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Science Communication
Volume 29 Number 2
December 2007 147-176
© 2007 Sage Publications
10.1177/1075547007308173
http://scx.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
147
Authors’ Note: The research described here was partially supported by a grant provided to the
Rutgers Food Policy Institute by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), under the Initiative
for the Future of Agricultural Food Systems (IFAFS) Grant #2002-52100-11203 “Evaluating
Consumer Acceptance of Food Biotechnology in the United States,” Dr. William K. Hallman, prin-
cipal investigator. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect official positions or policies of the USDA, the Food Policy Institute, or Rutgers University.
“We Begin Tonight With
Fruits and Vegetables”
Genetically Modified Food on the
Evening News 1980-2003
Mary L. Nucci
Robert Kubey
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Although the literature addresses U.S. newspaper coverage of the issue of genet-
ically modified (GM) food, there is no corresponding literature on television
coverage, in spite of the fact that television is still a primary source in the United
States for information about science. This article discusses national evening
news coverage (ABC, CBS, NBC) of GM food on U.S. television from 1980 to
2003, critical years of both introduction and controversy. This examination of
quantity, placement, length, and spokespersons pointed out minimal coverage
by networks, as well as a lack of consonance, indicating different newsroom
practices on the issue of GM food.
Keywords: television; genetic modification; evening broadcast news; food
R
ecent surveys of the U.S. public have shown that few Americans know
very much about the process of genetic modification or the products
resulting from the genetic modification of food (Hallman, Hebden, Aquino,
Cuite, & Lang, 2003; Hallman, Hebden, Cuite, Aquino, & Lang, 2004). Of
those surveyed in 2003, only 19% could remember any events or news stories
related to genetically modified (GM) food in open-ended questioning; in 2004,
when presented with seven stories (two of which were false rumors dissemi-
nated on the Internet), recognition ranged from 7% to 36%. These results are
in spite of the fact that GM foods entered the public domain in the late 1970s
148 Science Communication
as an offshoot of the technologies associated with genetic engineering and
biotechnology and are used in many products currently on the market today.
The Cornell Cooperative Extension Public Issues Education project on genet-
ically engineered organisms notes that
there are 12 different genetically engineered [GE] plants
1
that have been
approved for commercial production in the U.S. A simple rule of thumb
might be that any food containing ingredients from one of these 12 plants
could be from a GE variety. (GEO-PIE, 2006)
They estimated that of the U.S. food products that contain GM components,
as much as 60% comes from GM corn and soybeans (Genetically Modified
Organisms Public Issues Education Project, 2006).
Genetic modification of foods has been touted as having the potential to
increase yield, enhance the nutritional value of foodstuffs, and decrease the
use of pesticides in agricultural practice. Although dissenting voices both
within and outside the United States have raised concerns about the poten-
tially harmful effects of GM food on human health and the environment
arising from the usage of GM food and GM agriculture, the American
public to a great degree remains unaware of the scope and extent of the
products of this technology.
The media play a critical role in the public’s understanding of new
developments in science, such as in the genetic engineering of food prod-
ucts for human consumption. They set the boundaries of debates around
scientific issues (Nelkin, 1995), frame scientific problems and solutions for
the public (Gibbons, 1999; Ten Eyck, Thompson, & Priest, 2001), and
specifically for the field of biotechnology, play a role in the perceptions of
risk and benefit (Bauer, Durant, & Gaskell, 1998). The lack of direct expe-
rience that the majority of the public has with genetics and biotechnology
means that news coverage is a strong influence on these subjects (Mazur,
1981; Nelkin, 1995), and “it is very likely that the power of media to influ-
ence public opinion is stronger for science and technology issues than for
other questions” (Priest, 1999, p. 29).
Newspaper coverage of biotechnology and its myriad applications—GM
organisms used to mass produce pharmaceuticals, the cloning of animals
for food or drugs, the genetic enhancement of plants for improved food
yield, and so forth—has over the past three decades kept pace with the
growing biotechnology industry and the introduction of biotechnology
products to consumers (Nisbet & Lewenstein, 2002; McInerney, Bird, &
Nucci, 2004). Coverage in the 1980s promoted the technology with an
emphasis on health-related applications, basic research, and industry devel-
opment (Priest, 1995; Gaskell, Bauer, Durant & Allum, 1999). Coverage in
the 1990s—marked by sharp increases in news coverage associated with
landmark events such as the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the outbreak of
mad cow disease, and the contamination of human foodstuffs with GM corn
not approved for human consumption—became less positive (Marks, 2001;
Nisbet & Lewenstein, 2002; Marks, Kalaitzandonakes, & Vickner, 2003;
McInerney et al., 2004). This event-driven coverage opened up the debate
on this technology and resulted in a reframing of the discussions to include
ethics, risks, and accountability (Nisbet & Lewenstein, 2002),
2
exposing
the U.S. public to a steadily broadening debate over the 1990s (Marks,
Kalaitzandonakes, Allison, & Zakharova, 2002).
By comparison, there is virtually a complete lack of research on televi-
sion coverage of either biotechnology or GM foods over the course of their
development, even though the 2006 Science and Engineering Indicators
survey (National Science Board, 2006) demonstrated that about half (51%)
of the U.S. public relies on television for information about current news in
general, while 41% are dependent on television for information on science
and technology. Bauer and Bonfadelli (2002) found that “Television seems
to be the most important single media channel for disseminating informa-
tion about biotechnology” (p. 161).
In 2005, Besley and Shanahan lamented that research on the role of media
coverage on public attitudes toward biotechnology is hampered as a result of
not addressing television coverage of this still volatile issue. This article aims
to begin to address this concern. The research presented here is the first to
examine broadcast commercial evening news coverage of GM food, focusing
on the period between 1980 and 2003. This period was critical in the devel-
opment of this technology as it was in this time frame that GM food was
first introduced to the U.S. public and the North American consumer
market, achieved controversial status due to accidental non-GM food cross-
contamination of human food products, and became the subject of an increas-
ingly vocal outcry in Europe against both GM food and GM technology.
Based on previous work,
3
one of the first assumptions in this research
was that there would be very little difference in quantity of GM food cov-
erage across the three major news networks, and by consequence, in the
valence—whether the coverage about GM food was positive or negative—
of the spokespersons speaking on air about the issue. The inclusion or lack of
inclusion of spokespersons is an important consideration in the analysis of
media coverage, as the depth of debate around an issue is affected by the
range of voices privileged to speak and whether the valence of these voices
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 149
are for, against, or neutral about the subject. Valence—which in this study
was operationalized as positive, negative, balanced, or indeterminable—has
been shown to have an effect on memory, and although the research on
valence in television news is not consistent,
4
messages with a negative
valence are more readily recalled than messages with a positive valence
(Lang & Dhillon, 1995).
