Opening the News Gates? Humanitarian and Human Rights NGOs in the US News Media, 1990-2010

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Opening the news gates? Humanitarian and human rights NGOs in the US news media, 1990–2010

Matthew PowersUniversity of Washington, USA

AbstractThis study examines whether changes in the media, political, and civic landscapes give leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) increased news access. Using longitudinal content analysis (1990–2010) of a purposive sample of US news outlets, it compares the prevalence, prominence, and story location of news articles citing leading human rights NGOs to human rights coverage more generally. In all outlets, NGO prevalence rises over time; media-savvy NGOs drive much of the growth. By contrast, prominence decreases, as do the number of NGO-driven stories. In all outlets, NGOs typically appear in stories already in the media spotlight; as sources, they appear after the statements of government officials. Finally, the news outlets most receptive to NGOs are those that commit the fewest resources to international news coverage. Overall, findings suggest that while NGO news access has indeed increased over time, such access continues to be shaped by established patterns of news construction.

Keywordscivil society, content analysis, international news, human rights, news access, non-governmental organizations

Past research shows that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rarely make the news (Lang, 2013; Thrall, 2006; Trenz, 2004). Do changes in today’s media, political, and civic landscapes provide these groups with increased opportunities for news access? To

Corresponding author:Matthew Powers, University of Washington, 102 Communications Box 353740, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Email: [email protected]

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some, diminished newsroom resources – particularly in the United States – make jour-nalists increasingly likely to accept third party materials: leading NGOs, many of which have ramped up and professionalized their publicity efforts, are thus seemingly well-positioned to find increased news access (Cooper, 2011; Fenton, 2010). To others, cur-rent shifts do not alter key barriers of NGO access to the news media. Specifically, the news media’s bias toward government sources minimizes both the amount and types of coverage such groups receive: accordingly, NGOs are said to receive news coverage only when speaking on topics legitimated by government officials (Lang, 2013). This study, a longitudinal examination of the amount and types of news access received by humanitar-ian and human rights NGOs in the US media, puts these perspectives to the test.

Questions of news access represent a longstanding concern in communication research (Bennett, 1990; Hall et al., 1978). Scholars have examined the factors shaping patterns of source distribution (i.e. the relative mixture of sources in news articles) and editorial selection (i.e. the types of issues that receive coverage). The study of humanitarian and human rights NGOs provides opportunities for methodological and theoretical renewal of this important research tradition. Methodologically, NGOs raise interesting questions about to how adequately measure and operationalize news access. These are groups that do not merely wish to appear in the news; many also want to get the media spotlight to shine in new places and on new issues.

Theoretically, humanitarian and human rights NGOs provide an opportunity to examine whether changes in international relations are reflected in international news coverage. For decades, scholars of international relations have chronicled the incorpo-ration – for better or worse – of NGOs into processes of international governance (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Lang, 2013; Moyn, 2010). During this same period, the established wisdom in political communication has been that government officials dominate news coverage about those international relations (Bennett, 2004). While an important body of scholarship has investigated changes in how humanitarian and human rights groups pursue publicity (Chouliaraki, 2013; Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Dogra, 2012; Orgad and Seu, 2014; Powers, 2014), less attention has been paid to tracking whether these changes – in conjunction with shifting landscapes of news and politics – alter basic norms of news construction (e.g. resulting in fewer government voices, a broader range of topics or issues).

The aims of this study are fourfold. First, it overviews the established wisdom on news access and suggests that developments in the worlds of media, politics, and civil society invite new research that re-examines this wisdom. Second, it conceptualizes and operationalizes news access in order to capture the multiple dimensions on which NGOs seek coverage. Third, it documents how and in what ways NGO news access has changed over time. Fourth, it asks what effects, if any, changes in news access have on the con-struction of international human rights news. To achieve these aims, this study presents the results of a 20-year content analysis of human rights coverage in a strategic sample of leading US news outlets. In each outlet, it examines the prevalence, prominence, and geographic location of stories in which leading NGOs are cited to stories in which such groups are absent. By doing so, it presents concrete evidence showing how and in what ways NGO news access has changed over time – and asks what the implications of these developments are for the study of news access.



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News access revisited

Scholars have long stressed that news access is shaped by a combination of professional and economic factors (Gandy, 1982; Hall et al., 1978). Professionally, journalists see themselves as keepers of a public record detailing the actions of public officials. Economically, news organizations often lack the time and resources to produce news without the help of sources. Together, these factors lead reporters to favor government officials, who provide the ‘information subsidies’ (Gandy, 1982) necessary to fulfill both professional and economic considerations. While the resulting news coverage is not homogeneous, scholarship suggests that it is typically ‘indexed’ to the concentration and balance of power in government circles (Bennett, 1990).

