more datelines in the English-speaking areas, and Montreals strength shows up in French-speaking Quebec. As might be expected, the influence of Toronto is greatest in the English-language newspapers of Ontario, except for the Windsor Star, where Ottawa has a slight edge. Although the percentage of news originating in Toronto is lower in both the western and the Atlantic provinces, it still retains at least second place in all other newspapers except for the two in British Columbia and all the French-language newspapers, where it is in third position. Third place typically is occupied by Montreal in all provinces except those in the Far West, where British Columbia and Alberta newspapers give greater prominence to nearby major centres. Provincial and territorial flows to newspapers When the dateline data are aggregated by province and territory, several patterns of news flow within Canada are apparent (Table 5). First, for most of the newspapers the province of Ontario is the major source of the news, providing nearly 50% of the total Canadian datelines. Four newspapers, however, relegate Ontario to second position: the Victoria Colonist, in which British Columbia news barely edges out Ontario; Ottawas Le Droit, which has over 70% of its news originating in the province of Quebec; Quebec s Le Soleil, which slightly favours news from Quebec; and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, which draws 50% of its news from within Nova Scotia. In the Vancouver Sun, Montreals La Presse, and some of the Maritime newspapers, Ontario is in first position by only a slight margin. Second, news from the province of Quebec generally occupies second position. This tendency holds true except in British Columbia and the Prairie and Atlantic provinces, where Quebec news is shifted to third position and second position is occupied by news from the home province. Overall, news from British Columbia occupies third position. Third, the news flow from the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory typically accounts for less than 1% of the total Canadian flow. Western newspapers contain the largest number of territorial datelines.

Table 5. PROVINCE-AND TERRITORY-TO-NEWSPAPER

FLOWS: THE NUMBER OF DATELINES FOR EACH CITY AS A PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL CANADIAN DATELINES IN EACH NEWSPAPER

Newspaper of destination B.C.

Alta. Sask. Man. Ont.

P.Q.

N.B. N.S.

P.E.I.

Nfld.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Regina Leader-Post Winnipeg Free Press Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil Fredericton Gleaner Halifax Chronicle-Herald Charlottetown Guardian St. John's Evening Telegram

Total Canadian datelines

Province or territory of origin B.C.

Alta.

Sask.

Man.

Ont.

P.Q.

N.B.

N.S.

801 1496 1687 1562 J930 1162 1550 1957 1578 1175 1044 1456 680 899 1107 657 1918 940 1269

37.1 36.4 12.0 14.3 9.8 7.1 4.4 5.4 6.0 9.8 7.7 2.7 4.8 7.7 4.7 7.0 3.6 5.8 6.8

8.5 8.6 18.7 15.5 10.3 9.1 3.9 4.4 4.5 6.6 5.5 1.2 4.4 7.8 3.5 5.8 2.1 3.9 4.9

2.6 1.6 4.1 4.6 22.3 4.1 0.8 1.4 1.4 2.6 2.2 0.3 1.2 2.4 1.2 1.5 0.8 1.7 1.7

2.6 3.1 4.0 4.3 7.0 17.4 1.3 2.1 1.8 2.6 2.3 1.4 1.2 2.9 2.9 2.3 J.4 1.5 1.9

36.2 37.1 44.0 44.3 35.1 45.7 76.0 71.1 69.3 52.7 56.5 17.6 45.1 54.8 41.4 40.2 28.3 34.2 35.5

9.2 9.5 Í2.3 9.9 10.5 11.4 10.1 12.1 12.7 20.2 20.3 74.5 38.1 17.8 42.7 12.3 6.3 11.6 9.4

0.2 0.7 0.6 0.8 0.9 0.5 0.4 1.0 1.1 1.5 0.7 0.8 1.6 1.9 1.7 19.6 3.6 5.8 1.8

1.5 1.3 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.1 2.0 1.3 1.4 2.0 2.9 1.1 2.6 2.6 1.3 7.6 50.6 9.2 5.8

P.E.I. 0.2 0.3 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.8 0.8 0.3 0.6 0.6 0.3 1.5 1.8 23.6 1.7

Nfld.

Y.T.

N.W.T.

0.4 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.1 0.1 0.7 0.3 1.5 1.2 1.8 29.8

0.2 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.2 0.7 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0 0 0.3 0 0.5 0 0.1 0.2

1.1 0.5 0.8 2.8 0.8 0.8 0.4 0.2 0.6 0.5 0.6 0 0.1 0.6 0 0.2 0 0.5 0.5

Figure 4. City news flows.

Figure 5. Provincial news flows.

39

Chapter One

Table 6. DATELINE RANKINGS FOR ALL NEWSPAPERS BY CITY

Datelines City Victoria Vancouver Calgary Edmonton Regina Winnipeg Windsor London Hamilton Toronto Ottawa Montreal Quebec Fredericton Halifax Charlottetown St John's

Total

609

1096

562 800 239 564 89 107 141

3621 4718 2382

673 85 388 77 91

Per 100,000 population

311 101 139 161 170 104

34 37 28 138 782 87 140 354 174 405 69

Ranking Total 7 4 9 5 11 8 15 13 12 2 1 3 6 16 10 17 14

Per capita

4 12 9 7 6 11 16 15 17 10 1 13 8 3 5 2 14

Change

4-3 -8 0 -2 +5

-3 +1

-2 -5 -8 0 -10 -2

+ 13 -1-5 + 15

0

The Edmonton Journal is in the lead, as might be expected, since Edmonton considers itself and functions as the gateway to the north (see Spears, 1970, p. 206). In some newspapers, in contrast, especially those in Eastern Canada, news from the territories is completely absent. Finally, when each of the 19 newspapers is compared with others located in cities nearby or within the same province or region, some striking patterns can be seen (Figures 4 and 5). Each of the two British Columbia newspapers nearly mirrors the others pattern: both have about the same in-province as Ontario news, and the amount of news from neighbouring Alberta is as great as that from Quebec. Likewise, the four newspapers in the Prairie provinces follow one pattern: news from Ontario predominates, with in-province news next in importance; in addition, other western provinces are well-represented, with Alberta the slight favourite. A quite different pattern is exhibited by the three newspapers in the smaller Ontario cities: the Windsor Star, the London Free Press, and the Hamilton Spectator. All have a strong Ontario news coverage, which represents over 70% of their total Canadian datelines. The French-language Ottawa Le Droit is similar to these three Ontario newspapers, except that, as would be expected, Quebec is favoured over Ontario, with more than 70% of the news.

40

Places in the News

Table 7. DATELINE RANKINGS FOR ALL NEWSPAPERS BY PROVINCE OR TERRITORY

Datelines Province or territory British Columbia Alberta Saskatchewan Manitoba Ontario Quebec New Brunswick Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island Newfoundland Yukon Territory Northwest Territories

Total*

1610 1189

463 648

6325 3468

336 571 156 143 57 151

Ppr OH ftfift i CI 1lUVjVAA/

Ranking

population

Total

Per capita

Change

74 73 50 66 82 58 53 72 141 26 317 434

3 4 7 5 1 2 8 6 9 11 12 10

5 6 11 8 4 9 10 7 3 12 2 1

-2 -2 -4

3

-3 -7 -2 -1 +6

-1

+ 10 +9

"Total datelines in out-of-province newspapers only.

The Toronto Daily Star and the English-language newspaper in Ottawa and Montreal again resemble one another, in that roughly onehalf of their news originates in Ontario. These newspapers in the large centres of Canada show far less parochialism than those in the surrounding smaller centres. Le Soleil and La Presse, the two French-language newspapers in Quebec, fall into still another pattern. Both draw about 40% of their news from Quebec and an equal amount from Ontario, with the remaining 20% shared over the rest of Canada. Thus the contrast between the two language areas of Canada is evident in the provincial news flow pattern: in both Ottawa and Montreal the French-language newspapers follow the Quebec example whereas the English-language newspapers mirror the Ontario pattern. The four newspapers in the Atlantic provinces also share a common pattern: each favours news from Ontario, with the home province a close second and the other Atlantic provinces well-represented. Combined news flows In the preceding section only news flows to individual newspapers were examined. These flows can also be combined so that we can consider total

TabUS. CITY-TO-NEWSPAPER FLOWS PER 100,000 POPULATION*

City of origin

Newspaper of destination B.C.

Alta. Sask. Man.

P.Q.

N.B. N.S. P.E.I.

Nfld.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Regina Leader-Post Winnipeg Free Press Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil Fredericton Cleaner Halifax Chronicle-Herald Charlottetown Guardian St. John's Evening Telegram

14.2 7.2 6.7 7.1 2.8 123.1 11.6 11.7 7.1 7.0 _ 22.0 11.0 44.4 26.3 U . I _ 24.5 12.1 35.2 28.4 11.5 20.9 10.3 16.9 21.2 21.8 _ 7.1 4.2 10.4 8.7 15.6 7.1 3.8 6.7 5.0 7.1 2.8 14.3 5.4 6.9 9.5 11.4 6.8 11.7 5.4 4.5 7.9 9.2 4.4 16.8 6.1 6.2 7.7 11.4 4.4 8.7 4.0 5.0 4.6 6.4 3.5 6.1 2.1 1.7 1.4 2.8 3.3 3.1 2.1 3.2 2.4 2.8 1.5 11.2 3.3 7.2 7.1 7.1 4.3 6.6 3.0 4.5 2.8 6.4 5.4 3.1 3.1 3.0 4.2 2.8 2.6 8.2 3.8 3.2 3.8 6.4 4.6 5.6 3.0 1.7 4.0 5.7 2.4 10.7 4.2 4.2 8.3 5.7 4.1

0.4 1.5 1.2 0.4 1.2 0 8.9 5.8 6.2 1.9 1.2 0.4 1.5 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8

The number of datelines per 100,000 population for each city of origin, by newspaper.

0.7 2.1 1.4 0.3 1.0 1.0 8.4 _ 6.6 3.8 4.2 1.4 0.7 1.4 0.3 1.0 1.0 0.7 1.0

0.8 3.0 1.2 7.4 1.4 9.7 1.6 9.5 1.8 10.8 1.2 6.5 2.2 10.9 2.4 18.0 15.1 4.0 2.6 9.6 1.0 4.6 0.8 2.5 2.4 6.0 0.6 5.0 1.6 3.4 1.0 5.1 0.8 4.4 0.8 6.0

30.0 47.6 64.9 61.7 49.5 40.2 59.1 56.4 50.6 54.6 _

2.3 1.7 4.1 3.5 5.8 5.4 4.1 4.8 5.6 5.8 3.5 4.6 4.0 3.3 6.7 6.4 5.5 3.3 6.0 7.9 5.2 8.1 10.3 25.8 33.7 30.4 - 20.8 41.5 48.5 11.7 19.1 2.2 1.5 58.7 3.3 2.5 3.3 0 28.9 38.0 2.9 4.2

0 16.5 8.2 33.0 16.5 8.2 4.1 4.1 8.2 8.2 4.1 12.4 20.6 16.5 20.6 74.2 78.3 16.5

5.4 8.1 8.5 7.6 12.1 7.2 12.1 8.5 4.9 6.3 !0.3 5.4 5.8 6.3 5.8 13.0 23.4 23.4

0 0.8 10.4 3.0 10.4 4.5 5.2 3.8 41.8 3.0 1.5 36.6 10.4 3.0 0 10.6 5.3 10.4 2.3 20.9 15.7 3.0 20.9 0 0 0.8 15.7 3.8 1.5 10.4 26.1 6.1 99.3 9.1 6.8 67.9 -

Table 9. PROVINCE- AND TERRITORY-TO-NEWSPAPER FLOWS PER 100,000 POPULATION*

Province or territory of origin

B.C.

Alta. Sask. Man. Ont.

P.O. N.M. N.S. P.E.I.

Nfld.

Newspaper of destination

B.C.

Alta.

Sask.

Man.

Ont.

P.O.

N.B.

N.S.

P.E.I.

Nfld.

Y.T.

N.W.T.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Regina Leader-Post Winnipeg Free Press Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil Fredericton Gleaner Halifax Chronicle-Herald Cha riot te t own Guardian St. John 's Evening Telegram

13.6 24.9 9.2 10.2 8.6 3.8 3.1 4.8 4.3 5.3 3.7 1.8 1.5 3.1 2.4 2.1 3.2 2.5 3.9

4.2 7.9 19.4 14.9 12.2 6.5 3.7 5.3 4.4 4.8 3.5 1.0 1.8 4.3 2.4 2.3 2.5 2.3 3.8

2.3 2.6 7.5 7.8 46.5 5.2 1.4 2.9 2.4 3.3 2.5 0.5 0.9 2.4 1.4 1.1 1.7 1.7 2.4

2.1 4.6 6.8 6.9 13.7 20.4 2.1 4.1 2.8 3.1 2.4 2.0 0.8 2.6 3.2 1.5 2.7 1.4 2.4

3.8 7.2 9.6 9.0 8.8 6.9 15.3 18.0 14.2 8.0 7.6 3.3 4.0 6.4 5.9 3.4 7.0 4.2 5.8

1.2 2.3 3.4 2.6 3.3 2.2 2.6 3.9 3.3 3.9 3.5 18.0 4.3 2.6 7.8 1.3 2.0 1.8 2.0

0.3 1.7 1.7 1.9 2.7

1.5 2.5 3.7 3.8 5.2 3.0 3.9 3.3 2.8 2.9 3.8 2.0 2.3 2.9 1.9 6.3 122.9 11.0 9.4

1.8 4.5 7.2 8.1 9.8 7.2 2.7 3.6 5.4 8.1 7.2 4.5 3.6 4.5 2.7 8.9 30.4 198.8 19.7

0.5 l.t 1.6 1.1 1.6 0.9 0.9 2.7 2.0 1.3 0.9 0.2 0.2 1.1 0.5 1.8 4.3 3.1 68.5

10.9 38.1 59.8 43.5 21.7 43.5 5.4 5.4 16.3 5.4 10.9 0 0 16.3 0 16.3 0 5.4 10.9

25.8 23.0 40.2 126.4 43.1 25.8 17.2 11.5 25.8 17.2 17.2 0 2.9 14.4 0 2.9 8.6 14.4 17.2

0.9 U 3.1 2.8 2.8 1.1 1.9 1.7 2.7 3.0 20.3 11.0 8.7 3.6

"The number of datelines per 100,000 population for each province and territory of origin, by newspaper.

Chapter One

43

external flows from each city or province, that is, flows to all newspapers except those in the city or province of news origin. When we look at these totals by cities, the preponderance of news from Ottawa is striking (Table 6). Toronto has more than 1,000 fewer datelines than Ottawa, and Montreal over 1,000 fewer than Toronto. There is another big drop to Vancouver, and then the curve begins to level off, five cities having between 500 and 1,000 datelines and the remaining eight fewer than 500. The total news flows from the provinces and territories, not surprisingly, follow a similar pattern (Table 7). Ontario, which contains both Ottawa and Toronto as well as many other large population centres, is in overwhelming first place, with over 6,000 datelines. Second-place Quebec has slightly more than one-half this number. British Columbia and Alberta both have over 1,000, and the curve then levels off, with almost no representation from the two territories and the provinces of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. Combined news flows per capita In view of the fact that nearly all news stories are about people—what they do or say and what happens to them—it is not surprising to find that cities with large populations generate the greatest amounts of news. Although the data on total news flows emphasize the significance of large urban places such as Toronto and Montreal in generating news, they tend to underplay the role of small ones. By calculating news flows on a per capita basis, it becomes easier to visualize the relative importance of population size in different areas (Tables 8 and 9). There is less variability in per capita than in total news flows. Whereas the highest total city-newspaper flow, that for Ottawa, is over 61 times as great as that for the lowest, Charlottetown, the highest per capita flow, again for Ottawa, is only 28 times that of the lowest, Hamilton (Table 6). For city flows, Ottawa remains in first place on a per capita basis, emphasizing its primacy as a news source. As compared with total news flows, Toronto drops from second to tenth place, Montreal from third to thirteenth, and Vancouver from fourth to twelfth. Charlottetown and Fredericton, the two smallest cities, change from seventeenth and sixteenth places to second and third respectively. For most of the rest, the difference in ranks is relatively small. In summary, the largest and the smallest cities exhibit the greatest change in rankings. For the provincial flows, the two largest provinces rank lower on a per

44

Places in the News

Table 10. COEFFICIENTS OF CORRELATION AND OBSERVATIONS WITH LARGE RESIDUAL VALUES FOR THE RELATION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF ITEMS IN A NEWSPAPER FROM A CITY AND THE POPULATION SIZE OF THAT CITY, Pj

Newspaper

Coefficient of correlation*

Observations with large residual valuesf Positive

Negative Hamilton Windsor London Hamilton Windsor London London Windsor Hamilton Windsor London Hamilton London Windsor Hamilton Windsor London Hamilton Hamilton Hamilton

Victoria Colonist

0.754

Ottawa Vancouver

Vancouver Sun

0.691

Victoria Ottawa

Edmonton Journal

0.671

Ottawa Calgary

Calgary Herald

0.764

Ottawa Edmonton

Regina Leader- Pos t

0.716

Ottawa

Winnipeg Free Press

0.693

Ottawa Charlottetown

Windsor Star London Free Press

0.862 0.890

Hamilton Spectator

0.903

Toronto Daily Star Ottawa Journal

0.832 0.918

Ottawa Le Droit

0.702

Montreal La Presse

0.558

Montreal Star

0.728

Ottawa Ottawa Toronto Ottawa Toronto Ottawa Charlottetown Toronto Halifax Quebec Montreal Ottawa Quebec Ottawa Quebec

Quebec Le Soleil

0.716

Ottawa Montreal

Fredericton Gleaner

0.682

Charlottetown Guardian

0.441

Ottawa Halifax Charlottetown Ottawa Fredericton Halifax

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

0.462

Ottawa

Quebec St John's Windsor Hamilton St John's Charlottetown Hamilton London Windsor Hamilton Hamilton London Windsor Windsor London Quebec London Hamilton Windsor Windsor London Hamilton

45

Chapter One

Table 10 (continued). Newspaper St. John's Evening Telegram

Coefficient of correlation* 0.594

Positive

Negative

Ottawa Halifax Charlottetown

Hamilton Windsor London

*A11 coefficients of correlation except the ones for the Charlottetown Guardian and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald are statistically significant at a = 0.05. •{•Observations (cities) for which the value of the residual is greater than one standard error of estimate from the regression equation. They are listed in order of magnitude separately for positive and negative values. Positive residual values represent underpredicted observations and negative ones represent overpredicted observations.

capita basis than for total datelines (Table 7). Ontario decreases in rank from first to fourth, and Quebec falls from second to ninth. The two territories and Prince Edward Island, which have the smallest populations, exhibit the greatest gains. What these per capita figures suggest is that although smaller places generate less total news, there is some news flow just because they exist. Conversely, the very large places tend to generate less news per capita. This is a familiar phenomenon. As anyone acquainted with small-town newspapers knows, news of events such as a child's tonsillectomy or birthday party is often printed; in a metropolitan area only celebrities would qualify for similar attention. The smaller the community, the less important an item must be for it to be considered as news. STATISTICAL ANALYSES

In order to determine the relative importance of population size and distance in explaining the number of times that certain cities appear as datelines in newspapers, the city-newspaper flows were analyzed statistically. The frequency with which a given city, ;, was the source of news items in a newspaper, j, was considered in four ways: population size and distance were considered independently; population size and distance were used at the same time so as to determine their combined effect; and population and distance were used jointly, as in the spatial interaction modelé The distance used was the great circle distance between the cities of origin and destination. Relations to population size All but two of the coefficients of correlation between the number of times a city occurs as a dateline and the population size of that city are statistically significant, ranging between 0.441 and 0.918 for the 19 newspapers

46

Places in the News

studied (Table 10). Thus, on the whole, population size is important in determining how many times a given city appears as a dateline in newspapers in other cities. Deviations from this pattern are cities under- or over-predicted, the study of which may suggest additional factors important in explaining the frequency with which cities occur as datelines. Ottawa is underpredicted for all newspapers except the Ottawa ones, which, of course, exclude Ottawa in the analyses. Because it is the federal capital, it generates political and government news, which results in more total news than other cities of comparable population size. This news is important for the country as a whole. Nearby centres, centres within the same province, and provincial capitals are also underpredicted for other newspapers within the same province. Since these three categories are not mutually exclusive, there may also be an additive effect for some. Vancouver is underpredicted for Victoria, Victoria for Vancouver, Calgary for Edmonton, Edmonton for Calgary, and, within the Atlantic Region, Charlottetown for Fredericton, Fredericton for Charlottetown, etc. Here we can see that news tends to move more freely within provinces, trade areas, and regions than between them, indicating that political, commercial, and perhaps psychological boundaries serve as barriers to news flow. Quebec is underpredicted for two French-language newspapers, Le Droit and La Presse, and for the Montreal Star. Montreal is underpreTable 11. COEFFICIENTS OF CORRELATION FOR THE RELATION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF ITEMS IN A NEWSPAPER FROM A CITY AND THE DISTANCE TO THAT CITY, DtJ

Newspaper

Coefficient of correlation*

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Edmonton Journal Calgary Herald Regina Leader-Post Winnipeg Free Press Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star

-0.515 -0.480 -0.468 -0.474 -0.468 -0.235 -0.3J9 -0.251 -0.431 -0.107

Newspaper Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil Fredericton Gleaner Charlottetown Guardian Halifax Chronicle-Herald St. John's Evening Telegram

Coefficient of correlation -0.268 -0.576 -0.561 -0.300 -0.283 -0.146 -0.211 -0.104 -0.006

*Only the coefficients of correlation equal to or greater than 0.468 are statistically significant at a = 0.05.

47

Chapter One

dieted for the two French-language newspapers not in Montreal, Le Droit and Le Soleil. Some underpredictions, such as that of Charlottetown for the Winnipeg Free Press and both Charlottetown and Halifax for the Ottawa Journal, do not fit any of the above patterns. Overpredicted observations also occur. The three cities that were consistently overpredicted are in southern Ontario: Windsor, London, and Hamilton. St Johns, Charlottetown, and the predominantly francophone city of Quebec also appear. The first three cities are important within the local region, but insignificant at the national level. Charlottetown is the smallest in population size of all cities included in the analysis, and, since it is at times over- and at times under-predicted, it may be that small differences in the frequencies of datelines for a small place can make a large difference in the amount of deviation. For the francophone city of Quebec, we again find the influence of language noted above, this time acting as a barrier to transmission of news to anglophone cities. Relations to distance As would be expected with a distance decay function, all coefficients of correlation between the number of items in a newspaper from a city and the distance to that city are negative. They are, however, much smaller than those for population size. Only 7 of the 19 are statistically significant: those for the Victoria Colonist, Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Regina Leader-Post, Ottawas Le Droit, and Montreal s La Presse (Table 11). Table 12. COEFFICIENTS OF CORRELATION AND OBSERVATIONS WITH LARGE RESIDUAL VALUES FOR THF. RELATION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF ITEMS IN A NEWSPAPER FROM A CITY AND THE POPULATION SIZfc OF THAT CITY, Pj, AND THE DISTANCE TO THAT CITY, DtJ

Observations with large residual valuesf

Coefficient of correlation*

Positive

Negative

Victoria Colonist

0.807

Ottawa

Vancouver Sun

0.836

Ottawa

Edmonton Journal

0.755

Oltawa

Windsor Hamilton London Hamilton Windsor London London Windsor Hamilton

Newspaper

48

Places in the News

Table 12 (continued).

Observations with large residual valuesf

Coefficient of correlation*

Positive

Negative

Calgary Herald

0.838

Ottawa

Windsor Hamilton London

Regina Leader- Po sí

0.764

Ottawa

London Windsor Hamilton

Winnipeg Free Press

0.701

Ottawa Charlottetown

Windsor London Hamilton

Newspaper

Windsor Star

0.864

Ottawa

Hamilton

London Free Press

0.895

Ottawa Toronto

Hamilton

Hamilton Spectator

0.915

Ottawa

Quebec

Toronto Daily Star

0.839

Ottawa

St John's

Ottawa Journal

0.919

Charlottetown Toronto Halifax

Windsor Hamilton

Ottawa Le Droit

0.854

Quebec

Hamilton London Windsor

Montreal La Presse

0.904

Quebec

Montreal Star

0.864

Victoria

Hamilton London Windsor London Windsor Hamilton

Quebec Le Soleil

0.828

Ottawa

Hamilton Windsor London

Fredericton Gleaner

0.757

Ottawa

Quebec Windsor London

Cliarlottetown Guardian

0.628

Ottawa

Quebec Hamilton

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

0.665

Ottawa

Hamilton Windsor London Quebec

St. John's Evening Telegram

0.695

Ottawa

Hamilton Windsor London

*AII coefficients of correlation are statistically significant at a = 0.05. tObservations (cities) for which the value of the residual is greater than one standard error of estimate from the regression equation. They are listed in order of magnitude separately for positive and negative values. Positive residual values represent underpredicted observations and negative ones represent overpredicted observations.

