Literature review of media reporting on GM foods

Gentzkow and Shapiro (2006) argue that a Bayesian consumer who is uncertain about the quality of an information source will infer that the source is of higher quality when its reports conform to the consumer’s prior expectations, and they use this fact to build a model of media bias in which firms slant their reports toward the prior beliefs of their customers in

34 order to build a reputation for quality. Media may thus decide to bias the consumer negatively on GM foods if that is seen to conform to the European consumers’ prior expectations and fears. The media will be tempted to allocate significant amounts of space on negatively-biased news on GM foods since these stories could be considered to be attractive in drawing the public’s attention in that they could be connected with the European readers’ perceptions regarding the hazards of GM foods.

The production of genetically-modified crops and foods is a relatively new technology in Europe. Europeans have continued to argue about GM Foods in the last couple of decades.

GM animal feed imports are allowed into Europe, and the lack of labels on meat, eggs, dairy products, and fish produced using GM feed means that Europe’s reliance on GM is hidden from consumers, and so they cannot easily avoid buying GM-fed products.¹⁴ The European media has been very active in publishing stories on this subject.

Media bias on the subject of GM foods in Europe has thus elicited the interest of some research scholars who set out to identify whether there has indeed been a bias in the reporting of the implications of this relatively new technology. Interesting studies by Fitzgerald et al. (2002), Vilella-Vila and Costa-Font (2008) and King’s College (2008) do identify the presence of bias in media while reporting the news on genetically modified foods in Europe, and the results in these studies show negative bias most of the time. Another paper by Nichols-O’Neill and Woodworth (2012) also examines 13 international English-language newspapers (of which London Times being the only European newspaper) and conclude that 8 of those newspapers (although they say ‘nations’) demonstrated favorable coverage of GM foods while the remaining 5 were unfavorable. However, these studies suffer from one of two problems – either they take into account a limited number of publications and thus cover a limited part of Europe (all except the paper from King’s College) or they do not follow a rigorous content analysis methodology (as in the case of the paper from King’s College). The current study examines 46 newspapers across countries

14 http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/component/content/article?id=14861

35 and adopts a systematic content analysis approach. Such a full-fledged analysis is crucial for a manager to understand this phenomenon more completely.

Through a content analysis of print media coverage of genetically modified/engineered food in articles drawn from the Reuters Business Briefing, Fitzgerald, Campbell and Sivak (2002) show that while media sentiment was very positive in 1995, since then, media coverage on GM food had moved to a neutral middle ground by the time their paper was completed in 2002. This finding may not be valid in Europe since it is based only on English-language publications.

While examining whether the press media coverage and reporting had some effect on the change in attitudes towards and risk perceptions of new genetically modified (GM) foods between 1999 and 2004 in Spain and the United Kingdom (UK), Vilella-Vila and Costa-Font (2008) find that differences in media reporting along with attitudes towards journalism correlate with attitudes and risk perception to GM food. This result, the authors claim, reinforces the hypothesis of a media bias in newly created technology risks.

The analysis of the print and broadcasting media by King’s College, London, on behalf of the European Commission (2008), showed that the average frequency of articles over the 20 months studied was low across the ten European countries participating in the CONSUMERCHOICE project, and that most of them are news reports; media interest in GM food and related issues appeared limited in most countries in this study. However, specific national or local events did evoke greater responses, mirrored for a short period of time by an increased number of articles and reports. They also note that in most countries during much of the period of the project, the majority of published items were neutral or negative with respect to GMOs. The study then notes that by Spring 2008, favorable views became much more common, in some Member States constituting a clear majority – but this is not supported either by Eurobarometer indicators (Table 2.1) or the detailed tables and graphs given in the above study.

36 These studies which use the methodology of content analyses have invariably stopped after identifying such a bias, and have not examined the different characteristics of this bias. The current study aims to rectify this limitation by examining the different aspects of the bias. The current research does not address the impact of media bias on company reputation and the resulting firm strategies, but it aims to open up certain new facets of media bias so that the manager’s understanding of the bias is more complete, which in turn will lead to a better strategic decision-making process.

Academic research has under-estimated the strong anti-GM food sentiment in Europe. For example, Hoban (1998) says ‘Biotechnology will remain an issue in some parts of Europe, at least over the short term. However, the opposition there should fade with time, as more products arrive on the market that are clearly beneficial to consumers’. Hoban (2002) in another paper, also argues that media coverage of agricultural biotechnology over the past few years has generally been balanced in the United States, at least compared to Europe, and he says that while Europeans live to eat, Americans eat to live, and also declares that America’s relatively young culture tends to focus on the future whereas Europeans generally look to the past. In spite of his arguments, such strong and generalized statements cannot be accepted as reasons for the negative sentiment against GM foods in Europe.

Gaskell et al. (2003) say that, over the last 25 years, the volume of press coverage on biotechnology has increased more than one hundred fold in the UK and that as the volume of coverage has increased so has there been a decline in the favourability of the average article on biotechnology. While the overall acceptability of biotechnology in the UK fluctuated between positive and negative, the authors note that the majority of the population does not support GM foods while GM crops gain very modest support. This research also shows that while medical doctors are on top of the confidence level amongst the stakeholders in biotechnology (52% in 2002), newspapers and magazine reports scored only 11% just above the government which was the lowest in the list.

37 Research scholars have used different empirical methods to show such bias and the results of relevant media bias studies and in particular, studies on media coverage of GM foods, are summarized in Table 2.2.

It can be seen from the above analysis that not only the studies on media bias in Europe is a recent and growing phenomenon, but there are also serious gaps in understanding the reasons for these biases, particularly their role when new and so-called potentially harmful technologies are introduced. Such a fuller and clearer understanding is essential for a manager to prepare the firm against the impact of such biased information, since the different stakeholders, the financial sectors, the NGOs, the government and the consumers are likely to be influenced by such biased reporting.

38 Table 2.2. Summary of Literature on Media Bias

Author(s) Research objective

Sample data Bias definition and measurement/

Theoretical paper A publication is considered biased to Bruno (2009) To verify if labor

unions’ claim that

39

Author(s) Research objective

Sample data Bias definition and measurement/ that the media is itself a site of production of

40

Author(s) Research objective

Sample data Bias definition and measurement/

Theoretical paper Bias defined as the slant by the media

41

Author(s) Research objective Sample data Bias definition and measurement/

More recently, media bias as a research field is being extended from the political arena to the business sector.