For NGOs, this official bias has long made for an uphill battle in the struggle for media visibility. Studies have repeatedly found that such groups are included in news coverage only rarely (Thrall, 2006; Trenz, 2004). To improve their chances at garnering publicity, NGOs adapt their messages to acceptable formats and newsworthy topics (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Fenton, 2010; Waisbord, 2011). Yet, even when adapting to news media demands, achieving news coverage remains difficult. Lang (2013), for example, notes that NGOs are likely to receive coverage ‘only if there is valorized input from government representatives’ (p. 127). Because NGOs infrequently align with media demands and government opinions, they have been historically unlikely to receive news coverage.

Today, there are signs that things may be changing, particularly in the realm of inter-national human rights news. There, the constituent elements of a perfect storm are taking shape, which may result in increased news access for humanitarian and human rights NGOs. First, changing economic conditions – specifically, diminished revenues coupled with intensified profitability expectations at US news organizations (McChesney and Nichols, 2010) – have reduced the resources news organizations commit to international newsgathering. Since the end of the Cold War, US news outlets have cut back on the number of foreign news bureaus and full-time correspondents (Kumar, 2011). In their place, freelance reporters and parachute journalists have become increasingly common (Hannerz, 2004). As a result, news organizations find it increasingly difficult to ade-quately monitor international news based on their own network of correspondents (Sambrook, 2010; Wright, 2015).

Second, NGOs in general – and humanitarian and human rights NGOs in particular – enjoy relatively high levels of both public and official acceptance. In a climate of public skepticism toward governments, many view NGOs as both trusted sources of informa-tion and potential organizers for political action (Castells, 2008; Lang, 2013). Humanitarian and human rights NGOs benefit from a political climate in which their shared discourse – human rights1 – enjoys widespread public acceptance (if uneven application): historical scholarship shows that government use of human rights dis-courses exploded in the early 1990s (amidst the collapse of the Cold War and the emer-gence of so-called ‘humanitarian wars’), peaked in the mid-2000s (with pro- and anti-Iraq war sides using human rights language), and has decreased slightly in the United States under the Obama administration (Keys, 2014). This has led both humanitarian and human rights groups to interact more regularly with government officials, whether in the




provision of services or reporting of human rights violations. Taken together, these developments appear to simultaneously give official legitimation to NGOs (i.e. include them within the range of official viewpoints), while perhaps also decentering govern-ment officials as the primary authority on certain news topics.

Third, NGOs have professionalized their information offerings in order to improve their chances of making the news. Leading organizations nowadays dedicate substantial resources to producing reports about topics of importance (Dogra, 2012; McPherson, 2014; Orgad and Seu, 2014; Powers, 2015). Large NGOs also sustain substantial com-munication staffs – many with journalism backgrounds (Cooper, 2011) – that communi-cate issues to broader publics (by issuing press releases, staging media events, producing multimedia content, enlisting celebrities as spokespeople, etc.). Taken together, profes-sionalization processes at NGOs mean that these organizations have more – and more types – of information that they can use in their quest for news coverage.

These three elements – economic constraints for news outlets, acceptance of NGOs in official circles, and professionalized publicity efforts by leading NGOs – each point to seemingly favorable conditions for increased NGO news access. It is less clear what sorts of news access they might provide. Will increased news access allow NGOs to drive news coverage across a wider range of countries? Or will it result primarily in NGOs being subordinated to the demands and preferences of media and government actors? To date, scholars have answered these questions primarily through the lens of case studies (see, for example, Cooper, 2011; Fenton, 2010; Russell, 2013; Waisbord, 2011) or qualitative visual and discourse analysis (Chouliaraki, 2006, 2013; Orgad, 2013). While rich in empirical detail, such studies lack the systematic analysis required to answer specific questions concerning news access. Moreover, the different cases to which they speak produce a range of conflicting claims. Some find that NGOs today enjoy increased opportunities for news access (Russell, 2013), while others suggest that norms of news construction continue to minimize the amount and types of access NGOs receive (Waisbord, 2011). The issue, then, is not merely one of discrepant cases but also under-conceptualization. In order to clarify scholarly knowledge of NGO news access, it is thus necessary to conceptualize the multiple dimensions of news access, which can in turn be used as the basis for a content analysis examining patterns of NGO news access over time. This more parsimonious conceptualization of news access can help ascertain both the nature and some of the effects of NGO news access over time.

Conceptualizing NGO news access

News access examines who gets to be a news source and what sort of news source they get to be. Undoubtedly, this is a vast topic spanning a wide range of actors and influ-ences. Previous research suggests that access varies depending on news outlet, political context, topical focus, and a variety of other factors (Bennett, 2004). Thus, to avoid the risk of overgeneralizing, this study draws on the existing literature examining NGO-media relations in order to develop a parsimonious conceptualization of news access for NGOs. From this literature, it identifies three dimensions of access: prevalence, promi-nence, and story location, each of which captures different facets of how NGOs appear



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in the news. While not exhaustive of access in all forms, each of these – detailed below – documents aspects of news access that can adjudicate specific claims about the effects of NGO news access on norms of news construction.