Based on these assumptions, this first report focuses on three research
questions addressing quantity of coverage, who is privileged with face time
on the evening news, and the tenor of their dialogue about this issue:
Research Question 1: What was the quantity of coverage of GM food over the time
frame examined on commercial television evening news programs in the United
States?
Research Question 2: Whose voices are privileged as spokespersons on the evening
news?
Research Question 3: Is there any difference in the tenor or tone of the spokespersons
speaking on TV about GM food?
Background
Exposure to science information on television can be examined through the
two main categories of science content: the dramatic, such as that found on the
Science Channel and the Discovery Channel, and the informational, which is
represented by science content on news programming on commercial and
cable networks. In the United States, the three flagship commercial television
stations, ABC, CBS, and NBC, have been broadcasting 30-minute news shows
since the early 1960s. Although viewership has declined since the advent of
the Internet and competing cable news shows, the ABC, CBS, and NBC
evening news shows remain an important component for many Americans in
terms of staying in touch with the world around them. Together, they account
for an average nightly viewership of 29.3 million viewers or a 40% share of
all televisions in use at the time (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2003);
this makes them still the three most watched news outlets in the United States
(Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2004).
Their news shows—ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS’s Evening News,
and NBC’s Nightly News—are quite similar in structure. Each show is a
30-minute program broadcast around 6:30 p.m. using the same format of
a studio-based anchor and field reporters. Not counting introductions,
coming news, or advertising, the amount of time devoted to news is about
150 Science Communication
19 minutes, which is down from 21 minutes in 1990 (Project for Excellence
in Journalism, 2005). These news minutes are divided into an average of 10
stories per network (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2006).
It was noted that “citizens would get in the 30 minutes of the three
nightly commercial newscast roughly as great a range of topics as they
would from cable over four hours” (Project for Excellence in Journalism,
2006). This has been attributed to the reliance of commercial news on the
edited, taped, correspondent package; 86% of all stories on network news
are presented in this format (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005).
Of these stories, 42% were less than 40 seconds, 6% were between 40 sec-
onds and 90 seconds, and 52% were more than 90 seconds (Project for
Excellence in Journalism, 2004).
Past research has shown that there is generally little difference between the
three major television networks in national news coverage on the same stories
and topics (Gans, 1979; Center for Media and the Public Interest, 2003;
Stempel, 2003). Although slight, occasional differences have been noted
(Boedeker, 2003), the Tyndall Report calculated that “the minutes that each
network devoted to such stories as terrorism in Iraq, the Presidential debates,
and the Bush campaign were so close that they seemed to share a single
assignment editor” (Auletta, 2005, p. 51), a consonance described as “strik-
ingly similar” by the American Journalism 2006 annual report (Project for
Excellence in Journalism, 2006). This duplication of news values, expert
sources, and news treatments is based on common values in the newsroom and
the structural nature of the broadcast industry (Gans, 1979; Shoemaker &
Reese, 1996).
News as cultural practice. The news media are not objective sources of truth
independent from political or government agencies (Gitlin, 1980; Fiske, 1989)
but rather are subjective, culturally driven constructions of reality (Allan, 1998).
The stories that are chosen and the way they are presented are functions of ide-
ological processes that focus the public’s attention and awareness of issues
(Schudson, 1995; Ten Eyck, 1999; Van Dijck, 2003), emphasizing certain
points of view while marginalizing others (Tuchman, 1976; Kubey, Shifflet,
Weerakkody, & Ukeiley, 1995).
Rather than the news serving as a mirror of reality, it presents a highly
codified version of reality (Allan, 1998), encouraging the viewer to accept
as natural preferred definitions of reality. This has “profound implications
for the cultural reproduction of power relations across society” (Allan,
1998, p. 106) and is especially true for those topics where the content is
unfamiliar (such as science) and there is no baseline of knowledge by
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 151
which to validate the accuracy of the representation (Graber, 1989). News
about science can be described as a culturally produced product dissemi-
nated at a specific time for specific reasons (Miller, 1999).
The codification of news occurs through newsroom practices—news
gathering, news selection, news production, and news format—that control
the meaning of the news and, as a consequence, guide the viewer in not
only what to think about but how to think about the subject (McCombs &
Shaw, 1972). Newsroom practices are critical factors in terms of the devel-
opment of the public opinion regarding complex issues, as news sets the
agenda for what is considered salient to the public consciousness
(McCombs, 1981; Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder, 1982). Michael Schudson
(1995) noted that the function of these practices is “less to increase or
decrease the truth value of the message they convey than to shape and nar-
row the range of what kinds of truths can be told” (p. 55).
For stories about GM food, Logan (2001) noted that newsroom practices
resulted in stories on agriculture being part of the business “beat” with its
focus on business investments and the economic and social challenges of
companies (with the notable exception of reporting on Starlink) and not
part of scientific or investigative reporting. This historical practice of
reporting about GM food as part of the business beat has been blamed for
not helping the public understand GM food and the related issues of risk
and benefit (Logan, Fears, & Wilson, 1998). This economic basis also tends
to focus reporting on scientific crises or new discoveries, with the result that
reporting becomes focused on the sensational and then ends abruptly when
the event is over or has lost its alleged news value (Nelkin, 1995).
The selection of source spokespersons is affected by the focus of the
news story. An emphasis on a business beat will likely result in more indus-
try spokespersons than a public interest beat where the spokespersons will
be from the public or directly affected. As a newsroom practice, the selec-
tion of spokespersons to represent viewpoints on an issue creates the per-
spective from which the viewers determine their sense of the issue.
Spokespersons give voice to debates and issues by presenting pros and
cons, and as such, can drive public perceptions. Studies on risk have shown
that trust in institutions and experts is an important factor in decision
making (Poortinga & Pidgeon, 2003). For the issue of GM food, trust in
information is dependent on the source of that information (Priest,
Bonfadelli, & Rusanen, 2003).
The media control who is chosen to present opinions or information about
a story presented in the news, often using the same sources across stories, such
as in Hoynes and Croteau’s (1991) analysis of ABC’s Nightline, an in-depth
interview evening news program. This is especially true for complex issues
152 Science Communication
such as science, where journalists, who may not have the science knowledge
base for analysis, assume peer review of science articles implies “quality con-
trol of the science” (Conrad, 1999, p. 286) or are dependent on their sources
for interpretation (Priest, 1995). This can potentially limit the polysemic
5
potential of news stories and by corollary can limit the ability of the viewer to
actively participate in the debates over a developing issue. Technocrats (scien-
tists working within government structures), government officials, and scien-
tists associated with industry or academia are more often used as
spokespersons (Goodell, 1987; Ericson, Baranek, & Chan, 1989; Altheide &
Snow, 1991). Additionally, these sources often have greater media influence
due to social influence, which means that spokespersons that fall outside these
categories may be less able to influence the way they are presented in the story.
