How the News Media Can Frame an Issue
The long-awaited (yet largely ignored by the public as far as I can tell) Presidential Oil Spill Commission’s final report was issued last week, with a comprehensive examination of what happened before, during and after the fateful events on BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform. Certainly within the report there is plenty of fodder for Public Relations and crisis communications pros. One thing that struck me involves the way certain members of the media decided on a frame for their stories and stuck to it.
Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post picked out this nugget about CNN’s Anderson Cooper (emphasis mine):
From Chapter Five, page 139:
“Local resentment became a media theme and then a self-fulfilling prophesy. Even those who privately thought the federal government was doing the best it could under the circumstances could not say so publicly. Coast Guard responders watched Governor Jindal — and the TV cameras following him — return to what appeared to be the same spot of oiled marsh day after day to complain about the inadequacy of the federal response, even though only a small amount of marsh was then oiled. When the Coast Guard sought to clean up that piece of affected marsh, Governor Jindal refused to confirm its location. Journalists encouraged state and local officials and residents to display their anger at the federal response, and offered coverage when they did. Anderson Cooper reportedly asked a Parish President to bring an angry, unemployed offshore oil worker on his show. When the Parish President could not promise the worker would be ‘angry,’ both were disinvited.“
“This unattributed statement is completely false . . . [the claim] that it was journalists who were encouraging residents and state and local leaders to ‘display their anger at the federal response’ is offensive.”