A first dimension is prevalence. This refers to how often NGOs appear in the news. Several studies suggest that NGOs receive more overall coverage today than in the past, though supporting historical evidence is scant (Beckett, 2008; Sambrook, 2010). Moreover, discussions of prevalence remain underspecified in two ways. First, it remains unclear whether claims of growing access reflect an uptake in the usage of NGO materials by news organizations or simply an expansion in the population of NGOs and news outlets, respectively. Second, it is unclear whether growing preva-lence is a broad phenomenon or whether it is unevenly distributed across NGOs. Previous research shows that leading NGOs accrue a far greater amount of news cover-age than smaller ones (Thrall et al., 2014). Others also suggest that a few media-savvy NGOs drive the majority of the growth in NGO prevalence. In particular, scholars have argued that both Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières are especially well adapted to the current media environment. Unlike their competitors, these groups are posited to invest more resources in maintaining a nimble media profile that can respond to the needs and demands of journalists (Hopgood, 2006; Van Leuven and Joye, 2014).

A second dimension is prominence. It refers to the position and placement of NGOs within news articles (in relation to other news sources). According to some, NGOs may in some ways be changing the construction of news not only by appearing in more news articles than in the past but also by being cited more prominently within them. Fenton (2010) suggests that time-strapped journalists frequently copy NGO press releases – which feature the organizations themselves prominently – ‘verbatim’ (p. 116). Relatedly, others argue that NGOs increasingly decenter the prominence of government sources and perhaps increase the position of civic voices in news coverage (Castells, 2008). Van Leuven and Joye (2014), for example, find that international aid coverage in Belgium is more often based on NGO sources than government ones.

Others suggest that claims of ‘verbatim’ reportage and the displacement of govern-ment sources are overstated. In keeping with theoretical premises of indexing, Waisbord (2011) finds that the ‘organization of news work is lopsided against NGOs’ (p. 146) in favor of government officials. Several studies of the European press find that NGOs are used to ‘counterbalance’ (Van Leuven et al., 2013: 430) the messages put forward by officials. Furthermore, some warn that rising prominence for NGOs over time may crowd out smaller organizations with fewer material and symbolic resources (Bob, 2005; Thrall et al., 2014). Together, these suggest that the number of NGO-driven press releases will be quite low and that NGOs will typically appear later in stories after government officials.

A third dimension of news access is story location. International news coverage in general – and human rights coverage in particular – is known to be highly concentrated and focused on a handful of countries (Ramos et al., 2007; Zuckerman, 2004). Some research suggests that NGOs appear most often in news articles that focus on the small number of countries in which the news media already have an interest. This leads some scholars to express concern that NGO news access will reinforce, rather than challenge,




norms regarding the construction of international news (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Fenton, 2010; Waisbord, 2011).

Conversely, other research suggests that NGO professionalization has given organiza-tions both the skills and resources to bring news coverage to a wider range of countries than in the past (Ramos et al., 2007; Zuckerman, 2004). On one level, this suggests that the number of countries in which NGOs are cited will increase over time. On another, it also posits that the overall pattern of NGO citations will become less concentrated, that is, that the countries receiving the majority of news coverage will constitute a smaller proportion of all NGO news citations over time. Zuckerman (2004) argues both in the case of news coverage in Darfur. There, NGOs reported for years before journalists turned their attention to the story. As such, NGOs both helped push attention to a country otherwise outside the media spotlight and, in doing so, helped diversify – albeit modestly – the overall concentration of international news coverage.

In conceptualizing news access along these different dimensions, this study provides a methodological framework that may more adequately capture the empirical reality of NGO news access while also adjudicating among extant debates. Because each dimension captures different features of news access, each addresses both (a) how and in what ways NGO news access has changed over time and (b) what effects, if any, these changes have on the construction of international news. It is possible, for instance, that NGO prevalence has increased, while prominence has decreased and that government sources remain dom-inant in news articles. Such a finding would suggest that news construction norms have changed little, as NGO access would be mediated by other, more established news sources. Alternatively, it is possible that prevalence and prominence both increase and that the countries in which NGOs are cited diversify over time. Such a finding would support claims of both increased news access and the idea that NGOs may partially alter extant norms of news construction. To be sure, the range of potential permutations is wide and the influences are numerous. This study simply seeks to test common questions and claims about regarding changes to NGO news access.

Data and methods

This study asks whether changes in the political, media, and civic landscapes give NGOs increased news access. To investigate, it examines human rights coverage in a strategic sample of leading US news outlets from 1990 to 2010. In each, it compares the preva-lence, prominence, and geographic location of articles in which leading NGOs are cited to a random sample in which such groups are absent. Through this comparison, it cap-tures changes in NGO news access both in absolute terms and as a proportion of human rights coverage.