When this happens, the viewer may see certain voices as more credible regard-
less of whether they were given the same amount of space or time (Ten Eyck
& Williment, 2003). In a study that examined both newspaper and television
coverage of cloning in the United Kingdom, of the 354 sources, 54.4% were
scientists and scientific institutions, 11.6% were politicians and officials,
28.2% were other professionals and experts, 5.1% were nongovernmental
organizations and activists, and 1.7% were miscellaneous (Holliman, 2004).
Analyses of U.S. newspaper coverage of GM food have pointed out that sci-
entists and government officials were more often quoted as spokespersons.
These stories tended to frame biotechnology as progressive and positive and
rarely mentioned economic, social, political, environmental, regulatory, ethical,
or other concerns (Priest & Talbert, 1994; Priest & Ten Eyck, 2003). Seventy-
three percent of the spokespersons represented had university and industry affil-
iations, while 7% were activists and 1% were farmers (Priest & Talbert, 1994).
Zucker (1978) has pointed out that the less direct experience the public has
with an issue the more likely they will be dependent on the media and its
spokespersons for interpretation and information. Given that the U.S. public is
strongly reliant on television for science information, an examination of the
coverage of GM food on broadcast evening news is critical to understanding
the role and impact of media coverage of this controversial subject.
Method
To address the questions of structure and content in this study, content
analysis was used to study the televisual presentation of GM food in the
national evening news shows from ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS’s
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 153
Evening News, and NBC’s Nightly News. These three shows are available
on commercial network television and unlike cable television, which
requires the purchase of access by cable or satellite, are free to all those
with television reception, as they are supported by revenues garnered by
advertising. Although the combined viewership for these three shows has
dropped from more than 50 million viewers in 1980 (the year that CNN, the
first 24-hour news station, began to air) to 27 million in 2005 (Project for
Excellence in Journalism, 2006), access and consistency in the broadcast-
ing of these shows were critical to the decision to focus only on commer-
cial news television and not include CNN or Fox News. CNN was not
included in the study as it was difficult to identify a consistent evening news
show for comparison,
6
while Fox News was also not included as the net-
work only began broadcasting in 1996. For both of these cable channels,
access to transcripts and video coverage was problematic, while for the
three public stations, videotape and transcripts were readily available.
Prior to establishing the time range of our study, we examined the extent of
coverage by searching the Vanderbilt Television Archives (http://tvnews
.vanderbilt.edu). The Vanderbilt Archives offers complete access to the three
networks we examined here from 1968 to the present. The archives were
searched for evening network news stories on GM food using the search terms
gene*, modif*, enginee*, alter*, and food. Due to the inconsistent use of the-
saurus terms at Vanderbilt Archives for archiving news stories (Althaus, Edy, &
Phalen, 2002), all abstracts from the search results were hand examined for
applicability. Stories that were not about GM foods, such as a story that
included one or more of the search terms in a discussion of a politician’s plat-
form, were excluded from consideration.
To ensure that we had gotten all stories on GM food in our search of the
Vanderbilt Archives, the results of the hand-selection were then compared to
searches using the same terms in the Lexis-Nexis database. Based on the
search of Lexis-Nexis, it was decided to include stories about the use of bovine
somatotropin (also known as BST, somatotropin, bovine growth hormone, or
BGH), as the search terms used initially to search the Vanderbilt Archives did
not pull up stories about the use of GM BGH to increase the production of
milk in cows. A second search using the terms milk, bovine somatotropin,
BST, somatotropin, bovine growth hormone, and BGH was conducted in both
the Vanderbilt Archives and Lexis-Nexis, and these stories were added to the
total number of stories about the topic being examined.
Based on the results of these searches, the beginning date of the study
timeline was established as 1980, as this was the time when the earliest
references to patents and the technology of GM were aired. The end date of
154 Science Communication
2003 was chosen based on the decline in coverage of the topic. Every story
on GM food between 1980 and 2003 from these two searches was then
ordered on videotape from the Vanderbilt Archives. This resulted in a total
of 169 stories between 1980 and 2003 that were about GM food.
All 169 stories identified as about GM food were obtained from the
Vanderbilt Archives and viewed on videotape by the study’s first author,
who identified those stories that had individuals (other than the reporters or
anchors) speaking on camera. These spokespersons were operationalized as
any individual who has been identified by the news show as being able to
provide input, insight, or opinion about the issue of GM food. Traditionally,
analyses of spokespersons would focus on issue experts providing content
knowledge of an issue. We chose to code for all spokespersons regardless
of affiliation in order to understand the range of voices privileged by the
evening news shows. This resulted in a total of 111 stories that were
selected for coding, which yielded an N of 384 spokespersons.
The corresponding transcripts from these stories were downloaded from
Lexis-Nexis. Following training of two coders on the coding protocol, a test
coding of approximately 10% (12) of all stories was selected for reliability
testing. Intercoder reliability was assessed by Cohen’s kappa using SPSS,
which yielded a kappa for placement, length, and network of 1.0. For source
type, kappa was .80, and for perspective, kappa was .78. The remaining sto-
ries were then coded for three structural characteristics—the network on
which the story aired (ABC, CBS, or NBC), the length of the story, and the
story’s placement in the news lineup
7
—and two content characteristics—affil-
iation of spokespersons and the tone of each spokesperson’s perspective on
GM food operationalized as positive, negative, balanced, or indeterminable.
This evaluation of valence is not an uncommon approach in content analysis
(Gans, 1979; Croteau & Hoynes, 1994; Niven, 2005) as it provides the
researcher with a good deal more precision and control in handling and ana-
lyzing the data than in trying to distill a single code for an entire story that typ-
ically presents multiple perspectives on an issue. Results of coding were
uploaded to Excel, cleaned, and analyzed in SPSS.
Results
Quantity and structure of coverage. Using the Vanderbilt Archives and
Lexis-Nexis to double-check every story on GM food that was aired
between 1980 and 2003 on the three evening television news networks
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 155
resulted in a total of 169 stories on GM food. Assuming an average of 10
stories per show over the 23-year period (Bae, 2000), this represents less
than half a percent of all stories presented on all three evening television
news programs during that time frame.
8
In 2004, science stories across
commercial evening news networks accounted for only 3% of total news
time (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005).
For each year of the first 14 years examined in this study, no network
aired more than five stories on GM food (see Figure 1). Of the 169 stories,
32% (35 stories) of the stories were on ABC, 56% (62 stories) were on
CBS, and 13% (16 stories) were on NBC. When the shows were examined
for inclusion of on-air spokespersons, it was determined that a total of 111
(66%) of the stories included one or more on-camera actors, “talking
heads” who rendered opinion or reported facts or both. On ABC, 97% of all
GM stories used spokespersons, while on CBS and NBC, 87% of all GM
stories had spokespersons. This subset of 111 stories was used in all subse-
quent analyses.
