Local news and COVID-19 in North Carolina (page 5)

Background: What does the existing research say?

The news media play an important role in informing the public during any crisis. Journalists have the power to question public officials, hold government agencies and private businesses accountable, promote public safety, debunk rumors, share vital information and provide resources so people can protect themselves and loved ones.

As one study put it: “[Accurate news] helps direct the public to adopt appropriate actions to contain an outbreak, limit exposure, and reduce morbidity and mortality” (Lee & Basnyat, 2012). Beyond this functional role, the media can help people in less tangible ways: by allaying fears, connecting communities and creating a common experience in a frightening time.

Local media are particularly relevant, as many crises are experienced mostly as local events. Fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and pandemics all have geographically localized effects that differ significantly from one place to another. This increases the salience of specific, relevant, and actionable information.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virus transmission and hospitalization rates, political dynamics, lockdown measures, mask mandates and school closures were experienced differently from state-to-state, county-to-county, and even town-to-town. The global situation was less relevant to many people’s daily lives than concerns like: Is school open? Does my hospital have capacity? Will my neighbors mask up at the store? Is a vaccine mandate coming for indoor dining in my city? And how would it be enforced?

Jump to:

• Media framing of past novel disease outbreaks
• Media framing of COVID-19
• The decline of North Carolina’s local media

Media scholars and commentators have long recognized that news outlets are not passive conduits of information. Media frame articles by emphasizing or deemphasizing information, choosing which narratives to pursue and which to ignore, quoting some people and not others, and making a range of other editorial decisions. In playing this role, local news has occupied a powerful position, with great responsibility, in the coronavirus crisis.

But this crisis hit when local media sources across the U.S. were already in dire straits, with local newspapers — the foundation of the whole ecosystem — laying off thousands and closing by the dozens (Abernathy, 2022). After more than a decade of cost-cutting, many traditional powerhouses of local media struggled to retain audiences or even pay the bills. As national media companies such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Fox News stabilized or even expanded, local media companies such as Gannett, McClatchy and Lee Enterprises were sold, went through bankruptcy and fought to fend off private equity buyers. While the need for local news has never been higher, the institutional capacity to produce it has perhaps never been lower, with potentially serious effects on important coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.

This literature review examines scholarship about the media’s coverage of past pandemics and public health crises; the media’s coverage of COVID-19 in particular; and the specific economic, even existential, challenges local media outlets in North Carolina have faced leading up to and through the pandemic.

Media framing of past novel disease outbreaks

The ways media framing shapes public opinions, actions and attitudes has been a major subject of study for decades. Scholars have examined print, online, television and radio sources in the U.S. and internationally in order to quantify and describe how articles are covered. This includes a wide range of methodologies, from computer-driven, algorithm-based analyses of thousands of pieces of content to in-depth, qualitative analyses of a single source or very limited corpus of works. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars studied media framing of novel disease outbreaks such as Zika, Ebola, SARS, influenza and AIDS.

Studies have found that coverage of disease outbreaks tends to be episodic, highly driven by “breaking” news events and framed in the most dramatic possible terms. A 2008 analysis of New York Times coverage of mad cow disease, West Nile virus, and avian flu concluded that identifiable “events,” such as a government announcement of new restrictions, appeared to drive media coverage more than the actual severity of the disease outbreak: “Coverage of epidemic hazards was so event oriented that the decrease in media attention did not necessarily mean the resolution of the problems.” (Shih et al., 2008). Coverage was more likely to be framed in terms of “conflict” when the disease in question had more political overtones, such as mad cow disease, which raised political debates about beef production and importation of foreign cattle products. “The more political an issue was, the more prominent the conflict frame in media coverage,” Shih et al. found.

Media coverage of pandemic diseases often follows similar narrative patterns, as reporters and audiences fall back on familiar metaphors, storylines and casts of characters to help understand something new and frightening. Past pandemic coverage has included distinctly identifiable phases: “sounding the alarm, mixed messages, and crisis and containment.” (Gerlach 2016). Accompanying these narrative phases are “a set of characters that includes heroic medical personnel; threatening military authorities; valorous disease detectives; patients zero; hapless carriers; populations that continue to practice ‘primitive’ lifeways; and a vicious, anthropomorphized virus.” (Gerlach 2016). Regardless of the particulars of any one pandemic, these same patterns reemerge in the media’s coverage of new outbreaks.