The news outlets included in the analysis are the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, and USA Today. These outlets were selected both to provide a broad picture of NGO access in the news media as well as test whether patterns of news access vary by outlet. Elite newspapers like the New York Times retain ample foreign reporting staffs. As of 2013, The Times reported having 31 full-time bureaus in operation around the world (Keller, 2013). General audience newspapers and broadcast network news have cut back far more substantially. A 2011 survey found USA Today to have just 5 full-time bureaus



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in operation; NBC had 14 (Kumar, 2011). By selecting these outlets, the research design can test specific claims about whether diminished editorial resources may or may not offer increased access to NGOs. Furthermore, the focus on the US case supplements extant scholarship that examines NGOs in Europe (Trenz, 2004; Van Leuven et al., 2013; Van Leuven and Joye, 2014).

In order to create the sample, the author entered the search phrase ‘human rights’ into the LexisNexis search database. For the New York Times and USA Today, searches begin in 1990 and are repeated every 5 years up to and including 2010. This time period ena-bles a lengthy longitudinal analysis: its selection coincides with decreased editorial resources, increased NGO professionalization, and rising acceptance of human rights discourses. Because full text archives of NBC Nightly News begin in 2000 (and Vanderbilt archives provide only news summaries), analysis of that outlet begins in 2000. In all news outlets, the unit of analysis was the news article. This procedure yielded 10,310 news articles, which are referenced below as the total sample. Each of these articles is coded for year (i.e. 1990, 1995) and primary country of focus (e.g. Afghanistan, Turkey).

Within the total sample, searches for the name of seven leading humanitarian and human rights NGOs were entered. These are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision. Scholars routinely identify these as some of the largest and well-funded groups in the humanitarian and human rights sector (Barnett, 2011); previous research also shows that leading NGOs account for the vast majority of NGOs mentioned in the news (Thrall, 2006; Thrall et al., 2014). In selecting these organizations, the study can be reasonably sure that any over time changes in NGO prevalence reflect actual changes in news access rather than resulting from other confounding factors (e.g. the introduction of new NGOs in the sample). Moreover, by including several NGOs – namely, Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières – that previous scholarship identifies as especially media savvy (Barnett, 2011; Hopgood, 2006), this study is able to test claims about whether the media strategies of leading NGOs allow some organiza-tions more access than others. The total sample of articles in which NGOs are mentioned is 2077.

In order to compare citation patterns of articles in which NGOs are mentioned to those in which they are not, a random subset of news articles in which leading NGOs are not mentioned was also drawn. This subset included 100 articles for each news outlet in each time period (e.g. 1990, 1995). For any news outlet with fewer than 100 articles in a given year, all items were coded. This sample included 1034 news articles. Together with the sample of articles mentioning leading NGOs, these data are referenced below as the core sample. It contains 3111 news articles.

All articles in the core sample were coded in relation to specific claims about how NGO news access has changed and what effects, if any, such changes have on the con-struction of international news. To capture the prevalence of NGOs in the news over time, each article was coded for the specific organization mentioned. Those without any organization mentioned were coded as ‘0’. This allows for a simple measure of total NGO mentions over time and analysis of how many mentions each NGOs garner. These are compared to the total population of human rights articles (i.e. the total sample) in




order to examine the prevalence of articles in which leading NGOs are mentioned as a percentage of all human rights news coverage.

To further contextualize prevalence data, this study utilizes an independent measure of human rights discourse by government officials. Scholars working under the theo-retical premises of indexing call for independent measures of political discourse in order to more carefully trace the degree to which media coverage of an issue departs from political debates (Zaller and Chiu, 1996). The search term ‘human rights’ was entered into the online database of the Congressional Record in order to create a gen-eral measure of human rights discussions in policy circles. Then, the name of each leading NGO was entered alongside the search term (e.g. ‘Amnesty International AND human rights’) in order to capture the prevalence of NGOs within Congressional debates.

Several measures coded for prominence. To assess claims that NGOs decenter gov-ernment officials within news articles, each article in the core sample was coded for its first five sources. Any individual or group receiving direct attribution was deemed a source. Sources were categorized as government officials, civil society groups, academ-ics, businesspersons, legal or medical professionals, celebrities, UN officials, and unaf-filiated individuals. Each source was coded for its position within the news article (e.g. first source, second source). After coding, each source’s average order of mention was calculated within news articles. A simple word count of each news article was done to ascertain whether the NGO was mentioned in the first or second half of the news article. Finally, each article was coded for whether or not the NGO was the clear initiator. An article was coded as ‘NGO driven’ when it clearly signaled that an NGO was the source for the article (see Livingston and Bennett, 2003, for a similar measure). Such articles report statements made by an NGO in the first paragraph (e.g. ‘According to Human Rights Watch, 17 people were killed in bombings today’). This is a conservative esti-mate, as NGOs may ‘drive’ news articles in less visible ways; however, the indicator allows for testing of claims about whether NGOs find their work increasingly used ‘verbatim’.