In this subset of 111 stories that included spokespersons, CBS still
clearly dominated coverage of the GM food issue with 54% of all stories on
the issue (compared to 32% for ABC and 14% for NBC). Within this set of
stories, 11 stories were duplicated on the same evening across at least two
of the networks. Three stories were carried on all three networks on the
156 Science Communication
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
1980
1981
1982
1983
1
9
8
4
1
9
8
5
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
7
1
9
8
8
1
9
8
9
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
1
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
3
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
5
1
9
9
6
1
9
97
1
9
9
8
1
9
9
9
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
1
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
3
Year
Total stories
ABC
CBS
NB
C
Flavr Savr
TM
approved
1994
Dolly
cloned
1997
Starlink
found in
taco
shells
Nature
article
1999
Figure 1
Stories by Year and Network
same evening,
9
while of the 8 stories that were carried on two networks on
the same evening, 6 of the 8 were on ABC and CBS.
10
The other 2 stories
were on ABC and NBC (air date February 3, 1994, on milk and BGH) and
on CBS and NBC (air date April 24, 1987, on field testing).
Similar to the results seen in analysis of newspaper coverage of GM
food, coverage on television appeared to be driven by specific media
events. In 1994, an increase in coverage was associated with the approval
of the Flavr Savr
TM
tomato.
11
This spike in coverage quickly died down
until 1999 and the controversy as to whether monarch butterflies might be
affected by eating pollen from GM corn.
The following year, 2000, was marked by the Starlink controversy when
GM corn intended exclusively for cattle feed showed up in taco shells widely
sold in the United States for human consumption. This incident can be seen as
a spike in coverage by all three networks, similar to the increases at this time
seen in newspaper coverage (Nisbet & Lewenstein, 2002; McInerney et al.,
2004), to the extent that more than one quarter of all the network stories from
1980 to 2003 occurred in 2000. With the Starlink story, a long-standing and
key concern of opponents of GM food had been realized, that is, that it would
be difficult to completely contain and keep separate GM foods from non-GM
foods. This controversy continued to affect coverage through 2001, although
not all the stories produced during such event spikes were about the contami-
nation of human food with nonapproved GM animal feed (see Table 1);
between 1999-2001, 44% of all GM food coverage on network television
news coverage over the study time frame is accounted for.
Still, the frequency of reporting on GM food on network news broad-
casts was by no means high, or even common, with less than seven stories
a year on average across all three networks. Compared to CBS, ABC
reported slightly less than half as much, while NBC reported only one quar-
ter as often. Presented proportionally as the percentage of total stories on
GM food by network in each year from 1980 to 2003, CBS accounted for
100% of all GM food stories reported by the three networks in 1984, 1985,
1986, and 1990.
In terms of placement, all networks had a similar news show format,
with four commercial breaks during the 30-minute period. During the 23-
year time frame, GM food was the top story of the evening only nine times.
Of these top stories, six were on CBS and three were on ABC.
12
Two other
stories on GM food were not the top story of the evening but were before
the first commercial break. The majority of stories (91 stories, 81.9%)
about GM food aired after the second commercial break.
Although Ward (1992) found that the average length of stories about
science on evening news was 6 seconds, we found that most stories (70.3%)
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 157
158 Science Communication
Table 1
Topics of Genetically Modified (GM) Food Stories on Evening
Television News: 1980-2003
1980 1987 1994 2000
Patents Patents BST and milk Golden rice
Overview and Field testing Flavr Savr
TM
GM science
background Government (GM fish)
Implications and support Labeling
potential for GM Opposition to GM food
1988 1995 Policy (NRC report;
1981 GM science Opposition to NAS report)
Implications and (GM food) GM food Government support
potential for GM BST and milk Cloning
1989 Starlink (human food
1982 BST and milk 1996 contamination)
Implications and GM science (no stories) Marketing of GM
potential for GM foods
1983 1990 1997 2001
Field testing BST and milk Cloning Policy (FDA rulings;
Overview and Cloning BST and milk ban on Starlink)
background Implications and Starlink (human food
potential contamination;
allergies)
Opposition
1984 1991 Marketing of
Implications and GM science GM foods
potential for GM (GM food) GM science
Field testing 1998 (GM grapes)
1992 Pharming (drugs
Marketing of in milk) 2002
1985 GM foods Labeling GM science (GM
Cloning Government GM science salmon, soybeans)
Field testing support (GM food) Cloning
GM and food aid
1993 1999 GM science (safety
BST and milk Special report of cloned food)
1986 Flavr Savr
TM
Opposition to
Policy (guidelines) GM science GM food 2003
(GM food) GM products in GM science (safety
human food of cloned food)
Labeling
Note: BST = bovine somatotropin; NRC = National Research Council; NAS = National
Academy of Sciences; FDA = Food and Drug Administration.
on GM food were between 1 and 3 minutes long. The majority of stories, by
network, were also between 1 and 3 minutes long (ABC, 61%; CBS, 75%;
NBC, 73%). There were 30 stories on GM food that were longer than 3 min-
utes; of these, 24 (21.6%) were between 3 and 5 minutes long and 6 (5.4%)
were longer than 5 minutes. All stories longer than 5 minutes, which are asso-
ciated with greater depth of discussion, aired between the second and fourth
commercial breaks. Only ABC and CBS had these longest of stories (ABC,
11% of all stories; CBS, 3% of all stories).
When length and placement were compared, none of the longest stories
(greater than 5 minutes) were before the second commercial. Stories 1 to
3 minutes in length were found throughout the broadcast lineup, but the
majority (78.2%) were after the second commercial.
Spokespersons in the news. An examination of the spokespersons granted
face time on the evening news demonstrated that these spokespersons repre-
sented a wide variety of institutions and organizations (see Table 2). By
descending order of frequency, the most commonly used spokespersons were
industry, activist, scientist, public, farmers, other government, Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), and U.S. legislators. The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), both government
agencies that were charged with regulatory oversight for GM food, were each
present as spokespersons less than 1% of the total.
Examining the use of spokespersons across networks, slight differences
were noted in frequency between ABC, CBS, and NBC. The three most fre-
quently used spokespersons for all networks were industry, activist, and sci-
entist. The combination of industry and scientist, who often represent the
same viewpoint on genetic engineering, dominated as spokespersons dur-
ing the time frame studied. As combined frequencies, they represented
69.5%, 48.8%, and 59.7% of total spokespersons on ABC, CBS, and NBC,
respectively. Activists, typically representing an alternative viewpoint, were
used as spokespersons 18.8% of the time on ABC, 20.4% on CBS, and
15.6% on NBC (see Table 7).