Scholars have also found that the framing and emphasis of subjects within articles varies over time, both changing and responding to the audience’s beliefs. A study of AIDS pandemic coverage in national and international sources found that articles increased dramatically from the mid-1980s. This was not in response to disease statistics, which were largely static. “Rather, social, political, and cultural forces played a more significant role in determining the newsworthiness of the issue.” (Bardhan 2009). At the same time, the way the pandemic was framed changed, from an emphasis on the supposedly “deviant” lifestyles of marginalized victims to the broader biomedical, social and economic implications of the disease. Troublingly, AIDS coverage fell off rapidly in the 1990s as the epicenter of the crisis moved to the developing world, and the coverage that remained did not emphasize many necessary steps to end the pandemic. “The projection of AIDS as a globally interrelated phenomenon and the need for prevention and education glaringly lacks emphasis,” Bardhan noted.

Even in health crises that resolve quicker than the multi-decade, ongoing AIDS pandemic, media emphasis and framing can shift significantly from one stage to the next. A study of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic response concluded the “health risk” frame (focused on the transmission, prevalence and new cases) was most commonly used in the pre-crisis stage of coverage, before it was apparent how severe or mild the outbreak would end up becoming. Most of the risk descriptions in that early phase were “qualitative,” meaning they used words such as “serious” to describe the risk, rather than statistical measures. Meanwhile, in the post-crisis stage of the H1N1 pandemic, “medical/scientific” framing of articles (highlighting medical treatment and scientific progress) was more prevalent, along with quantitative descriptions of risk (Pan & Meng, 2016). To some extent, this simply reflects the reality of daily news coverage — when less is known about a new threat, risk descriptions are necessarily more qualitative and articles might more naturally be framed in terms of the risk of the unknown. But the media’s framing can also influence audience responses and attitudes — by, for example, emphasizing the unknown and possibly massive risk of a new virus rather than preventative steps one can take.

As Pan and Meng concluded, “for those people who were not directly affected, but highly anxious about the flu virus, news media did not deliver adequate information.” Another systematic study of H1N1 information found the potential pandemic had been over-dramatized by news organizations. Coverage didn’t follow the trajectory of the disease spread or risk, but was instead driven by episodic events. The coverage focused disproportionately on risks and threats of the disease while leaving out information about preventative measures and quantitative risk estimates. The authors concluded that the media employed “a disproportionate mention of risk compared to the actual risk.” And by emphasizing threats and neglecting protective measures, the media “may increase public fear and maladaptive responses in the public.” (Klemm et al, 2014)

Failing to deliver necessary information can make it harder for audiences to judge threats and protect themselves and their community. A study of avian flu pandemic articles found the coverage was “mired in sensationalism.” (Dudo et al, 2007) Examining a sample of coverage from the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the authors found 73% contained “loaded words” such as “killer” and “huge death toll.” Thirty percent of articles had loaded words in the lead paragraph, while 43% of articles contained a worst-case scenario, such as another 1919-style influenza pandemic. Episodic framing “heavily dominated” the papers’ coverage, accounting for over half the articles, while thematic, big-picture framing on articles appeared in only 19%. That gave readers “facts but no context for larger implications.” (Dudo et al, 2007). Meanwhile, almost no articles mentioned measures readers could take to protect themselves or assess whether they might be infected — just 9% mentioned protective measures and 12% mentioned symptoms.

