Place, distance, and environmental news: Geographic variation in newspapercoverage of the spotted owl conflict

This paper examines the geographic variation of newspaper coverage of the c onflict over northern spotted owls and old-growth forest protection in the Pacific Northwest. We address four issues: the extent to which newspaper "f raming" of the conflict favored one side or the other, the way in which cov erage varied among newspapers publishing in different cities around the cou ntry, the extent to which that variation was related to the newspapers' phy sical distance from the Pacific Northwest, and the extent to which variatio n was related to other characteristics of the newspapers' locations. We con tent-analyzed the news coverage in ten major daily newspapers for the perio d 1990-1994. Dependent variables were number of stories, story length, numb er of sources, and the number of "pro-cut" or "pro-save" news sources and s tory themes appearing in each article. independent variables were physical distance, economic ties, political dominance, lumber industry employment, e nvironmentalism, and political and environmental pluralism. In the 408 stor ies we analyzed, there was a significant tendency to present story themes t hat parallel the pro-cut side of the conflict. Regression results showed ph ysical distance and economic connections both to be significant predictors of the number and length of stories and number of sources, with explained v ariance ranging from 38 to 78 percent. Variation in the framing of the stor y was more difficult to predict, although there does appear to be some rela tionship to voter registration and environmental membership patterns.