In the vast majority of circumstances (greater than 80% of the time),
individuals speaking on camera could be rated on whether they appeared to
support GM foods or were against or critical of GM foods. Following are
examples of positive and negative statements taken from two shows that
aired April 24, 1987, and April 5, 2000:
Coded as positive:
ABC, air date April 24, 1987: “This experiment poses no threat to the
environment, no threat to animals, plants, or most importantly to human
beings.”
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 159
160 Science Communication
Table 2
Organizational Affiliations of Evening News Sources
Universities
Stanford Michigan State
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cornell
University of California–Berkeley Harvard
Ohio State University of Illinois
University of Arizona University of Pennsylvania
University of California–Davis University of Ontario
Rutgers Texas A&M
University of Vermont Purdue
George Washington University Iowa State
Tufts
Industry
Cetus Biotechnology Industry Organization
Genentech Grocery Manufacturers Association
AF Protein Advanced Genetic Sciences
Calgene Prodigene
Monsanto Viagen
Eli Lilly DuPont
Genzyme Aqua Bounty Farms
Asgrow Seed Company ABS Global
Granada Biosciences
Activists
Hereditary Disease Foundation Concerned Consumers
Center for Science in the Public Interest Greenpeace
Foundation on Economic Trends Union of Concerned Scientists
Humane Society Alliance for Bio Integrity
Earth First Center for Food Safety
Environmental Policy Institute Environmental Defense Fund
Center for Responsible Genetics Organic food industry
National Wildlife Federation Earth Liberation Front
Biotech Policy Center
a
Friends of the Earth
Consumer’s Union Consumer Federation of America
Pure Food Coalition Atlantic Salmon Federation
Pure Food Campaign People’s Business Association
CARE Center for Human Nutrition
a. Was a division of the National Wildlife Federation.
ABC, air date April 5, 2000: “The committee is not aware of any evidence
suggesting that foods on the market today are unsafe to eat as a result of
genetic modification.”
Coded as negative:
ABC, air date April 24, 1987: “These people, they’re mad scientists, they
really are.”
ABC, air date April 5, 2000: “There’s only a small chance that this organ-
ism will do damage, but if it does do damage the event can be catastrophic.”
As seen in Table 4, over the 23-year period there are more spokespersons with
a positive perspective (171, 44.5%) on GM food than negative (156, 40.6%),
but the difference is very slight. This is in contrast to newspaper coverage
of GM food, as noted previously, in which there is a strong bias toward a
positive presentation. However, when the data set was analyzed in 5-year
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 161
Table 3
Number and Frequency of Source Types (1980-2003)
Total Frequency, %
Industry 80 20.8
Activist/activist group 74 19.3
Scientist/medical 72 18.8
Public 54 14.1
Farmers/farmers association 49 12.8
Food and Drug Administration 19 4.9
U.S. legislators 5 1.3
Environmental Protection Agency 3 0.8
National Institutes of Health, Department of 2 0.5
Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Agriculture 2 0.5
Other government 24 6.3
Table 4
Positive and Negative Perspective of Actors 1980-2003 (N
==
384)
Number %
Positive tone 171 44.5
Negative tone 156 40.6
Indeterminable/none 54 14.1
Balanced 3 0.8
increments (except for the 3-year subset 2001-2003), the perspective of
spokespersons can be seen to have changed over time (see Table 5). The
greater number of positive perspectives of the early years of discourse on GM
food between 1980 and 1990 shifted to a greater number of negative perspec-
tives between 1991 and 2000. This is in line with increasing concerns over GM
food both in the United States and overseas, the increasing presence of
activists in media coverage,
13
and the critical events associated with Starlink
(the Nature article in 1999,
14
and the contamination of human food products
with GM corn not approved for human use in 2000).
As expected, industry, scientists, and government tended to be more pos-
itive than activists and the public, while farmers and farmers associations
were essentially evenly divided between positive and negative perspectives
(see Table 6). The FDA, as the key regulatory agency in the United States
overseeing GM food issues, accounted for nearly half of all government
spokespersons consulted on camera and presents an overwhelmingly posi-
tive perspective on the technology. Legislators were the only members of
government quoted in these news stories that were more negative than pos-
itive, but the number of quoted legislators is so small (only five cases) it is
difficult to draw a conclusion as to their meaning or significance.
Discussion
Over the time period examined in this study, GM food moved from con-
cept to market in the United States, with the first GM whole-food product
(Flavr Savr
TM
tomato) reaching the consumer shelves in 1994. Typically, for
any technology, this period from concept to market would be the time when
the public would first become aware of the technology through media cov-
erage and from that media coverage would subsequently develop an opin-
ion of the technology (supportive, oppositional, or neutral) and its value for
162 Science Communication
Table 5
Number of Positive and Negative Perspectives Among Actors
in 5-Year Increments (1980-2003; N
==
384)
1980-1985 1986-1990 1991-1995 1996-2000 2001-2003
Positive tone 31 24 33 54 29
Negative tone 18 20 38 63 17
Indeterminable/none 5 7 14 25 3
Balanced 1 0 2 0 0
society. The results of this study indicate that over the time frame exam-
ined, the broadcast evening news coverage was minimal in quantity, event
driven, and inconsistent between the three networks. This lack of in-depth
news reporting during this period that was critical for the dissemination of
information and development of public opinion about GM food through
ongoing discourse in the media is of concern as a test case for news cover-
age of science and scientific issues.
Over the 23 years of coverage examined here, there were only 169 sto-
ries on GM food. This averages to approximately 7 stories a year, which is
clearly a very small fraction of the 3% of network time devoted to science
stories a year (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005). This means that
for the U.S. public over the 23 years of coverage, there was less than 1 story
a month on the technology. Of course, as one could expect that few indi-
viduals regularly watch all three networks each night, it is reasonably safe
to conclude that relatively few people saw more than a handful of reports
over the 23-year period.
But not only were stories on GM food scarce over the 23-year period,
there was little duplication of stories by night across networks (an indica-
tion of equal interest on the subject by all three networks), and only rarely
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 163
Table 6
Percentage of Positive and Negative Tone of On-Camera
Sources by Affiliation
Positive Negative
Government 18.8 8.2 (Combined results of below)
Food and Drug Administration 8.2 0.6
Other government 6.4 5.1
Legislators 1.2 1.9
Environmental Protection Agency 1.2 0.6
National Institutes of Health/Department 1.2 0
of Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Agriculture 0.6 0
Industry 36.3 6.4
Scientist/medical 24.6 11.5
Activists 3.5 41
Farmer 11.7 12.8
Public 5.3 19.2
Number of sources 171 156 (Note: 3 balanced,
54 indeterminable)
did they occupy the top-story slot of the evening. Placement provides a
sense of significance, as the first stories on the evening news programs are
considered to be the most important for the viewing audience. Only nine
times in 23 years was GM food the leading story of the evening; three of
those times the same story was the lead on two networks (ABC and CBS).
