Reporters, news sources, and scientific intervention: The New Madrid earthquake prediction

Public Understanding of Science

Volumn 5, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 205-216

  Smith, Conrad ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041982202     PISSN: 09636625     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1088/0963-6625/5/3/002     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. The newspapers were the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today.
2. Ad Hoc Working Group on the December 2-3, 1990, Earthquake Prediction, 1990, Evaluation of the December 2-3, 1990, New Madrid Seismic Zone Prediction (Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey), 18 October, p.5.
3. Associated Press, 1988, Poll finds Americans are ignorant of science. New York Times, 25 October, final edition, p.C10.
4. Klaidman, S., and Beauchamp, T. L., 1987, The Virtuous Journalist (New York: Oxford University Press);
5. and Siebert, F. S., Patterson, T., and Schramm, W., 1956, Four Theories of the Press (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).
6. Entman, R. M., 1989, Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press).
7. Shoemaker, P. J., 1987, Building a Theory of News Content: A Synthesis of Current Approaches. Journalism Monograph 103 (June) (Columbia, SC: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication).
8. Tuchman, G., 1978, Making News: A Study in the Social Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press).
9. Gans, H. W., 1979, Deciding What's News: a Study of CBS Evening News. NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Vintage).
10. Sigal, L. J., 1973, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, MA: Heath).
11. Scanlon, J. T., 1978, Media coverage of crises: better than reported, worse than necessary. Journalism Quarterly, 55, 68-72,
12. cited in Singletary, M., 1980, Accuracy in News Reporting: A Review of the Research. ANPA Research Report No. 25 (Washington, DC: American Newspaper Publishers Association).
13. Nelkin, D., 1987, The culture of science journalism. Society. September/October, 17-25.
14. Dunwoody, S., and Scott, B. T., 1982, Scientists as mass media sources. Journalism Quarterly, 59, 52-59.
15. Dunwoody, S., and Ryan, M., 1985, Scientific barriers to the popularization of science in the mass media. Journal of Communication, 35, 26-42.
16. Gordon Shepard, R. G., and Goods, E., 1987, Scientists in the popular press. New Scientist, 24 November, 482-484.
17. Meyer, P., 1987, Ethical Journalism (New York: Longman), p.51.
18. Nelkin, D., 1987, Selling Science (New York: Freeman).
19. Dearing, J. W., 1995, Newspaper coverage of maverick science: creating controversy through balancing. Public Understanding of Science, 4, 341-361.
20. Sandman, P. M., and Pasden, M., 1979, At Three Mile Island. Columbia Journalism Review, July/August, 43-58.
21. Smith, C., 1992, Media and Apocalypse: News Coverage of the Yellowstone Forest Fires, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Loma Prieta Earthquake (Westport, CT: Greenwood), p. 158.
22. Becker, L. B., Fruit, J. W., and Caudill, S. L., 1987, The Training and Hiring of Journalists (Norwood, NJ: Ablex).
23. Gitlin, T., 1980, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p.28.
24. Nigg, J. M., 1982, Communication under conditions of uncertainty: understanding earthquake forecasting. Journal of Communication, 32(1), Winter, 27-36.
25. The publications searched in the GeoRef database that include seismological studies were Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Geology, Geological Society of America Bulletin, Geophysical Research Letters, Geophysics, Journal of Geophysical Research, Nature, Reviews of Geophysics, Science, Tectonics, Tectonophysics and United States Geological Survey Professional Papers.
26. CBS in its 20 September Evening News, the Chicago Tribune in wire stories on 2 July and 10 July, the Los Angeles Times on 5 July and 9 September, the New York Times on 20 August and 27 September, USA Today on 16 March, 24 September and 27 September, and the Washington Post on 10 July.
27. Holmes, S. M./Associated Press, 1990, Quake predictions are on shaky ground, some say. Los Angeles Times, 5 August, Bulldog Edition, p.A26;
28. and Casey Bukro, C., 1990, Quake rattles parts of midwest. Chicago Tribune, 27 September, p.3.
29. Ad Hoc Working Group on the December 2-3, 1990, Earthquake Prediction, 1990, Evaluation of the December 2-3, 1990, New Madrid Seismic Zone Prediction (Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey), 18 October.
30. Farley, J. E., Barlow, H. D., Finkelstein, M. S., and Riley, R., 1993, Earthquake hysteria, before and after: a survey and follow-up on public response to the Browning forecast. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 11(3), November, 305-321.
31. Wetzel, C. G., Hattinger, E., McMillan, R., Rayburn, M., and Nix, A., 1993, Methodological issues in studying response to the Browning prediction of a New Madrid earthquake. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 11(3), November, 437-452.
32. Bazell, R., 1990, A little shaky; Dr. Browning's earthquake predictions. New Republic, 203(25), 10 December, 16 (LEXIS/NEXIS).
33. Sandman, P. M., and Pasden, M., 1979, At Three Mile Island. Columbia Journalism Review, July/August, 57.
34. Fowler, G., 1991, Iben Browning, 73; researcher studied climate and quakes. New York Times, late edition final, 20 July, section 1, p.30.