Anglo-American Press Coverage of Therapeutic Cloning: a Grounded Discourse Analysis of News Production and Content Eric Jensen
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Anglo-American Press Coverage of Therapeutic Cloning: A Grounded Discourse Analysis of News Production and Content Eric Jensen Homerton College University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Anglo-American Press Coverage of Therapeutic Cloning: A Grounded Discourse Analysis of News Production and Content Eric Jensen Abstract This study examines the production and content of press coverage of therapeutic cloning in the US and Britain from 1997 to 2006. The sample includes 5,185 articles drawn from 19 new publications, as well as 18 qualitative interviews with journalists and editors. Data analysis was conducted in two phases, using both grounded methodology and sociological discourse analysis. The results coalesced around three main themes: Hype, Nationalism and Sources. In the case of hype, its valence and relative distribution was found to differ substantially across the US, UK tabloid and UK broadsheet samples. The elite press in the UK and science advocacy publications in both countries evinced a strong bias towards utopian framing, hyping the imminence and certainty of forthcoming therapeutic cloning cures. Meanwhile, a dualistic pattern of both utopianism and equally excessive dystopianism was visible in the American press and British tabloid newspapers. In addition to utopian/dystopian hype, competitive framing and banal nationalism (Billig 1995) was shown to be influential both in the backstage news judgments of journalists and editors, and in front stage press content. The third results chapter investigates the process of source selection. In keeping with previous research (e.g. Conrad 1999), scientists were found to represent the most important and extensively cited category of journalistic sources. Also significant were subpolitical activists, aligned on either side of this issue as semi-routine journalistic sources. Most notably, patients and anti-abortion groups supplied journalists with sympathetic human interest narratives and sensational criticism of embryo research, respectively. Finally, the discussion chapter considers the struggle between market imperatives and professional ideals embodied in the practice of science journalism. Emerging from this struggle are several limitations inherent in the press s role as a major forum for publics engaging with science. 2 Preface This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration. The first seeds of the analysis of part of the elite UK sample were cultivated in a much more rudimentary version presented in my MPhil Dissertation, submitted and accepted in 2004 in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge. However, this analysis has been completely re-written in the present dissertation, which is an entirely new and original work. This dissertation is less than 80,000 words, excluding bibliography. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION / LITERATURE REVIEW ..........6 1. Defining Therapeutic Cloning : The Semantic Struggle .8 2. Background: A Brief History of Human Cloning Before Dolly ..11 3. Epochal Change in the Contemporary Human Cloning Debate ..14 4. Science in the Risk Society .. .. .. ........23 5. The Public Sphere ...26 6. Previous Studies of Human Cloning in the Media ...39 II METHODOLOGY... .. ............51 1. Sampling: The Press ....51 2. Sampling: Interviews .. .. .......................53 3. Data Analysis Phase 1: Grounded Methodology .... .....................56 4. Data Analysis Phase 2: Discourse Analysis ......................59 5. Epistemological Considerations .. ......................61 6. Quality in Qualitative Research ...... ..........................62 7. Concluding Methodological Considerations .66 III RESULTS: THE DAO OF HUMAN CLONING .. .....67 1. Scientific Utopianism in the Elite UK Press .67 2. The Janus-faced of American Press Coverage .. ....75 3. Haphazard Hype in the UK Tabloids . .......81 4. Scientific Dystopianism: The Role of Science Fiction .84 5. Backstage: Journalist Interview Results ....91 6. Deviant-case Analysis ...98 4 7. Chapter Discussion .104 IV RESULTS: NATIONALISM ... .. ..............111 1. A Brief History of Scientific Nationalism and Therapeutic Cloning.....111 2. Scientific Nationalism.. ..120 3. Chapter Discussion. 