While the bulk of scholarship around the media and pandemics has focused on national or international outlets, researchers have also found the local media has an important role to play. A comparison of coverage of the Zika pandemic in the New York Times and the Tampa Bay Times found the local paper did a better job of providing its readers with localized, specific information they could use to protect themselves from the virus. Nearly 60% of Tampa Bay Times articles contained self-protection information, compared with 26% from the New York Times. (Jerit et al, 2018). The difference remained even though both papers were just as likely to use loaded words and focus on worst-case scenarios. This suggests that even as Tampa Bay Times readers got a steady dose of doom-and-gloom, it was accompanied with information about how to prevent the worst outcome.

To a large degree, this makes intuitive sense: A paper that’s based in a community where Zika is spreading is more likely to offer its readers information about preventative measures than a paper whose audience is largely in Zika-free parts of the U.S. But this finding has troubling implications in an era of declining local news resources. “Our findings suggest that the oft-noted decline of local newspapers could make some communities less equipped to contain the spread of infectious diseases,” Jerit et al. noted. A study comparing survey results and media coverage of Zika found that increases in information about Zika in legacy media coincided with increased protective behavior among people considering pregnancy, suggesting local news outlets can actually foster a protective response in their audience (Chan et al, 2018).

Intriguingly, a study based on statistical models of infection and vaccination concluded that the most effective way to end a pandemic is when individuals are aware of and make vaccination decisions based on local disease trends, thus focusing resources on hotspots. This approach is faster and more efficient than global approaches meant to vaccinate the maximum number of people as quickly as possibly. (Herrera-Diestra and Meyers, 2019) “Risk is highly variable in time and space,” the authors noted. This suggests that communities with better local information will be more able to protect themselves in a pandemic.

Local news might also leave audiences more poorly informed than national news because of resource constraints, however. A study comparing local and national TV news coverage found local articles about cancer tended to be shorter, focused on individuals and less informative. (Lee et al, 2021) The authors were blunt: “Compared with national TV news, local TV cancer articles were (a) much shorter in length, (b) less likely to report on cancer prevention (i.e., preventive behaviors and screening tests).” Highly abbreviated local TV news coverage of cancer might not be useful to audiences, the study concluded.

The picture we’re left with is of the media as a powerful but not unlimited force, able to influence the public’s perception of pandemics through the topics and lenses news outlets choose for their coverage. The media’s approach to a pandemic can encourage people to take protective measures and foster greater understanding of the scale of a threat, or it can sow alarm and emphasize harmful stereotypes about victims. Local media has an especially important role to play in pandemics, where risk varies greatly from place to place at different times, and might be more effective than national media at helping local audiences understand risks and protect themselves. But local media might also lack the necessary resources and time to effectively report on disease outbreaks.

Jump to:

• Media framing of past novel disease outbreaks
• The decline of North Carolina’s local media

Media framing of COVID-19

Researchers have already focused considerable attention on the COVID-19 pandemic’s coverage in the media, even though at the time of this research, it had been less than three years since the outbreak began. Given the well-established, long-studied patterns of media coverage in framing pandemics, we should expect much of the COVID-19 pandemic reporting to follow similar trends as past pandemic coverage. Scholarship has generally supported that expectation, but with some key differences. COVID-19 coverage has been very polarized along partisan lines, with significant differences in both audience perception and news content based on news outlets’ political leanings. The media is also dealing with more dis- and misinformation, facilitated by the Internet, than during many past pandemics. And despite evidence that local media coverage of previous pandemics such as Zika enabled people and communities to protect themselves, there is evidence that because of polarization, COVID-19 coverage might not be promoting the same pro-social and protective responses.

One of the most striking and consistent findings by scholars examining COVID-19 coverage is how quickly and deeply coverage of the pandemic became polarized. Although a virus is not political, this pandemic is politicized, a condition exacerbated in large part by the 2020 presidential elections and the actions of former President Trump. A comparison of the coverage on Fox News and MSNBC found that MSNBC framed the coronavirus as a more serious crisis and mentioned case numbers, deaths and public health guidelines to protect viewers much more frequently. In one evening of primetime coverage, MSNBC mentioned COVID-19 public health guidelines 61 times. Cases and deaths were mentioned 27 times — vs. only two mentions of current guidelines and one of cases and deaths on Fox (Johnson, 2021).