To assess claims about how changes in news access impact the location of articles in which NGOs are mentioned, all articles – that is, the total sample – were coded for country focus. Following Ramos et al. (2007), each article was coded for the first country mentioned. This likely undercounts the total number of countries, as some articles include multiple countries. However, this measure allows for longitudinal analysis of whether the number of countries in which NGOs are mentioned expands over time, while retaining high levels of coder reliability. To test claims that NGO mentions cluster around a small number of countries, the study reports what percent-age of all NGO mentions is located in the five most frequently mentioned countries for each collection period.

The author provided two graduate student coders with the core sample drawn from LexisNexis. A pretest among coders was performed to ensure reliability; in-person meet-ings among coders resolved coding disagreements. Using Krippendorf’s alpha, overall reliability (determined by sample tests constituting 10% of the overall data) between coders was high. For prevalence measures, average reliability was .815; for prominence, .802; and for country focus, .735.



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Findings

Prevalence

NGO prevalence in the news rises sharply over time, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of all human rights coverage. The growing prevalence of leading humanitar-ian and human rights NGOs in the news far outpaces their presence in Congressional debates, which remain largely constant. Media-savvy groups drive much of the growth and account for a growing share of all mentions. Across all time periods, the news outlets that dedicate the fewest resources to international news coverage are also the most likely to mention NGOs in their reporting. See Tables 1 and 2.

In 1990, humanitarian and human rights NGOs were mentioned in 8.5% of all human rights news articles in the total sample. By 2005, that number jumps to 27.4%. In 2010, prevalence drops slightly in absolute terms (from 638 to 604) but grows as a proportion of all articles (to 35.9%) on account of the news media’s diminished attention to human rights issues. Growing prevalence in the news far outpaces NGO presence in Congressional debates. There, human rights issues – as a percentage of all human rights discussions – peak

Table 1. NGO prevalence as a % of human rights coverage by media and Congress.

Institutional actor

1990, % (Total N)

1995, % (Total N)

2000, % (Total N)

2005, % (Total N)

2010, % (Total N)

NYT 7.9 (1704) 11.7 (1601) 18.6 (1990) 26.4 (2005) 34.7 (1466)USA Today 11.7 (358) 14.6 (335) 13.9 (266) 32.3 (261) 41.6 (190)NBC Nightly n/a n/a 35.6 (45) 40.3 (62) 59.3 (27)Total Media 8.5 (2062) 12.2 (1936) 18.4 (2301) 27.4 (2328) 35.9 (1683)Congressional 13.5 (1152) 18.3 (882) 14.3 (1157) 15.7 (1083) 13.4 (681)

NGO: non-governmental organization.Congressional mentions taken from Congressional Record online database. Total media sample, N = 10,310 articles. See methods section for details.

Table 2. NGO prevalence in the news by individual organization, 1990–2010.

NGO 1990, % (N) 1995, % (N) 2000, % (N) 2005, % (N) 2010, % (N)

Amnesty 59.7 (105) 39.4 (93) 31.0 (131) 20.4 (130) 19.0 (115)HRW 10.8 (19) 40.3 (95) 39.0 (165) 33.9 (216) 30.3 (183)ICG n/a n/a 2.6 (11) 7.5 (48) 10.9 (66)MSF 5.7 (10) 9.7 (23) 16.1 (68) 15.5 (99) 20.5 (124)Oxfam 3.4 (6) 3.0 (7) 4.0 (17) 13.6 (87) 7.6 (46)SCF 15.9 (28) 5.5 (13) 5.2 (22) 6.9 (44) 6.1 (37)WV 4.5 (8) 2.1 (5) 2.1 (9) 2.2 (14) 5.5 (33)Total 176 236 423 638 604

HRW: Human Rights Watch; ICG: International Crisis Group; MSF: Médecins Sans Frontières; SCF: Save the Children; WV: World Vision.Total sample of articles in which NGOs are mentioned, N = 2077. Due to rounding, not all % add up to 100.




in 1995 and decline steadily over time. Overall, NGOs are found on average in about 15.0% of all Congressional discussions of human rights: this number varies minimally over time.

Claims that media-savvy organizations drive much of the growth in NGO news preva-lence find support. In 1990, the two media-savvy organizations in the sample – Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières – account for just 16.5% of all NGO men-tions in the core sample. By 2010, these groups garner half (50.8%) of all mentions. For other groups, prevalence either undulates moderately across time periods or rises in absolute terms while constituting a small portion of total mentions. Amnesty International and Save the Children both see their number of mentions rise modestly in absolute terms even as their share of total mentions diminishes considerably, from 75.6% in 1990 to just 25.1% in 2010. Oxfam and World Vision see their prevalence grow over time in absolute terms (from 6 and 8 in 1990, respectively, to 46 and 33 in 2010), but this remains a small proportion of all NGO mentions.

