“Crashing the gates” – selection criteria for television news reporting of traffic crashes
Introduction
Mass media (i.e. means of communication that reach large numbers of people, such as television or newspapers) are one of the primary sources of current information in society, and therefore play an important role in how people perceive society (Dearing and Rogers, 1996). The relationship between mass media and traffic safety for instance is highly relevant. Media are playing an important role in the creation of health awareness, such as road safety attitudes in a population (Combs and Slovic, 1979, Connor and Wesolowski, 2004, Daniels et al., 2010). This appears for example from a number of studies showing an important influence of mass media on alcohol-impaired driving. Mercer (1985) indicates that media coverage is probably a more critical element in the reduction of alcohol-related crashes than police road checks. Epperlein (1987) concludes that the impact of the media reporting about alcohol-impaired driving that preceded a new law against alcohol-impaired driving had a higher influence on reducing alcohol-impaired driving than the introduction of the law itself.
However, media’s choices of what stories to cover and how to cover them are in fact driven by economic interests rather than public education goals (Beullens et al., 2008, Connor and Wesolowski, 2004, Frost et al., 1997). Hence, media coverage does not necessarily reflect reality. Research shows that the link between media reporting and developments in reality is far from perfect (Kepplinger and Habermeier, 1995, Lowry et al., 2003, Perse et al., 1997). Editorial decisions about the ‘newsworthiness’ of an event are often based on a story’s novelty and dramatic value; events that are more rarely occurring or more dramatic are more likely to get reported (Adams, 1992, Combs and Slovic, 1979, Connor and Wesolowski, 2004, Daniels et al., 2010). In our society where the importance of media has been strongly increasing, the media determine the perception more than reality itself (Ghanem, 1996). Several studies indicate that the public perception of safety risks or threats, such as traffic crashes, are subject to systematic biases (Combs and Slovic, 1979, Connor and Wesolowski, 2004, Daniels et al., 2010). When people consume news, they assume that the coverage presents a fair representation of reality (Kepplinger and Habermeier, 1995). For instance, they assume that a higher number of news items about a specific type of event indicates that such events occur more often in reality (Connor and Wesolowski, 2004, Kepplinger and Habermeier, 1995). This perception influences the way people think about, react on, or adjust their behaviour to diverse forms of safety risks. It is likely that the number of media reported crashes and the way of reporting influence the perception of the risk of certain behaviours (Connor and Wesolowski, 2004, Daniels et al., 2010). Also Frost et al. (1997) suggest that media create a biased perception of different causes of death. Whenever this perceived risk does not correspond with the real risk, biases in the public’s perceptions and attitudes of the risk might occur (Beullens et al., 2008). Therefore, increased efforts to analyse the media reporting on traffic crashes and their possible implications on traffic safety are justified.
While there is a large body of research related to media coverage of other injury related topics (such as homicide), reporting about traffic crashes has received little attention in scientific literature (Beullens et al., 2008, Connor and Wesolowski, 2004). Little is known about how media report on traffic crashes, and even less about what crashes are selected by media for reporting. The aim of this study is to contribute to filling the gaps in scientific knowledge about the media reporting of traffic crashes by determining which crash characteristics have an influence on the probability that the crash is reported in the television news. By linking the news items about traffic crashes to the official crash database, a strict input–output analysis of the media selection can be performed, identifying which objectively registered characteristics of the crash have an impact on the probability that the crash is reported in the media.
The structure of this paper is as follows. First, we give a brief overview of the relevant literature about earlier research about the media reporting of traffic crashes. Next, we describe the data and methodology of this research. In the analysis section we start with a description of the collected data. Then, a number of logistic regression models are presented that identify crash characteristics that influence the probability of being reported in the television news. Finally, we present the main conclusions and discuss the limitations of this paper.
Section snippets
Literature review
A study by Daniels et al. (2010) investigated the newspaper coverage of 140 injury crashes with motorcyclists. The study indicates that the reporting rate in media increases when the severity of the crash is higher. This finding is in line with other studies about non-traffic accident reporting (e.g. Woodcock (2008) came to the same conclusion in the context of amusement ride accidents). Daniels et al. (2010) also indicate an influence on the probability of reporting from time aspects (day of
Data and methodology
For this study, news items about traffic crashes from the prime time television news are linked with the official injury crash database. The study takes place in the region of Flanders, Belgium. Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium. The region accommodates approximately 6.3 million inhabitants (slightly over half the Belgian population) and covers an area of about 13,500 km2 (slightly less than half the Belgian surface) (Statistics Belgium, Belgian Federal Government, 2013).
Analyses
The variable of interest, whether a specific crash has been reported in the television news or not, is a dichotomous variable. Therefore, logistic regression models are used to identify independent variables that are related to a lower or a higher chance of being reported in the media. The functional form of the chosen logistic regression models is the following (Allison, 1999):where
P is the probability of a crash being reported in the media.
β0 is the
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the database for all injury crashes, while Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the fatal crash database. The left column of these tables contains the variable name and description. The middle column shows the descriptive statistics for all crashes (both the ones that have been on the news and the ones that have not), and the right-most column shows the descriptive statistics for the crashes that have been in the news only (i.e. where NEWS =
Interpretation of results
An overall result is that all variables that indicate the severity of the crash (in terms of maximum severity level, number of involved victims and number of fatalities) have a significant impact on the probability of being reported in the media. Generally, the more severe the crash and its consequences, the higher the probability that it is reported in the media. This is in line with other research, confirming that media tend to focus on more dramatic news events (Combs and Slovic, 1979,
Conclusions
Five types of crash characteristics have been identified to have an impact on the probability of the crash being reported in the prime time television news. These are characteristics related to the crash severity, the moment the crash takes place, the location of the crash, personal characteristics of the involved victims and finally the involved road user types. This indicates that the number and the nature of reported crashes in the television news not always exactly follow the reality.
More
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Flemish Government within the framework of the Policy Research Centre for Media and the Policy Research Centre for Traffic Safety. It was partly supported by a grant from the Research Foundation Flanders. The content of this paper is the sole responsibility of the authors.
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