49 Table 13. COEFFICIENTS OF CORRELATION AND OBSERVATIONS WITH LARGE RESIDUAL VALUES FOR THE RELATION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF ITEMS IN A NEWSPAPER FROM A CITY AND POPULATION OF THAT CITY DIVIDED BY THE DISTANCE TO THAT CITY, PjfDu

Observations with large residual valuesf rVtaARs-iar.* ~f

Newspaper

correlation*

Positive

Negative

Victoria Colonist

0.803

Ottawa

Vancouver Sun

0.826

Ottawa

Edmonton Journal

0.764

Ottawa Fredericton

Calgary Herald

0.834

Ottawa

Regina Leader-Post

0.758

Ottawa Charlottetown

Winnipeg Free Press

0.691

Ottawa Charlottetown

Windsor Star

0.796

Ottawa

London Free Press

0.754

Ottawa

Hamilton Spectator

0.835

Toronto Daily Star

0.609

Ottawa Journal

0.811

Ottawa Vancouver Victoria Ottawa Vancouver Victoria Victoria Vancouver

Windsor Hamilton London Hamilton Windsor London Windsor Hamilton Windsor London Hamilton Hamilton Windsor London Windsor London Hamilton Hamilton London Fredericton Hamilton Windsor London Windsor

Ottawa Le Droit

0.810

Quebec Montreal

Montreal La Presse

0.780

Ottawa Quebec

Montreal Star

0.754

Ottawa

Quebec Le Soleil

0.768

Ottawa

Fredericton Gleaner

0.691

Ottawa Vancouver

Hamilton London St John's Fredericton Windsor Hamilton Hamilton London Windsor Hamilton London Windsor London Windsor Hamilton Hamilton London Windsor Quebec Windsor London

50

Places in the News

Table 13 (continued). Observations with large residual valuesf

Coefficient of correlation*

Positive

Negative

Charlottetown Guardian

0.561

Ottawa

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

0.590

Ottawa

S t. John's Evening Telegram

0 . 65 1

Ottawa

Quebec Hamilton London Windsor Hamilton Windsor London Quebec Hamilton Windsor London

Newspaper

*A11 coefficients of correlation are statistically significant at a = 0.05. fObservations (cities) for which the value of the residual is greater than one standard error of estimate from the regression equation. They are listed in order of magnitude separately for positive and negative values. Positive residual values represent underpredicted observations and negative ones represent overpredicted observations.

For the newspapers studied, distance as measured here is therefore not an appreciable factor in the amount of news transmitted between cities, in that even the closest relationship accounts for only about 33% of the variance. It is possible that an analysis of within-province news or use of a different measure of distance might show distance to be of greater importance. Relation to population and distance considered together As might have been expected, when population and distance were considered at the same time the relation was closer than when either variable was considered alone (cf. Tables 12 and 13). This analysis corroborates the importance of the population component and the relative insignificance of the distance factor. Ottawa is most frequently underpredicted. Quebec is underpredicted for the French-language newspapers in Ottawa and Montreal and overpredicted for three of the Maritime newspapers, possibly indicating the effect of a linguistic barrier. Windsor, London, and Hamilton, which have relatively large population sizes for the country as a whole but are small in relation to Toronto, are consistently overpredicted, indicating that it takes more than a large population to be newsworthy. Relations to population and distance used jointly Positive relations were found between the number of times a city occurs as a dateline and the population of a city divided by the distance between that city and the one in which the newspaper is published, as would be

Chapter C)ne

51

expected from previous studies of spatial interaction (Table 13). The observations that are over- and under-predicted resemble most closely those from the analysis using both population and distance, with two major exceptions: Vancouver and Victoria are frequently underpredicted, reflecting perhaps the actual or perceived importance of including news of the West Coast; and Fredericton, one of the two smallest cities in the study, fluctuates between being under- and overpredicted. DISCUSSION

The results of the statistical analyses confirm the impression that population size is the most important variable in explaining the movement of news between cities. For the 19 newspapers studied, it accounts for from 19 to 84% of the variation. Physical distance for these centres and at this scale is not an important variable. The greatest variation is accounted for when population and distance are considered simultaneously in a multiple correlation analysis, and the population-distance ratio is not as closely related as population alone. Study of the observations with large residual values suggests additional factors that might help to account for the variation in the number of items that appear in newspapers from various places. Some of these factors are related to characteristics of the city or origin of news: its socio-economic characteristics or its functional importance as a provincial capital or trade centre. The most striking city was Ottawa, which because of its political importance generated an amount of news disproportionate to its population size. The other factor was language, relatively more news moving between cities where the same language is spoken than between French- and English-speaking ones. These characteristics are not mutually exclusive. The two largest cities, Montreal and Toronto, are the capitals of the two most populous provinces as well as financial centres. In addition, centres within the same sphere of influence—trading, political, or social— are underpredicted for other newspapers within the same sphere of influence. Underpredicted cities appear to be those that, although important locally, or larger than others in the region, are not part of the national, political, or financial scene. Small centres are at times under- and at others over-predicted. St. Johns is overpredicted for one newspaper, the Ottawa Journal. This variation could relate to fluctuations in the number of news items coming from small places: because they are small, there is no steady stream of news

52

Places in the News

items from them. There may also be a threshold effect, in that a city must reach a certain degree of national importance before much news originating there is consistently found in outside newspapers. At the other end of the scale, cities tend to be overrepresented once they reach a certain level of national eminence. It is also possible that separate relationships exist for different classes of cities. Other factors that might help to account for more of the variance than is explained in the present analysis could involve characteristics of the newspapers themselves. Ownership, circulation, size of staff, and advertisement income all might influence editorial policy and the selection of news items for publication from among those available on any given day. Interviews with editors of individual newspapers and impressions gained from reading journal articles suggest that this topic is a very difficult one to reach conclusions about when one is dealing with a number of newspapers. CONCLUSIONS

This study of the frequency with which datelines appeared in a sample of newspapers in major cities across Canada relates conceptually to four major areas of interest: information flows, diffusion theory, spatial interaction, and environmental perception. It is interpreted within the context of the process by which news is collected from multifarious sources, funnelled to newspapers, and disseminated to the public in printed form. Some of the factors that influence the decision as to what news is actually published are also taken into account. A close relation was found between the frequency with which a given dateline appeared in a newspaper of another city and the population size of the city of news origin. Spatial patterns of news origin were evident: these differed both by sections of the country and according to whether the newspaper was printed in English or French. In the statistical analyses of the relation of dateline frequency to population size and distance from the city of news origin, we found that although population was a significant factor, distance in most instances was not. It is understandable that population size would be important, since on the whole it is people who make the news and newspapers are very human enterprises dealing with human experiences. Since this study focuses only on the flow of news to major newspapers within a single country, it should be thought of as part of an attempt to

Chapter One

53

comprehend a complex process. We hope that further investigation will lead toward better understanding of the way humans acquire geographical information and form mental images of the spatial structure of their world. NOTES 1.

2.

A number of studies have been done by geographers and others on the origin and dissemination of news. For example, the number of places mentioned in BBC radio broadcasts is presented in cartograms in Cole & Whysall (1968); and likewise for the front pages of Pravda and a regional British newspaper in Cole (1969). Using a similar technique an issue of Time and four issues of Rolling Stone, a popular music magazine, are analyzed in Goodey (1969). Newspapers from the past have also been investigated. Merritts studies of American colonial newspapers during the period 173575 (1963, 1964) show how the impact of the American Revolution was reflected in the declining number of mentions of British place names and the offsetting increase in news flow among the colonies. Pred (197la, 1971b, 1973) describes and analyzes information flows in the United States prior to the invention of the telegraph in 1844. The relation between distance and news interest and the effect of the mass media have also been studied (Maclean & Pinna, 1958). In order to discover social-geographic structure and the existence of regionalism, newspapers published in the Rhein-Main district of Germany were analyzed (Hartke, 1952). Newspapers have also been used to study the spatial diffusion of important news events. See, for example, O'Keefe (1969); Sheatsley & Feldman (1964); Allen & Colfax (1968). In addition, content analysis of newspapers has been used by some investigators to help determine the nature of certain social phenomena. See, for example, Hayward & Osborne (1973); Hills (1972). In addition to datelines, the places named within news articles have been used by researchers as the sources of the news. Such studies include Cole (1969); Cole & Whysall (1968); Goodey (1969); Merritt (1963). This approach does not, however, appear to be necessary, since we found that most items originated at or very close to the places named in the datelines. Also, our data were often aggregated for analytical purposes, so that any locational specificity gained might have been lost in any case. The number of column inches in different articles has also been used in some studies. See, for example, Budd (1964); Hart (1965); Zipf (1946); references to these measures in Holsti (1969); a number of studies cited in Kingsbury et al. (1937). But the findings in Smith (1914, pp. 205ff.), as cited in Kingsbury, et al., p. 207, show a reasonably close relation between the frequency of appearance of places in datelines and the lengths of the articles associated with them. An items placement within the newspaper or the size of its headline could be taken as indicators of that items importance, but since they are not related to the origin and destination of news they were not used here. For an

3.

4.

interesting discussion of bias in relation to these items, see Kingsbury, et al., pp. 40-80; for weighting them differentially, see Holsti, p. 122. An overview of the use of this model and a review of distance as a variable in human interaction as well as the ways geographers have treated these matters can be found in Olsson (1965). These items and additional more recent developments are insightfully discussed by Claeson (1968). For a discussion of psychological, time, social, and cost or economic distance as alternatives to such physical distance measures as straight-line or travel, see Watson (1955). See also the discussions by Isard & Reiner (1966); Olsson (1965, pp. 57-63); Brown (1968); Sack (1973).

Chapter Two A NODAL STRUCTURE FOR A SET OF CANADIAN CITIES USING GRAPH THEORY AND NEWSPAPER DATELINES /

T~'the relative importance and the spheres of influence of the urban cenJL tres within some specified region, such as a country, are intriguing topics of investigation. Webber (1964) indicated that the ordering of centres within a country is not possible, since "the spatial extent of each [urban] realm is ambiguous, shifting instantaneously as participants in the realm's many interest-communities make new contacts, trade with different friends, or read different publications" (pp. 116-117). We suspect, however, that there is considerable order in the communication links among the larger centres within a country. For example, Canadas leaders in business, governments, and the arts tend to move through a hierarchy of centres to end up in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, or some other large city, depending upon the particular field in which they work. All urban centres are linked to Ottawa, which is at the apex of political power, and to large urban centres, such as Toronto and Montreal, which predominate in the economic realm. The major purpose of this paper is to derive a nodal structure for seventeen major Canadian cities, based on newspaper datelines. By utilizing these particular information flows, the analyses also shed light on possible differences between the anglophone and francophone communications networks. A basic assumption made in this study is that spatial information flows can be used to derive a structure of a system of urban centres. Support for this assertion is based on the work of Meier (1962), who argued that urbanization can be considered as a communication process, This chapter was co-authored by Steven Welling. Originally published in The Canadian Geographen Vol. 21, 1977, pp. 148-163.

56

Places in the News

in that an increasing proportion of the population not only lives in large urban centres, but also has greater contact with other urban areas. Additional foundation rests on the research of Pred (1971a, 1971b, 1973a, 1973b), who has demonstrated the importance of the circulation of information for urban growth and the interdependence of cities. Furthermore, empirical work discussed by Soja (1968) shows that these kinds of flows have regular patterns, reveal interconnections among centres, and help to integrate a territory. DATA SET

The information flow data used in this study consist of datelines of news items that were gathered from the same 19 newspapers in 17 Canadian cities as were used in the research reported in Chapter One (Table 3). Further details concerning the sampling process appear in the introduction to this study. METHODOLOGY _____

These data were analyzed by means of graph theory in order to determine the flows of information between cities. According to Busacker and Saaty (1965), this is "one of the simplest, most elegant subjects of modern mathematics which possesses a wide variety of applications. Based on the simple idea of points interconnected by lines, graph theory combines these basic ingredients into a rich assortment of forms and endows these forms with flexible properties, thus making the subject a useful tool for studying many kinds of systems" (pp. vi-vii). Although this approach has been used extensively in the analysis of river and transportation networks (Chorley & Haggett, 1969), it has received limited attention in dealing with interurban flow patterns. The initial attempt to derive a nodal structure utilizing a graph theoretic approach was carried out by Nystuen and Dacey (1961) for a set of urban places within the state of Washington. The same technique was applied by Davies and Lewis (1970) to produce a hierarchical ordering of Welsh telephone charging areas, and Clayton (1974) analyzed interaction patterns in New England using three separate techniques, including graph theory. The measure of connectivity in each of these studies was the number of telephone calls between pairs of cities. Finally, Holmes (1974) presented a critical review of graph theory and associated methods used in analyzing flow matrices, and has applied many of the same procedures in studying the Australian urban system.

Chapter Two

57

The pioneering work of Nystuen and Dacey forms the basis of the technique applied in the present study. Although an explanation of the method is given in the original study, it seems useful to consider briefly the procedures followed, so as to point out modifications that have been introduced and to indicate the simplicity of the procedure. The concepts utilized in this methodology are only part of the domain of graph theory and relate to a specific class of graphs known as digraphs. In this approach, each city is represented by a point or node; a line connecting any pair of nodes represents a flow between them. In the present study it is necessary to rank the centres (nodes) according to some measure of importance; in this case, the total number of datelines from each centre found in the newspapers of the other centres was used. The approach is also restricted in the sense that flows can occur only from higher-ranking centres to lower-ranking ones. Also, within the realm of this approach, the transitivity property is assumed with respect to centres and their flows. That is, if city A is of a lower order than city B, and is therefore subordinate to it, and if B in turn is subordinate to C, then A is also assumed to be subordinate to C. Initially, all nodes are considered to be first-order places, but as soon as a node receives a flow from another first-order node, it becomes a second-order node. Similarly, the recipient of a flow from a second-order node becomes a third-order node, and so on. A final aspect of the technique that should be discussed is that indirect as well as direct flows are considered, since analysis of the raw data matrix would provide information only on direct connections between nodes. It seems important to include also associations between urban places that are related to the "trickling down" concept through an urban hierarchy, according to which information and innovations move from higher-order through intermediate to lower-order centres (Hägerstrand, 1966). In attempting to incorporate these indirect flows, the original matrix is manipulated by the technique described by Nystuen and Dacey. The technique incorporates the power expansion of the matrix of positive decimal loadings derived from the direct flow matrix by dividing each cell of the matrix by the maximum column total. The resultant matrix gives one form of the attenuation of flows as connections become more indirect. Although this procedure has been criticized by Stephenson (1974), we believe it is worth while to use it, because indirect flows are important despite their ambiguous nature. Like Stephenson, we provide no solution

Table 14.

MATRIX OF DATELINE FLOWS

City from City to 1. Victoria 2. Vancouver 3. Calgary 4. Edmonton 5. Regina 6. Winnipeg 7. Windsor 8. London 9. Hamilton 10. Toronto 11. Ottawa 12. Montreal 13. Quebec 14. Fredericton 15. Halifax 16. Charlottetown 17. St. John's TOTAL

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

0

241 43 48 41 14 14 28 23 33 17 6 13 6 16 11 21

154 0 119 131 112 45 41 58 59 66 43 23 33 34 41 33 45

29 47 0 142 68 42 27 28 18 25 20 13 18 12 13 7 17

33 58 220 0 105 43 25 47 39 38 23 12 14 21 19 20 41

10 10 37 40 0 22 10 16 13 16 9 4 9 4 9 8 8

15 38 60 62 118 0 15 37 24 24 19 8 29 14 25 13 22

1 4 3 1 3 0 0 23 15 16 5 1 2 2 2 2 2

2 6 4 1 3 3 24 0 19 11 12 2 1 3 3 2 3

4 6 7 8 9 6 11 12 0 20 13 4 3 8 5 4 4

79 195 254 250 285 171 287 473 397 0 253 67 131 90 135 115 159

181 287 391 372 298 242 356 340 305 329 0 203 292 115 354 174 229

62 113 159 113 153 97 111 184 151 166 144 0 321 61 92 92 80

8 17 26 23 28 22 16 31 16 38 39 146 0 7 12 0 20

0 4 2 8 4 2 1 1 2 2 1 5 5 0 18 19 4

12 18 19 17 27 16 27 19 11 14 23 13 13 29 0 52 52

0 2 2 1 8 7 2 0 2 4 3 0 2 5 19 0 13

1 4 6 5 4 2 4 14 7 3 4 1 2 8 12 9 0

575

1,037

526

758

225

523

82

99

124

3,341

4,468

2,099

449

78

362

70

86

Chapter Two _

59

to the problems he raises, although we recognize that one is needed. Three differences between the present data set and its conceptualization and manipulation and those of previous studies should be made clear. First, the flow matrix is transposed, placing cities of origin across the columns and cities of destination down rows (Table 14). This change came about as a result of using datelines, which are origins of flows, instead of telephone calls, which are destinations. Importance is therefore expressed in terms of influence rather than attraction. The second change concerns the presentation of the linkage diagrams aspatially instead of spatially. This modification is based on the statement of Nystuen (1963) that "we may remove measures of distance and direction from a geographical study and speak of connection only.... This is best thought of as a topological property of space" (p. 39). By removing the spatial relation between nodes and constructing aspatial tree-linkage flow diagrams, not only can a hierarchical structure readily be distinguished, but the direction of flows through the hierarchy can also be easily observed. A simple example using ten nodes is presented below, where the spatial relationship is maintained in A of Figure 6 and B is the same flow diagram in simple topological terms. The final difference is that both the dominant or largest flows and some of the less dominant ones are used in the analyses. This procedure is followed in order to examine the data set more completely. This raises two problems: one concerns relating these flows of different orders of dominance to each other, and the other deals with deciding on the extent to which these flows should be considered. Since only a single order of dominance can be examined at any one time, it is difficult to relate these orders to each other. Some impression of the relations can, nevertheless, be obtained, because certain centres are highlighted or isolated in each analysis. The following procedure for determining how many flows to examine, although perhaps crude, seemed practical. For each city, i.e., newspaper, and for each set of flows, the size of the flow was plotted against its rank. Break or inflection points can be determined from these diagrams and the more dominant flows distinguished from the more common ones. In each case a break point can be found readily. Figure 7 exemplifies the common pattern for a break after the fourth flow. ANALYSES

Three separate analyses were carried out and their results compared. The first utilized the newspaper with the largest circulation in each of the

60

Places in the News

seventeen cities considered in the study, the second considered the English-language newspapers of Ottawa and Montreal, and the third used the two French-language newspapers of these cities. Canada is a bilingual country, and although most cities are either predominantly anglophone or francophone, some have significant numbers in each group. Any changes in the nodal structure resulting from the different selection of newspapers would affect not only Ottawa and Montreal, but the entire set of centres, because each change alters an entire row of the original flow matrix. It seems reasonable, therefore, to expect changes in the nodal structure of the entire system. The ranking of cities according to the total number of datelines appearing in all other centres, presented in Table 15, forms the first step in determining the linkages between pairs of nodes and specifies the manner in which cities may be connected, since centres cannot have flows from lesser-ranking ones. As pointed out above, a decision needs to be reached concerning the extent to which the less dominant (that is the second, third, fourth, etc.) Figure 6. Flow diagram: A, spatial relationship maintained; B, aspatial topological representation.

Figure 7. Example of break in order of flows.

Chapter Two

61

flows are significant and should be considered. By utilizing the break in rank-size procedure discussed above, a distinct number of flows was readily determined for each of the cities in each of the three analyses (Table 16). It can be noted that there is a range of values from two through five, the average being 3.2 flows. Although this procedure is simplistic, it does indicate that the three most dominant flows are quite distinct and stable, whereas the fourth- and fifth-dominant flows are distinct only for some centres. Because they fluctuate more, they should perhaps be considered as less significant, but still of interest. Since there is a levelling off in the rank-size relation beyond the fifth-dominant flow for all centres, only the five most dominant flows to each city are considered in all analyses. FINDINGS

The results of the first analysis, which was based on the data for the newspaper with the largest circulation for each centre, are discussed in detail, with each of the five nodal structures being discussed individually. The results of the two subsequent analyses, in which the two different languages are considered, are then compared with the results of the first analysis and with each other. For the first analysis, the plot of first-dominant flows, i. e., those indicating the strongest associations among the seventeen centres and producing the most stable and general nodal structure, has a three-level hierarchy, Table 15. RANK OF CITIES BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF DATELINES APPEARING IN ALL NEWSPAPERS

Rank

City

Number of datelines

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Ottawa Toronto Montreal Vancouver Edmonton Victoria Calgary Winnipeg Quebec Halifax Regina Hamilton London StJohn's Windsor Fredericton Charlottetown

4,468 3,341 2,099 1,037 758 575 526 523 449 362 225 124 99 86 82 78 70

62 Table 16.

Places in the News

NUMBER OF DISTINCT FLOWS FOR EACH CITY FOR ALL ANALYSES

Analysis City

1

2

3

Victoria Vancouver Calgary Edmonton Regina Winnipeg Windsor London Hamilton Toronto Ottawa Montreal Quebec Fredericton Charlottetown Halifax St. John's

4 4 4 2 3 3 4 3 3 3 2 3 3 4 5 3 3

4 4 5 2 3 3 4 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 5 2 3 3 4 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 4 3 3

with Ottawa at the apex (Figure 8). All but three nodes have a direct connection with Ottawa, which emphasizes the importance of the federal capital regarding news flows. Hamilton and London both receive their dominant flow from Toronto, and Quebec receives its from Montreal. This series of flows produces two second-order nodes, Toronto and Montreal, which, because of the connections with Ottawa, make that city a third-order node. This finding suggests the importance of proximity at a local scale. In the nodal structure developed by the second-dominant flows (Figure 9), only two levels of a hierarchy are found. They show the importance of Toronto and Ottawa as well as the connection between Vancouver and Victoria on the west coast. Interestingly, the three centres that received their first-dominant flows from nodes other than Ottawa are now linked with the federal capital. Because the second-dominant flows between Vancouver and Victoria are reciprocal, this link is isolated. The remaining centres form a major group of nine first-order nodes that receive their second-dominant flows from Toronto. The second-dominant flows partition the system into four parts, three of which are each dominated by a second-order node, while the fourth indicates the independence of Montreal.

Chapter Two

63

Figure 8. First-dominant flows.

Figure 9. Second-dominant flows.

The third-dominant flows produce a linkage diagram (Figure 10) with four orders of nodes. Toronto is at the top by virtue of its connection with Montreal, and Ottawa has been isolated. Victoria, Vancouver, Quebec, and Montreal receive third-order flows from Toronto. Montreal in turn connects directly with ten other cities, including Edmonton.

64

Places in the News

Edmonton is linked to Calgary, which receives its third-dominant flow from Edmonton. Ottawa is isolated because it is the highest-ranking city; since it has made its connections with all other centres in either the firstor second-dominant flows, it will remain independent of the rest of the system in all subsequent levels of flows. The fourth-dominant flows present a structure (Figure 11) with four orders of nodes, dominated by Montreal. These flows indicate the importance of Vancouver and show a Maritime connection between Halifax and Charlottetown. Toronto and Ottawa are now isolated from the other centres, since all possible connections have been made, and Edmonton is independent because its fourth-order flow is from a lower-ranking node, Calgary. Montreal is at the top of the hierarchy because of the patterns of flows from Montreal to Vancouver to Halifax and finally to Charlottetown. In addition, Montreal has direct flows to Victoria and Calgary. The plot of the fifth- and last-dominant flows considered in this analysis reveals a more complex pattern than previous structures, with five levels of nodes (Figure 12). Vancouver holds the highest position in the Figure 10. Third-dominant flows.

65 Figure 11. Fourth-dominant flows.

Figure 12. Fifth-dominant flows.