Claims that understaffed news outlets are more likely to mention NGOs also enjoy empirical support. NBC Nightly News is most likely to mention NGOs in its coverage (core sample). On average, 42.5% of its human rights coverage references a leading NGO, and this percentage grows over time. By 2010, nearly 60.0% of its human rights articles reference a leading NGO. USA Today’s coverage of human rights issues declines each year from 1990 on, but the shrinking coverage coincides with increased mentions for NGOs. By 2010, 41.6% of all human rights stories include a leading humanitarian or human rights organization (up from just 11.7% in 1990). Prevalence as a percentage of human rights coverage is lowest in the New York Times (19.7% on average), in part because the Times produces a much larger number of human rights articles in absolute terms than either of the other two news outlets.

Prominence

NGO prominence declines over time. NGOs are mentioned later in news articles and after other news sources. Expectations that increased access will decenter official sources are unsupported: across all time periods in the core sample, government officials are most prominent. To the extent that growing NGO access displaces any source, it tends to be other civil society groups or United Nations officials. Finally, suggestions that NGOs are increasingly able to drive news coverage (as evidenced by the number of NGO-driven articles) receive little support: the total number of such mentions is small and declines as a proportion of all mentions over time. See Tables 3 and 4.

Government officials are a prominent source in all human rights news articles. They are slightly more prevalent in articles where leading NGOs are not mentioned (32.4% vs 28.0% of all mentions, respectively, in the core sample). Nowhere, though, are govern-ment officials decentered from the news coverage. In addition to constituting roughly a third of all sources, government officials are also most likely to be the first source men-tioned in any article (34.2% of all first mentions, figure not shown in tables). If leading NGOs displace any sources, it tends to be other civil society groups and United Nations officials, both of whom are more commonly mentioned in human rights articles where NGOs are not included as sources: civil society groups (i.e. any civic group that is not one of the seven NGOs) garner 23.9% of mentions in human rights articles but only 9.5%



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in those in which leading NGOs are mentioned; United Nations officials are twice as likely to appear in articles without leading NGOs in it.

While the prevalence of NGOs increases over time, their prominence within articles decreases. In 1990, 51.1% of NGO mentions occur in the first half of articles in the core sample. By 2010, only 39.4% do. In addition to being mentioned later in news articles, they are also increasingly mentioned after other news sources. In 1990, NGO order of mention averaged 2.12. This figure drops gradually over each time period; by 2010, average order is 3.19. In their place, government officials and unaffiliated individuals receive the most prominence. In 1990, individuals constituted 15.3% of first and second source mentions in news articles that mention leading NGOs. By 2010, they account for 31.8% of all mentions. Government officials remain prominent across all time periods. Together, unaffiliated individuals and government officials thus count for nearly two-thirds of first sources in the 2010 sample.

Despite claims that NGOs find their publicity attempts increasingly used verbatim by the news media, NGO-driven articles constitute a small portion of all mentions. Such articles rise in absolute terms (30 in 1990, 82 in 2010), but decline as a proportion of all mentions (17.0% in 1990, 13.6% in 2010). Media-savvy NGOs’ accounts are most suc-cessful in placing such articles: Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières

Table 3. Average distribution of news sources in human rights articles.

Source Human rights news Articles w/NGO citation Difference

Government 32.4 (1261) 28.0 (2128) – 4.4Media 6.1 (238) 4.8 (367) −1.3Leading NGO – 31.3 (2377) –Civil Society 23.9 (931) 9.5 (722) −14.4Business 2.3 (89) 2.5 (193) +0.2Arts/Education 7.4 (288) 4.8 (366) −2.6United Nations 12.6 (489) 6.5 (496) −6.1Individual 10.6 (414) 9.6 (730) −1.0Other 4.6 (180) 2.8 (214) −1.8

NGO: non-governmental organization.Core sample, N = 3111 articles. For human rights news, total N = 3890 sources. For articles citing NGOs, total N = 7593 sources.

Table 4. Indicators of NGO prominence, 1990–2010.

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

NGO-driven article 17.0 (30) 12.7 (30) 13.5 (57) 15.2 (97) 13.6 (82)Citations in 1st half of news article 51.1 (90) 49.2 (116) 39.2 (166) 39.8 (254) 39.4 (238)Avg. citation order 2.12 2.71 3.26 3.09 3.19

NGO: non-governmental organization.All figures based on average of the three news outlets. Total sample of articles in which NGOs are men-tioned, N = 2077.




generate 58.0% of all NGO-driven articles. Amnesty International accounts for another quarter (25.6%) of all such articles. The remaining mentions are split fairly even amongst the remaining groups. In general, the findings suggest that NGO-driven news articles are an infrequent occurrence for all groups.