135 V RESULTS: THE ROLE OF NEWS SOURCES ..............137 1. The Anglo-American Field of News Production. ..138 2. Scientists as Sources . .. .. ..............140 3. Subpolitical Activists as Sources . ...................156 4. Chapter Discussion.. ..........................................179 VI DISCUSSION ... .. ..........................183 1. Summary of Results. ...........185 2. Mediating Public Engagement: Promises and Problems.. ...................189 3. Conclusion.. .198 REFERENCES ... .... ...............200 5 TABLES AND FIGURES TABLE 1: Limitations of Previous Studies of Human Cloning in the Media .................49 TABLE 2: British and American Publications in Sample by Press Genre ......................52 TABLE 3: British Publications in Sample by Known Political Orientation .......53 TABLE 4: Interview Sample Journalistic Specialism Distribution... ......................55 TABLE 5: Summary of Thematic Content by Press Sample.. 103 6 Anglo-American Press Coverage of Therapeutic Cloning: A Grounded Discourse Analysis of News Production and Content CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW Despite increasing reflexive questioning of expert systems and rising public ambivalence towards scientific development (e.g. Beck 1992; Giddens 1991; Giddens 1994), the institutions of science still retain much of their historical authority and influence. Science disproportionately serves extant economic, political, and institutional interests, while new consumer and medical technologies help to sustain its generally positive public image (e.g. Toumey 1996: 17). However, some aspects of techno-scientific development have sparked controversy, prompting intensive media coverage and biogovernmental action (Gerlach and Hamilton 2005). Such scientific controversies combine moral argument with extensive use of scientific expertise (Nelkin 1992: xviii). No scientific issue has been more controversial in this sense at the global level than human cloning (Einsiedel et al. 2002). The agonistic struggle over the government s supervisory role in devising interventions and regulatory controls over biomedical research can be viewed as part of the bio-politics of the population identified by Michel Foucault (1991/1978: 262). Today, bio-politics is equally constructed by state bio-power (Foucault 1991/1978: 265) and mass media coverage. Indeed the issue of human cloning has been the subject of an ongoing bio-political struggle taking place in news media over the technology s averred therapeutic potential. In this debate, the lives of early human embryos destroyed by the research are weighed against the hope that it will end the suffering of patients with debilitating illnesses. While reproductive human cloning (cloning for live birth) has been overwhelmingly opposed by governments and publics around the world, therapeutic cloning has found a significantly more positive public reception according to both British and American public opinion polls (Evans 2002a; Nisbet 2004). Although therapeutic cloning has been highly controversial in the US, it remains legal and has been allocated research funding by a number of individual states with the enthusiastic support of patient groups, scientists and the biotechnology industry. Backed by similar stakeholders, the UK government embraced this technology as a harbinger of hope for patients and the promotion of scientific progress. These biogovernmental outcomes are inextricably intertwined with the communication of this bio- political issue through the mass media. In order to assess this mediation, the present study 7 examines the production (n = 18) and content (n = 5,185) of press coverage of therapeutic cloning in the leading scientific nations of the US and Britain from 1997 to 2006. Both the minutiae of journalistic practice and larger sociological transformations are considered in order identify key themes within this coverage. Also known as medical cloning , embryo cloning , or embryonic stem cell research , therapeutic cloning represents the fusion of two recently developed lines of biomedical research. It combines the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology that created Dolly the sheep in 1996 (Wilmut et al. 1997) with techniques for deriving embryonic stem cells first published in 1998 (Thomson et al. 1998). Together it was hoped that these technologies could be used to create human embryos genetically identical to adult patients for use in stem cell treatments. This tissue would be used to avoid immune system rejection. However human embryos would be destroyed in this process, a fact which has fuelled expressions of moral opposition by anti-abortion activists and some religious leaders. Moreover conservative1 bioethicists such as Leon Kass2 (2000) and Francis Fukuyama (2002), criticised therapeutic cloning as an instantiation of modern biomedicine s hubristic quest for immortality. They argue that this quest portends myriad long-term negative consequences for nearly all aspects of life, from gender and family relations to the very essence of human nature (also see Habermas 2003). Just as therapeutic cloning represents the convergence of mammalian cloning and human embryo research, this hybrid concept