Even in cases where COVID-19 wasn’t ignored, significant differences between media sources with different political leanings have emerged. A content analysis of COVID-19 coverage in six print newspapers perceived to have different political stances found that right-leaning sources like the Wall Street Journal had the lowest amount of scientific information and the lowest amount of sensationalism in their coverage. By combining low amounts of scientific information about COVID-19 and low alarmism about the consequences of the disease, these news sources created the perception that the pandemic was being overblown by other press outlets and some politicians (Mach et al, 2021). Left-leaning newspapers like the Washington Post featured more “exposing” coverage focused on policy and government failures, and more strident warnings about the risks of the pandemic. “Patterns of U.S. media reporting were correlated with failures of national leadership under the Trump Administration, and they may have both reflected and contributed to politicization of COVID-19 in the United States,” the authors concluded. (Mach et al, 2021).

Among local news outlets, those in the most heavily right-leaning counties covered COVID-19 about one tenth as much as the average local news outlet. Those in the most left-leaning counties covered COVID-19 about three times as much as the average. And they covered different topics: News outlets in right-leaning counties were more likely to write about testing, school closures, case and death counts, while left-leaning outlets focused on state-level politics and the economic impacts of the pandemic, such as unemployment and housing. (Joseph et al, 2021)

An analysis of network news and national newspapers’ coverage of the early pandemic found that politicians were more likely to be quoted in newspapers than scientists (though they were quoted roughly equally in network news). Newspaper coverage was also more politicized and focused on “leading politicians who serve as representatives of competing political camps,” while politicians from different parties focused on markedly different topics in their quotes. Republicans spoke more often about the federal response, China and hydroxychloroquine, the alleged wonder drug touted by Trump, for example (Hart et al, 2020).

When dealing with a globe-spanning pandemic, news outlets have emphasized different storylines in different countries dealing with the same problems. A comparison of New York Times coverage of lockdowns in Wuhan and Italy found that coverage of China tended to focus on the Communist authorities’ perceived incompetence in creating a “humanitarian disaster” through their draconian and ineffective policies. articles about the Italian lockdown, on the other hand, focused on individual citizens’ responsibility and discipline, and framed many government failures as actually owing to a positive: Italy’s status as a liberal democracy, in contrast with authoritarian China. (Zhang, 2021) A comparison of coverage in the New York Times and the Global Times, of China, found that each framed the other countries’ pandemic response through political and nationalistic lenses. The American media outlet focused on Chinese shortcomings in equipment and controlling the virus, as well as the government’s “totalitarian” control over citizens. The Chinese outlet emphasized factors such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s perceived incompetence, lack of testing supplies, and the U.S.’s wildly expensive and ineffective healthcare system (Abbas, 2020).

In addition to politicization and polarization, the media has also dealt with a wave of social-media driven online misinformation during this pandemic, perhaps unprecedented in its scale and reach. An in-depth analysis of a single far-right YouTuber (one of countless thousands on social media) shows the scale of the problem, and its possible effects. “Mr. Metokur” streamed 1,895 minutes of content about COVID-19, amassing more than 1 million views, in the three months before a pandemic was declared. The top 10 scientific news sources online, by contrast, produced 61 minutes of YouTube content about COVID-19 during this time. Metokur framed the virus as part of a conspiracy by liberal elites, and encouraged his viewers to stock up on guns and ammunition. And he did this all with high levels of certainty and personality, the content analysis found, connecting with his audience in ways traditional media do not. “Finding that perceived authenticity may facilitate conspiratorial amplification provides another challenge, as mainstream media structures seemingly lack the personability of alternative media creators.” (Rooke, 2021).