And each of those times, the issue related in the story had some connection
to government actions (patents for GM organisms, government decision
about marketing of GM food, government proposals regarding approval of
GM products). Obviously, GM food became a critical issue only when gov-
ernment actions were involved.
Corresponding with placement, length of story is an indicator of impor-
tance of the topic in the newscast. Longer stories have traditionally meant
greater depth of content and by consequence, a story that needs to be expli-
cated more completely; it can be assumed that the shorter the story, the less the
information covered. The data showed that the majority of the stories on GM
food were between 1 and 3 minutes in length. Thirty stories were longer than
3 minutes in length. This stands in sharp contrast to Ward’s (1996) analysis,
which found that the average length of science stories was 6 seconds. It is
likely, though, that this increase in length is due less to an emphasis on GM
food than to a format change introduced by ABC News in the late 1980s
(which was adopted by the other two networks) to include correspondent
pieces (2 to 3 minutes in length) to go more in depth into an issue without run-
ning stories that were longer than 2 or 3 minutes (Project for Excellence in
Journalism, 2006). Regardless, the fact that only 3% of all stories were under
a minute in length at least points to a greater depth of reporting on GM food
than could be predicted from previous analysis of science story length.
However, before one strongly asserts that GM stories were longer on
average, it must be pointed out that the stories analyzed for length were
those that had spokespersons. It may be that length of the stories is directly
related to the inclusion of these spokesperson clips. As this study did not
calculate story length for the balance of 58 stories on GM food that did not
have spokespersons, it is impossible to make the claim that GM stories
were longer on average than other stories. Regardless, it is still important to
note that on average, it appears that stories about GM were longer than
might be expected from previous analysis, and that
some in network news say that modern television news stories are probably
more densely packed with information than were stories of similar lengths in
earlier years. The new technology—satellites, video feeds, computer-generated
graphics and more sophisticated editing equipment—allow producers and
editors to more easily add more information from more sources. The tech-
nology also allows journalists to include more, pithier and shorter soundbites
164 Science Communication
in stories rather than longer but perhaps longwinded ones. (Project for
Excellence in Journalism, 2004)
But most startling was the discrepancy in coverage noted between net-
works, which contrasts with earlier work showing strong concordance in topic
coverage between the three networks. CBS dominated coverage of the topic,
with 54% of all stories appearing on CBS compared to 32% on ABC and 14%
on NBC. In 4 of the 23 years, CBS had 100% of stories on the topic.
We could find nothing in the literature that would explain the significant dif-
ferences in quantity of coverage. A critical examination of 2 days of coverage
of GM food pointed to a possible explanation for these differences, which we
believed were based on some fundamental news show differences in focus. On
April 5, 2000, both ABC and CBS ran a story about the National Research
Council (NRC) releasing a report on GM food that was generally positive
toward the technology. It was a report that one might presume would generally
please the GM food industry in spite of some controversy about the allegiances
of some of the individuals serving on the commission and the recommendation
that GM food was an important area that needed to be monitored.
ABC’s story mentioned that the report called for tighter government
monitoring that should set some of the then-existing concerns about GM
food to rest. CBS was substantially more critical, with anchor Dan Rather
introducing the report with the statement that “Future gene-altered crops
need to be checked for possible threats to other plants” and adding that
“critics of gene-altered foods don’t like the study’s main finding or the sci-
entists who’ve made it” (CBS Evening News, April 5, 2000).
An additional and notable difference between ABC and CBS, which
may be indicative of why this issue was covered differently by these two
networks, concerned an additional ABC story about Monsanto, which ran
the day before the NRC report. Monsanto, a company with one of the
largest stakes in GM food, issued a press release a couple of days ahead of
the commission report
15
stating that they would, on the day of the report,
release a great deal of proprietary scientific information about GM rice.
According to Hendrik Verfaillie, president of Monsanto, the data in this
report could “facilitate and encourage basic research to improve rice and
other crops.” This action, reported by ABC but not by CBS or NBC, made
Monsanto look especially good on the day prior to the release of a positive,
but not stellar, national commission report. The intent of Monsanto is
almost beyond question in that the press release came out just ahead of the
commission report, timed to coincide with and to increase the chances of
coverage. Moreover, Monsanto had been in possession of the data for some
time and could, it would seem, have released the information earlier.
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 165
One element in the report was most striking. Following the report from
the field, the late Peter Jennings commented that
one of the biggest companies in genetically altered foods, Monsanto, said
today it would give away valuable research on the genetic structure of rice
which could lead to new strains of healthier strains of rice that would be more
resistant to disease. No company has ever disclosed so much genetic infor-
mation about a single crop. (ABC Evening News, April 5, 2000)
This very favorably worded statement about the value of Monsanto’s
release of data left a positive impression of Monsanto and GM food.
ABC may well have chosen to run the Monsanto story because they
thought it had important news value. A skeptic might wonder if Monsanto
had better public relations contacts with ABC than at the other two net-
works. Relatedly, ABC News has received millions of dollars in advertising
from Archers Daniel Midland, a company that also has considerable inter-
ests in the success of GM food.
But without concrete evidence of intervention at the level of news-show
funding, this still did not explain the differences in coverage we discovered.
We continued to speculate as to what might explain the more frequent
reporting by CBS News and decided to contact the networks and attempt to
learn about the story assignment routines at each network by interviewing
executive producers, producers, and the reporters. We chose to start with
CBS primarily as it had been observed that the executive producer Jim
Murphy and producer Sally Garner were frequently cited in on-air credits
on the broadcast stories on CBS, and reporter Wyatt Andrews was a con-
sistent reporter on these stories.
CBS permitted taped phone interviews with these three key individuals.
Each interview was cleared in advance by CBS’s public affairs office. We
spoke first with Sally Garner, providing her with our basic quantitative find-
ings, as we believed that it would have been inappropriate to not disclose
our findings and would have made asking direct questions about CBS’s
heavier coverage impossible.
We did not receive comparable access to ABC or NBC. In retrospect, the
critical obstacle was the inability to identify a producer or reporter at either
network who was consistently cited in on-air credits like Murphy and
Garner. Nor was there a reporter who seemed to have the story as his or her
beat in the way that Wyatt Andrews did.
16
As with CBS, we were routed to
ABC’s and NBC’s own public affairs departments for clearance, and
166 Science Communication
though we were told a number of times that we would hear back about pro-
posed interviews with the respective executive producers, we were unable
to obtain the interviews we requested. We did tell our contacts at both ABC
and NBC that we had completed interviews with individuals from CBS.
