Possibly the most important way in which the news media exert control over the range of ideas in our society is through limiting what Noam Chomsky has called "the bounds of the expressible." They do this by excluding stories and information or angles on stories which are outside the frame. These are the real sins of omission. As Michael Parenti has noted, "perhaps the most common and complete form of distortion is non-reporting." This is what the under-reported stories are all about. But the other side of this coin is the material that fills in the gap. If the under-reported stories represent news the public is not privy to, then the over-reported stories illustrate the news with which we are inundated.
In the spring of 1996, Project Censored Canada released its first so-called "Junk Food News" list, a list of stories which were over-reported in 1995. As we may see from the list below, these may be an important story covered in a sensational manner, with skimpy investigation of the underlying issues (Bernardo); a trivial story that receives more coverage than it deserves (Grant); a superficial approach to a story that ignores more complete information about the same subject (the information highway); or an advertisement in disguise (Microsoft Windows 95, Beatles.)
The stories were rank-ordered by a national panel of publishers and journalists. American news stories swept the top three places. Here is the list, ranked from most over-covered (1) to least over-covered (10).
Junk Food News 1995
1. The O.J. Simpson Trial.
2. Actor Hugh Grant nabbed with Prostitute
3. Release of Microsoft's Windows 95
4. Dick Assman (Promoted by David Letterman)
5. Princess Diana's BBC Interview
6. The Information Superhighway
7. The Beatles' Anthology
8. The Paul Bernardo Trial
9. The 1995 Hockey and Baseball Strikes
10. The Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies join the NBA
1. O.J. Simpson
A year's coverage tended to focus primarily on the trial, the evidence and the question of O.J.'s guilt or innocence in the two murders. More attention could have been devoted to the problems of violence against women, and racism in the justice and enforcement systems.
2. Actor Hugh Grant Nabbed with Prostitute
One of Hollywood's hot male leads, Hugh Grant was caught on tape attempting to procure the services of a prostitute. The media were at a loss to understand why Grant, whose girlfriend is the stunning actress Elizabeth Hurley, would pay for sex. Headlines read, "How could Hugh?" as the media scrambled for reactions from Hurley and speculated on how the incident would affect their relationship.
3. Release of Microsoft's Windows 95.
A reported $100-million (U.S.) was spent promoting the much-ballyhooed
Windows 95 operating system from Microsoft, touting "more power, more freedom, more fun." CEO Bill Gates sponsored the entire edition of Rupert Murdoch's The Times of London, while a banner unfurled from the CN Tower made the front page of The Globe and Mail. Gates went on a tour of political leaders, including prime minister Jean Chretien. Weeks of media coverage constituted free advertising, anticipating and then documenting the release, while customers lined up at midnight. Computer experts have since almost universally panned the product.
4. Dick Assman (Promoted by David Letterman)
From his small-town Petro Canada station in rural Saskatchewan, Dick Assman vaulted into the media spotlight for his 15 seconds of fame. On the basis of his obvious assets, Assman was centred-out by NBC's David Letterman and subsequently became a celebrity, with his gas station turned into a tourist attraction and Assman doing guest appearances at tractor pull shows and bikini competitions across North America.
5. Princess Diana's BBC Interview
Princess reveals extramarital affair, eating disorder, in an interview said to be aimed at gaining PR upper hand over Prince Charles. The Queen subsequently suggests divorce and Prince Charles concurs.
6. The Information Superhighway
The bulk of stories on the information superhighway explicitly or implicitly tout job creation and a utopia of universal access to "knowledge." So far, the reality seems to be: further convergence or monopolization amongst cable firms and media industries; the firing of thousands of cable, telephone, banking and other employees, as a consequence of the former; a vision of home delivery of videos via the phone or cable, but the reality of phone and cable access to the pornography and e-mail of the Internet. Meanwhile, 25% of Canadian homes had computers in 1994, but they were in 46% of homes with incomes of more than $100,000 and only 9% of homes with income of less than $20,000.
7. The Beatles' Anthology
In November 1995 the Beatles came back, with a new single, a double CD set
and a six-hour prime time TV documentary. They were welcomed with extensive news media coverage.
8. The Paul Bernardo Trial
These gruesome sex crimes were portrayed in graphic detail in saturation
coverage over a period of several months. In contrast, relatively little attention has been focused on important questions such as the performance of the police, and the issue of violence against women.
9. Hockey and Baseball Strikes
Hockey strike finally ends in January, 1995. Sports fans found by poll to be on the side of owners and against players. Baseball strike continues until April.
10. Raptors and Grizzlies Join NBA
Front page news was given to the two new Canadian National Basketball Association franchises in a blatant form of boosterism, seemingly designed to whip up reader interest and increase ticket sales.