The effects of conspiratorial framing can have consequences in the real world. An experiment which exposed subjects to articles highlighting the origin of COVID-19 in China and the pandemic’s economic harm found those subjects scored higher on subsequent measures of anti-Asian American sentiment and general xenophobia, compared to subjects who read neutrally framed articles (Dhanani & Franz, 2021). Another experiment exposed some subjects to news articles about conspiracy theories for the origins of the virus (such as “Coronavirus Originated in a Chinese Laboratory…Many believe that either an accidental or deliberate leak of the virus from the Wuhan lab is what caused the current outbreak.” Those subjects were less likely to say in a subsequent survey that protective measures such as wearing facemasks and social distancing were necessary to combat the pandemic than subjects who read a neutral story (Bolsen et al, 2020). Exposure to conspiracy theories in a manipulated media story thus appeared to reduce their willingness to take protective steps like wear masks.

Given the apparent negative effects of biased or politicized coverage, one might hope to see more positive effects from responsible news coverage, especially in local media (since, as discussed above, local media often has an especially important role to play in informing communities during a pandemic). But the presence of more robust local news coverage does not seem to stimulate more prosocial, protective responses from community members. A rigorous analysis compared a sample of counties with local media outlets to counties without any local media. Although there were significant differences observed in the rates at which people stopped traveling, shopped less and stayed home (indicating compliance with stay-at-home orders), those differences disappeared when controlling for differences such as demographics and partisan leanings. “The relationship between local newspaper volume and behavior change is effectively zero…local news coverage is not sufficient to undo the politicization and polarization of issues and behavior.” (Fischer 2020).

An experiment also found no correlation between framing the coronavirus in terms of its disproportionate impact on African-Americans and lower vaccine hesitancy — subjects exposed to news articles presenting the coronavirus in racial disparity terms were no more likely to express an intention to vaccinate, contradicting earlier theories that building trust with minority groups through public health messaging acknowledging disparities would lead to higher rates of vaccination and compliance with medical directions (Fox and Choi, 2021).

As in previous pandemics, overall media coverage of COVID-19 began to fall quickly even though the disease has remained a potent killer. Although it remained a major topic, coronavirus coverage was partially crowded out online and on the airwaves, as early as mid-2020, by other pressing issues, such as the presidential election and racial justice protests. Newspaper articles about the coronavirus in 102 outlets fell by nearly half from March to November, even as cases climbed to record highs and deaths increased. (Pearman et al, 2021).

Media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic thus presents a complex and not entirely encouraging picture: Politicized, polarized, beset by competing conspiracy theories, possibly ineffective at generating prosocial behaviors, and waning even as the pandemic increased in ferocity. Set against this already discouraging backdrop, the decline of local media takes on an especially ominous appearance.

Jump to:

• Media framing of past novel disease outbreaks
• Media framing of COVID-19

The decline of North Carolina’s local media

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 coincided with the end of a devastating decade for local news. Tens of thousands of jobs disappeared as local newspaper conglomerates merged, went bankrupt or were acquired by rapacious hedge funds. Digital platforms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon vacuumed up most of the enormous windfall in online advertising. National newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times reinvented their businesses and added millions of digital subscribers. But local news was left greatly diminished, with far fewer resources to cover events such as a massive pandemic.

Various estimates differ slightly in the details, but all show the overall catastrophic decline. Newspaper newsroom employment fell by 51% from 2008 to 2019 (Grieco, 2020). Between 2005 and 2021, a total of 43,600 newsroom employees lost their jobs (Abernathy, 2022). Those jobs were concentrated in regional, metro newspapers and smaller outlets. “Many of the chain-owned state and metro dailies that employed several hundred journalists in 2005, had only a few dozen in their newsrooms in 2022,” noted media decline-tracker Penny Abernathy. Losses generally included the most experienced local journalists (Abernathy, 2022).

The audience for local news— at least the paying audience — is shrinking as well. Total weekday circulation for local newspapers is down 40% since 2015, while advertising revenue is down 40% and circulation revenue down 26% since 2019. (Matsa and Warden, 2022).

Many local outlets have simply vanished: “More than one-fourth of the country’s newspapers have disappeared, leaving residents in thousands of communities living in vast news deserts.” (Ardia et al., 2020). Since just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 360 more closed, and the U.S. is on track to lose a third of its remaining newspapers by 2025 (Abernathy, 2022). The impact of the pandemic on the news business has disproportionately fallen on local media outlets. Many resorted to furloughing staff, cutting journalists’ pay, eliminating print days and otherwise going into survival mode in the face of a potential “extinction level” event (Ardia et al., 2020).