66

Places in the News

structure, with flows to Edmonton, Calgary, and Charlottetown. Edmonton, in turn, has flows to five cities, including Winnipeg, which itself has fifth-dominant connections with Regina, Quebec, and Halifax. The lowest level of connection between Halifax and St. John's as well as Fredericton is the final link in this five-level nodal structure and shows the Maritime interconnections. By definition, Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal are isolated, since all three have made all possible flows to lesser centres. DISCUSSION

The nodal structures resulting from the five dominant flows of newspaper datelines can be summarized by examining the cities at the various levels of the hierarchy by orders and by the ranking according to the number of links (Tables 17 and 18). The first place of Ottawa is undisputed and the ranking of centres thereafter is roughly in the following sequence: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Halifax, with all other centres as equals at the next level. Where subgroups exist, they are at low orders, such as between Victoria and Vancouver or Calgary and Edmonton. The ranking of the cities is not too surprising except for the dominance of Ottawa and the switch between Edmonton and Winnipeg. The former indicates the strong influence of the federal capital, especially regarding political news for the entire country. The latter is likely the result of the cities and data selected, since two cities are included from Alberta whereas only one is included from Manitoba. These explanations underscore the fact that any nodal structure developed depends upon the particular set of nodes selected and the data used. FURTHER RESULTS

The second and third analyses focus on anglophone-francophone differences. In the dateline ranking, although no changes occur for the focus on the anglophone newspapers, the only change that takes place for the francophone newspapers is the interchange between Calgary and Quebec (Table 19). Considering the total flow matrix, the changes are slight, since only one city is involved in each change. These changes nevertheless affect the flows throughout the entire system. By looking at the differences that result from using English-language newspapers we can observe that changes from the initial analysis appear only for the second- and third-dominant flows (Figure 13). In the second-

Chapter Two

67

Table 17. HIERARCHY OF CENTRES BY ORDERS AND DOMINANCE OF FLOW FOR THE ANALYSIS USING THE NEWSPAPER WITH THE LARGEST CIRCULATION

Centres by orders 5 4 3 2 1

Dominance of flow 1 _ Ottawa Toronto Montreal Ail other centres

2 Toronto Ottawa All other centres

3 _

4 _

5

Toronto Montreal Edmonton

Montreal Vancouver Halifax

Vancouver Edmonton Winnipeg Halifax

All other centres

All other centres

All other centres

Table 18. HIERARCHY OF CENTRES RANKED BY NUMBER OF LINKS AND DOMINANCE OF FLOW USING THE NEWSPAPERS WITH THE LARGEST CIRCULATION

Centres by number of links 1 2 3 4 5

Dominance of flow 1 Ottawa Toronto Montreal All other centres

2

3

4

5

Toronto Ottawa Vancouver All other centres

Montreal Toronto Edmonton All other centres

Vancouver Montreal Halifax All other centres

Edmonton Vancouver Winnipeg Halifax All other centres

dominant flows Montreal connects with Toronto instead of being independent, and it remains separated from Toronto in the third-dominant flows. As a result, Montreal becomes a higher-order centre than Toronto. Turning to the changes that come about as a result of using the French language newspapers, we note that they occur only in the fourth- and fifth-dominant flows (Figure 14). In the fourth-dominant flows St. Johns comes under the influence of Halifax instead of tying in directly with Vancouver. In the fifth-dominant flows Windsor receives its flows from Quebec instead of Edmonton, and since Quebec receives its fifth-dominant flow from Winnipeg, a lesser-ranking centre than Quebec, the Quebec-Windsor subsystem is separated. In addition, St. Johns is now connected with Vancouver rather than with Halifax.

68 Figure 13. Changes created by using English-language newspapers.

Figure 14. Changes created by using French-language newspapers.

Chapter Two

69

Table 19. RANK OF CITIES BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF DATELINES APPEARING IN ALL NEWSPAPERS, USING THE FRANCOPHONE NEWSPAPERS

Rank

City

Number of datelines

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Ottawa Toronto Montreal Vancouver Edmonton Victoria QuebecWinnipeg Calgary Halifax Regina Hamilton London St. John's Windsor Fredericton Charlottetown

4,468 3,210 2,238 1,017 742 570 534 522 513 351 220 116 91 82 80 80 71

DISCUSSION OF ANGLOPHONE-FRANCOPHONE DIFFERENCES

Contrary to what was anticipated, the gross change in the nodal structure resulting from considering linguistic differences is very slight, and the dominant position of Ottawa is reaffirmed. The ranking sequence of centres obtained in the initial analysis also remains the same. Only Quebec is added to the list of centres identified as important in the nodal system of Canadian centres (Tables 20 and 21). Differences are more noticeable on detailed inspection: from the anglophone viewpoint, Montreal connects with Toronto and is part of the system of the country's cities instead of being isolated. The affinity among French-speaking areas shows up in that Montreal is considered more important; there is a connection between Quebec and Windsor, which has a sizable francophone population; and the link to St. Johns is Halifax rather than Vancouver, because Nova Scotia has French settlements along the coast of Cape Breton Island. CONCLUSIONS

Use of this technique reveals some interesting points regarding flows of information between Canadian cities. At the same time, it leads one to speculate about what further analysis might reveal. A major conclusion is that the results of the three analyses could easily be combined into a sin-

70

Places in the News

Table 20. HIERARCHY OF CENTRES BY ORDERS AND DOMINANCE OF FLOWS FOR THE ANALYSES FOCUSING ON ANGLOPHONE AND FRANCOPHONE DIFFERENCES

Centres bv order

Dominance of flows 1

5 4 3 2

!

Ottawa Toronto Montreal All other centres

2 Toronto Ottawa All other centres

3 _

4

5

-

-

Montreal Vancouver Halifax

Vancouver Edmonton Winnipeg Quebec Halifax All other centres

Montreal Toronto Edmonton All other centres

All other centres

Table 21.

HIERARCHY OF CENTRES RANKED BY NUMBER OF LINKS AND DOMINANCE OF FLOW FOR THE ANALYSES FOCUSING ON ANGLOPHONE AND FRANCOPHONE DIFFERENCES

Dominance of flow

Centres by

NUMBER OF links

1

2

3

4

5 Edmonton Vancouver Winnipeg Quebec Halifax All other centres

1

Ottawa

Toronto

Montreal

Vancouver

2 3

Toronto Montreal

Ottawa Vancouver

Toronto Edmonton

Montreal Halifax

4

All other centres

All other centres

AH other centres

All other centres

gle national hierarchy of centres, as was discussed above. The significant variations from this hierarchy result from the subtle differences related to flows within the anglophone and francophone networks. It seems reasonable to believe that these first few orders of dominance, in this case five, would be based on similarities among these flows or some common underlying structures. They would therefore be useful primarily for deriving overall patterns, but would not reveal uniquenesses. One would expect that continuing the analysis would have the result of moving from a macro- to a micro-analysis, and from generality to uniqueness. One of these areas of uniqueness that might possibly be revealed if the analysis were to be continued into lower orders of dominance would be the preferences and idiosyncrasies of individual editors. Although certain

Chapter Two

71

news items appear in almost every newspaper, others are included or omitted at the editors discretion; choices among these less-important items are often based both on what he believes his readers should read and on his perception of what they consider to be newsworthy. Besides continuing the analyses at lower orders of dominance, but using the same data base, it would also be possible to select additional newspapers. In order to investigate contrasts between the francophone and anglophone networks more intensively, more francophone newspapers should be added. Similarly, if newspapers in additional cities at lower levels in the central place hierarchy were to be added to the data base, flows within areas would likely be discovered. In addition, other communication media, such as television and radio news, or magazines, could be used to study this topic in greater depth. The technique identifies networks of connections among centres: however, those flows that exist once a city has been connected to all others are not shown, because of the transitivity rule. It would be interesting to determine the groupings of centres that would be obtained if the analysis were started with a higher-order flow, say the fifth or sixth. By continuing this process of starting with a sequence of higher-order flows or by considering more orders, insights into special qualities of cities and their newspapers, including perhaps the mental maps of editorial staff, may be revealed. This study also helps to emphasize that the nodal structure and the urban hierarchy derived from it mirror the type of flow on which the analysis is based. Newspaper datelines indicate the source of the news and reflect the type of news, such as political, economic, business, sport, or scientific, that is most prevalent. Political and economic news constitutes 43% of the total number of datelines. It follows, therefore, that Ottawa, which clearly generates a large number of national political and national economic news items, is the most important centre. Had we used only entertainment, ecological, or consumer affairs news categories, for example, different structures might have been obtained. These results present an interesting addition to previous findings on the dominance of major metropolitan centres in Canada. Kerr (1968) stressed the financial influence of Toronto and Montreal, and to a lesser extent of Vancouver and Calgary. The present study points out the extremely dominant political influence of Ottawa, and to a decreasing extent the influence of the other centres identified in the hierarchy.

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Chapter Three PAROCHIALISM AMONG CANADIAN CITIES

S

ome of the data collected for a study of news flows among a number of major Canadian cities were used to investigate the topic of parochialism as it relates to each of these cities. "Parochial" is defined in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as "confined or restricted, as if within the borders of a parish." The synonym "provincial" is defined as "confined to a province or region." Although parochialism is synonymous with provincialism, in Canada the use of the former term minimizes the possibility of confusion arising from associating provincialism with provinces as such. As has often been shown, individuals tend to think of their own area of residence as being of primary importance. We have all seen maps of New Yorkers' or Bostonians' concept of the United States: their own city dominates the picture, with the immediately surrounding area next in size, and the rest of the country all squeezed together. This same concept is found in newspapers, where local news predominates, followed by state or provincial news, with news from other states, provinces, and countries least important (see Cole, 1969; Cole & Whysall, 1968; Goodey, 1969; Hartke, 1952; MacLean & Pinna, 1958; Zipf, 1949). Parochialism is complementary: that is, it rests not only on how people in an area view their world, but also on how others view them. Both of these aspects are illustrated in daily newspapers, and study of them therefore relates to the more general study of the spread of information, the diffusion of ideas over space, and especially to mental maps. The original analysis focused on the amount of news that travels from one city to another, and the linkages among cities (Kariel & Rosenvall,

This chapter was originally published in The Professional Geographer, Vol. 30, 1978, pp. 37-41.

74

Places in the News

1976). In contrast, the present discussion looks at how much of the news generated in a given city does not flow out of that city, but is of purely local interest. Possible explanations for the variations from city to city are then considered. For the original study, a sample of 19 newspapers from 17 centres was selected. All the provincial capitals and larger population centres were represented. A random sample of thirty publishing days was then drawn, and the datelines of all news items for these dates were recorded. Local items, which carry no dateline, were also tabulated. At first it seemed reasonable to surmise that either the amount or the percentage of local items in each newspaper could serve as an indicator of the amount or degree of parochialism of the city in which it was published, since it would indicate the inward-looking nature of the community. A community more concerned with news about its own doings would be less concerned about news of the outside world. Expressing this concept more precisely, the percentage of local news and the percentage of news originating outside an area are obviously complementary—that is, local news plus nonlocal news equals total news. Therefore, using the perTabU22. NEWS ITEMS CONTAINED IN NEWSPAPERS Local News

Purely Local Interest"

Amount

Percentage

External Datelines8

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun

1306 2162

40.6 37.2

1096

81.6 92.9

Alta.

Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal

1374 1576

28.1 15.9

562 800

89.7 86.0

Sask.

Regina Leader-Post

1609

32.3

239

97.5

Man.

Winnipeg Free Press

1878

37.9

564

93.7

Ont.

Windsor Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star Ottawa fournal Ottawa Le Droit

1271 1184 1629 2261 1955 903

33.2 26.0 35.3 45.7 47.3 27.5

89 107 141 3621 4718 4718

98.2 98.0 98.8 79.1 80.0 56.7

P.Q.

Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil

2050 1725 1789

55.2 42.5 42.5

2382 2382 673

84.3 81.3 91.8

N.B.

Fredericton Cleaner

1259

46.0

85

98.5

N.S.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

990

26.3

388

94.8

P.E.I.

Charlottetown Guardian

1137

42.4

77

98.3

Nfld.

St. John's Evening Telegram

1711

40.6

91

99.2

Newspaper

B.C.

609

• Total number of datelines from a given city appearing in newspapers in all other cities in the sample. "The largest number of news items from a city subtracted from the number of local news items expressed as a percentage of the number of local news items.

Chapter Three

75

centage of either local or nonlocal news items would yield the same results in an analysis. By referring to column one of Table 22 it can be seen that the use of local news items as an indicator conflicts sharply with intuitive ideas about the amount of parochialism in various cities. With regard to the amount of local news, the Toronto Daily Star ranked first, the Vancouver Sun second, Montreal s La Presse third, and the Ottawa Journal fourth. When local news was considered as a percentage of the total, the results were similar: the Ottawa Journal carried the second-highest percentage of local news, while the Toronto Daily Star ranked fourth, and in Montreal La Presse ranked first. Consequently, we recognized that a different indicator of parochialism was needed. Obviously, in the larger centres and the federal capital, large amounts of news are generated. Some of these items are of interest beyond the centre of origin whereas others are of only local concern. Presumably in less parochial centres more of the items originating in a given city would travel beyond the city of origin, whereas in more parochial centres less news would travel outside the area. In order to isolate from the total number of items originating in a city those that were of purely local interest, the following approach was taken: For each city in the sample, the total number of local news items was first noted (Table 22, column 1). Then the data matrix of news flows from Table 23. LARGEST NUMBER OF NEWS ITEMS FROM A CITY Items from City City

Victoria Vancouver Calgary Edmonton Regina Winnipeg Windsor London Hamilton Toronto Ottawa Montreal Quebec Fredericton Halifax Charlottetown St. John's

Largest Number

241 154 142 220 40 118 23 24 20 473 391 321 146 19 52 19 14

Newspaper

Vancouver Sun Victoria Colonist Edmonton Journal Calgary Herald Edmonton journal Regina Leader-Post London Free Press Windsor Star Toronto Da//y Star London Free Press Calgary Herald Quebec Le Soleil Montreal La Presse Charlottetown Guardian St. John's Evening Telegram Halifax Chronicle-Herald London free Press

76

Places in the News

cities to newspapers was examined to determine which newspaper outside that city printed the most items from the city. The greatest number of items in each newspaper from another city, and the name of that city, are given in Table 23. It was assumed that this number represented news items that had travelled to at least one other city. Subtracting this from the total number of local items gave the number of items that presumably did not travel outside the city of origin. This amount was then expressed as a percentage of the total number of local items. Using Vancouver as an illustration, 2162 local items appeared in the Sun on the thirty days of the sample. Outside that city, the largest number of Vancouver datelines, 154, appeared in the Victoria Colonist. Thus 2162-154 = 2008 local items originating in Vancouver presumably did not appear in any other newspaper. Hence, 92.9% of the total local items in the Vancouver Sun presumably did not travel outside that city, and could be considered to be of purely local interest. Obviously this does not refer to specific news items, since an item passed up by one paper might appear in others, but rather to the total number of items. Although admittedly a rough indicator, it appears to have empirical support. Turning now to column four of Table 22, we can see that the percentage of purely local interest items ranged from 56.7% for Ottawas Le Droit to 99.2% for the St. Johns Evening Telegram. The low percentage for the Ottawa newspaper is not surprising, since many of the items originating there concern national politics and are therefore almost automatically of more than purely local interest. These items are, of course, printed in the Ottawa papers along with those of only local interest, such as local politics and general news of the city. Thus we find that, using this indicator, for the Ottawa/0#r/W80.0% of the items originating in Ottawa are of purely local interest. It should be pointed out that this numerical value has no particular significance. It is simply a useful indicator that provides a basis for comparing the relative proportions of news of purely local interest from city to city. It would be necessary to take a different approach, using content analysis, to determine exactly which items originating in Ottawa on a particular day and printed in the local newspapers were not printed in any other newspaper. The Toronto Daily Star included a relatively small proportion of purely local interest items: 79.1%. The situation is similar for Montreal, where the Star carried 81.3% of such items and the French-language La Presse 84.3%.

Chapter Three

77

At the other end of the scale, 99.2% of the local items in the St. Johns Evening Telegram were of purely local interest, which suggests that this city is very isolated from the rest of Canada and therefore more parochial. Other cities high in parochialism, in descending order, are: Hamilton (98.8%), Fredericton (98.5%), Charlottetown (98.3%), Windsor (98.2%), London (98.0%), and Regina (97.5%). This measure of news of purely local interest involves those items that do not travel outside the city of origin. A different measure of parochialism that might be used would be the number of news items from a city that is printed in other newspapers—that is, the amount of news that travels outside the city of origin. For simplicity, we shall refer to this as "total external datelines," since it is composed of the total number of datelines from a given city appearing in newspapers in all other cities in the sample. Ottawa, as the nations capital, produced the largest number of external datelines; Toronto was second, Montreal third, and Vancouver fourth. Thus, except for Ottawa, the rank was the same as that of population size. Charlottetown generated the fewest external datelines, followed by Fredericton, Windsor, St. Johns and London. ANALYSIS

There is a high negative correlation between total external datelines and the percentage of purely local news items (r=-0.86). This suggests complementarity: that is, those cities that generate many datelines in other newspapers also publish a smaller proportion of purely local items in their own newspapers. One might ask whether the number of external datelines is not primarily a function of the number or percentage of local news: that is, the more news that is generated in a city, the more ofthat news is printed elsewhere. This idea is invalid, however, as can be seen from the fact that the correlation between number of local news items and percentage of purely local items is virtually zero (r= 0.003). Nor is the correlation between the percentage of local items and the percentage of purely local items appreciably higher (r=-0.016). INTERPRETA.TION

The most obvious explanation would seem to be that parochialism is inversely related to population size. According to the index developed in this paper, however, this explanation is only partially valid. The largest

78

Places in the News

cities, Toronto and Montreal, are generally thought of as the least parochial: they rank second and third from the bottom, respectively. Ottawa, which ranks in size with cities such as Calgary and Edmonton, is the least parochial. Vancouver, the third largest city, ranks in parochialism well ahead of Calgary, Edmonton, and even Victoria, which is much smaller but is the provincial capital. It appears that the importance of a city as a political, financial, commercial, or industrial centre must therefore also be taken into account, but given the nature of the sample, which was based on both a city's size and its importance as a political centre, it would be difficult to draw definite conclusions. A larger sample, including many smaller centres and more centres in each province, would help to clarify the matter. Some bias may have been introduced into the index by the choice of cities. Where there is more than one city in a province in the sample, some other city within the same province is usually the one with the greatest number of datelines from that city. Consequently, it is possible that if at least two cities in each province had been in the sample, the ranking would have been different. On the other hand, Hamilton, Windsor, and London all rank very high in parochialism: second, fifth, and sixth, respectively, out of nineteen. They are all located relatively close to each other and in the province with the largest number of cities in the sample. The population of each metropolitan area is over 200,000, but events in these cities appear to be of little interest in other cities. London and Windsor reciprocate in that each has the highest number of datelines in the other citys newspaper. The greatest number of datelines from Hamilton, however, appears in the Toronto Daily Star. It is a common observation that when population centres are clustered, relative population size may be more significant than absolute population size. This may well be the reason for these three cities' relatively high parochialism. In this sample only two cities permit comparisons of French and English newspapers: Montreal and Ottawa. The greatest number of datelines of each city in any other newspaper will obviously be the same for both newspapers in the city, but the parochialism index will differ according to the number of local news items in each newspaper. This index is almost the same in the two Montreal newspapers: 84.3 in La Presse and 81.3 in the Star. For Ottawa, however, the situation is quite different: the index is 56.7 for Le Droites opposed to 80.0 for the Journal. When it is

Chapter Three

79

recalled that Le Droit serves the francophone population of the OttawaHull area, the picture could be quite different. Any items from Hull appearing in the Ottawa newspaper would carry a Hull dateline, even though they originated within the metropolitan area. It is probable, therefore, that the index for Le Droit is low as the result of an artifact, and that if news from Hull were considered as local news it would be higher and come closer to that of the Journal. It might also be supposed that newspapers that circulated throughout a relatively large area would be less parochial than those that were restricted to the city of publication and its immediate vicinity. Newspapers in this sample tend to circulate throughout a region extending well beyond the city of publication. The main exceptions to this are the London, Hamilton, and Windsor newspapers, all of which cities show up in this index as being high in parochialism. Again, a larger sample would be needed to test this notion. SUMMARY

The index of parochialism suggested here seems to be reasonably valid for this sample of Canadian cities and newspapers. Neither the amount nor the percentage of local news published in a newspaper is particularly helpful as an indicator of parochialism. If the index turns out to be more generally valid, it should prove useful in the construction of mental maps showing how a given city is viewed by the rest of Canada. St. Johns, for example, is almost outside the awareness of Canadians living in other areas, whereas Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal loom large in their consciousness.

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Chapter Four ANALYZING NEWS ORIGIN PROFILES OF CANADIAN DAILY NEWSPAPERS

R

ecent arrivals to a community often state that the local newspaper compares unfavourably with the one published in their former home town. They believe that the coverage is too parochial and does not reflect adequately the world s events, that it places a disproportionate emphasis on local news while displaying a corresponding lack of interest in news about the international (substitute national, regional, or state/provincial) scene. Although these types of value statements can be argued at length without reaching any definite conclusions, it is possible to determine accurately the relative emphasis on local, regional, provincial, national, and international news in newspapers, as well as to compare the mix of news origins among newspapers. Newspapers displaying similar mixes may be identified and explanations for similarities and differences sought. Do similarities exist within groups because the newspapers are located in nearby cities, political centres, or regions? What circumstances determine whether news in a particular newspaper is primarily of local, state/provincial, national, or international origin? In this study, we propose explanations for the different news origin profiles and discuss the appropriateness of evaluating newspapers on the basis of news origin. METHODOLOGY

For this research project, a sample of 21 daily newspapers from 18 centres was selected. The federal capital, all provincial capitals and population centres over 100,000 persons were represented.1 In each city, the newspaper with the largest circulation was chosen. To provide better coverage of This chapter was originally published m Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 58, 1981, pp. 254-259.

82

Places in the News

Canadas two official languages, two additional newspapers were chosen: a French one in Ottawa and an English one in Montreal. The Saint John Telegraph Journal vt%s added in order to have an additional province with more than one city represented. The Toronto Globe and Mail, with a circulation almost as great as the Daily Star's, was included both because of its national stature and to have two newspapers of similar importance published in the same language in the same city. A random sample of 31 publishing days, representing 10% of all days on which Canadian newspapers publish, was then drawn, and the datelines of all news items for these dates were recorded. These datelines were used as indicators of the place of origin of the news items. Local items, which carry no datelines, were also tabulated. Photograph captions were considered to be news items, and since they carry no datelines they were assumed to originate at the place identified in the caption.2 RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION _ _ _

Overall pattern of news origin. The percentage of local, provincial, national, and international news in each of the 21 newspapers varies considerably (Table 24). When these percentages are averaged for all 21 papers, local news emerges in first position, with some 37% of the total news items. International news is next at 31%, national next at 18.8%, and provincial last at 12.9%. It would be instructive to have comparative figures from a study of other Canadian newspapers done at a different time, or with different criteria. The most closely related is Bruces important study (1966), which provides supportive, if not directly comparative, data.^ Gerbner and Marvanyi (1977) found that the foreign news content as a percentage of total news space varied greatly among newspapers in nine countries: for example, the New York Times contains 16% foreign news, the London Times, 22%, and Pravda, 38%. In our sample, 49.8% of all international news originated in the United States, while 30.8% came from European countries.^ These percentages are not surprising, given Canadas long-standing cultural and economic ties to these two areas. In 1973, for example, 70.7% of Canadas imports came from the United States, 4.3% from the United Kingdom, and 6.3% from other European Economic Community (EEC) countries. In that same year, some 67.4% of Canadas exports was sent to the United States, 6.3% to the United Kingdom, and 6.2% to other EEC countries (Canada Yearbook, 1977, p. 911).