The fact that American stories and sources dominate the junk food list indicates the degree to which Canadians continue to be inundated by U.S. popular culture. Of course, this trend is by no means new, but it has arguably been accelerated by deregulation, new communications technologies, and the global marketing of media products. U.S. producers and distributors in the media and entertainment industries have achieved unprecedented influence and power in this environment.
The confusion of "news" with banal and trivial items of interest from commercial popular culture is also a well-established tendency, with roots that run as deep as the origins of the mass press in the nineteenth century. In many instances the lines between banal and trivial discussions of events or tendencies in popular culture, and more significant news stories, are self-evident. David Letterman's promotion of Dick Assman is less important than a Bosnian peace accord. But in many other instances the lines between real "news" and junk food news is harder to draw because of the powerful way that some junk food news stories dramatize issues and concerns of great importance to Canadians. For example, the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trials captured the public imagination partly by tapping into longstanding collective fears about random victimization, public order, and the vulnerability of children and youth. In a somewhat different way, the O.J. Simpson trial -- our number one junk food news story for 1995 -- articulated compelling questions about crime, race, class, gender, and the administration of justice in the U.S., while simultaneously playing to the obsession in commercial popular culture with the lives of celebrities.
The problem in the Simpson trial was that news coverage typically focused on the the serial narrative of day-to-day courtroom drama, and on the personalities of principal figures in the drama, rather than the public issues raised as the trial unfolded. More notably, the sheer volume of apparent "news" items generated by the trial was completely out of proportion to the global significance of the event. The murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were a tragedy, but there have been many other more numerous and horrible murders that have received less than a tiny percentage of the coverage given to the Simpson case. For example, 1995 marked the 20th anniversary of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which resulted in an estimated quarter million deaths in the first 5 years. One effect of the media's reliance on "junk food" news is a culture where people are more likely to know minute details of the Simpson trial than to know that East Timor even exists.
Coverage of the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trials raises roughly similar concerns. Gruesome sex crimes were portrayed in graphic detail, involving sensational saturation coverage over a period of several months. By contrast there was much less media attention given to the broader analysis of the social and psychological conditions that may or not encourage sexual predators, to questions about the ethics and politics of sentencing, and to the widespread problem of violence against women. Once again, while the deaths of Kristin French and Lesley Mahaffey were horrible and tragic, there are many other important stories about tragic deaths that tend to be pushed to the margins by more sensational news items. For instance, Statistics Canada recently reported that there was one workplace injury every seventy seconds in Canada in 1994, leading to 724 work-related deaths. That's about two workplace deaths everyday. With the exception of obvious disasters such as the Westray mine explosion, these workplace deaths lack the dramatic horror that fuelled popular interest in the Bernardo and Homolka trials. Still, the sheer numbers of these workplace deaths suggest an issue of considerable social importance.
Surely, news organizations have an obligation to dramatize and focus attention on such important stories as much if not more than the more sensational and sometimes trivial stories that often grab the headlines for weeks on end. There is nothing any more wrong with a little junk food in our news coverage than in our diets. Still, a healthy political and national culture can't survive by living on a diet of of junk food news items or junk food styles of coverage, any more than a healthy body can survive on a diet of chips and cheese puffs. Unfortunately, the commercial and social pressures that frame and filter news coverage often work against the provision of a healthy news diet. The media regularly serve up main courses of stories that are sensational, superficially covered, excessively promotional, or downright trivial. This diet of junk food news has always been more geared to selling products than to informing citizens, and it tends on the whole to be politically conservative, or at best, politically safe.
Why should it be otherwise? The corporate news media are committed to making money. They experiment with news formulae and sets of management strategies, primarily to raise subscriptions, reduce costs, and bring in greater advertising revenues. At the same time, major news organizations have a stake in pursuing an economic and political environment where they can pursue their business interests with maximal effect and minimal interference. Major newspapers are generally conservative in editorial tone and some openly donate money to conservative political parties. These papers encourage dissident voices from time to time, but typically in extremely modest doses. Few newspaper owners, managers, or senior editors have much of a stake in promoting in-depth social and political analysis across a spectrum of political views. All of this appears to have opened the door ever wider for junk food news, arguably with conservative political effects. The diversions of junk food news can deflect attention away from stories that have a potentially greater influence on the way we live our lives. At the same time, junk food news stories and news styles may prompt us to vent our frustrations on statistically minor incidents about which we can do little, at least in the short term. As we indulge our fascination with celebrities, follow spectacular trials with horrific curiosity, consume promotional pseudo-events, or lose ourselves in "news" from the sports and entertainment industries, we risk losing perspective on broader social issues and problems in our society, about which we might do a great deal.
What can you do?
NewsWatch Canada is compiling a list of over-reported junk food news stories. Please consider nominating any junk food news stories that you believe are the most over-reported, yet least deserving, news stories of this year (1997).
If you know of a story that has been over-reported please write to:
Dr. James Winter
c/o University of Windsor, Department of Communication Studies
401 Sunset Avenue
Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4