Story location of news coverage

While media coverage of human rights issues declines over time, the geographic reach of that coverage – as well as its concentration – remains largely constant. Leading NGOs are mentioned in a wider number of countries, but the distribution of their mentions remains heavily concentrated within a few select countries. Across all periods and news outlets, NGOs tend to be mentioned primarily in countries where the media spotlight is already shining. Interestingly, though, NGO-driven articles appear most likely in coun-tries outside the media’s primary zone of interest. See Table 5.

News coverage of human rights issues typically occurs in roughly 100 countries (total sample). This figure remains largely constant, even as media coverage of human rights issues declines in absolute terms. In all time periods, the New York Times far exceeds all other news outlets in the number of countries it reports (143 vs 73 in USA Today and 32 in NBC Nightly News). It is also more diverse in its coverage of human rights issues. On average, the percentage of mentions garnered by the top five countries ranges between 47.1% and 61.1%, as compared to 59.2% and 89.2% in USA Today and 80% and 100% in NBC Nightly News (figures not shown in table). Thus, while the degree of concentra-tion varies, all outlets generally concentrate on a few countries. Excluding the five most frequently cited countries, the average number of citations per country across all outlets is 10.12 annually.

Growing NGO prevalence does little to change this equation. While NGOs are men-tioned in a growing number of countries (40 in 1990, 74 in 2010), the bulk of their men-tions come in the countries from which the news media already report. Like news media coverage of human rights issues more generally, NGOs tend to be mentioned in just a few countries. In any given year, between 46.6% and 63.8% of all NGO mentions occur in the five countries that garner the most media coverage for human rights issues. Over time patterns – either toward greater or less concentration of NGO citations – are unclear. The percentage of NGO mentions occurring in the top five countries drops 10% points

Table 5. Patterns of human rights coverage in the US news, 1990–2010.

Outlet 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Articles citing an NGO

(a) Total countries 40 52 56 72 74(b) % mentions in top 5 countries

57.4 46.6 57.2 63.8 53.6

Total human rights coverage

(a) Total countries 100 87 109 100 110(b) % mentions in top 5 countries

56.0 57.3 52.1 57.6 56.7

Total sample, N = 10,310 articles.



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from 1990 to 1995, only to rise in both 2000 and 2005, and drop slightly (to 53.6%) in 2010. Unobserved factors, like real world human rights issues, may be responsible for variation. Further research is required on this issue.

Interestingly, while the number of NGO-driven stories is small, NGOs do appear more likely to drive news coverage when reporting on issues in a country not already in the media spotlight. Of the 237 NGO-driven articles in the core sample, 61.2% are found in countries outside the media spotlight (as indicated by a country’s exclusion from the top five countries in any given year). Typically, these mentions are one-off citations of a country that otherwise receives very little coverage. Occasionally, a single organization appears able to bring sustained media attention to a country otherwise unlikely to receive news coverage. In 2005, for example, Human Rights Watch was cited 12 times in Uzbekistan, a country with otherwise very low prevalence across the sample (across all outlets and time periods, it gathers only 20 total mentions). This suggests that while NGOs are generally mentioned in news articles within the media spotlight, they may be most likely to succeed in driving news coverage when focusing on countries outside the media spotlight.

Discussion

This study has examined whether changes in media, politics, and civil society give NGOs increased access in mainstream news. It finds that leading humanitarian and human rights NGOs do indeed receive greater prevalence today than in the past. The rising inclusion of such groups in the news far outstrips their mentions in official political debates. Moreover, the news outlets that dedicated the fewest resources to international newsgathering are most likely to mention NGOs. According to the literature, the most likely explanation for this finding is that they utilize the ‘information subsidies’ (Gandy, 1982) that leading NGOs provide. The result is that while there is less human rights news coverage today than in the past, NGOs appear more often in it.

At the same time, the findings suggest that greater inclusion of NGOs has done little to change the basic norms of news construction. Leading humanitarian and human rights groups are cited later in news articles and after other news sources, especially govern-ment officials and – to a lesser degree – unaffiliated individuals. Claims that NGOs are decentering government officials appear overblown, at least in news coverage. Articles driven directly by NGO efforts are rare across all time periods. Furthermore, leading NGOs are mentioned primarily in countries where the media spotlight already shines. Thus, the findings accord with previous research suggesting that while the news gates may open for leading NGOs, they do so in ways that largely reinforce long established norms of news construction (see, for example, Thrall, 2006; Thrall et al., 2014; Van Leuven and Joye, 2014).

Extant theories of news access correctly predict the types of coverage that NGOs receive. However, they do not predict the amount of coverage they receive. For example, indexing theories (Bennett, 1990) suggest that non-official sources tend to receive cover-age only when they ‘express opinions already emerging in official circles’ (p. 106). Logically, this suggests that NGO prevalence ought to rise and fall alongside the inclu-sion of leading NGOs within official circles (as measured via the Congressional record).