What we learned from the interviews with CBS may well explain the
preponderance of stories from that network. In short, Garner and Andrews
found a very receptive executive producer in Jim Murphy from their very
first suggestion that they do a story on the subject. Wyatt commented that
Murphy seemed intrinsically interested in the topic because
first of all it’s food, and people eat that. I think people are fascinated by that.
And second, it is the technological frontier. Marry that to food and he
[Murphy] sees it as a no-brainer. He just thinks the audience is going to be
interested when people are messing with your food. (personal communica-
tion, A. Wyatt, October 2004)
These interviews indicated how important a production team is for a story
or topic to receive regular attention. It was because Garner and Andrews stuck
with the topic and were given a lot of latitude by their executive producer,
James Murphy, that they ended up providing much more frequent coverage.
CBS’s decision to focus on GM food through newsroom practices of news
topic selection would mean that CBS Evening News viewers might be more
likely to consider GM food a topic of concern (McCombs & Shaw, 1972)
through the greater awareness and attention to the issue (Schudson, 1995; Ten
Eyck, 1999; Van Dijck, 2003). Without surveying consistent viewers of the
three networks’ perspectives on GM food we cannot, of course, go beyond
speculation.
These differences in quantity and emphasis, though, do not seem to have
carried over in the use of spokespersons. Within the small corpus of stories
carried on the evening news shows—and in comparison to newspaper cov-
erage of GM food—the use of spokespersons on television was more bal-
anced across networks and more representative of the variety of voices in
the GM food controversy (see Table 7).
Over the 23-year time frame, 21% of the spokespersons were from
industry, 19% were scientists, 19% were activists, and the balance consisted
of representatives from government, farmers, and the public (see Table 3).
By network, there were only slight differences in the three most frequently
used sources of industry, scientist, and activist; by frequency all three used
these groups similarly when combined (ABC, 58.7%; CBS, 58.8%; NBC,
60%). Differences in the frequency of use of other spokespersons were
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 167
slightly greater but likely represent differences in focus of the networks
themselves.
These results stand in sharp contrast to the 73% industry and 7% activists
in a study of 18 months of newspaper coverage (Priest & Talbert, 1994). This
comparison does not take into consideration access to spokespersons, as it
may be that television news shows have greater access to spokespersons than
do the small dailies noted in the study on newspaper coverage. However, this
broader range of viewpoints does not appear to be unusual in television cov-
erage; 72% of controversial nightly newscasts had multiple viewpoints
(Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005). Television coverage of GM
food did not appear to emphasize the mainstream, large organization point of
view that dominates newspaper coverage of the issue (Priest & Ten Eyck,
2003), likely because in order to appear objective and unbiased in the short
format of television news, oppositional voices are presented as the “balance
between opposing points of view” (Priest, 1995). These voices are important
in the development of new technologies as they promote and generate public
debate. Priest and Ten Eyck (2003) note that
activists can affect others through direct persuasions, though that is typically
not enough. It is important that a dissenting message is publicized by the
news media—that the rhetoric of a group of people with a particular, espe-
cially a non mainstream, opinion, is made available for public reflection. This
has the effect of extending the range of public debate; it is easy to imagine
168 Science Communication
Table 7
Percentage Frequency of Source Types by Network
ABC CBS NBC
Industry 18 22.3 22.2
Activist/activist group 18.8 20.4 15.6
Scientist/medical 21.9 16.1 22.2
Public 11.7 14.2 20
Farmers/farmers association 15.6 11.8 8.9
Food and Drug Administration 4.7 6.2 0
U.S. legislators 1.6 0.9 2.2
Environmental Protection Agency 0.8 0.9 0
National Institutes of Health/ 0 0.9 0
Department of Health and
Human Services
U.S. Department of Agriculture 0.8 0.5 0
Other government 6.3 5.7 8.9
people reorienting themselves on a revised public opinion continuum and
projecting a different reaction from others as a result of learning about oppo-
sitional views. (p. 29)
Yet, when the valence of the spokespersons as a whole was considered,
it was shown that there was an almost even split between the polarizing
positive-negative valence. Over the 23-year period, 45% of all spokesper-
sons were pro GM food and 41% were negative about the issue. As was
expected, the perspective of industry and scientist experts was more posi-
tive than negative across the 23-year period, while activists were more often
negative than positive when speaking of GM food. Yet, looked at in 5-year
increments (see Table 5), valence as a whole shifted over the timeline
examined. The more positive tone of the first 10 years was followed by a
more negative valence in the years between 1990 and 2000. Here, television
coverage mirrors the shifts from the promoting newspaper coverage of the
1980s (Priest, 1995; Gaskell et al., 1999) to the less positive coverage in the
1990s (Marks, 2001; Nisbet & Lewenstein, 2002; Marks et al., 2003;
McInerney et al., 2004). Of note, within each of these categories there was
still some opposite opinion to the majority valence, indicating that there is
no overall unified stance toward the technology.
It is clear from the results here that television coverage of GM food over
this 23-year period is different in both quantity and valence of coverage when
compared to newspapers. Beyond the obvious differences as media, newspa-
pers and television are dissimilar in the size of the news hole (that is, how
much time, in terms of television, or space, in terms of newspapers) is devoted
to disseminating information and the way in which the audience interacts with
the medium. The results presented here indicate that newsroom practices,
although strong factors in news production for both media, can affect news
coverage of television in ways that likely have more of an impact than with
newspapers due to the limited time available for news coverage on television.
In contrast to earlier work that has shown consonance across the evening
news commercial broadcasts in the United States, this study points out that
for the specific issue of GM food, newsroom practices resulted in a differ-
ence in quantity over time. Within the stories themselves, there was little
difference in spokespersons or the valence of their comments. However, as
pointed out in the limited critical analysis of one story, there appear to be
inequalities in coverage that could be explicated by critical analysis of sto-
ries analyzed.
Limited as it was to structural and quantitative analysis of GM coverage
by the broadcast networks, this study points to the need for further exami-
nation of the coverage of this volatile topic, especially in light of the
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 169
reliance of the American public on television for news about science. As
well, it highlights a call for further examination of the role of newsroom
practices.
Conclusions
As a mass medium, it has been said that television has the greatest like-
lihood of influencing public opinion about science (Nelkin, 1995; Nisbet &
Lewenstein, 2002). The Pew Foundation noted that the U.S. public’s
knowledge of GM food tends to be driven mostly by the degree to which it
is covered by the media (Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, 2006).
As shown in this study, the spotty coverage of GM food in the evening
broadcast news, coupled with the reliance of the U.S. public on television
for information on science and technology, highlights concerns about this
medium’s providing the information needed by the U.S. public to make
sound and rational decisions regarding GM food.