Despite this decline, local news remains extremely important to people’s understanding of and ability to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic — and it’s not just local news advocates saying this. Local media “serves an important agenda-setting role within a community, helping community members understand their stances on issues.” (Ardia et al., 2020). A survey by the Pew Research Center found that 61% of adults said they were following coronavirus news at the local and national levels equally, 23% said they were paying more attention at the local level, and only 15% said they were paying more attention at the national level. And while 56% cited national news as a major source of news about the outbreak (vs. 46% for local news outlets), more people said they trust their local news outlets to get the facts right than the media in general — 50% vs. 44%. (Shearer, 2020). This is consistent with other surveys showing audiences trust local news sources — both print and broadcast — the most out of all types of media, scoring well ahead of national news sources (Brenan, 2019).

Researchers have also noted anecdotally the apparent greater impact of their work when covered in local rather than national outlets. A Harvard School of Public Health researcher described the effect: “Among the many outlets that covered our work including large national names, the one for which I heard the most feedback from was the KTSF segment [a San Francisco station]…This speaks to the tremendous reach of local news and the degree of trust that people place on seeing reporters, anchors, and guests who are familiar to them and understand their local contexts.” (Yan, 2022).

Specialized local media have the ability to elevate marginalized groups and focus attention on issues impacting their communities. An analysis of mainstream and Black-focused news outlets found stark differences in their coverage. Only 4.8% of articles produced by general-interest news outlets focused on issues impacting Black communities, vs. 21.2% of articles on Black-focused news sites (Biswas 2021). Local media do not always succeed in elevating these groups, however. A study of Memphis news articles during the pandemic found that 50% of the time, articles about the impact of COVID-19 relied on individualistic framing to explain why some people suffered disproportionately, i.e. by focusing on individual health and behaviors as the drivers of preexisting conditions rather than acknowledging the larger reality of systemic racism at work. “The overrepresentation of individualist explanations points to the media as an institution that both shapes and is shaped by structural racism. Nevertheless, the selective framing used by local news organizations potentially impacted Memphians’ understanding of, and the responsibility to respond to, the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 for Black individuals,” the authors wrote. (Turchi & Melton-Fant, 2022).

The greatest feature of local news in its pandemic coverage might, in many cases, be the absence of any coverage. There are well-documented negative effects of the absence of local media in other arenas, such as decreased voter participation and knowledge (Hayes and Lawless, 2018), decreased split-ticket voting indicating more blind partisanship (Darr et al, 2018) and increased borrowing costs for local governments no longer facing media scrutiny (Gao et al, 2018). The COVID-19 crisis allows an examination of whether a decline in local media has similar effects on public health, and whether local media outlets are still meeting their communities’ needs.

There is some evidence that they are not. A systematic examination of local news outlets’ social media posts compared to the public’s expressed desire for news about specific topics showed a mismatch the authors termed the “crisis coverage gap.” Local news sources paid disproportionate attention to topics such as national business responses and economic effects of the coronavirus. But the public expressed more interest in “coverage of topics that would have a direct influence on their daily lives,” such as grocery store responses and fact checks of rumors circulating in the community. People were seeking a guide for the “patchwork of local and state ordinances rather than a cohesive federal initiative,” while local news outlets gravitated towards “coverage of political issues.” (Masullo et al, 2021)

In North Carolina, that gap may be expressed as an overabundance of articles about readily apparent controversies and spectacles, such as mask mandate protests, and a dearth of service-oriented articles, such as coverage of what schools are doing to improve ventilation and bring students back safely. “In the three weeks leading up to my kid’s first day of class, there were literally zero articles in the N&O about back-to-school matters in Durham,” noted John Zhu, a former journalist and adjunct faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill (Zhu, 2021). “The N&O’s coverage of the issue was reactive and driven by conflict and spectacle. A couple dozen anti-mask folks show up outside the school board building with signs? Well, we gotta write 15 inches of copy quoting everything they say, don’t we? The same group crashes a school board meeting? Well, we gotta report all their rants, don’t we?” (Zhu, 2021)

