91
Policy Agendas in the Media
development of this omnibus package of legislative policies that eventually codified
some of these issues into law.
Coverage Intensity
On April 19,1995 at 9:02 a.m., a truck bomb ripped apart the nine-story Alfred
R Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The blast collapsed many
portions of the building and trapped victims underneath tons of rubble. Almost
immediately after the blast, a hehcopter news crew was over the scene televising
t he collapsed building and documenting the efforts of countless fire, pohce, and
rescue personnel.
Television networks devoted extensive on-air time and back room resources
to the bombing incident. During the first seven days of coverage, the nightly network
newscasts from ABC, CBS, and NBC averaged 80% of their broadcast time on
this story (see Table 1). On the eighth day of coverage, on-story time dropped to
the mid 40% range. Analysis of the content of these broadcasts was thus hmited to
seven days, April 19 to April 25, 1995.
Table 1: Percentage of Broadcast Time Per Network
BROADCAST TIM E SPENT ON OKLAHOMA CITY
BOMBING STORY BY M AJOR NETW ORKS
19th
20th
21st
APRIL
22nd
23rd
24th
25th
7 day
avg. %
ABC
84.25
86.49
86.96
86.82
71.31
87.32
53.97
79.59
CBS
73.17
99.20
89.74
91.87
60.94
88.89
45.08
78.41
NBC
93.28
91.34
90.55
93.89
72.03
70.23
65.25
82.37
Name of
Network
Sources: ABC 1995a-1995g, CBS 1995a-1995g, NBC 1995a-1995g, respectively.
The virtual army of media personahties and support staff that descended on
this story generated nightly news reports all over the United States and around the
world. Most importantly for this study, was the question of whether and how
business representatives, pubhc interest group spokespersons, and state managers
used this unique opportunity to further their policy agendas, for or against the
issues before Congress.
Analysis of the overall number of speakers in the media coverage is presented
in Table 2. Speakers refer to everyone, identified or presented anonymously, who
was given the opportunity to make a verbal expression on the broadcasts during
the week of newscasts. In order to conduct this analysis, videos of the 21 broadcasts
were systematically surveyed as to speakers and the content of their presentations.