Chapter Four

83

Using other studies as a guide, the high ranking of international news was unexpected, although the dominance of local news was anticipated (see Cole & Whysall, 1968; MacLean & Pinna, 1958; Merritt, 1964). Canadas relatively small population is scattered over a large, extensive area, and the resulting problems of communicating over long distances may tempt her to look outward for news. In addition, because of her world position in the peace-keeping role, her dependence on exports and imports, and the high percentage of foreign corporate ownership, what takes place beyond her borders is of great consequence to the national welfare. Local news. Although local news tends to predominate in most Canadian newspapers, there is considerable variation in its relative importance. Montreals La Presse exhibits the highest percentage, with over one-half of its news in this category. As the largest and most influential centre of French Canada, Montreal understandably generates an inordinate amount of local news. In contrast, only about one quarter of the news in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald is local. We have learned from our previous studies that Canadian capital cities are major news sources (see Chapter One, above). This same pattern shows in the present study. In all but one of the provincial capitals, local news ranks first. The one exception is the Winnipeg Free Press, in which local news is a close second to international news. For the newspapers in Canadas three largest centres, Toronto (also the provincial capital), Montreal, and Vancouver, local news is also first, followed by international news. In contrast, international news ranks first in the newspapers of all other centres that are not provincial capitals, with the exception of Hamilton. International news. The Winnipeg Free Press contains the highest percentage of international news, 38.6%. At least 30% of the news items in all the newspapers in the other western provinces originate outside the country. In contrast, the newspapers in the Atlantic region have the smallest percentages of international news; the Charlottetown Guardian, with 22.5%, has least. It should be noted that even though the percentage of international news in Canadian newspapers varies, the disparity is smallest within this category.

84

Places^ in the News

National news. Ottawa's Le Droit has more than one-third of its news coming from national sources; at the other end of the spectrum only 9.7% of the news in the Windsor Star carries national datelines. It should be noted that Le Droit, which serves the francophone readership in Ontario and in Hull, Quebec, understandably draws most of its news items from the neighbouring province of Quebec. Thus many items in Le Droit carry Quebec datelines and are therefore categorized as national news items. All other Ontario newspapers have a rather low proportion of national news. The explanation for this may be that the major source of Canadian news is the national capital of Ottawa, while the large metropolitan and financial centre of Toronto ranks second overall. News items generated within Ontario are classed as either local or provincial news for Ontario newspapers, but as national news in newspapers outside of that province. Provincial news. Since Ottawa and Toronto are the major sources of news in Canada, it is not surprising that the Windsor Star and other Ontario newspapers contain the highest percentages of provincial news. In contrast, in the Montreal Star, which serves an anglophone readership within francophone Quebec, only 3.9% of the datelines represent provincial news. This is to be expected, since the Star gathers much of its news from Ontario and other English-language areas. The newspapers in the prairie provinces also show a low percentage of news in this category. In these provinces with small populations, because a high percentage of the inhabitants live in the cities of publication, the areas outside those cities do not generate much provincial news. Profiles. In this study, the pattern of a newspaper s relative percentages of local, provincial, national, and international news is termed its news origin profile. For some newspapers, such as the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, this profile shows an almost even distribution among the four news origin classes, whereas for others, such as Montreal's La Presse, there is wide variation. The variations among newspapers can be compared by use of standard deviations among types of news. The Halifax Chronicle-Heraldhzs a standard deviation of only 1.6%, whereas Montreal's La Presse has 21.8%, with the other newspapers falling somewhere in between. An alternative approach would be visual examination and subjective analysis of the data. Not only is this difficult, but it is also imprecise and

85

Chapter Four

Table 24. News Items Contained in Major Canadian Daily Newspapers City and Newspaper

Standard Total Items Local Provincial National International Deviation

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun

3218 40.6% 5815 37.2

Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal

4888 4625

28.1 34.1

Regina Leader-Post

4985

Winnipeg Free Press

4953

9.2% 9.4

15.7% 16.4

34.5% 37.1

14.9 14.3

6.5 5.2

28.0 28.5

37.4 32.2

13.1 13.4

32.3

8.6

30.1

29.0

11.0

37.9

4.1

19.4

38.6

16.5

Toronto Globe and Mail Toronto Daily Star London Free Press Hamilton Spectator Windsor Star Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit

4313 44.0 4943 45.7 4560 26.0 4609 35.3 3829 33.2 4129 47.4 3281 27.5

13.2 12.5 30.5 23.7 30.8 14.3 7.8

12.8 11.2 12.4 10.5 9.7 11.0 36.6

30.0 30.5 31.1 30.4 26.3 27.4 28.1

15.0 16.4 8.7 10.8 10.6 16.5 12.2

Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil

3716 4062 4213

55.2 42.5 42.5

7.0 3.9 11.2

11.3 18.2 15.0

26.5 35.4 31.3

21.8 17.4 14.6

Fred ericton Gleaner Saint John Telegraph Journal

2738 2815

46.0 20.3

4.7 27.9

19.3 20.6

30.0 31.2

17.4 5.4

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

3764

26.3

25.8

25.2

22.7

1.6

Charlottetown Guardian

2680

42.4

8.3

26.8

22.5

14.0

St. John's Evening Telegram

4211

40.6

9.0

21.2

29.2

13.3

Average

4112

37.4

13.0

19.0

31.0

11.1

may introduce personal biases of the person doing the grouping. The use of cluster analysis, a procedure for analyzing multi-variate data, is a more efficient way of determining and displaying complex relationships. By taking into account similarities and differences in the values of the variâtes among the 21 newspapers, this procedure arranges the newspapers into a hierarchy where those with the highest mutual similarity are identified. The groups or clusters are placed with other newspapers they most closely resemble until all the newspapers are placed into a complete classification scheme (see Davis, 1973). A problem common to all grouping procedures is that of determining the number of groups, which affects both within- and among-group variation. At the two extremes, if all observations are placed in one group, there is too much loss of detail, whereas with only individual observations and no groups, each case is unique (see Johnston, 1968).

86

__

Pk^JMjh* News

The uniqueness-generality problem can be handled relatively objectively by plotting the loss of detail or individuality against the number of groups and noting a breaking point in the curve. The present cluster analysis reveals that the newspapers can best be divided into six groups. The cluster analysis of the newspapers in each of these groups is presented in Figure 15 by means of a dendrogram, which is a common way of showing the results of a cluster analysis. Each of these six major groups has several commonalities. The first contains the two newspapers in British Columbia, the Winnipeg Free Press, and two in Quebec. These five exhibit a high percentage of local news, coupled with an almost equally large proportion of news from international sources—the highest of any of the six groups. All these cities are remote perceptually, linguistically, and/or spatially from the central province of Ontario; British Columbia has rather close ties with the West Coast of the United States, and Quebec with France. The second group contains newspapers located in three of the four provincial capitals of the Atlantic region. These are characterized by a high percentage of local news, with national and international news almost tying for second place. They are in a single geographic region and share the isolation from Canadas heartland that characterizes group one. The third group, consisting of newspapers from the largest urban centres of Central Canada, features the highest percentage of local news in combination with an above-average proportion of provincial and local news and a low percentage of national news. As expected, this pattern was present in the newspapers of Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, centres that generate large amounts of news. News items that would be classed as local or provincial news in their own newspapers would be national news in the newspapers in other provinces. The fourth group contains the three newspapers in the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and Ottawas Le Droit. This group is characterized by an almost equal balance of local, national, and international news, with a lower than average proportion of provincial news. The percentage of provincial news is the lowest among the six groups, while that of national news is the highest. These newspapers appear to reach beyond their provincial borders for news, exhibiting the same effect of isolation as groups one and two. The fifth group contains the newspapers from Halifax and Saint John, the largest centres in the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New

Chapter Four

87

Figure 15. Cluster analysis dendrogram of newspapers.

Brunswick, coupled with the London Free Press. A high percentage of provincial news, with a correspondingly low proportion of local news, is the major feature of this category. These three cities are all rather small in comparison with other places in their home provinces, which seem to generate as much news as the city of publication. The proportion of local news is the lowest of the six groups and is only about two-thirds of the average in all Canadian newspapers. In contrast, the percentage of provincial news is the highest of all the newspapers studied. The final group is represented by two newspapers from second-order Ontario cities. The Hamilton Spectator and the Windsor Star have the lowest percentage of national news and a rather high percentage of provincial news. Because of its large population and the fact that it contains the important centres of Toronto and Ottawa, the home province of Ontario generates more news than any other province. In these two newspapers, of course, Ontario news would fall into the provincial category whereas most of the other newspapers would list the same news items as national news.

88

piaces_ ÛL^JV^*

They also share a similar pattern of distribution among the four newssource categories. In summary, the cities in which newspapers in each of the six groups are published share certain features. In most instances, they are either located in the same province or region of the country, or are similar in size. The effect of isolation from the central province of Ontario also seems to be a common factor in categories one, two, and four. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Several readily discernible and overlapping factors help to explain the variations in news origin profiles. These factors, which operate in varying combinations and with different degrees of importance, often relate to the location of the city of publication with respect to: 1) isolation from the political, financial, industrial, and cultural heartland of the country; 2) the amount and importance of news generated in different types of cities, such as provincial capitals or major and subordinate regional or national centres; 3) linguistic affinities with regard to the location of newspapers, the newspapers readership, and the news sources; and 4) foreign cultural and trade ties. Other factors that undoubtedly reflect the news origin profiles include the editors' and publishers' perceptions of what readers desire, what kind of image they wish their newspapers to portray, or what readers they wish to attract. Our methodology, however, did not allow us to gauge the relative roles of these factors. Possibly the overriding variable surfaces only when the basis for designating the origin of news items is taken into account. The problem is that items that are designated as local for one newspaper will automatically be placed in different news origin categories in newspapers located in other cities. A local item in Quebec's Le Soleil, for example, will be classed as provincial for Montreal's La Presse, or Star, and national in all other newspapers. Although use of political boundaries is convenient, it results in somewhat arbitrary and artificial delineation of news origin. This blurs the profiles enough to suggest that primary reliance on the relative percentages of news items in each category of news origin as a basis for judging a newspapers quality is seldom justified, although commonly engaged in. It may be fair to speculate that newspapers cannot easily break out of their present mould. If a new newspaper were to be established in or near one of the cities represented in the study and cater to the same readership,

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89

it would be likely to exhibit a news origin profile similar to that of the existing newspaper(s). The similarity of the profiles for the two Toronto newspapers, the regional groupings, and the similarity of other neighbouring newspapers seem to support this contention.

NOTES 1. 2.

3. 4.

Since the Kitchener-Waterloo RecordVas unobtainable in the original or on microfilm this newspaper and this centre were left out of the analyses. The items were grouped by place of origin into local, provincial, national, or international news, following conventional political boundaries. When intercoder reliability was checked by having each of the four coders analyze the same issue of two newspapers, intercoder variation was virtually non-existent. In addition, Edinborough (1969) provides an overview of the organization and scope of the daily press in Canada. For interesting accounts of this phenomenon, see Hart (1963); Scanlon (1973).

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Chapter Five CULTURAL AFFINITY DISPLAYED IN CANADIAN DAILY NEWSPAPERS

I

n international news flows, cultural affinity has been considered an important determinant of news origin. Galtung and Ruge (1965) proposed and found support for the hypothesis that newspaper readers seek the familiar and culturally similar, and that more attention will be paid to items of cultural proximity than to culturally distant ones, which will be less noticed, or even bypassed. Reviewing the studies of Frey (1963) and the International Press Institute (1953), Östgaard (1965) identified cultural proximity as a key element influencing the flow of international news, since an identification and familiarity with news messages help to catch readers' interest. Hester (1973) also identified cultural affinity as a determinant in predicting the volume of information flows. He reasoned that there would be individuals to whom newspaper readers will feel a kinship because of familiar interests, lifestyles, or backgrounds, and that such relationships. . . do exist between nations as well, and measures of them might include a shared language, the amount of migration between nationals, the amount of travel between them, and statuses and past-statuses such as mother country-colony, or patronage (p. 242).

He hypothesized that news flows between countries sharing such traits would be greater than between countries having little cultural affinity. More recently, Robinson and Sparkes (1977), using examples from the Canadian and American press, suggested and found support for the hypothesis that cultural and historic ties with the United Kingdom This chapter was originally published m Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 60, 1983, pp. 431-436.

92

Place^in^he_News

resulted in an emphasis upon coverage ofthat country's news in the newspapers of North America. Despite reasonable support for the cultural affinity hypothesis, these studies have all focused on pairs of individual countries where the cultural affinity is masked by other factors, such as political éliteness or amount of trade. In none of these studies has cultural affinity been pursued solely within the context of a strongly bicultural and bilingual country such as Canada, where non-cultural factors can be considered constant. Canadian daily newspapers provide an unusual opportunity to explore the role of cultural affinity, because both French- and English-language newspapers are published, often within the same city. The aim of this study is to examine the relative cultural affinity of both English- and French-language newspapers to English- and Frenchculture countries. The general hypothesis is that English-language newspapers, having greater cultural affinity with other English-language countries, will print relatively more news from them than will the Frenchlanguage newspapers. Conversely, French-language newspapers will print more news from French-language countries than will English-language newspapers. In order to examine this notion more closely, French- and English-language countries were categorized in three different ways, as explained below. METHODOLOGY

This study is an extension of the research on news in Canadian daily newspapers that is reported in previous chapters of this volume. This phase of the study uses 21 newspapers published in 18 Canadian centres. In keeping with the works cited above, three ways of selecting and categorizing the worlds countries were used in order to focus on both the French and English cultural affinities. In Affinity I the worlds countries are divided into three realms: a) all French-language countries, including former French colonies and areas of French influence; b) all Englishlanguage countries, including former colonies, former Commonwealth countries, and areas of British influence; and c) all other countries, excluding the United States.1 Affinities II and III focus more directly on the affinity factor by using only the news from the countries most closely related culturally, not taking into consideration news from other countries. For Affinity II, the countries are a) France and b) the United Kingdom, and for Affinity III, a) France and b) the countries of the

93 Figure 16. Cultural affinity dendrogram I.

Figure 17. Cultural affinity dendrogram II.

94

Places in the News

Figure 18. Cultural affinity dendrogram III.

"White Commonwealth," i.e., the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.2 In order to determine the relation between news origin and cultural affinity in these newspapers, and to group the newspapers accordingly, cluster analysis was applied (for this methodology, see Davis, 1973). This analysis takes into account similarities and differences in the percentages of the news items in each newspaper for each of the three cultural affinity categories. The newspapers are then arranged into a hierarchy where newspapers with the greatest mutual similarity are identified first. Individual and groups of newspapers are then placed with other newspapers or groups of newspapers they most closely resemble until all newspapers are placed within the cluster. The results are shown in dendrographic form (Figures 16-18). RESULTS

For all three cultural affinity categorizations, examination of the dendrograms in conjunction with the input data indicates that the French-language and the English-language newspapers fall into distinctly separate groups. For the Affinity I categorization the French- and English-language newspaper groupings differ from each other in that there is almost twice as much news from French-culture countries in the French-language

95

Chapter Five

Table 25. Percentage of News from Different Sources According to Three Ways of Categorizing Cultural Affinity by Major Canadian Daily Newspapers

City and Newspaper

Affinity I Affmitv II French British Other United Culture Culture Coun- France Kingrealm realm tries* dom

Affinity III White France Commonwealth

B.C.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun

10.7% 15.4

39.3% 33.2

50.0% 51.4

21.1% 25.2

78.9% 74.8

18.3% 23.0

81.7% 77.0

Alta.

Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal

12.6 13.9

38.1 38.0

49.3 48.1

22.3 22.3

77.7 77.7

20.3 20.1

79.7 79.9

Sask.

Regina Leader- Pos t

12.6

40.7

46.8

20.9

79.1

19.3

80.7

Man.

Winnipeg Free Press

11.6

37.0

51.3

22.6

77.4

20.0

80.0

Ont.

14.4 Windsor Star 12.7 London Free Press Hamilton Spectator 14.2 12.4 Toronto Daily Star Toronto Globe and Mail 13.0 Ottawa Journal 16.3 27.2 Ottawa La Droit

33.2 34.7 41,2 36.9 34.8 38.4 22.9

52.4 52.6 44.6 50.7 52.2 45.4 49.9

27.1 21.3 22.2 23.1 26.0 23.4 54.3

72.9 78.7 77.8 76.9 74.0 76.6 45.7

25.4 20.0 21.9 21.7 24.4 22.6 53.8

74.6 80.0 78.1 78.3 75.6 77.4 46.2

P.Q.

Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil

22.2 12.3 22.1

22.8 39.3 21.9

55.0 48.3 56.0

49.7 24.5 54.2

50.3 75.5 45.8

47.0 21.5 52.6

53.0 78.5 47.4

N.B.

Fredericton Gleaner Saint John Telegraph Journal

14.0

42.5

43.6

17.3

82.7

16.1

83.9

12.8

33.6

53.6

27.3

72.7

25.2

74.8

N.S.

Halifax ChronicleHerald

12.8

37.2

50.0

17.6

82.4

16.7

83.3

P.E.I.

Charlottetown Guardian

10.8

37.2

51.9

18.8

81.2

17.0

83.0

Nfld.

St. John's Evening Telegram

8.2

41.0

50.8

16.1

83.9

14.4

85.6

14.3 23.7 12.9

35.5 22.4 37.4

50.2 53.9 49.7

26.5 47.0 22.4

73.5 53.0 77.6

24.7 53.2 20.5

75.4 46.8 79.6

Averages:

All newspapers French-language newspapers English-language newspapers

»Excluding the United States

newspapers as in the English-language ones (an average of 23.7% vs. 12.9%) (Table 25). Ottawas Le Droit prints more news from French-culture countries (27.2%) than the other two French-language newspapers. Although this may be surprising, because Ottawa is more bilingual than Montreal or Quebec City, it is explainable, since Le Droit circulates widely to French-

96

Places in the News

language subscribers in the countryside around Ottawa. Also, in those cities where both French- and English-language newspapers are published, each newspaper can orient its stories to a particular cultural group. The opposite situation applies to the Saint John, New Brunswick, Telegraph Journal, which caters to both cultural groups: descendants of the United Empire Loyalists and the Acadians. The St. Johns, Newfoundland, Evening Telegram prints the least news from the French-culture realm (8.2%), while the Fredericton, New Brunswick, Gleaner prints the most from the British one (42.5%). The Affinity II categorization shows essentially the same pattern as that for Affinity I. The Saint John Telegraph Journal prints a higher percentage of news from France than the other English-language newspapers. This newspaper, publishing in the only officially bilingual province, has the highest percentage of news from France and the lowest from the United Kingdom of any of the English-language newspapers (27.3% and 72.7%). Also noteworthy is that all other newspapers in the Atlantic region carry a greater percentage of news items from the United Kingdom than any other newspapers. The Affinity III categorization shows a pattern similar to the others, but is closer to the Affinity II categorization, since the additional news from Australia and New Zealand is relatively small in all newspapers. Overall, the proportion of news from France printed in the French-language newspapers is 53.2%, as contrasted with only 20.5% in the Englishlanguage ones. The Saint John Telegraph Journal again has the highest percentage of news from France and the lowest from the "White Commonwealth" countries when compared to the other English-language newspapers (25.2% and 74.8% respectively). The other newspapers in the Atlantic region again show their cultural affinity by printing greater percentages from the "White Commonwealth" than any of the other Englishlanguage newspapers. The other interesting item in this categorization is the orientation of western Canadian newspapers toward Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific. CONCLUSION ___

As shown in all three categorizations, Canadas newspapers display remarkable cultural affinities toward their readers* respective cultural homelands, the French-language newspapers toward France and the English-language ones toward the United Kingdom. In that part of New

Chapter Five

97

Brunswick where people of both cultural groups live, the newspaper examined provides a more even balance of news from the two cultures. These findings not only support but amplify those of previous studies. Any way it is viewed, an international news flows cultural affinity is a striking factor in determining the source of news printed in a newspaper. In reaching this conclusion, we are mindful that both French- and English-language newspapers in Canada receive foreign news from the same source, the Canadian Press, and thus in essence have access to the same foreign news items. Each newspapers editorial staff, however, chooses which news to print, and, reflecting the cultural affinities of their readers, French-language newspapers are culturally biased toward news items from France and English-language ones to those from the United Kingdom.

NOTES 1.

2.

United States news flows were not considered because the United States is not deemed to be part of Canada's cultural heritage, and, since it constitutes nearly half of all foreign news for all newspapers, it overshadows international news flows to such an extent as to render analyses difficult to interpret. Although Canada should be included in this designation, when dealing with Canadian newspapers Canadian news would of course be considered domestic rather than foreign news.

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Chapter Six UNITED STATES NEWS FLOWS TO CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS

NEWS FLOWS AND GEOGRAPHICAL THEORY

This work falls within the domain of the geography of information and communication, an area long neglected by geographers, despite the fact that, as pointed out by Hägerstrand, "All human action takes place in a cross-fire of information" (as cited in Tunstall, 1971, p. 17). This study also relates to three other geographical topics: (1) diffusion theory, (2) spatial interaction, and (3) environmental perception. The diffusion of innovations depends on the flow of information. Unless information is transferred from one group or person to another there is no diffusion of ideas (see Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1966; Gould &Tornqvist, 1971; Hägerstrand, 1966; Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971). In studies of spatial interaction among people and areas, telephone messages and newspaper items have been used as measures of personal contact and information flow. The gravity model, which utilizes both distance and population variables, is often employed in such studies. Information is also essential in creating the images and cognitive maps that people form of other places. The accuracy of our perception can be a function of the amount of knowledge we process of a place, although misinformation can also be transferred by information flows. Newspapers and other media are important sources of information about places in distant parts of the world, especially areas a reader may have never visited (see Goodey, 1974; Gould & White, 1974). Since the flow of newspaper news is one constituent of the overall flow of information between countries, This chapter was originally published in The American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 13, 1983, pp. 44-64.

100

Places in the News

the purpose here is to investigate the spatial origin and content of the news from the United States that is published in major Canadian daily newspapers. The questions that are investigated in this study are: What is the spatial pattern of news origin, and what is the relative importance of population and distances, as suggested by spatial interaction models, upon news flows? What is the relative importance of the various U.S. urban centres and states as news sources? How dominant are the larger cities? How does one Canadian newspaper differ from another, and one area of Canada from another? What is the effect of bilingualism in Canada on news flow? EMPIRICAL STUDIES AND CONCEPTUAL J^RAMEWORK

Studies about the flow of news, particularly between the United States and Canada, and discussions of the news-gathering, dissemination, and publishing process provide both empirical data for comparing the findings of the present study and the conceptual framework used as a basis for interpreting them. At the empirical level, although a number of studies have focused on the origin and destination of news, both within a country and across international borders, only those by Hart (1963), Scanlon (1973), and Sparkes (1978) deal specifically with the flow of U.S. news into Canada. All three reveal that the Canadian press devotes a relatively large proportion of its newshole to the U.S. Hart found it to be 12.1%, Sparkes 14.0%, and Scanlon 18.0%. In other studies of international news in Canadian newspapers, McNaught (1940) found that total foreign news ranged between 21 and 48% of all news; U.S. news accounted for 32 to 68% of this. Robinson and Sparkes (1977) found that "the foreign newshole in the Canadian press was 27.56% of total news, while in the American press it is 11.87%," and 13.52% of all news in the Canadian press was about the United States. Concerning the type of news that tends to travel across the border between the United States and Canada, Hart found that sports ranked first (31.3% of all U.S. news), followed by news related to health and education (24.8%), while political, economic, business, and foreign relations news was third (11.6%). Sparkes found that business and economics ranked first, comprising 17.8% of all U.S. news; human interest second, at 16.4%; sports third, 13.7%; and education and science fourth, 11.9%. Budds (1964) study of U.S. news in Australian and New Zealand

ChapterSix _____ JOI

newspapers provides a basis for comparison with two additional Englishspeaking Commonwealth countries. He found that news about diplomacy and foreign relations and internal governmental affairs and politics consistently ranked first in all newspapers studied. Other categories, however, differed considerably in importance among newspapers and between the two countries. Although some authors have found that news interest declines with distance, most studies report that distance plays only a small part in accounting for the amount of news from different areas that is printed in newspapers.1 Sparkes contended that in the Canadian-American exchange, where cultural and political factors are similar, physical proximity to the border could be predictive of differences in news volume. His findings, however, did not support this belief with regard to Canadian news in U.S. newspapers, and he did not test it for U.S. news in Canadian ones. This present study considerably extends the scope of earlier studies. It increases the locational specificity of the news sources: whereas previous studies considered the U.S. news only in the aggregate, this one uses regions, states, and a few of the major cities as bases of the analysis. It also provides broader Canadian regional and cultural coverage, since newspapers from all provinces and both English- and French-language newspapers are examined. Furthermore, it groups these newspapers according to commonalities of their U.S. news coverage. THE NEWS-GATHERING AND PUBLICATION PROCESS

In order to place the news flow from the United States to Canada within a geographic context that will help to explain both news origin and the distribution of various content categories, it is helpful to understand what is news, as well as the news-gathering and publication process, especially as it relates to how U.S. news reaches Canadian readers. In discussing the intrinsic values that make an event news, MacDougall (1964) concludes that two major factors dominate: importance and potential interest: Those news values about which there is general agreement are: (1) timeliness, (2) proximity, (3) prominence, (4) consequence, and (5) human interest. The elements of reader interest may be telescoped into the following: (1) personal appeal, (2) sympathy, (3) unusualness, (4) progress, (5) combat, (6) suspense, (7) sex, (8) age, and (9) animals (p. 96).