This trend of reacting to controversies and giving equal airtime to both sides of a debate is apparent in a study of local media coverage of mask mandates in four states — Illinois, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Texas. Researchers found that in the two weeks leading up to the implementation of a mask mandate, news articles focused on the effectiveness of masks and encouraging mask wearing. After a mandate was implemented, however, articles tended to shift towards covering those who questioned the mandate’s legality or effectiveness. The total number of articles encouraging mask use or correcting misinformation fell, while articles discouraging masks or questioning their effectiveness rose. Headlines often featured rote repetitions of mask opponents, such as this example from Texas: “‘Don’t be a sheep’: Sheriff rebels against new mask requirements” (Morrow and Compagni, 2020).

The volume of local coverage of the pandemic was also more tightly correlated with national death rates than with what was going on in local communities. “What local news agencies covered was best explained not by local conditions, but rather by national trends in the number of people dying from COVID. This finding reflects a continuing trend of the nationalization of news coverage, a trend that is decades in the making, but has gotten more pronounced in recent years,” researchers noted (Joseph et al, 2021). Local news outlets in right- and left-leaning counties both tended to cover issues more likely to resonate with their audience, the study concluded: “Coverage that did occur was tailored at times to fit the desires, rather than the needs, of their audience.” (Joseph et al, 2020).

One likely reason for these inadequacies in coverage is simply the tremendous drop in resources available to local news outlets. Abernathy has documented the stunning decline through her “News Deserts” research, including the impact on North Carolina. “The Charlotte Observer, the largest newspaper in the state, had more than 250 in its newsroom at its peak in the 1990s, but is now down to fewer than 50,” she notes. (Abernathy, 2018). At the News & Observer, also owned by McClatchy, circulation has fallen from 150,000 to 95,000 since the mid-1990s. The paper has completely pulled out of the six rural counties in eastern North Carolina in which the News & Observer’s reporting on hog farms once won a Pulitzer Prize (Abernathy, 2020).

North Carolina has six counties with no newspaper whatsoever — more than in any of the surrounding states of Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. In the past two decades, 36 newspapers have closed or merged in North Carolina (Abernathy, 2020).

This decline in resources has hurt health reporting in North Carolina. More than a decade ago, Ferrell Guillory noted that the News & Observer had gone from assigning four reporters to health-related beats to just one. “They covered the health care sphere as business, as science, and as personal interest articles…Dependable, continuous health coverage has diminished. The media seem less inclined, and less able, to provide sustained attention to health news.” (Guillory, 2009). Today, the News & Observer does not appear to have any dedicated reporters assigned to health as a beat, while the Charlotte Observer (which shares many staff with the News & Observer) had one reporter assigned to cover health, aviation and business news during the pandemic. That reporter resigned, effective July 2022, to work at a local bookstore.

The decline in local news coverage may be particularly acute in smaller communities. An analysis of U.S. communities with populations between 20,000 and 300,000 residents found that one in five received no local news coverage whatsoever. “A full 20 percent of the sample of communities was completely lacking in journalism about their communities,” the researchers concluded. Across the whole sample, only 17% of all articles examined were “truly local,” meaning they were actually about or took place within the community. That means even small communities that still have local news outlets are largely getting repurposed content originating outside their community (Napoli et al, 2018).

Despite this, the local media has continued to attempt to provide information their audiences need. Robyn Tomlin, former executive editor of the News & Observer, noted early in the pandemic that the whole staff was devoted to the effort. “We’ve redeployed our entire staff as full-time coronavirus reporters, as this is changing every aspect of life for our readers,” Tomlin said. “One thing has become incredibly clear in the last few weeks. Local audiences are craving quality local news and information.” (CISLM, 2020).

Jump to:

• Media framing of past novel disease outbreaks
• Media framing of COVID-19
• The decline of North Carolina’s local media

Next chapter