Yet, the findings indicate that NGO prevalence in the Congressional Record is largely constant over time. It may be that additional measures of government valorization of NGOs are needed. Nonetheless, something more than government indexing appears responsible for the growing prevalence of leading NGOs in the news.

In this vein, scholars have suggested that NGOs boost their chances of breaking into the news by professionalizing their publicity strategies (Bob, 2005; Hopgood, 2006). The findings here offer support for such claims. In particular, media-savvy NGOs, especially Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières, are responsible for much of the growth in NGO prevalence over time. This finding connects with scholars who note that the chances for news access are distributed unevenly across NGOs. While others have noted that resource-poor organizations face much higher barriers to news access (Thrall et al., 2014), this study shows that even among well-resourced NGOs, one’s chances of making the news is moderated by media skills that are themselves unevenly distributed across organizations. More research examining the processes by which different types of NGOs pursue news coverage is needed to deepen our understanding of these issues.

Diminished editorial resources do seem to make some outlets more likely to feature NGOs in their news coverage. Both NBC Nightly News and USA Today have less human rights news overall but include leading NGOs in a greater proportion of it. At the same time, in no outlet does increased NGO prevalence appear to alter or modify the general patterns of human rights news coverage. The one counter-tendency to this finding is that NGO-driven articles tend to relate to countries not already in the media spotlight. This could result from a number of factors. On stories already in the news media’s zone of interest, NGOs may be more likely to be used as an accompanying, rather than driving, voice in news coverage. In contrast, when publicizing issues outside the media spotlight, leading organizations may compete with fewer voices for attention. More attention – into the roles played in this by both NGOs and newsrooms – is required.

A number of factors may have influenced the findings. By sampling at 5-year incre-ments, the data is subject to world events that may drive leading NGOs – and human rights topics more generally – into and out of the news cycle. It may be, for example, that the moderate drop in human rights coverage from 2005 to 2010 reflects heavy focus on Iraq in the former and on the financial crisis in the latter. By calculating NGO prevalence as a percentage of all human rights articles, the findings can claim with some confidence that prevalence has increased. Whether the overall prevalence of human rights discourses is on the decline – as some have suggested (Keys, 2014) – requires further research.

Prominence data find that NGOs tend to be mentioned later in news articles over time. In their place, unaffiliated individuals increasingly occupy prominent positions. Theoretically, this finding is in keeping with scholarship that notes the rise of narrative forms of journalism which emphasizes unique individual experiences as a way to tell complex stories. This seems especially likely in human rights coverage, which centers to a large degree of the suffering of individuals – and, increasingly, on the individuals in the global north that donate to these causes (Chouliaraki, 2013; Dogra, 2012; Orgad and Seu, 2014). Some scholarship suggests, however, that NGOs play a key role in connecting reporters with individuals on the ground that can dramatize events (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Powers, 2013; Reese, 2015). If this is the case, data on the growing prominence of unaffiliated individuals might partially obscure the role NGOs have in their being there.



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This research raises a number of questions that can be addressed moving forward. Civil society voices are typically theorized as providing an alternative perspective to media and government viewpoints (Habermas, 1996). The growing incorporation of NGOs in news coverage of human rights issues raises important questions about whether or not they are being used to present alternative perspectives. Frame analysis could be fruitfully employed to track the different ways in which NGOs frame human rights issues vis-a-vis government officials. This could supplement some of the ongoing research that assesses the implications of increasingly media- and branding-driven forms of human rights and humanitarian publicity (Chouliaraki, 2013; Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Dogra, 2012; Kyriakidou, 2014). Moving beyond the case of human rights, future research could also examine whether NGOs operating in other thematic areas (e.g. environmental groups) see an increase in prevalence. Finally, cross-national comparisons could help tease out the degree to which different media systems are more or less open to the mes-sages of advocacy groups in general and NGOs in particular.

Increasingly, scholars frame question of news access in terms of resources. On this view, the reduction of cost (for sources to produce information and for journalists to produce it) creates conditions for greater access. In several ways, this study supports this argument. However, the findings also suggest that extant norms of news construction still matter in terms of who and what gets circulated in the public sphere. NGOs may thus enjoy greater news access today than in the past, but the power to shape, or challenge, these rules continue to exceed their grasp.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Note

1. Historically, human rights and humanitarianism were separate discourses, with the former focused on protecting citizens against state violence and the latter driven primarily to reduce suffering. Since the end of the Cold War, the two have become increasingly intertwined, with both relying on human rights discourses to justify their work. As Moyn (2010) puts it, ‘[T]oday, human rights and humanitarianism are fused enterprises, with the former incorporating the latter and the latter justified in terms of the former’ (p. 221). As such, one can group them together for content analytic purposes, without denying the actual differences in work both sets of actors do on the ground.

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Opening the News Gates? Humanitarian and Human Rights NGOs in the US News Media, 1990-2010

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