102

Places in the News

Galtung and Ruge (1965) have proposed a number of hypotheses about the news value of events and the likelihood of stories about them being published. Summarizing and combining some of their hypotheses, those events more likely to be published will be those that: (1) have a certain threshold of violence, size, or number; (2) are unambiguous; (3) are meaningful to the publications readers in terms of cultural proximity or relevance; (4) concern élite nations; (5) concern élite individuals; (6) can be perceived in personal terms; and (7) are negative. Concerning news reported in Canadian newspapers, Worthington (1971) suggests, somewhat facetiously, The importance of a foreign story often seems to be assessed by several simple factors, not necessarily in this order: 1) Are the [news] agencies making a big fuss over it? 2) Is the opposition likely to react? 3) Does it involve violence? 4) Does it involve white people—preferably Anglo-Saxon or English speaking? 5) Is it simple; that is, can it be reduced to East-West, black-white, them-us terms? 6) Has the editor ever heard of the country or the participants before?... Any newsman can give examples, a few nuns raped in the Congo in 1960 received far more attention than 1,000 Ethiopians slaughtered in a one-day uprising in that same year (p. 57).

Also, with respect to Canada, Wilson (1976) suggests that news must process prominence of the person reported on; consequence, in terms of the number, size, breadth, or depth of the impact; and human interest. Robert Ezra Park sums up the dilemma embodied in striking a balance between keeping people informed and providing a product that will sell: "...the things which most of us would like to publish are not the things most of us want to read. We may be eager to get into print what is, or seems to be, edifying, but we want to read what is interesting" (as cited inTunstall, 1971, p. 16). Numerous writers—usually journalists themselves—have discussed the complex process involved in gathering, selecting, and finally publishing news. From the decision as to which potentially newsworthy events should be covered by reporters to an editors last-minute cutting during pas te-up, judgments are continually being made. From the original volume of news made available by news wholesalers and a particular newspa-

Chapter Six

103

per s own correspondents and stringers, the subtractive process of determining which of all the available news to print continues, with decisions being made by gatekeepers at many points along the line (see White, 1950; Peterson, 1979; Bagdikian, 1971). It has been estimated that only about 5 to 10% of the news transmitted by the wire services is actually published (see Tunstall, 1971, p. 16). Making choices as to what to publish, something usually done under pressure as press time nears, requires judgment. Even though editors are rarely able to make explicit the criteria used, there is considerable homogeneity among them. The criteria that seem to be used by these gatekeepers include: 1. the size of the available newshole, a limitation set by the size of the newspaper, the amount of advertising it runs, and the space allocation among various departments; 2. policy preferences of the publisher and editor, including the papers role in the country s press system; 3. certain commercial criteria. Whatever else it is, a newspaper is a business; in order to stay in business its product must sell. Achieving this goal requires striking a balance between giving the public what it wants and printing what the editor and publisher believe should be printed; and 4. the relative news value of different items from which the selection is to be made (see Cohen, 1963; MacDougall, 1964; Stewart, 1980). Much of the U.S. news that reaches Canada has already passed through several gatekeepers at the news-gathering and transmission levels. The major source of U.S. news in Canadian newspapers is the Canadian Press (CP), a non-profit news cooperative, whose primary role is not to originate news but to gather it from other sources and distribute it throughout Canada (see Sutherland et al., 1970; Spears, 1970; Doyle, 1980). Through its offices in New York and Washington, the CP channels the news from U.S. sources (primarily from the Associated Press, a U.S. cooperative) to its member newspapers. CP provides news in both French and English, but, because of the high cost of translation, French-language newspapers receive fewer CP news items than their English-language counterparts, and often make their own translations and adaptations of the English copy.

104

Places in the News

United Press International (UPl), a commercial U.S. news service, competes with CP on a much smaller scale. Southam News Services provides some supplemental U.S. news copy to its own group of newspapers. Additional U.S. news and feature copy reaches Canadian newspapers through syndicates such as the New York Times, the Washington PostLos Angeles Times, Religious News Services, Gallup Poll, Dow-Jones, and others. RESEARCH EXPECTATIONS

In light of previous findings, taken in the context of the news-gathering, transmission, and publication process, certain research expectations are suggested: 1. Amount of news: U.S. news plays a major role in Canadian papers— between 12 and 18% of all news, according to previous studies. 2. Distribution of news content: political and economic, sports, and human interest news items would be expected to rank highest, while news about topics such as ecology and resources, consumer affairs, and natural catastrophes would be relatively unimportant. 3. Regions of news origin. a) Since most news is about people and their activities, more news items will be printed about areas with large population size. b) Since not all people are considered equally newsworthy, disproportionate amounts of news are likely to originate in those areas where prominent public figures live, or where they may be visiting or vacationing. c) Distance might be important: readers would be more interested in learning about areas closer to home—especially nearby areas on the other side of a border—than about areas farther away. d) Disproportionate amounts of news can be expected to come from areas with which people in a given community are familiar or have cultural ties: places where other Canadians live or favourite vacation spots, for example. 4. Variations in news content by regions of origin: different kinds of news might be expected to come from different regions, depending on the kind of activities taking place in each. Washington, D.C., for example, would contribute substantial amounts of political news, while New York City would produce financial and entertainment news.

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__

105

METHOD AND PROCEDURE

This phase of the study utilized data from 21 newspapers (including the Saint John Telegraph Journaland the Toronto Globe and Mail) in 18 cities. The sampling procedures are described in the introduction to this volume. During the data collection process datelines were aggregated by states and major cities. In order to make presentation of the findings more manageable, the United States was divided into nine regions: the eight subdivisions adopted by the Office of Business Economics for data regularly tabulated in the Survey of Current Business» with the District of Columbia considered as an additional region, since Washington, D.C., as the national capital, generates an inordinate amount of news that is of widespread importance (Figure 19). News items were placed into one of twelve content categories based on the research of Hart (1963), Bruce (1966), and Holsti (1969) (Table 2). Since the categories are not entirely mutually exclusive, and since many longer articles qualify for inclusion under several headings, subjective judgments were sometimes necessary. In order to achieve consistency, coders conferred about application of the classification throughout the project. As it turned out, most classifying was simple and clear-cut. It was Figure 19. Sources of U.S. news in Canadian daily newspapers.

106

Places in the News

difficult to decide whether items about issues such as the Watergate question should be considered as crime or as politics; they were finally classified as political rather than as crime, even though many persons consider them to be the latter. Problems also occurred, although rarely, with stories about famous persons and aspects of their family life and political activities. In such cases it was decided to classify the news item either as political or human interest, depending upon the story's emphasis. AMOUNT AND CONTENT OF UNITED STATES NEWS

The amount of U.S. news in the Canadian newspapers studied varied from a total of only 261 U.S. datelines in the Charlottetown Guardian to a high of 1023 in the Vancouver Sun, with an overall mean of 632. In percentage terms, the Charlottetown Guardian also ranked lowest, with only 9.7%, while in the two highest-ranking newspapers, the Calgary Herald and the Winnipeg Free Press, U.S. datelines accounted for 18.3% of all news items, and the London Free Press was a close third, with 18.0%. The overall mean was 15.4% (Table 26). When analyzed by categories, sports placed first, comprising a mean of 27.9% of all U.S. news; political and economic news second, with 21.2%, and human interest third, with 12.1%. These three categories combined accounted for 61.2% of all U.S. news (Table 27). Other categories were less than 10%: for example, in spite of its perceived prominence, law and crime news represented only 9.5% of the total U.S. news. These findings as to both the total amount and the relative distribution of various categories of U.S. news in Canadian papers were comparable to those of the studies cited above, where total U.S. news was found to range between 12.1% and 18.0%, as compared with 15.4% here. In all studies, the three highest ranking categories tended to be political and economic, sports, and human interest. Lowest ranking were news of accidents, catastrophes, and ecology and resources, even though individual items often received considerable prominence. McNaught (1940), writing in the late 1930s, suggested two major reasons for this relatively large amount of news from a single foreign country published in Canadian newspapers. First, "Canada is a North American nation whose social and economic structure is closely related to that of the United States," and second, "much of the news originating in the United States is of such direct interest to Canadians that it almost falls

Chapter Six

107

within the category of domestic news." These factors appear to remain equally important today. The most striking observation regarding the origin of United States news printed in Canadian newspapers is the dominance of a few regions (Table 28). The Mideast contributed 28.7% of the total news in all the newspapers studied, Washington, D.C. 19.8%, the Far West 16.7%, and the Great Lakes 10.2%. Equally interesting were the areas about which the least news was printed: New England (5.7 %), the Southwest (4.6%), the Plains (4.1%), and, least of all, the Rocky Mountains (1.2%). Within several regions one or two news sources dominated. It was most marked in the Midwest, where New York state contributed 78.9% of the news items, and New York City 69.8% (88.5% of all New York state news). In New England, Massachusetts contributed 70.7%; in the Great Lakes region, Michigan accounted for 35.1% of the news, and Illinois for 31.4%. In the Southeast, Florida accounted for 44.6% of the regions news. Finally, California contributed 81.2% of the news from the Far West, Los Angeles was responsible for 35.7% of Californias news (29.0% ofthat from the region), and San Francisco for 11.4% (9.2% of the region). The news domination from a few areas was evident, since the top three states, considering Washington, D.C. as a state, contributed 56.1% of the total news: New York (22.7%), Washington, D.C. (19.8%), and California (13.6%). The top ten—adding Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Texas, and Ohio—accounted for 80.0%. At the other extreme, thirty-four states contributed fewer than 100 items each: together, these states, two-thirds of the total number, accounted for only 11.6% of all news. Inspection of the data suggested that a relation exists between the news volume and population size of the states of news origin. This relation was supported by the regression-correlation analysis, which yielded a coefficient of correlation of 0.64.2 Examination of the residuals from the regression analysis showed that Washington, D.C. was the most deviant observation, providing many more items than would be expected considering its population size, and was followed by New York, Alaska, California, and Massachusetts. The vacation and retirement states of Hawaii, Arizona, and Florida also contributed slightly more datelines in relation to their population. Areas having considerably fewer news items

Table 26.

U.S. Region-to-Newspaper Flows: The Number of Datelines for Each Region as a Percentage of the Total U.S. Datelines in Each Newspaper Region of origin

U.S. datelines Newspaper and Ownership Number Percent B.C. 2.4 28.6 17.9 5.6 Victoria Colonist (FP)1 552 9.2 3.6 17.22 8.3 2.9 21.4 20.2 8.4 2.1 21.8 Vancouver Sun (FP) 3.6 5.3 1023 17.6 3.2 26.8 8.6 Alta. 22.7 Calgary Herald (S) 7.7 4.4 1.3 20.8 8% 2.9 18.3 7.6 3.8 28.9 24.4 1.6 Edmonton Journal (S) 7.7 4.6 16.3 3.1 15.5 753 5.0 27.9 10.1 Sask. 4.4 20.8 Regina Leader-Post (I) 4.1 14.0 1.5 5.4 726 14.6 31.3 10.5 8.0 Man. 21.2 907 4.0 Winnipeg Free Press (FP) 5.5 1.2 14.2 10.0 18.3 6.1 24.7 13.1 Ont. 15.1 Windsor Star (S) 601 15.7 17.1 4.8 3.5 0.3 20.0 5.3 25.6 8.2 19.0 London Free Press 821 18.0 3.9 4.8 0.5 11.9 6.0 32.4 6.0 15.6 17.2 0.8 Hamilton Spectator (S) 15.7 3.9 19.3 722 10.8 5.1 6.8 27.6 8.6 26.7 Toronto Daily Star (I) 14.4 4.9 712 4.2 27.5 1.5 6.6 2.9 17.0 8.6 26.9 3.5 0.9 Toronto Globe and Mail (FP) 662 8.9 3.9 12.8 15.3 5.3 26.4 11.3 4.4 9.7 1.1 16.5 Ottawa Journal (FP) 13.2 4.0 546 6.2 35.9 9.2 13.0 4.4 5.7 16.5 387 0.5 Ottawa Le Droit (I) 9.0 17.3 11.8 5.9 32.6 8.0 P.Q. 6.4 3.7 Montreal La Presse (I) 1.0 14.9 13.0 11.0 11.0 15.1 483 6.6 30.2 1.7 Montreal Star (FP) 16.9 4.0 4.6 716 17.6 5.9 33.1 10.5 6.3 17.0 4.4 0.4 12.4 4.2 19.6 Quebec Le Soleil (I) 13.4 566 8.3 11.8 5.5 33.4 N.B. 3.7 Fredericton Gleaner (Irv) 547 16.7 9.8 3.9 0.2 22.1 13.1 6.6 28.7 11.8 4.8 Saint John Telegraph Journal (Irv) 416 9.4 9.4 1.2 12.7 17.8 14.8 4.8 10.1 29.8 N.S. 4.1 11.4 Halifax Chronicle-Herald (I) 4.1 23.6 9.4 1.3 12.2 9.0 27.5 9.6 458 P.E.I. Charlottetown Guardian (T) 0.4 13.4 9.7 16.1 4.6 261 8.4 34.5 9.6 6.5 6.5 Nfld. St. John's Evening Telegram (T) 14.4 1.0 18.0 4.6 606 10.1 12.5 5.6 16.3 7.6 24.3 AVERAGE 16.7 15.4 5.7 28.7 4.1 1.2 19.8 4.6 9.0 10.2 'Ownership is indicated as follows: (FP): Free-Press Publications (owned by Thompson); (S): Southam Inc.; (T): Thomson Newspapers Ltd.; (Irv): Irving Family; (I): Independent. 2 The number of U.S. datelines in each newspaper as a percentage of the total number of news items in each newspaper.

Table 27. U.S. News by Content Category and by Newspaper: The Number of Datelines for Each News Content Category as a Percentage of the Total U.S. Datelines in Each Newspaper News content category

U.S. Newspaper

B.C.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun Aha. Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal Sask. Regina Leader-Post Man. Winnipeg Free Press Ont. Windsor Star London free Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Daily Star Toronto Globe and Mail Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit Montreal La Presse P O« • •>< Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil N.B. Fredericton Gleaner Saint John Telegraph Journal N.S. Halifax Chronicle-Herald P.E.I. Charlottetown Guardian St. John's Evenine Televram Nfld. AVERAGE

Datelines

552 1023 896 753 726 907 601 821 722 712 662 546 387 483 716 566 457 416 458 261 606

17.8 15.8 26.0 12.5 21 8 12 2 26.4 8.8 6.8 23.1 15.4 7.5 22.3 7.3 13.9 9.3 20 6 13 3 20.6 9.5 27.2 11 0 18.7 7.3 24.3 3.6 17 6 3 9 16.2 11.3 23.9 2.1 14.9 10 7 25.5 11.3 25.8 6.6 25.7 11.1 21.5 11.9 21.2 9.5

5.8 4.2 2.2 2.3 1.8 2.3 2.0 1.6 43 2.8 20 2.7 1.6 14 2.2 0.7 2.2 3.4 2.0 3.8 3.1 2.6

1.3 0.7 1.1 0.9 0.6 0.8 0.2 0.2 1 l 0.8 0.8 0.9 0.0 00 0.1 0.2 0.7 0.2 0.4 0.0 0.5 0.6

2.5 0.9 2.7 3.5 1.8 2.5 0.7 1.5 1.7 1.1 1.1 2.0 0.0 02 2.2 0.4 2.4 1.9 5.9 0.4 1.5 1.8

2.9 5.6 3.5 8.5 6.2 4.1 3.7 4.9 6.1 5.6 35 5.3 2.6 23 2.9 2.3 5.3 2.2 5.9 4.6 4.3 4.5

20.7 0.5 21.2 11.3 14.5 6.5 15.1 6.5 8.7 24.5 24.0 3.0 38.3 3.3 24.1 20.2 24.4 5.1 20.5 11.1 34 9 5.4 28.0 3.5 50.1 3.1 63.8 4.3 25.6 10.2 50.4 10.4 20.6 0.9 8.1 31.5 29.0 3.7 24.5 6.9 33.5 1.8 27.9 6.9

3.6 7.2 4.9 17.0 3.1 3.7 2.3 8.5 3.1 11.9 11.4 9.2 1.6 10.0 7.7 8.8 3.6 7.9 3.4 11.7 2.5 7.6 3.9 26.4 3.0 4.5 5.7 9.1 2.8 5.2 6.0 10.3 4 6 4 3 2.9 11.6 3.1 5.6 3.4 15.7 3 3 3.8 2.9 4.2 2.4 11.9 3.1 14.1 1.3 4.7 4.1 4.7 1.0 1.5 1 9 2.1 1.3 4.6 2.5 20.8 2.5 2.3 1.9 3.0 3.3 5.3 5.3 28.7 1.7 2.6 0.7 10.8 2.6 6.8 4.1 7.2 2.7 3.8 0.8 15.7 4.0 5.9 1.2 10.9 2.8 6.1 4.1 12.1

110

Places in the News

for their population were: Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Iowa, and Idaho. It is interesting to note that the two largest states, California and New York, also produced disproportionately greater amounts of news in relation to their population size. At the other extreme, three of the states that were most overpredicted, i.e., contributed fewer items than would be expected considering their population size, were in the Southeast. This might be ascribed, at least in part, to the particular events of that year— if, for example, the study had been done during the height of the civil rights activism, Alabama and Mississippi might well have produced relatively large amounts of news. In addition, according to the gatekeepers, the Southeast appeared not generally to have been a newsworthy area. NEWS CONTENT AND»ORIGIN

The perception that outsiders form of a country depends to a large extent upon the medias portrayal of it. The stories newspapers choose either to play up or ignore, the emphasis they impart to each, whether or not they follow up—all these factors shape the readers' responses to ongoing events. It often appears that news from the United States that appears in Canadian newspapers is overloaded with U.S. involvement in international affairs, sensational news about crime, the doings of politicians, movie and television stars, and the like. One would expect that the particular mix of news from each region would help to characterize it in some way. The U.S. news published in Canadian newspapers was viewed in two ways: (1) the amount of news from a given region that fell within each content category, and (2) the amount of news within a given content category that originated in each region (Table 28). The top figure in each column is the percentage of news within that region that each content category comprised, so that the rows total 100% of the news within the region; the second figure is the percentage of news within that content category originating in each region, and the columns add up to 100% in each category. In the Mideast, for example, sports was the largest category, with 29.2% of total news from that region, which in turn represented 30.1% of all sports news. Next is political and economic news, 14.3% of all news from the region and 19.5% of all news in that category. Although business and financial news comprised only 13.0% of all news from the Mideast

Chajrter_Sjx_

III

region, this represented 53.9% of all news in the category, as might be expected, since New York City is located in this region. Continuing across the row, it can be noted that this region also contributed almost half of the news about both social aspects of life and entertainment, and almost onethird of the law and crime news, although each of these represents a relatively small proportion of all news from the region itself. For the next ranking region, Washington, D.C., political and economic news was more than half of the total, or 58.8%; this represented 55.0% ofthat category from the entire U.S. It also made substantial contributions in the areas of consumer affairs (52.4%) and ecology and resources (43.3%), although each of these was a small proportion of the regional news. In marked contrast to all other regions, sports was insignificant, only 1.4% of all news within the region. Distribution of news from the Far West showed yet another pattern. Sports news was the largest category (29.2%), while human interest ranked second (18.9%), but was first with news in that category (26.2%). The Far West also made a large contribution to entertainment (39.1%). This region and the Mideast together contributed 84.7% of all entertainment news. In the regions that contributed the smallest amounts of total news, a single event could generate a disproportionate amount of news within that category: for example, within the Plains, 23.5% of the news was political and economic, most likely reflecting the prolonged Wounded Knee crisis in South Dakota, a state that otherwise might have produced little news of international note within that category. Although it would be difficult to specify what mix of news would have been most desirable, on the basis of the number of news items alone it appeared that, overall, a fairly balanced view of the U.S. and its various regions was presented in the Canadian press; the country was not presented as being fraught with accidents, catastrophes, crimes, and the like. REGION- AND STATE-TO-NEWSPAPER FLOW

In view of the traditional north-south flow of people, goods, and information between the United States and Canada, which at times has been stronger than the east-west flow across Canada, it might be expected that news from adjacent regions of the U.S. would feature more prominently in Canadian newspapers than news from regions farther away. Although some evidence of this trend was noted at a regional level, there were

Table 28.

U.S. News Flows by Content Category and Region of Origin News content category

Region of news origin 1 . New England

Datelines Number Percent

753

5.71

2. Mideast

3814

28.7

3. Southeast

1197

9.0

4. Great Lakes 5. Plains 6. Southwest 7. Rocky Mountain 8. Far West 9. Washington, D.C.

1352

10.2

540

4.1

613

4.6

155

1.2

2221

16.7

2626

19.8

10.52

5.6

¿.o

14.3

0.8

2.0 •i -5

") OJ

10.5

1.5

4 .J-j

7

.2

1.0

45.0

5.7

3.6 r .J

n

.ji

3.9

2.1

"1/ ,¿ "5

Oz "> y.

29.2

19.5 7.5 16.4 21.6 30.1 31.8 16.5 15.6 7.2 1.0 .9 6.9 36.3 8.5 7.1

3.6 3.4

23.5

4.6 4.5

5.1 8.4

12.2

1.1 .5

11.9 10.3 11.7

9.2

3.1

2.0 5.8 1.3

3.1 7.7 3.7

5.3

.7

3.1

4.9

1.6

2.6

3.5

24.1 .3

5.0

13.6

5.5

.7

.3

3.5

20.7

9.6

58.8

15.0

24.9

14.9 8.6

3.8

12.5

.8 2.6

5.0

1.7 1.8

16.4 3.9

15.9

9.5

15.2 4.5 2.6 4.6

2.0

1.7

4.6 L ^,

9.4

17.0 fi

"> A4 i,

A, A *».4

6.4

o.nU

9.1

53 .9 44.6 45.6 21.6 20 .1 1.2 .8 .6 5.3 15.7

2.6 11.7 13.8 H. 7 1 .1 1 .9 7.8 43.4 9.6 3.8 1.6 4.1 13.1

43.5

2.0

.3

26.3

4.2

1.7

21.3

.9

0.0

4.6

13.0

1.3 1i 7

7.0 3.9 11.1 14 .1 13 .9 .2 1.1 4.6 12.2 1.1

.7 1 .6 1.8 6.4 3.1 .8 .5 43.7 1.0 2.6

15.5

25.2

1.2 9.5

29.2 1.4

7.2 1.1

17.5

.7 2.6

1.3 .4

2.6 7.4

6.3

.9 7.5

I .3 .5

8.4 5.9

2.0

.6

1.6 9.5

.2

4.1

14.2 .6 5.4 25.8 .2

2.5

18.9

16.4 5.6 39.1 26.2 5.7 1.1 4.0

55.0 5.4 9.4 0.0 52.4 13.1 11.0 2.6 43.3 20.0 1.0 21 .1 AVERAGE 4. 1 4.5 27.9 6.9 6.1 12.1 21.2 9.5 2.6 0.6 1.8 2.8 'The number of datelines for each region as a percentage of the total number of datelines from all regions. 'The number of datelines for each news content category as a percentage of the total number of datelines originating in each region. 'The number of datelines from each region as a percentage of the total number of datelines in each content category.