In this first study of television news coverage of GM food, we have seen
that over the 23 years of the study, coverage was sporadic and light, except
for the spikes associated around the infrequent crisis event. This stands in
strong contrast to newspaper coverage, which has followed the GM food
issue more closely over the years examined. One network, CBS, dominated
coverage, yet each network treated the issue quite similarly in its use of on-
air spokespersons. Although media coverage is associated with the devel-
opment of long-standing perspectives, coverage as spotty as seen in this
23-year time frame would likely have little effect on an individual’s support
or opposition to GM foods; in fact, since 2001, support for GM foods has
remained flat, while opposition has declined (Pew Initiative on Food and
Biotechnology, 2006).
Critically, these results indicate that for a subject as ubiquitous and per-
vasive as food (that is, everyone needs to eat), the lack of coverage may be
of concern for other, less all-encompassing technological issues. If the U.S.
press does not cover a technology of food, what does this imply about the
potential for coverage of technologies with less relevance to a majority of
the population? As seen here, newsroom practices promoted CBS’s focus
on GM food. Would it require the same serendipity of like-minded produc-
ers and reporters such as noted with CBS to push for the inclusion of sto-
ries on other science issues?
Previous studies have yielded contradictory results about the relation-
ship of television science to public perceptions of science. Nelkin (1995)
170 Science Communication
and Nisbet and Lewenstein (2002) found that the viewing of science con-
tent on television decreases public reservations about science, while Besley
and Shanahan (2005) found that attention to television news has a negative
relationship to support for biotechnology. In the case of our results here, the
paucity of television coverage of GM food has likely had little impact on
public perceptions, which is in line with both the Hallman et al. (2003,
2004) and the Pew Initiative (2006) surveys showing that the U.S. public
has “heard little about genetically modified foods, and as such, have yet to
roundly accept or intensely oppose them” (Pew Initiative on Food and
Biotechnology, 2006).
Recent data on the use of televised science (all science programs, not just
news programming) clearly indicate that television exerts an influence on
people in their attitudes toward nanotechnology, an emerging science issue
(Lee & Scheufele, 2006). Indeed, the impact of television news programming
about science may not be in the dissemination of knowledge about a subject
but rather the emotional response toward that subject. Given the results here—
that there is little difference among the networks except in quantity of cover-
age (which is still minimal, even for CBS, which had the most coverage over
the 23-year period examined) and that there is essentially an even split
between positive and negative perspectives on GM food—it is not unsurpris-
ing that the U.S. public has little knowledge about this issue and that support
for or against this technology has remained unchanged.
This examination raises concerns in the ability of television to serve
as the primary medium of information dissemination about science and
technology. The structural and economic characteristics of television news
production severely limit the capability for it to serve as a medium for dis-
semination of complex topics. Further examination of other developing and
controversial science topics, such as nanotechnology or global warming,
would be valuable to determine whether the results of this study are gener-
alizable to other science topics.
Ultimately, the role of the news media in presenting science is compli-
cated by what the audience brings to the table in terms of their belief and
attitudes toward science. As Robert Logan (2001) noted,
Predispositions affect how persons perceive the credibility of news sources;
the extent to which adults and children are interested in learning; possible
motivations to read, listen, or watch science news; and potential recall of
facts or concepts within a science story. (p. 141)
As a first study in television coverage of GM food on U.S. evening broad-
cast news, the results presented here are limited by their focus on structural
Nucci, Kubey / Genetically Modified Food on the Evening News 171
and quantitative analyses. Yet, the demonstration that television coverage
differs from newspaper coverage should serve to encourage science com-
municators to consider a focus or at least the inclusion of television media
in their research.
Notes
1. These are corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, potatoes, squash/zucchini, papaya, tomatoes,
sugarbeets, rice, flax, and radicchio.
2. See Marks, Kalaitzandonakes, Allison, and Zakharova (2002), Nisbet and Lewenstein
(2002), and McInerney, Bird, and Nucci (2004) for content analyses of biotechnology cover-
age in newspapers.
3. Previous research, discussed below, has shown strong consonance between the three
evening news shows and the extent and focus of coverage.
4. See Lang (1991), Newhagen and Reeves (1992), Reeves, Newhagen, Maibach, Basil,
and Kurz (1991), and Tan (1986).
5. Characterized by having multiple meanings such that each viewer can take away a dif-
ferent meaning. Polysemy does not, however, imply an infinite set of possible meanings.
6. For example, the evening CNN news shows on Vanderbilt Television Archives were
Worldview (1995-2000), Wolf Blitzer (February 2001-December 2001), Newsmagazine (2001-
2005), and Anderson Cooper (2005-present).
7. Top story, before first commercial, after first commercial and before second commer-
cial, after second commercial and before third commercial, after third commercial and before
fourth commercial, after fourth commercial.
8. The total number of stories that aired over the 23-year period can be estimated at 10
stories/show × 3 networks × 365 days/years × 23 years = 251,850 stories.
9. The three stories were aired November 11, 1980 (Supreme Court and genetic engi-
neering patents), April 17, 1987 (patents for genetically modified [GM] organisms), and May
26, 1992 (marketing of GM products without government approval).
10. Air dates were December 16, 1982; August 7, 1987; April 5, 2000; May 3, 2000; and
October 31, 2003.
11. Flavr Savr
TM
, a product of Calgene, was the first GM whole food approved for the U.S.
market.
12. Three of these top stories were the top story on two networks (ABC and CBS). Story
subjects included the Supreme Court decision on patenting of GM organisms, GM marketing
and government approval, use of bovine growth hormone to promote milk production, Food
and Drug Administration proposals about regulation of GM food, contamination of taco shells
with GM corn, and an update on that issue 4 days later.
13. Similar shifts in source spokespersons are noted for the issue of global warming, with
the balance of sources shifting from scientists in early newspaper coverage to politicians and
interest groups in later newspaper coverage (Wilkins, 1993; Williams, 2001).
14. The article by Losey, Rayor, and Carter (1999) is considered critical in the United
States as awareness raising on the possible impact of GM products.
15. “Scientists Achieve Major Breakthrough in Rice; Data to be Shared With Worldwide
Research Community,” PR Newswire, April 4, 2000.
16. The most frequent ABC reporter was Barry Serafin. On NBC, Robert Bazell accounted for
nearly one third of all their stories. On CBS, Wyatt Andrews reported on 41% of all stories.
172 Science Communication
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Mary L. Nucci is a doctoral candidate in media studies at Rutgers University. Her research
focuses on visual format, rhetoric, and culture in science communication. She has an AB in
biological sciences from Mount Holyoke College and an MS in zoology from Rutgers.
Robert Kubey is a professor of journalism and media studies and the director of the Center for
Media Studies at Rutgers University. His publications have focused on the psychological expe-
rience of media and the state of media literacy education in the United States and worldwide.
176 Science Communication