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equally inexplicable discrepancies. For example, one would expect to find news from the Far West to be highest in the Victoria and Vancouver newspapers. The Victoria Colonist, did, in fact, come first, with 28.6% of all U.S. news coming from the Far West, but the Vancouver Sun was third, with 21.8% (Table 26). The Fredericton Gleaner in distant New Brunswick held second place, with 22.1%. New England news featured most prominently in newspapers of Canadas Atlantic provinces, and the percentage tended to decline westward. The Windsor Star had the most news from the adjoining Great Lakes region, with the London Free Press second. The Winnipeg Free Press, however, came third, and the St. Johns Evening Telegram was a close fourth. News from the Plains was highest in the distant Charlottetown Guardian and the St. Johns Evening Telegram was second, while the nearby Winnipeg Free Press, which might have been expected to be most closely tied to the Plains, was only third. The Regina Leader-Post fell into ninth place. A similar lack of pattern was found for news from the Rocky Mountains, where Edmonton and Calgary, which might be expected to carry the most news about the region, ranked only fifth and seventh, respectively. These cross-border affinities showed up more clearly, however, at a state-to-newspaper flow level, which emphasized their highly localized nature. Maine, for example, accounted for 38.1% of the total news from the New England region in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, and for 22.0% ofthat news in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. The Detroit-Windsor connection was illustrated by the fact that 70.9% of the news from the Great Lakes region printed in the Windsor Star came from Michigan. There was some connection between North Dakota and Regina, with 13.3% of the news from the Plains that was printed in the Regina LeaderPost coming from North Dakota. Similarly, in the Calgary Herald 33.3% of the news from the Rocky Mountain states originated in Montana, while 25.0% ofthat in the Edmonton Journal also came from there; in contrast, ten other papers across the country printed no news from Montana. More news from Idaho also appeared in the Calgary Herald: 25.0% of all news from the Rocky Mountains—here, again, 13 newspapers printed no news from that state. Finally, the largest percentages of news from Washington appeared in the Victoria Colonist (12.7% of all news from the Pacific region) and the Vancouver Sun (19.8%).

114

Places in the News

Other than these cross-border affinities, no systematic relationship to distance was observable. It is possible that the effect of distance applied most to what is considered to be purely local news, which has traditionally dominated Canadian newspapers (see Stewart, 1980). The only other influence attributable at least partially to distance would seem to be the fact that the United States is Canadas closest neighbour; in this study virtually half (49.6%) of all foreign news originated in the United States. Factors other than physical distance alone, such as the importance of the United States as a world power and the close economic, political, and cultural ties between the countries, are probably more important. NEWSPAPER GROUPINGS

It is quite evident that on any given day, the same top news stories will probably appear in virtually all Canadian daily newspapers, but which other ones are printed differs tremendously. Editors, acting as gatekeepers, have considerable latitude in deciding which items to publish, despite the fact that they all draw from the same pool of news items available to them from the various wire services and use the same general criteria in the selection of items. The findings regarding the differing percentage of news from the nine U.S. regions and the variation in emphasis among the twelve content categories that the newspaper display provided bases for grouping them both by region of news origin and by content category. In order to determine such patterns of similarity and differences as may exist, which could result from differences in such factors as location, language of publication, or newspaper chain ownership, the technique of cluster analysis was employed (see Davis, 1973). This procedure takes into account similarities and differences in the value of the variâtes among the 21 newspapers, arranging them into a hierarchy in which those with the highest similarity are identified first. These initial groups or clusters were then placed with other newspapers that they resemble most closely until all the newspapers were organized into a single group. The groupings that resulted from this analysis are presented as dendrograms, a common way of showing the results of cluster analysis (Figures 20 and 21). The grouping by regions of news origin (Figure 21) examined in conjunction with the input data (Table 26) revealed that the Victoria Colonist differed most from all other newspapers, in that it printed greater percentages of news from the Far West and the Rocky Mountains, and lesser

Chapter Six

115

percentages from the North and Mideast regions, than any of the other newspapers. This tendency to play up more local news was not evident, however, for those newspapers published on the other extreme of the continent. The news sources for all other papers were similar, judging from the relatively small differences in the error sums of squares. When newspapers were grouped by news content (Figure 20 in conjunction with Table 27) the French-language publications were in a group apart from the rest. It is evident that they emphasized sports news to the extent that it was more than half of the total number of U.S. news items. Aside from sports, only political and economic, and business and financial news categories seemed to be of any importance: all other categories were relatively neglected. The "French connection" was emphasized by the fact that the three French-language newspapers on the average contained 20% fewer U.S. news items than the average for all Canadian newspapers, although four English-language ones, including the Charlottetown Guardian, contained still fewer. It should be appreciated that the process of translating U.S. news items into French is an expensive burden, which is born mostly by the French-language newspapers themselves. Since this translation problem appeared to constrain the flow of all U.S. news to French-language newspapers, with the exception of sports news, it is possible that sports in this sense can be viewed as a universal language. Why other types of entertainment did not fall into this same category was difficult to surmise, except perhaps that Montreal has long been the home of many professional sports teams that compete with their U.S. counterparts. Francophone reporters who accompany these teams and report directly to their newspapers by-pass the language problem. In addition, readers of these newspapers are understandably interested in reports of the U.S. professional sports teams that compete in the same league as their local teams. Two other similarities are worth noting. The two Alberta newspapers resembled each other closely, with the lowest percentages of sports news —a little over half the national average—and a relatively high percentage of news about the social aspects of life. The Winnipeg Free Press and the Fredericton Gleaner were also similar, differing from the general pattern in having an extremely low percentage of political and economic news items and an exceptionally high percentage of human interest items—more than twice the national average.

116

Places in the News

Figure 20. Cluster analysis dendrogram by content category.

Figure 21. Cluster analysis dendrogram by source region.

CONCLUSION As McNaught (1940) first suggested, three factors continue to account for the high percentage of news from the United States in Canadian newspapers: (1) Canadas social and economic structure is closely related to that of the United States; (2) U.S. news almost falls within the category of domestic news in Canada; and (3) obtaining U.S. news is relatively inexpensive.

Chapter Six

117

Although the influence and dominance of the United States are felt throughout the world, in few countries are they as strong as in Canada. Besides sharing the world s longest undefended border, as well as a common language and cultural heritage, Canada and the United States are inexorably tied together in the economic realm. In 1973, the year of the data for this study, 70.0% of Canadian imports came from the United States (in comparison with 4.3% from the United Kingdom and 6.3% from the European Economic Community); as well, 67.4% of Canadas exports went to the United States (in comparison with the 6.3% to the U.K. and 6.2% to the EEC) (Canada Yearbook, 1977). In addition, many Canadian corporations are wholly or partially owned subsidiaries of U.S. ones, and mutual tourism helps to spread U.S. influence throughout most of Canada (see Ray, 1967; Safarían, 1973). Concern is also sometimes expressed that the Canadian public is not being offered the right kind of news, that there is too much sensationalism and too little hard news and background interpretation. Although this study dealt only with news origin and content categories, and not the manner in which the news was handled or presented, it does suggest that, at least with regard to U.S. news, Canadian newspapers print a fair mix of various types of news. There was also considerable consistency among newspapers with respect to the total percentage of U.S. news carried as well as the distribution of various news categories, the major exception being the great emphasis of the French-language newspapers on sports. Sports, political and economic, and human interest items are found to dominate the U.S. news; these are the same categories that tend to dominate many international news flows (see Budd, 1964; International Press Institute, 1953; Markham, 1961). The flow of news from source to printed page is controlled by a series of gatekeepers, through decisions made at various points in the process of gathering, transmitting, and publishing news. At the source, much of the news does indeed come from "fountains of interesting facts." Prominent individuals might also be considered fountains of information. The majority of the U.S. news comes from areas where newsworthy events occur or are likely to occur, such as Washington, D.C., and areas with large populations, notably New York City. Since different categories of events occur in different areas, the content category of news printed from various areas is a function of what takes place there: for example, Washington, D.C. produces primarily political and economic news, while New York City is

118

a major source of news about business and entertainment. At the receiving end of the transmission lines, specific papers select the kinds of news their editors believe will interest readers. Papers tend to carry news from areas of special interest to their readers: for example, from cities and states just across the border, as well as from favourite vacation and retirement spots. Without apologizing for, or attempting to justify, what newspapers print, too often the fact that they are businesses is overlooked; the reality is that they must continue to make money in order to stay in business. Consequently, as was pointed out above, they attempt to strike a balance between publishing what they ought to print and what sells. For these reasons we anticipate that the United States will continue to be the major foreign "news fountain" for Canadian newspapers. NOTES 1. MacLean &c Pinna (1958) found that news interest declined with distance, whereas Hart (1963), Hicks & Gordon (1974), and Kariel & Rosenvall (1978) found no relation between distance and the amount of news. The differences in the findings are likely related to the distance used; the former studies used relatively short distances, which could almost be considered "local," whereas the latter studies used considerably longer or "non-local" distances. 2. The number of news items was the dependent variable and the 1970 population size was the independent variable. Population data were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1973). For the District of Columbia, the population size of the District was used, rather than that for the S.M.S.A. The regression equation is loglO Y = -3.3151 + 0.8201 loglO X.

Chapter Seven SPATIAL PATTERN OF WORLD EVENTS IN CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS

I

nformation is essential in creating images and cognitive maps that people form of foreign places. As the American journalist Howard K. Smith sagaciously observed, "after formal schooling is over for the average citizen, at least four-fifths of what he continues to learn about his community, about his state and city, and about his nation and the world, comes filtered through the observations of the journalist" (as cited in Fang, 1972, p. 15). Even though television is today the most popular news medium, newspapers continue to provide both breadth and depth of coverage (Pool, 1983). Since knowledge of other countries affects understanding of ones own, a constant and balanced flow of information from other parts of the world is essential. More than 200 studies of international news flows have been carried out, virtually none of them dealing with Canadian newspapers, so it is manifestly impossible to review them here. Two of the early studies provided the impetus for others. The International Press Institutes The flow of the news (1953) focused on how international news was gathered and distributed among nations. It found that news from large, élite nations was favoured over that from smaller countries, and that hard news of politics and foreign relations exceeded cultural and human news items. UNESCO's How nations see each other (1954) provided an early descriptive study of how news of one country was presented in the newspapers of other nations. Gerbner and Marvanyis study (1977) deserves special mention, not only for its wide scope, covering sixty daily newspapers from nine counThis chapter was originally published in Proceedings, 25th International Geographical Congress, Paris, France, August, 1984.

120

Places in the News

tries in the capitalist, socialist, and third worlds, but also for its extensive bibliographic contribution. The authors concluded that the countries of Western Europe are the best represented in the newspapers they studied, but that Western newspapers showed little interest in news from Socialist countries. News from the Soviet Union received more attention in third world countries than in other regions, while news from Africa, Australia and Oceania, China, Mongolia, and North Korea was the least represented in newspapers around the world. Our study focuses on the amount and type of international news published by the major Canadian daily newspapers, which circulate to over one-half of the population. It builds upon numerous earlier studies of the origin, amount, and type of foreign news contained in various countries' newspapers, both describing the news flows, and grouping newspapers according to region of news origin and content category. METHODOLOGY

This study is an extension into the foreign news arena of the research described in earlier chapters of the present volume. Twenty-one newspapers published in 18 Canadian centres, including the Saint John Telegraph Journal and the Toronto Globe and Mail, were selected for analysis.The international news items provided the research data for this study. The United States news datelines were not considered, as they constitute nearly half of all foreign news items in all newspapers and overshadow other international news flows to such an extent as to render any analysis difficult to interpret. Moreover, in Canadian newspapers U.S. news is often selected and displayed more like domestic than foreign news (Kariel and Rosenvall, 1983b). During the data collection process datelines were aggregated areally by major world regions and countries. In order to make presentation of the findings more manageable, the world was divided into the 11 regions adopted by de Blij (1971). News items were placed into one of 12 content categories based on the research of Hart (1963), Bruce (1966), and Holsti (1969) (Table 29). Since the categories are not entirely mutually exclusive, and since many longer articles qualify for inclusion under several headings, subjective judgments were sometimes necessary. Although most items were easy to classify, in order to achieve consistency coders conferred about application of the classification before commencing the data collection.

Table 29. International news flows by content category and region of origin.1

Region of news origin

1.

International Datelines Number Percent

Europe

7523

56.1 2

34. 2a 7.3 2.7 1.0 0.9 45. ¿* 56.7 44.3 36.6 45.8

2.

Soviet I'nion

626

4.7

35.3

3.

Middle America and Caribbean

482

3.6

31. 1

4.

South America

722

5.4

47.8

2.9 3.9

1.8

15.5 2.7

Africa

627

4.7

52.8

6.

North Africa and Southwest Asia

957

7.1

India and its perimeter7. 304

2.3

48.7

China and its sphere8.

197

1.5

50.2

8.4

1105

8.2

73.3

10.

Japan and Korea

439

3.3

38.9

II.

Australia. New Zealand and Pacific Islands

420

3.1

36.9

2.6

Excluding the United States of America

2 The

0.9

3.3

1.7

4.7 7.2

9.8

2.0

5.5

4.3

3.8

11.2 1.5

0.1

0.3

4.1

0.9

7.7

0.5

1.2

1.2

0.7 2.0

0.7 0.6

3.8

3.6 0.6

1.2 7.6

1.9

4.3

10.7

1.8 2.5

2.4

15.7

1.7 2.2

2.5 8.9

1.5

12.2 2.5

7.1

7.1

4.8 9.9

0.3

3.6

17.3 1.2 2.8

14.1 0.7 6.6 1.3 12.2 3.6 2.4

7.6

'2.0

2.4

2.8 9.8

2.8

5.6

0.5 0.8

0.5 0.6

4.8

4.8 2.5

0.4

0.9

14.1

4.9 8.8

2.5

7.0

5.9

13.3 0.0

1.3

7.0

0.7

2.0

0.8

2.7

12.5 I.I

1.6

0.4

1.5

4.9

4.3 13.2 13.2

4.6 3.4

0.4

1.2

26

13.1 1.2 3.2

0.0 3.9

13.4

0.5

0.7

0.5 4.2

1.4 0.6

6.1 5.7

5.0

7.1

1.0

0.7

3.2

8.3

68.6 8.0

6.5 0.8

6.4

0.2

0.8

2.3 3.3

2.8

0.5

8.8

2.4 3.6

1.0

1.8

5.9

10.9

4.9

2.4

3.9

1.2

2.2

77.6 3.3

7.9

1.0

0.8

1.1

7.3 3.6

1.2 1.5

3.4

2.7

5.5 1.3

0.5

3.6

3.9

2.7

42.1

4.6

0.5 2.9

3.0

3.3

6.4

57.9

0.2

17.8

3.3

9.2

67.9

2.2 1.2

6.1

0.8

0.8

9.6

2.1

5.5

3.9

0.5

1.8

7.6

1.4

1.3

0.8

2.0

1.0 2.8

4.4

5.3 6.9

2.5

14.4

AVERAGE

2.5

8.2

1.8

SPi'Che.-ist Asia

1.4

24.8

1.5

2.8

6.8

0.8

21.4

1.0

0.5

15.6 5.1 73.1 76.7

26.4

2.8

7.8

10.3

8.2

2.6

9.

7.5

48.3 14.1

0.8

1.9 9.9

3.3

I I .3

1.0

4.2

9.5

0.6

3.3

6.2

5.1

66.3

1.5

7.5

5.9

0.3

3.9

12.7 6.1

5.

1.1

2.1

2.4

3.4

14.5

number of datelines for each region as a percentage of total number of datelines from all regions.

The number of datelines for each news content category as a percentage or the cocal number of datelines originating in each region. The number of datelines for each region as a percentage of the total number of datelines in each content category.

122

Places in the News

OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS FLOWS

Overall, Europe provided over one-half (56.1%) of the total foreign news in the newspapers analyzed (Table 29). In distant second and third position are two political hot spots that for decades, and especially during the time period investigated, have provided a steady news flow: Southeast Asia (8.2%) and the region of North Africa and South West Asia (the Middle East) (7.1%). With the exception of China, none of the world regions provided an unexpected news flow pattern. China, with some 25% of the worlds population, surprisingly was the source of only 1.5% of the news. With respect to content, political and economic news items dominated, comprising 42.1% of the total international news printed in all newspapers (Table 31). This high percentage of political news is consistent with other studies of news flows (Kariel and Rosen vail, 1978). Political and economic news also dominated in each individual region, with the higher percentages being found for Southeast Asia (73.3%) and the Middle East (66.3%) (Table 29). Human interest news occupied second position (14.3%) and sports news third (12.0%). Human interest items were substantial (7.6 to 17.8%) in all regions, and sports fluctuated greatly from a high of 24.8% of all items from the Soviet Union to a low of 9.5% of the items from China. This contrast between U.S.S.R. and China was not evident, however, in other content categories. For example, the news from both the U.S.S.R. and China downplays catastrophes (0.3 and 0.5% respectively), law and order (2.9 and 2.5%), and accidents (1.1 and 2.0%), when compared to other world regions. In business news, Japan and Korea led the way with 14.1% of all items falling in this category, followed by Europe with 5.1%. Nevertheless, Europe, because of its greater overall news flow, was the source of more business items (76.7% of all international business news) than were Japan and Korea. In science, medicine, and technology, the U.S.S.R. led, with 14.1% of the items. Europe not only led in overall news but also dominated every news content category. Political and economic news ranked first (34.2%) and human interest (17.8%) and sports (15.6%) were in second and third position. In contrast, for the U.S.S.R. sports (24.8%) and science, medicine, and technology (14.1%) placed second and third. Third world regions including Africa, India, China, and Southeast Asia showed a similar news pattern: political and economic news occupied

Table 30. World region-to-newspaper flows: The number of datelines for each region as a percentage of the total international datelines in each newspaper.1 Region of Origin

Newspaper

International Datelines Number Percent 16. 92 19.4

53.1 48.3

917 732

18.8 15.8

725

14.5

Winnipeg Free-Press

1013

Ont.

Windsor Star London Free-Press Hamilton Spectator Toronto Dally Star Toronto Globe and Mail Ottawa Journal Ottawa Le Droit

P.Q.

B.C.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver Sun

544 ||3I

5.9 4.2

2.2 3.0

9.0 5.7

Alta.

Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal

Sask.

Regina Leader-Post

57.2 50.4

4.6 5.6

2.7 4.0

4.9 4.9

55.9

4.5

3.9

5.9

Man.

20.4

56.1

4.3

2.4

5.2

408 599 672 795 633 571 533

10.6 13.1 14.6 16. i 14.7 13.8 16.2

56.6 65.6 56.2 58.2 53.4 56.6 66.6

6.4 4.0 5.4 4.6 4.7 4.5 3.2

4.4 3.0 5.4 3.8 2.7 3.8 3.2

Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le Soleil

504 722 750

13.6 17.8 17.8

62.3 55.0 59.1

3.6 3.9 4.3

N.B.

Fredericton Gleaner Saint John Telegraph Journal

365 461

13.3 16.4

58.4 54.7

4.1 4.8

N. S.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

3.1 4.8

6.8 9.3

2.8 3.1

0.9 1.5

7.3 11.5

2.8 5.5

6.1 3.2

5.2 5.5

6.5 7.5

5.0

6.8

2.0 2.6

».I 1.4

2.3

1.5

8.2 10.7

3.6 3.5

3.9 4.1

7.6

3.4

4.7

6.5

3.3

3.2

2.0

7.4

3.4

4.7

3.9 3.2 .9 .8 .1 .5 .9

4.4 4.3 5.4 3.6 6.2 5.6 2.4

6.6 6.0 6.1 7.7 8.4 5.6 6.2

2.7 1.8 2.5 1.9 1.9 2.6 0.7

1.2 0.7 0.7 1.3 2.8 2.1 2.2

7.1 8.2 7.0 7.7 9.3 9.6 9.0

3.7 2.5 4.0 3.0 3.6 3.1 0.9

2.9 0.7 2.4 2.4 2.8 1.7 0.6

3.6 4.7 3.7

7.1 5.4 6.1

2.8 5.4 4.7

6.5 6.5 9.3

0.8 2.3 1.5

0.6 0.8 1.3

8.5 6.8 6.7

2.2 4.1 2.3

2.0 5.0 1.1

3.8 3.0

4.9 5.4

3.6 4.3

6.6 8.2

1.1 3.5

1.1 1.9

1 1 .0 8.2

2.2 2.8

3.3 3.0

398

10.6

56.0

5.8

4.8

5.3

4.5

5.5

1.5

2.0

10.0

2.3

2.3

P.E.I. Charlottetown Guardian

341

12.7

51.6

5.0

4.1

5.6

5.3

7.0

3.8

2.3

7.0

5.0

3.2

Nfld.

588

14.0

AVERAGE

St. John's Evening Telegram

54.8

5.9

5.3

6.1

5.8

7.5

1.9

1.7

3.6

2.0

5.4

56.1

4.7

3.6

5.4

4.7

7.1

2.3

1.5

8.2

3.3

3.1

9 Excluding the United States of America. The number of international datelines in each newspaper as a percentage of the total number of news items in each newspaper.

124

_

Places in the News

first place, with social aspects of life second and human interest third. The regions of the Western world and the Soviet Bloc dominated the sports, business, science, medicine and technology, and law and order categories, while the Middle and South American regions tended to occupy a position halfway between the Western and third world regions. NEWS FLOWS TO NEWSPAPERS BY REGIONS AND COUNTRIES

The flow of international news to Canadian newspapers was analyzed in terms of the percentage of news from individual countries and regions published by each newspaper. Since these percentages show the relative importance of the various countries and regions, it is necessary to bear in mind that the following comparisons and observations are based on these relative percentage figures and not on the actual number of datelines. The dateline data revealed additional information; an example is that of the Vancouver Sun, which, although it contained the lowest percentage of items from Europe of all the newspapers studied, had a larger number of actual datelines from Europe than any other newspaper except the Winnipeg Free Press. Similarly, because the Vancouver Sun had the largest number of total international datelines, it often gave greater actual news coverage to the various world regions than other newspapers that may have had a much lower actual number of datelines, but which on a percentage basis may have given a proportionately higher coverage to a particular region. Europe. For each newspaper Europe was always the region supplying the largest proportion of international datelines (Table 30). In each newspaper this figure was 48% or higher. Within Europe another pattern was also evident: with the exception of the French-language newspapers, at least 40% of the European datelines originated in the United Kingdom. In Ottawa's Le Droit and Quebecs Le Soleil the largest percentage of European news originated in France, while in Montreal s La Presse the amount from the United Kingdom and France was almost equal. In the English-language newspapers news from France always placed second, with between 9 and 14% of the European datelines. The majority of the news was political and economic, and again most of this came primarily from the United Kingdom and then from France, West Germany, and Italy, in that order. The news from the United Kingdom was to a large extent concerned with the situation in Northern Ireland. During the period of study, in

Table 31. International news by content category and newspaper of destination: The number of datelines for each news content category as a percentage of the total international datelines in each newspaper.1 News Content Category

Newspaper

International Datelines

B.C.

Victoria Colonist Vancouver"Suñ

544 1131

36.6 54.5

10.3 6.5

3.3 5.8

2.8 I.I

I.I 0.6

2.9 3.1

10.7 9.3

0.7 4.5

I.I 0.5

8.5 4.7

Alta.

Calgary Herald Edmonton Journal

917 732

38.4 42.2

7.3 8.3

2.6 5.3

2.5 1.6

I.I 2.2

3.4 2.5

7.4 6.8

3.6 4.8

0.5 0.3

11.8 13.7

2.0 20.0 I.I 8.1 3.7 2.9

17.7 9.4

1.9

18.1

Sask.

Regina Leader-Post

725

38,5

6.6

2.9

1.2

1.0

2.9

11.0

5.1

0.8

9.9

Man.

Winnipeg Free Press

1013

32.5

8.5

1.7

1.6

2.2

3.1

11.6

1.1

0.6

14.2

Windsor Star

408

39.7

4.7

3.9

1.7

0.5

4.2

15.7

2.0

0.5

6.9

3.2

17.2

Toron o Daily Star Toron o Globe and Mail Ottaw Journal Ottaw Le Droit

795 633 571 533

40.9 51.3 35.4 46.7

7.9 8.7 6.8 2.4

4.0 2.8 2.6 1.1

2.0 .4 .2 0.6

0.9 0.9 1.0 0.0

1.6 1.7 2.1 0.9

9.4 18.3 9.8 11.3

4.4 1.9 1.4 7.5

0.4 0.3 0.5 0.2

6.5 5.8 20.7 7.3

2.5 1.7 0.7 9.6

19.4 4.9 17.7 12.4

P.Q.

Montreal La Presse Montreal Star Quebec Le~SOTeil

504 722 750

46.2 31.6 55.9

2.6 11.8 2.7

2.6 3.3 2.1

.4 .2 .1

0.4 2.1 0.0

2.0 1.8 2.3

26.4 12.6 16.0

3.6 7.1 6.8

0.2 0.8 0.1

4.4 12.6 3.3

2,6 1.2 4.7

7.7 13.8 5.1

N.B.

Fredericton Gleaner Saint John Telegraph Journal

365 461

24.9 54.9

13.4 1.1 5.9 4.3

1.4 3.2

2.5 0.0

I.I 2.2

14.8 10.6

1.4 0.2

2.2 0.6

7.4 3.7

N.S.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

Ont.

2.0 21.0

Lonon Free Press 599 35.1 7.3 3.8 0.7 0.5 2.7 9.7 10.7 0.7 9.0 2.3 17.5 Hamil on Spectator 672 39.1 9.7 4.9 0.7 1.3 3.4 12.3 3.6 1.3 6.7 2.2 14.6

1.6 28.2 0.6 13.7

398

46.7

5.0

3.0

1.5

1.8

1.3

18.3

2.3

1.0

10.5

P.E.I. Charlottetown Guardian

341

48.7

5.9

5.6

1.5

1.2

3.8

7.0

0.0

0.9

5.3

Nfld.

588

41.0

8.0

3.4

2.0

1.0

2.0

12.2

1.7

0.5

9.2

1.5 17.3

42.1

7.3

3.3

1.5

1.1

2.5

11.9

3.6

0.6

9.0

2.4 14.6

St. John's Evening Telegram

AVERAGE2 1. Excluding the United States of America. 2. Differences from Table 29 are due to rounding.

0.7

7.8

0.6 19.6

126

Placesjw the News

addition to the general tensions and troubles in Ulster that were reported, there was a referendum in Northern Ireland to determine whether the population wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. Other widely reported stories were the "Cod War" with Iceland, a dock strike, and the impact of the United Kingdoms joining the European Economic Community along with Ireland and Denmark. The main story emanating from France, however, was the Vietnam cease-fire. Other major stories included the riot that erupted in Paris over the visit of Golda Meir, the removal of the body of Marshal Petain from its grave and its subsequent recovery, and several air crashes, one into a mountain near Clermont-Ferrand, and another involving a mid-air collision between two Spanish airliners. The only other countries with a fairly consistent representation were Italy and Germany, which were always either third or fourth in overall European coverage except in the Victoria Colonist and the Windsor Star. A number of important stories originated in West Germany, notably the Munich Olympics, and the terrorist killing of Israeli athletes there, and the subsequent release of the terrorists following the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner over Turkey. News items also included the dissolution of the German government, the calling of new elections, and the return of Willy Brandt to power. Coverage of Italian news gave less importance to political events, and more to law and crimes, accidents, consumer affairs, social aspects of life, and entertainment. The only countries for which political and economic news was not of primary importance were Czechoslovakia, West Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Sweden; in these countries sports coverage came first. In West Germany there was the Munich Olympics; in Iceland the chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. The small countries of Europe, such as Liechtenstein, San Marino, Malta, and Luxembourg, generally received minimal coverage. The countries of Eastern Europe also supplied relatively few datelines, as did those of Scandinavia. Soviet Union. The relative coverage given to news from the Soviet Union was fairly consistent. The Victoria Colonist and newspapers in the Maritimes gave the highest coverage, while Ottawas Le Droit and Montreal's Le Presse published relatively small amounts of news. Typically, the largest category was political and economic; for instance, many items

Chapter Seven

127

dealt with Russian views and commentaries on the Vietnam peace talks. Sports were also important, including the coverage of the CanadaU.S.S.R. hockey matches, followed by science, medicine, and technology. Southeast Asia. After Europe, Southeast Asia was usually the region with the greatest number and percentage of datelines. In most world regions one country stood out as the main source of news items for that region. In Southeast Asia, understandably, because of the war in Vietnam and its aftermath, political and economic news items dominated in all countries, except Malaysia and Indonesia, which were outside the sphere ofthat war. The Philippines generally ranked second; many stories covered the political unrest associated with the Marcos government, and included the stabbing of his wife Imelda. The Philippines also suffered from several catastrophes, mainly heavy rains and subsequent flooding. The war in Southeast Asia, however, led to fairly consistent coverage of news items from North Vietnam (the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong), Cambodia (the siege and bombing of Phnom Penh to break the communist blockade, and the resignation of the Lon Nol cabinet), and Thailand. Hong Kong also received fairly consistent coverage, often acting as a dateline for news originating within China, as did Indonesia, but the majority of news items were of the human interest type. North Africa and South West Asia. North Africa and South West Asia, another region where there was a major conflict, usually ranked third as a source of international datelines. Israel stood out as the primary source, usually between 20 and 60% of the total news from the region; political and economic stories understandably were once again overwhelmingly important. From Israel there were the ongoing reports of problems with neighbouring countries, such as the clashes along the Lebanese border. More spectacular, however, was the uncovering of a Syrian spy ring within Israel, and the shooting down by Israel of a Libyan civilian airliner over the Sinai desert. News from Egypt and Lebanon usually ranked second and third. From Egypt came news of a proposed merger with Libya to unite their governments. Subsequently there was news of the breakdown of these unity talks and a mass march by Libyans toward Egypt. Apart from the border clashes with Israel, the news from Lebanon reported conflicts between the Lebanese army and Palestinian guerrillas within the country.

128

Places in the News

There was also consistent coverage of news from Cyprus (where the bishops demanded that Archbishop Makarios should be unfrocked because he held public office), Turkey (where both law and crime and accidents received relatively high coverage), and Iran and Libya. There was consistently minimal coverage of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf States and the remaining North African countries. The news that did appear fell mainly under the headings of human interest and social aspects of life. South America. Both South America and Africa enjoyed generally "higher than average" rankings. As always, political and economic news provided the majority of datelines. In South America, law and crime news occupied the next most important category, whereas in Africa there were relatively more stories related to social aspects of life and human interest news. Within South America, Argentina was the most common source of datelines. The news covered the return to power of the Peronists under Dr. Hector Campora in an election, the subsequent return of Perón to the country, and left-wing terrorism associated with these political developments. There was also the discovery of survivors from a plane crash in the Andes involving a Uruguayan rugby team, a story that subsequently led to very wide coverage. After Argentina, Brazil and Chile usually ranked second and third as news sources. In Brazil there was an emphasis on political and economic and human interest stories. Accidents and catastrophes, such as flooding in central Brazil, also received wide coverage. In Chile, the emphasis was on politics and economics, as newspapers followed the story of Allende, from a strike by truck drivers that escalated his political and economic problems, to the armed forces' demonstration of their loyalty to him by putting down a revolution. Other countries with fairly consistent representation were Peru and Venezuela, where human interest stories and accidents were relatively well represented in most newspapers. Africa. When examining the news coverage of Africa, a different type of situation emerged. Although most news stories from South Africa, the country with the greatest number of datelines, were of a political and economic nature, they only slightly exceeded the number for social aspects of life, 23.6 and 21.8% respectively. There was no major political story dominating events in South Africa during this period, only news of the ongo-

Chapter Seven

129

ing political situation and racial problems. After South Africa, Uganda usually had the greatest percentage of datelines. The major news event was the consolidation of power by Idi Amin and the expulsion of Asians from that country. Kenya, Nigeria, and Rhodesia also received fairly consistent coverage. Some Kenya datelines consisted of news from Uganda. Nigeria reported the crash of a plane carrying pilgrims from Mecca. The closing of the Zambian border by Rhodesia also received attention. Coverage of the other African countries was very spotty and consisted primarily of human interest or social aspects of life news. China and its sphere. Of the remaining regions, all of which rank "below average" in news coverage, China was usually either last or next to last. Very little catastrophe news came from this region. Most of the datelines were from Mainland China (with the exception of the London Free Press), and most stories fell into the political and economics category. The major news story was the summit meetings between China and Japan, when these countries signed an accord to end the technical state of war that had existed between them for over sixty years. Taiwan received some coverage, particularly of political and economic news, but Mongolia received minimal coverage, mostly in the social aspects of life category. India and its perimeter. India and its perimeter generally received only slightly higher coverage than China. Normally 50% of that came from India, with Pakistan ranking second and Bangladesh third. The remaining countries received very little coverage. The main story from this region, with datelines from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, was the aftermath of the war between India and Pakistan, the repatriation of civilians and prisoners of war, and the withdrawal of troops on both sides from the Kashmir truce line. There were also a number of news items relating to various catastrophes in Bangladesh. Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands. The South Pacific was another region with consistently very low coverage. The main categories represented were political and economic, human interest, law and crime, and sports. News from Australia usually ranked first (with the exception of the Toronto Star and the London Free Press), with New Zealand occupying second position. Oceania received consistent but extremely low

130

Places in the News

coverage. The main stories from this region were the announcements by the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand of their intention to remain in SEATO and ANZUS (a mutual security pact between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). Japan and Korea. Japan and Korea generally received relatively low coverage. Japan was always in first place with over 80% of the datelines. Although political and economic news was greater than that of any other category, business and finance news was also relatively high. Apart from the China-Japan accord there were no really significant stories. There were, however, a number of accident and human interest stories from Japan. In South Korea there was the imposition of martial law and a new constitution, but there was almost no coverage of North Korea. Middle America and the Caribbean. Within Middle America and the Caribbean political and economic items were of primary importance, but sports received proportionately high coverage, as did human interest and accidents news items. Mexico consistently placed first (with the exception of the Charlottetown Guardian and Ottawas Le Droií), with 25 to 30% of the datelines. Other consistent sources were the Bahamas, Bermuda (where the Governor, Sir Richard Shurples, and an aide were assassinated), Jamaica (where sports stories were important), and Nicaragua (where the aftermath of an earthquake was reported). The whole region generally received very low coverage, and several countries and many of the small islands received very little or no mention. NEWSPAPER GROUPINGS

It is obvious that on any given day the same top international news stories will appear in virtually all newspapers across the country, but the additional ones printed differ considerably. Even though all newspapers draw upon a similar pool of international news items, editors exert a powerful influence upon the final selection. While they all employ the same general criteria, personal preferences and knowledge about an area also come into play. In order to sort out the commonalities and differences that exist among Canadas major newspapers with regard to regions of news origin as well as content of news items published, cluster analysis, a procedure for analyzing multi-variate data, was employed as discussed by Davis (1973).

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When newspapers were grouped according to the relative proportions of news from the eleven regions of news origin, the most noteworthy phenomenon was the similarity among them (Figure 22). Most similar are the Hamilton Spectator and Windsor Star» closely followed by the Calgary Herald» Regina Leader-Post &nd Winnipeg Free Press, from a subgroup that combines with all other newspapers only at the final grouping. Their commonality stems from having the highest percentage of European news, the lowest from Indian and its perimeter, and low percentages from Japan and Korea as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands. The other French-language newspaper, Quebecs Le Soleil, is most similar to the Toronto Star. The two newspapers on opposite ends of the country, the St. Johns Evening Telegram and the Victoria Colonist, also form a subgroup based on their having the highest percentage of news from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands. This orientation may reflect the maritime viewpoint as well as the connection to the United Kingdom of these two cities' residents. It is important to note that all of these differences are relatively minor, and that the similarities are greater than the differences. It might be that Figure 22. Cluster analysis dendrogram by region.

132

Places in the News

in order to highlight differences, newspaper groupings would need to be based on all individual countries, but this would then be difficult to analyze and interpret. When newspapers were grouped by news content categories, the differences were somewhat greater than those for the regional grouping (Figure 23). The only other feature was the singularity of the Fredericton Gleaner. It differs from the other newspapers in having the lowest percentages of political and economic and accidents news, and the highest percentage of human interest news, all by wide margins. CONCLUSION

This study of the foreign news published in 21 Canadian newspapers over a one-year period has shown that it follows a pattern similar to that found in newspapers in other countries, in that news from certain world regions and certain categories of news are favoured. In the newspapers studied, news from Europe and political hot spots in other parts of the world provided over 70% of the news. In addition, political and economic news, along with human interest and sports news, accounted for nearly 70% of the content. Figure 23. Cluster analysis dendrogram by category.

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When newspapers were grouped according to regions of news origin, as well as when they were grouped by news content categories, a remarkable degree of similarity among all of the country's newspapers was observed. These skewed patterns of news origin and content, while not unusual by world standards, have been noted with some concern by the Canadian government-appointed Royal Commission on Newspapers (1981). The Commission has also expressed concern over the lack of Canadian correspondents abroad and the dependence of the Canadian Press on other news agencies for foreign news copy. It is not clear whether these patterns could be altered greatly even if newspaper editors were to strive for less uniformity in their foreign news coverage. The ultimate test of whether an information item is reported, selected by gatekeepers, and finally printed centres around the question, "Is it news?" Regardless of the debates that revolve around this perennial question, journalists, without explicitly answering it, seem to possess a remarkable unanimity as to what is newsworthy. Political and economic events and the actions of élite people and nations have always figured prominently in the determination of what should be considered news and what should not, and seem to be more important elements in the news equation than newspaper ownership patterns, geographical location, or whether the news is printed in English or French. Thus it would appear that newspaper readers will continue to have access to no more than minimal news from many regions of the world. If they do, indeed, receive nearly all of their news of other countries through newspapers and similar media, then their knowledge and understanding of global problems and situations must be affected by this informational balance.

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Chapter Eight FACTORS INFLUENCING INTERNATIONAL NEWS FLOWS /

nrthere is a wide disparity in the amount of news from various countries -L printed in the newspapers of other countries. This variation in the origin and destination of internal news flows has been looked at in a number of studies and can be confirmed readily by examining a set of daily newspapers. In order to understand these uneven patterns, researchers have proposed, at times rather nebulously, a number of political, economic, physical, and psychological factors. To date, however, no overview of this research has been presented, nor have the more persistently suggested factors been tested. The purpose of this study is to review what has been done and to test four of these factors in the flow of international news to Canadian daily newspapers. Two global studies carried out in the 1950s, the International Press Institutes The flow of the news (1953) and UNESCO's How nations see each other (1954) provided a descriptive look at the pattern of international news flows and appeared to have given an impetus to scholars to explain observed variations. Within ten years theoretical views were formulated to account for these patterns. Many of these early investigations were carried out by Scandinavian scholars. For example, Östgaard (1965) isolated a number of determining factors, grouping them under the headings "political" and "economic," and stressed that "the news media tend to reinforce or at least to uphold the divisions of the world between high status nations and low status nations" (p. 55). In an attempt to systematize the factors influencing news flows, Galtung and Ruge (1965), following the work of Östgaard, presented This chapter was originally published in journalism Quarterly, Vol. 61, 1984, pp. 509-516, 666.

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Places in the News

numerous theories and hypotheses. They proposed, for example, that "the more the event concerns élite nations, the more probable that it will become a news item" (p. 68). They then tested some of these hypotheses against news flow data from four Norwegian newspapers. Other Scandinavian scholars, such as Sande (1971) and Rosengren (1970; see also Rosengren & Rikardsson, 1974), attempted to test these factors and to refine the theoretical base of such studies. More recently, researchers in other parts of the world have also tested these factors against other news flow patterns (see Robinson & Sparkes, 1977; Hicks & Gordon, 1974; Hester, 1973). As a result of these studies, numerous factors have been discussed, of which the following are some of those more persistently suggested: distance, cultural affinity, population, trade, gross national product, and éliteness. FACTORS IN NEWS FLOWS_

Distance. The physical distance between the country of news origin and the country in which the items appear has been a tempting explanation of the volume of news flows. While MacLean and Pinna (1958) found that news interest declined with distance, Hicks and Gordon (1974, p. 104), in their study of foreign news in Israeli and U.S. newspapers, found that other factors—ethnocentrism and elitism—were more important. In their study of news flows within Canada, Kariel and Rosenvall (1983b) found that no substantial relation existed between news flow and physical distance; but when news flow from the United States to Canada was analyzed, some cross-border affinities were present. Our conclusion, based on these and other studies, is that differences in findings are probably related to the distance itself: when relatively short distances are involved, there is some relation to distance, in that news from these nearby sources could be considered local. When longer distances are involved, as in much international news flow, then distance is not an important variable. Cultural affinity. The importance of the influence of cultural affinity on international news flow has been observed by several researchers. Schramm (1949), for example, noted that the more a reader or editor identifies with a story, the greater the likelihood that it will be selected and the higher the possibility of it being sent along the news flow channels

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137

between countries. In his identification of news flow factors Östgaard (1965) stated, "things or issues with which those handling and those receiving the news are most familiar, finds its way through the news channels more easily than news concerning unfamiliar persons, things or issues." Also, "the greater the possibilities of identification with the news, the greater will be the news flow, and conversely,... the less the possibilities of identification, the more the news flow will be hampered" (p. 46). In a study of news printed in Canadian newspapers, Kariel and Rosenvall (1983a) found a significant relation between cultural affinity and the amount of news from the country with which there is the affinity, that is, French-language newspapers favour news from French-culture countries and English-language newspapers favour news from the United Kingdom. Population. Since most news is about people and their activities, more news items should be printed about nations with large populations. Rosengren and Rikardsson s study of Middle East news in Swedish newspapers found that "trade seems to be more important than population as a determinant of the news flow" (1974, p. 104). On the other hand, our study of news flows from the United States to Canadian newspapers showed that a positive relation does exist between news volume and the population size of the state of news origin (see Kariel & Rosenvall, 1983b, P. 54). Trade. The amount of trade between nations has been used as a factor to explain international news flow. Rosengren and Rickardsson, for example, incorporated Swedish import trade figures in their study and concluded that it was an important predictor (1974, p. 104). Likewise, Anderson, in a study of Copenhagen newspapers, found a correlation between amount of news and export-import figures (as cited in Rosengen & Rikardsson, 1974, p. 103, n. 7). Gross national product. Gross national product per capita (GNP/c) has been suggested as a factor accounting for international news flows, primarily because it relates closely to the economic and political importance of nations as well as their level of technological development. As Hicks and Gordon stated, "the world flow of foreign news deals chiefly with a group of highly developed countries which are dominant in world poli-

138

Pj^eiinjhe News

tics" (1974, p. 64). Both Östgaard (1965, p. 43) and Rosengren and Rickardsson (1974, p. 106) indicated that differential news flows relate to the relative wealth of nations. Éliteness. The notion of "éliteness," the relative standing of nations in the eyes of others, has provided an interesting concept for the understanding of international news flows. This amorphous but nonetheless apparently important concept has not been defined precisely. Galtung and Ruge (1965) mentioned the term. Sande (1971) operationally defined an élite nation as "one of the big powers" (p. 238). Schramm (1964) identifies élite nations as a "group of highly developed countries which are also dominant in world politics" (p. 61). Östgaard (1965) refers to "high status" and "low status" nations when ranking countries (p. 55). Rosengren and Rikardsson (1974) investigated surrogate measures, such as population size and foreign trade. Although at times "elitism" rather than "eliteness" has been the term used, we use the term "éliteness" in order to emphasize a state of being. This study pursues further the last four of these factors: population size, trade, GNP/C, and éliteness, but does not deal with physical distance or cultural affinity. Physical distance in international news flow does not seem to be significant except in border situations. Since cultural affinity has already been studied and shown to be important, and since it is a discrete variable, it was not included in this study, which comprises continuous variables. METHODOLOGY

This study extends our previous research on news in Canadian daily newspapers. A detailed discussion of the methodology and sampling procedure appears in the introduction to this volume. The present study uses 21 Canadian daily newspapers, including the Saint John Telegraph Journal and the Toronto Globe and Mail To determine the validity of the suggested variables, correlation analyses were carried out. The number of news items was the dependent variable. These were determined for each country by tabulating all the datelines of all 31 issues of these 21 newspapers. Since photographs are also news items but carry no datelines, they were assumed to originate in the country identified in the caption. Although United States news items are part of the international news flow, they were not included in the present analysis, since in our sample

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they constituted nearly half (49.8%) of all international news items in all newspapers, overshadowing and usurping the international news flow to such an extent as to render any analysis difficult to interpret. Moreover, as McNaught (1940) pointed out, U.S. news almost falls within the category of domestic news in Canadian newspapers. Data for the independent variables were selected so as to correspond as closely as possible to the time period of the news item data. Population data were obtained from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook. Data used for the amount of trade between Canada and the various countries was the total value of exports and imports given in the Canada Yearbook (1977). Gross national product per capita data was used as given by the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development. In order to obtain quantifiable judgments of each country's éliteness, all Canadian and American geographers who had indicated a topical proficiency in political geography in the Directory of the Association of American Geographers (1982) were surveyed. These judges were asked to rate each country's éliteness on a five-point scale. Of the 80 questionnaires sent, 34 usable ones were returned. Mean values of the respondents' evaluations were computed, in a procedure similar to the one used by Driver (1975). These ranged from the most élite, 3.909 for the United Kingdom and 3.818 for the U.S.S.R. and Japan to 0.152 for Montserrat and St. Vincent, the least élite. Data analyses. Simple correlation-regression analyses were carried out between each of the independent variables and the dependent variable to determine the relation between them, as well as to identify which countries do not fit the general pattern, that is, those from which either more or fewer news items were printed than would have been expected on the basis of the independent variable used. A difference greater than ±1.5 standard error units from the regression equation was used to identify these deviant observations (see Thomas, 1960). A multiple correlation analysis was then performed to determine the relative importance of each independent variable as well as the degree of relationship when all were used simultaneously. Logarithmic transformations were made where necessary to normalize the data. FINDINGS The correlation between population size and the number of news items

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Places in the News

Table 32. CORRELATION MATRIX BETWEEN ALL VARIABLES

Y News items X, Population X2Trade X 3 GNP/C X 4 Eliteness

Y

Xi

\2

Xa

\4

1.000

0.599

0.586

0.469

0.845

1.000

0.475

-0.085

-0.657

1.000

0.595

0.685

1.000

0.558 1.000

was 0.599 (r2=0.359), a statistically significant relation at a=0.05. Inspection of the scatter diagram (Figure 24) shows that more items were printed from some countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, South Vietnam, and Iceland, than would be warranted by their population size, and that from others, such as Mali, North Korea, Guinea, Honduras, and Albania, fewer news items were printed than would be expected considering their population. Several countries that were closely predicted, and may be of general interest, such as the U.S.S.R., West Germany, Egypt, India, Japan, China, and Brazil, are also identified in the figures. The correlation between the amount of trade and the number of news items was 0.586 (r2=0.343), a statistically significant relation. More news was printed from the United Kingdom, South Vietnam, Kampuchea, Laos, and some other countries than would be expected considering the amount of trade, and countries such as Honduras, Mauritius, Fiji, Martinique, and Albania had fewer news items appearing about them (Figure 25). The correlation between GNP/C and the number of news items was 0.469 (r2=0.220). Although this is a statistically significant relation, it accounts for less than a quarter of the variance. The United Kingdom, South Vietnam, India, and several other countries are those about which more news items were printed than would have been predicted on the basis of GNP/C, and fewer items were printed about some others, such as Qatar, Gabon, Honduras, and Fiji (Figure 26). The correlation between éliteness and the number of news items was 0.845 (r2=0.713). This relation is both statistically significant and sub-

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Figure 24. Relation between population and the number of news items.

stantively important, since over 70% of the variance was accounted for. Countries about which more news was printed than their eliteness rating warranted included South Vietnam, Iceland, Kampuchea, Uganda, and the islands of Oceania (Figure 27). Those about which fewer news items were printed include Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Monaco, and Honduras. When these four variables were considered simultaneously in a multiple correlation-regression analysis it is found that eliteness contributed most to the size of the multiple correlation coefficient (R=0.850, R2=0.723), and that there was no statistically significant difference between the correlation that took the other variables into account and the simple correlation (r=0.845, r2=0.713) that was found for eliteness alone. The additional variance accounted for by the inclusion of the other three variables is only 0.83%. DISCUSSION Two interesting conclusions can be reached as a result of these analyses. First, since the relations are all statistically significant, the factors thought to account for international news flows are valid. Since, however, the proportion of the explained variance is small in three instances, population 36%, trade 34%, and GNP/C 22%, their substantive importance appears

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Places in the News

Table 33.

Countries Under- and Overpredicted in Two or More Analyses on the Basis of Population Size, Gross National Product Per Capita, Value of Trade, and Eliteness Variable

Country

Population

Trade

GNP/C Eliteness

Vnderpredicted Bahamas Bermuda France Iceland Israel Italy Kampuchea Laos Nepal Papua New Guinea South Vietnam Uganda United Kingdom

x

X X

X X

X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

x

x

X

X

X X

X X

X

X

X

X

x x x x

X

X

X

X

x

Overpredicted Albania £1 Salvador Fiji Gabon Guinea Honduras Mauritius North Korea Qatar Republic of Congo Sierra Leone

X

X X X

X X

x x

X

X

X

x X X

X

X

X

x x

x X

to be minor, whereas that for éliteness is a significant 71%. Secondly, some countries are consistently under- or Overpredicted, that is, more or less news, respectively, is printed about them than would be expected on the basis of these variables (Table 33). This is partly due to the particular events that took place in these countries during the time period of the study: for example, the Boris Spassky-Bobby Fischer chess tournament in Iceland; the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (Kampuchea); the special interest of Canadians in their favourite vacation spots, Bermuda and the Bahamas; several important events that took place during the year in Italy, including the eruption of Mt. Etna, a crackdown on the Mafia, an election, an unusual number of art thefts, an apartment explosion in Rome, Titos visit, and an airplane hijacking by a former U.S. marine; the mystique of Nepal, and the flooding of several villages that left

143 Figure 25. Relation between amount of trade and the number of news items.

Figure 26. Relation between gross national product per capita and the number of news items.

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Places in the News

Figure 27. Relation between eliteness and the number of news items.

numerous dead; and of course the cultural affinity of Canadians with the United Kingdom and France. The fact that there is less news than expected from some countries is more difficult to account for except in terms of self-imposed news suppression, as in Albania, or the relegation of these countries to the extremely insignificant category, in that many editors may never have heard of them, as with Honduras (see Worthington, 1971, p. 57). The overwhelming importance of eliteness in the multiple correlation analysis reinforces the findings of the simple correlation analyses and raises a number of interesting questions. First, one can question the causal relation between eliteness and news flow, that is, is the eliteness rating of a given country affected by the amount of news from that country, or, conversely, is the news flow determined by the country's eliteness? Further, what is it that makes nations élite and why is this factor so important? Do élite nations really have as many newsworthy events as are printed about them, or do reporters, editors, and other gatekeepers perceive these countries accurately? How would the amount of international news in the newspapers of other countries correspond to the eliteness ratings by residents of those nations?

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CONCLUSIONS

The importance of cultural affinity has already been assessed, but determining its importance relative to éliteness is more difficult. Our data suggest (and we suspect) that, on the average, éliteness is considerably more important; only for those nations where there are particularly close cultural ties, as with the United Kingdom and France for Canada, does this variable greatly influence the amount of news that is printed. Special or unusual events, those that cannot be ignored in the world of economics, sports, politics, or the natural environment, tend to increase the number of news items from the country in which they take place. This is the result not only of the reporting of the events themselves, but in addition, since more reporters are on the scene, additional items are filed that might otherwise pass unnoticed. The rapid change that can occur in the number of news items being printed about a country can be exemplified readily by the current situation in El Salvador, the earlier conflicts in Afghanistan and the Falkland Islands, and, in relation to the time period of our study, Vietnam and Kampuchea. Careful consideration of our data shows that most events reported from the countries underpredicted in the éliteness analysis were of interest to or directly involved an élite nation. That is, if more news is reported from a country than its éliteness rating would warrant, one or more of the world s élite nations has a stake in or is involved in the event.

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Chapter Nine CANADIAN URBAN HIERARCHIES

I

nterrelationships among urban centres are often amorphous. They also vary with the nature of the centres, that is, whether they are primarily financial, manufacturing, administrative, or of some other type. In order to elucidate these interrelations among Canadian cities, and to derive an overall structure of a system of urban centres, Kariel and Welling (1977) used total news flows. Ottawa emerged at the top of the hierarchy. The ranking of centres thereafter was in roughly the following sequence: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Halifax, with remaining centres equal at the next level. In the earlier article it was pointed out that the use of specific news categories, such as entertainment, business and finance, law and crime, or consumer affairs, might well result in different structures. Further, it has frequently been found that when all-encompassing variables are disaggregated into their components, greater precision results and new structures may be revealed. Here, the original study is extended by disaggregating total news flows to determine the nature of the hierarchies resulting from an analysis by content category. The categories are those used in research on content analysis of news media and other social science data. Although not all the categories are self-evidently relevant, they are all retained to maintain the integrity of the total flows—to avoid the risk of discarding certain of them arbitrarily and to ensure that the findings are comparable with other studies. The results should help to determine whether, in fact, there is a single hierarchy or a variety of structures, and thus shed light on the degree to which Canada is highly centralized. It assesses the validity of Kerrs (1970) conclusion that Toronto and Montreal, and to a lesser extent This chapter was originally published in The Canadian Geographer, Vol. 28, 1984, pp. 383-390.

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Places in the News

Vancouver and Calgary, are the country's major financial centres. McCanns (1982) more recent statements that Canada's economic strength is in the domain of the urban-industrial core of Ontario and Quebec, and that Toronto is the overall leader, far outdistancing Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg, can also be illuminated. Similarly, these findings augment those on the dominance of major metropolitan centres in Canada contained in studies by Maxwell et al. (1972), Li et al. (1978), and Semple and Smith (1981), which focused on economic activities only. DATA BASE^ AND METHOD

For consistency and comparability, the information flow data and method used in the previous studies are repeated here. The data base consists of datelines of news items gathered from a sample of 19 newspapers in 17 selected major Canadian centres (Table 3). The entire issue for each day, for every newspaper, for a random sample of 31 publishing days from a year-long time period was scrutinized. Each news item was placed into 1 of 12 content categories (Table 34) used in analyzing news media and other social science data (Hart, 1966; Bruce, 1966; Holsti, 1969). Graph theory (Nystuen & Dacey, 1961; Davies & Lewis, 1970; Clayton, 1974; Holmes, 1974) was used to analyze the information flows. Although the differences in concept and manipulation between the preTable 34. News content by category. Category

News content

Number of items

Political and economic

Politics, general economy, trade, treaties, elections, legislation, and diplomatic relations

6,615

Law and crime

Crimes, preventative measures, civil suits, prisons, and police forces

1,037

Accidents

Man-caused accidents involving people directly or indirectly

Catastrophes

Natural occurrences involving the environment, such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and avalanches

Ecology and resources

Environmental problems and natural resources, with impact rather than the economy as the main thrust

216

Science, medicine. and technology

Science, medicine, and technology; including discoveries, developments, and applications

384

Sports

Sports

1,940

Business and financial

Business and financial

2,077

Consumer affairs

Cost of living, price controls, 'rip-offs,' and consumer education

427

Social aspects of life

Holiday travel, religion, fashion, women's liberation, modern living. education, and sex revolution

884

Entertainment and the arts

Arts, literature, films, music, and plays

310

Human interest

Deaths, engagements, weddings, suicides, amusing incidents, and activities of prominent public figures

847

155 10

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149

sent data set and those used in other studies are discussed in the previous article, it seems appropriate to restate the changes that were made. First, because datelines are origins of flows instead of destinations, the flow matrices are transposed, placing cities of origin across the columns and cities of destination down rows. Importance is therefore expressed in terms of influence rather than attraction. Second, the linkages are presented aspatially instead of spatially, so as to distinguish more readily the hierarchical structure, observe the direction of flows, and make comparisons among analyses. Third, both the dominant, or largest, flows and some of the less dominant ones are used. The number of flows analyzed was deterFigure 28. Canadian urban hierarchies by news content category using the newspapers with the largest circulation in each city.

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Places in the News

Figure 28 (continued).

mined by finding the inflection point on the curve obtained by plotting the size of the flow against its rank for each city (newspaper) and each set of flows. Although this is a simplistic and subjective procedure, it indicates the relative importance or distinctiveness of the flows. In some cases (e.g.,

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Figure 28 (continued).

consumer affairs), only the first flow is of distinct importance, possibly because of the small number of items; for most others, several flows are important. In order not to read more into the data than exists, only the most distinct flows for each news type are discussed.

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Places in the News

Figure 29. Changes in the urban hierarchies using French-language newspapers in Ottawa and Montreal.

Three separate analyses were carried out and their results compared. The first used the newspaper with the largest circulation in each of the 17 cities. These included a French-language newspaper in Montreal and an English-language one in Ottawa. In the second analysis, only English-language newspapers were considered for all 17 cities (i.e., the Montreal Star was substituted for La Presse), and in the third analysis Montreal and Ottawa were represented by their leading French-language newspapers. It was reasoned that any changes in the nodal structure associated with the

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Figure 30. Changes in the urban hierarchies using English-language newspapers in Ottawa and Montreal.

selection of different newspapers would affect not only the two cities involved, but the entire set of centres. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

As had been anticipated, in the analysis by individual content categories different hierarchies emerged, reflecting the functions of the dominant cities (Figure 28). Ottawa is dominant in four categories, in all of which the federal government plays a large role: political and economic; science,

154

_ Places in the News

medicine, and technology; consumer affairs; and ecology. Toronto is dominant in business and finance; entertainment and the arts; social aspects of life; and human interest. Montreal is first in sports; law and crime; and accidents. For all categories, either one or both of the other two centres is second in importance. The analysis for the remaining category, catastrophes, is extremely difficult to interpret; presumably this is a function of the small number of news items involved (10, or 0.07% of the total) and the virtually chance location of catastrophic events. For illustrative purposes, the urban hierarchies for those content categories for which Ottawa is most important are discussed. The other hierarchies can be interpreted in the same way. For political and economic news, four levels of dominance were analyzed. At the first-dominant level, Ottawa is connected to all centres as the major news source. Toronto is important at the second and third levels, while Montreal is a third-order node at the third and fourth levels. The science, medicine, and technology category also shows a clear dominance of Ottawa and Toronto, but Edmonton is a second-order node at the first level and a third-order one at the second level. Three regional linkages can be noted: Montreal-Quebec, Vancouver-Victoria, and Edmonton-Calgary. The hierarchy for consumer affairs is identical to that for political and economic news, with Ottawa at the apex. That for ecology and resources reveals Ottawa and Toronto as the major centres, with regional Vancouver-Victoria and Montreal-Quebec linkages at the first level of dominance. There were relatively few changes from the original hierarchies in the second and third analyses (Figures 29 and 30). Not including catastrophes, six categories remain the same, while there are relatively minor changes in the other five: political and economic; science, medicine, and technology; business and finance; entertainment and the arts; and law and crime. Even in these categories there are almost no changes in the first-dominant flows. Overall, the nodal structures are similar, although Toronto and, to a lesser extent, Ottawa make a few more connections with English-language newspapers and correspondingly fewer with French-language ones. The major implication of these findings is the confirmation of Canada as a highly centralized country, in which the three major heartland cities—Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal—are the seats of power and dominate all others in all aspects of human activities, not only in the economic

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Jj>5

sphere. The few intra-regional connections that are evident (for example, Halifax with other cities in the Atlantic provinces, and Winnipeg with other cities in the prairie provinces) are much less dominant and stable. Even intra-provincial links are few, with Montreal-Quebec, VancouverVictoria, and Toronto-Hamilton-London-Windsor showing up most frequently. Thus, aside from purely local news, newspaper readers throughout Canada are far more likely to find news emanating from the three major centres than from centres in their own province or region. This pattern of news origin undoubtedly tends to perpetuate Canadians' lack of knowledge of other parts of the country, to foster their perception that anything worthy of note is happening in a heartland dominated by Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, and to reinforce the centralization of power in the hands of a few.

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Chapter Ten WHO TALKS TO WHOM: ÉLITENESS AMONG THE WORLD'S NATIONS

I

nternational standing is always relative. To the proverbial "Man in the Street" in Toronto, New York, or Moscow its the clan in Parliament, the White House, or the Kremlin who are the aristocracy. And it is the study of who talks to whom among the world s nations that provides insights into which countries constitute the nobility of the international power structure. Those nations making critical decisions in the political arena and directing the course of history are those who are "more equal than others" at the United Nations or Geneva peace talks. There are cliques who talk only among themselves and then there are other entities sitting on the periphery, unimportant, with few listening to them, even if they do seem to have significant items to communicate. Upon closer examination we discern a pecking order, at least of sorts, with a few countries of high standing, a great many who believe they count but really don't appear to, and the vast majority located at the bottom of the heap. We could shrug it off with the observation, "Its the usual J-shaped distribution of human phenomena." But this is not enough, since it leaves us dissatisfied and demands that we ask, "What is happening here, and why?" and "What is the significance of this political geographic reality?" I respond somewhat emphatically: "But this is significant. Look, its not only among countries that there are isolates and centrists, leaders and followers, influentials, and the powerful decision makers of our 'Global Village.' It also applies to parts of countries. What about the relation between central Canada and the provinces? Do Nova Scotians feel left out? Is the North unimportant? Doesn't Ottawa feel that the country spins This chapter was originally published in The Canadian Geographer, Vol. 34, 1990, pp. 142-149.

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on its axis? Is it Edmonton vs. the rest of the province, as well as upstate vs. downstate in Illinois or almost any other state? And what about regions within the provinces? Some Fernie, B.C., residents wish to secede and join Alberta. Do they feel so alienated, so powerless, isolated, and on the periphery from the élite in Victoria and Vancouver that they really wish to join Alberta?" You respond, "Let s suggest that we recognize more formally the concept of éliteness for analyzing these uneven relationships. By exploring peoples perceptions of the relative standing of countries we could describe and analyze international relationships. We could even draw sociograms of countries, provinces, cities, and the like, the way Moreno (I960) and his co-workers did for small groups." This conceptualization is analogous to geographic regions, hierarchies, and systems (Coffey, 1988). This discourse leads us to the focus of this paper—to present a perceptual ranking of the éliteness of nations, to discuss who talks to whom among them, and to explore, though in sketchy form, the more general point: the importance of perception as well as semiotics in the study of geographic interrelationships. PREVIOUS STUDIES __ _ __ _

International news flows—news in one country's media from other countries—can be used to indicate the ranking of nations, because most of what a person learns about the world comes through the eyes of a journalist. Two global studies carried out in the 1950s, the International Press Institutes The flow of the news (1953) and UNESCO's How nations see each other (1954), provided a description of the pattern of international news flows and gave an impetus to subsequent studies that attempted to explain variations among them. Several scholars, many of whom were Scandinavian, have formulated theoretical views to account for these news-flow patterns. For example, Östgaard (1965) isolated a number of "political" and "economic" factors and stressed that "the news media tend to reinforce or at least to uphold the divisions of the world between high status nations and low status nations" (p. 55). In attempting to systematize the factors influencing news flows, Galtung and Ruge (1965), following the work of Östgaard, presented numerous theories and hypotheses. They proposed, for example, that "the more the event concerns élite nations, the more probable that it will become a news item" (p. 68). Even the news from Third World countries jumps in magnitude significantly if the news

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__15?

involves a country from another part of the world that enjoys a superior éliteness ranking. They also tested some of these hypotheses against news flow data from four Norwegian newspapers. Other scholars, such as Sande (1971) and Rosengren (1970), attempted to test these factors and to build on the theoretical base of such studies. More recently, researchers in other parts of the world have also tested these factors against other news-flow patterns (Hester, 1973; Hicks & Gordon, 1974; Robinson & Sparkes, 1977). As a result of these studies, the following factors have been discussed and persistently suggested: distance, cultural affinity, population, trade, gross national product, and éliteness. ÉLITENESS

Thus the concept of "éliteness," the relative standing of nations in the eyes of others, has been suggested frequently for understanding international linkages. Despite its apparent potential importance, it has not been defined precisely in the literature. Galtung and Ruge (1965), for example, only mentioned the term. Sande (1971) operationally defined an élite nation as "one of the big powers" (p. 138). Schramm (1964) identified élite nations as a "group of highly developed countries which are also dominant in world politics" (p. 61). Östgaard (1965) referred to "high status" and "low status" nations when ranking countries (p. 55). Rosengren and Rikardsson (1974) investigated surrogate measures for éliteness, such as population size and foreign trade. On the other hand, we (Kariel & Rosenvall, 1984, chapter eight of the present study) established an éliteness ranking by using a panel of experts consisting of geographers in Canada and the United States with a topical proficiency in political geography. We believed that they would provide a suitable expertise because of their specialized knowledge of world affairs. Without being provided with a definition, they were instructed to rank each country's éliteness on a five-point scale. There was a surprising degree of consensus in the ranking. We related the éliteness ranking to international news flows appearing in Canadian daily newspapers (Table 35). Basically, this was a sample of 21 Canadian daily newspapers published in 18 centres, consisting of the federal capital, all provincial capitals, and cities over 100,000 (which combined have about one-half of the Canadian population). A random sample of 31 publishing days during a one-year period, representing 10% of all days on which Canadian newspapers publish, was used (Kariel & Rosenvall, 1978). Éliteness

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Table 35. Éliteness rating and the number of embassies located in various countries. Country U.S.A. United Kingdom japan U.S.S.R West Germany France China Israel Canada Australia India Sweden Switzerland Brazil Mexico Netherlands Italy South Africa

Egypt

Taiwan South Korea Norway Belgium Iran Denmark last Germany Saudi Arabia Nigeria Austria Cuba Spain Poland Chile Indonesia Ireland Venezuela New Zealand Argenlin.i Hong Konp Turkey Vietnam Finland Czechoslovakia Greece Philipines Singapore Yugoslavia Lebanon

Eliteness

Embassies

* .93

.10 .10 .24 24 .21 .18 18 .18 .14 U .Oíi .0(> .03 .03 03 .91

91 94 2 "! 2 80 89 45 45 66 45 67 S9 67 6) 50 69 88 15 7) 13 24 48 80 42 5) 15 37

Country Kenya Algeria Hungary Portugal Columbia North Korea Libya Panama Thailand Kuwait Iraq Syria Pakistan Jordan Peru Ethiopia Morocco Iceland Ghana Malaysia Zaire Jamaica Romania Uruguay Cyprus Tanzania Ecuador Kampuchea Luxembourg Costo Rica Laos Bulgaria Bolivia Ivory Codsi Tunisia Sud.in 1 iberia Sn Lanka Uganda Zambia Dominican Republic Nicaragua Burma Guatemala Afghanistan El Salvador Somalia Honduras

Elitent-ss

85 .76 76 7(, .70 .67 .67 .64 .64 62 .61 58 .57 .55 .52 .48 .48 .47 .42 . 2 . 2 9 9 . 9 . 3 . 0 . 7 . 7 1 . Ç . 5

Embassies

3) 42 40 32 40 3 7 2

\ 1 1 ¿

09 .Oí« 01 .'14 94 .91 .91 88 88 85 .85 .73 .70

Country Senegal Trinidad A Tobago Guinea Malta Yemen Haiti Oman Paraguay Sierre Leone Barbados Guyana Madagascar Malawi Congo Nepal Cameroon Benin Fiji Gabon Niger Mauritania Mali Botswana Chad Gambia Mongolia Togo Albania Central Africa Rep Lesotho Burkina Faso Swaziland Burundi Mauritius Kwanda

[litónos

70 70

8

Embassies

29 3 9 7 4 0 2 7

8 8 8 ' 5 > » 2 ' ' 4 > > i > ) ) ) J4 -M Jl 21

l 1

9 9 2 5 0 3

SOURCES: Calculated by authors from questionnaire results and The Sfafesman's Vear-ßook /975- J976 (the latest for which these data are available).

correlated more closely (r= 0.845) than did population (r= 0.599), trade (r= 0.586), or GNP/C (r= 0.558), and when these variables were considered jointly (R= 0.850), éliteness was most important. Thus, what was in the minds of experts who study the worlds nations—that is, their perceptions, was more significant than hard or objective data. Understandably, evaluations solicited from other individuals, especially those from other countries, might have differed from those provided by political geographers. OTHER INDICATORS OF WHO TALKS TO WHOM

Éliteness, which we choose to define as the relative standing of nations in the eyes of others, appears to account for the flow of news among the

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worlds countries. News flows are not, however, the only means of determining "who-talks-to-whom" linkages among nations. The location of an embassy by one country in another nation may be even a more valid indicator, since the amount of news flow, for example, can be influenced by the simple absence or presence of a correspondent. The siting of an embassy, on the other hand, results from a purposeful decision by a country's leaders and reflects the political and economic reality of the world s power structure. In addition, these decisions are influenced by financial exigencies. Gambia, for example, has only six embassies, three in neighbouring states and two in the great powers (Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). On the other hand, Australia, although not a world power, maintains embassies in some 68 countries. The disparity among countries as to who talks to whom through embassy links is further apparent when examining the number of embassies located in a country (Table 35). Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, the U.S.S.R., and the United States, draw embassies from almost all other nations, whereas some attract government representatives from only a few. What makes a country élite in the eyes of others? Is it their relative wealth, resources, or other tangible goods that they possess? Or is it something more tenuous, such as commonality in culture, ideals, history, or political savvy? Are regional interests or identity important? For example, African nations choose to place their embassies in other African countries rather than in Latin America or Asia. Likewise, Islamic countries are inclined to favour nearby Arab nations when choosing their external diplomatic locations. In addition, the establishment of embassies is a manifestation of one country's perception of another country's being an élite nation. The relation between the number of embassies in a country and its éliteness ranking is r = 0.79. Since our focus is on who talks to whom, there was no need to correlate the relation between embassies and Canadian news flows. There may be other, possibly better, indicators of who talks to whom. Nevertheless, because of the close relationship between éliteness—as determined by peoples perceptions—and news flows, we suggest that perceptions are more important forces determining who talks to whom than various others that have been or could be proposed. These perceptions encompass a whole host of intangible factors such as wealth, status, influence, competence, loyalty, and self-assurance, as well as other unidentified and possibly unidentifiable ones.

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DISCUSSION

The concept of éliteness and perceptions is proposed as being useful for analyzing who talks to whom. In this context there are some points and questions to direct thinking about this topic and potential research. What is the nature of the relation between news flows and éliteness: Is it a cyclical? Is there a feedback loop? Or do both of these take place at the same time—that is, do they reinforce one another? Does the éliteness ranking determine news flows originating for that country, or is it a case where the paucity or indeed plethora of news determines the relative ranking of a country in the eyes of others? Are the media the only means or the main venue for others to judge a country, and where there is a paucity of news, does that country become an unknown entity that is often viewed with suspicion, as strangers are sometimes viewed? It is our observation that if more news originates from a country than its éliteness ranking would seem to warrant, then one or more of the worlds élite nations has a stake in or is involved with the event reported. For example, the substantial flow of news about the war in the Falklands was more a factor of Britain's involvement than Argentina's. In other words, if the war had been between Argentina and Chile, it is possible that far less news would have flowed to other countries. Likewise, the Soviet Union's involvement with Afghanistan and France's role in New Caledonia have made those countries far more newsworthy than they might have been if the conflicts had been internal or associated with countries lower on the éliteness ranking. The steady and voluminous flow of news from the Middle East is certainly influenced by the interest, concern, and involvement of the world s superpowers or highly "élite" nations. Éliteness is measured ultimately by perception rather than some surrogates such as news flows and embassies. Pakistan, for example, hosts a high number of embassies but ranks low on the éliteness ranking. In contrast, Australia ranks high in terms of éliteness but it is not a major generator of worldwide news flows, nor, indeed, is it the location of a large number of embassies. Rather than focusing further on news flows or embassies, it seems to us that the important point, barring agreement on an operational definition, is that éliteness is based fundamentally on perceptions and other intangibles. Since communication among nations, provinces, and other political units, even if done in the name of these entities, is carried out by individuals, it is analogous to people communicating with each other.

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Such interpersonal communications are determined mostly by persons' perceptions of reality, emotional feelings, goals and values, as well as awareness of themselves and others. Thus, to statesmen as well as the "Man in the Street," these intangibles provide a more comprehensive understanding of who talks to whom. Since this is the case, we believe that these elements should receive greater emphasis in geographic studies of spatial interaction. Various texts on interpersonal communication, such as one by Adler and Towne (1987), provide valuable discussions of these elements. They state that communication takes place most readily among persons who feel comfortable, share an affinity, and are not in a power struggle with each other. We have presented the concept of éliteness as a means of understanding interactions and communications among the world s nations and have pointed out the significance of perception as a basis for these phenomena. What is important is what individuals perceive and believe, rather than what is. We conclude that the use of these subjective variables will shed more light on this important topic and will help us understand not only how the "Global Village" operates, but also how we can increase understanding and co-operation among countries.

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