Planning, Practice & Research, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 147 – 161, May 2006

ARTICLE The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine R. CHRISTOPHER EDEY, MARK SEASONS & GRAHAM WHITELAW

Introduction The role of the media with respect to urban planning has not been well-addressed in the existing body of planning literature. This article explores the topic through a case study of the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM) planning issue in Canada. The case study analyses the Toronto Star’s coverage of the issue and knowledge gained from interviews with actors intimately involved in the issue, including journalists, planners and members of environmental groups. How do people know which issues are important to them and the community at large? Society uses the information agencies, particularly the mass media, which deliver information and interpretations through the use of experts and news analysis. The media in turn are not simply conduits of information, as the journalists involved must make judgements about the selection and presentation of news to meet their obligations to the community in a responsible manner (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). As a result, what one reads as the news is a reconstruction and an interpretation of what actually happened. It is generally accepted that the media does have an influence over public opinion (Lippman, 1922; Cohen, 1963; Harrison & Hoberg, 1991; McCombs & Shaw, 1993). The media force attention to certain issues over others; build up public images of political figures and current events; and influence what individuals should think about, know about and have opinions about. This creates a type of learning process, in which the public discovers what is important and needs to be addressed on the basis of how much emphasis the topic in question is given in the information sources that they consult (Lang & Lang, 1959).

R. Christopher Edey, Communications and Urban Planning Manager, Redevelopment Office, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 1001 Queen Street West, 1167A—Administration Building, Toronto, Ontario, M6J 1H4, Canada. Email: [email protected]; Dr Mark Seasons, Associate Professor & Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada. Email: [email protected]; Dr Graham Whitelaw, Lecturer, Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0269-7459 print/1360-0583 online/06/020147–15 Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis 147 DOI: 10.1080/02697450600944632 R. Christopher Edey et al.

Agenda Setting and the Issue-Attention Cycle Agenda setting is the key topic in any discussion of the media’s power and role with regard to public opinion and policy outcomes. First-level agenda setting is defined as ‘the selection of object or issue for attention’ (what to think about) and second-level as ‘the selection of attributes for thinking’ (how to think about it). ‘Attributes are the characteristics and properties that detail the images of each object or issue’ (McCombs & Shaw, 1993, p. 62). According to early communications theory, political information or opinions can be readily injected into the body politic by the mass media. By the 1950s and 1960s, researchers began to recognize that ‘people watch or read selectively and in accordance with previous views [and that] if anything preconceptions seemed to be hardened by exposure to media’ (McCombs & Shaw, 1993, p. 65). In the 1970s and 1980s a third stream of research emerged, emphasizing that while news media may not be able to tell people what to think or to change their firmly held political views, they can influence what people think about: they set the agenda for public discussion (McCombs & Shaw, 1993). The debate continues, but all things considered:

In absence of a unified theory of democratic politics and the role of the media therein, politicians, media consultants, and journalists continue to behave as if news media are influential, and this assumption seems to be shared by voters. (Ungar, 1990)

Opinion on the power and extent of agenda setting is by no means conclusive or consistent. In general, it is recognized to be ‘a highly complex phenomenon contingent on a variety of conditions’ (Palmgreen & Clark, 1977, p. 452). One such factor is scale, as the agenda-setting impact of the media is generally weaker at the local level, when compared to issues of national scope—an important distinction for planners. While the media retains significant influence at the local level, the impact of alternative sources of information (e.g., interpersonal channels, personal observation) is strongly indicated (Palmgreen & Clark, 1977). Are the issues covered in newspapers reflective of the various personal agendas of those in the media, or of the public’s agenda as a whole? Some have made the case that concerns about journalistic bias assume that journalists exert significant individual influence over the news, and that they will promote their own political beliefs. A 1984 survey of American journalists showed that the media elite were much more politically liberal than Americans at large. Similar research has been done in Canada; a 1985 survey of the Ottawa press gallery revealed that 80% of its members described themselves as politically ‘left’ or ‘centrists’. These results showed that journalists were out of step with those in the Canadian mainstream at that time (Desbarats, 1990). However, allegations of political bias ignore the professional training and personal standards of journalists. Both of these factors, in theory, inhibit journalists from using their skills to promote a particular ideology. Furthermore, journalists work under a hierarchy of editors and news directors who exert tremendous influence by choosing the journalists who are to be hired and promoted, controlling their assignments, and having the final word on the product 148 The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine before it goes to press. These editors and news directors are in turn hired and promoted by the owners of media enterprises, whose views they presumably respect and reflect. These internal media structures are the reason many journalists react sceptically to talk about the ‘power of the press’ at least as applied to individual journalists (Desbarats, 1990). While some stories are forgotten almost as soon as they appear, others demonstrate longevity and make the transition from individual story to recurring issue. The longevity of an issue in the print media can be attributed to at least three major factors: public interest; the agenda of the media source; and the existence and strength of active policy communities pursuing the issue. Marshall McLuhan pointed out that it is largely the audience itself that ‘manages the news’ by maintaining or losing interest in a given subject (1964). The public’s management of the news tends to promote a ‘crisis – response’ pattern when dealing with issues involving particular social problems, especially environmental issues (Downs, 1972). This feedback system is generally referred to as the issue-attention cycle and is divided into five stages as follows:

1. The pre-problem stage; 2. Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm; 3. Realizing the cost of significant progress; 4. Gradual decline of intense public interest; 5. The post-problem stage.

Issues exist long before they are ‘found’ by the media and continue to exist long after attention has waned, thus active policy communities are necessary to keep an issue on the public agenda. Policy communities are made up of persons involved in the politics and policymaking of a defined policy area. It is among such networks that policy issues tend to be defined, the relevant evidence debated and alternative options worked out (Lomax-Cook & Skogan, 1991). A policy community includes both formal (e.g. government agencies) and informal (e.g. citizen groups) actors. In the transmission of information to a wide audience a certain amount of detail and depth are lost, which makes simplicity and the framing of an issue essential to successful transmission through the media. Journalism often uses ‘narrative templates’ to accomplish this transmission. One of the most common templates is that of the villain, the victim and the hero. Any story that can be arranged into this format will get media attention, often without a great deal of scrutiny as to whom, exactly, the respective players are, and by what criteria they were assigned their media roles (Murray, 2001). When the media portray an issue in an unambiguous way with dramatic, convincing and clear evidence, public attitudes are more likely to change (Protess et al., 2003). The literature suggests that the print media is not an impartial actor, and through its agenda-setting abilities can affect the relative salience of the issues on the public agenda, and to a lesser extent can affect the salience of the key attributes of the same issue. In short, the media transmits information about policy matters to citizens, who in turn pressure officials to act on their concerns and priorities (Lichtenberg, 1990). 149 R. Christopher Edey et al.

Case Study—Oak Ridges Moraine The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is Canada’s largest metropolitan region, with a population of 5 million people. The GTA’s continued economic and population growth has regularly pitted developers and conservationists against one another. But rarely has this perennial conflict and its attendant media coverage been on the scale of the Oak Ridges Moraine debate of the past five years. Rising in the Region of Peel and Counties of Dufferin and Simcoe in the west and running in a generally east – west direction for 160 km into Northumberland County, the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM) forms the drainage divide between Lakes Simcoe and Ontario and acts as the headwaters for over 35 rivers and streams in the Greater Toronto Area (Figure 1). The portion of the Moraine within the GTA stretches over a distance of some 90 kilometres and has a total area of over 1,250 square kilometres. The Moraine serves as a groundwater recharge area and also contains the majority of the remaining natural areas in the GTA bioregion including forests, wetlands and habitat for wildlife species. Economic- ally, the gravel and sand of the Moraine provides aggregate materials used in construction projects within the GTA. Historically, the Moraine has accom- modated towns, villages, and urban areas, which provide housing and employ- ment opportunities. The debate about how Moraine lands should be used, in the context of the growing metropolis to the south, long predates the heavy media attention that it attracted in 1999 – 2000. The ORM figured in the Toronto-Centred Regional Plan initiative of the 1960s, which called for satellite cities joined by high-speed transit with large greenbelts acting as urban separators (e.g. the Moraine). The housing supply crisis of the mid 1980s led provincial planners to return to a focus on long-term planning centring on the rapidly expanding Greater Toronto Area. At this point, Moraine municipalities had yet to design much policy

FIGURE 1. The Oak Ridges Moraine (not to scale).

150 The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine regarding the use of Moraine lands. It was only in the late 1990s that the Moraine began to attract press attention of any significance as it became a highly desirable location for suburban development in the GTA. Development proposals generated extensive and often impassioned debates among pro- and anti-development groups. The GTA is Canada’s main English-language media market, with four major daily newspapers, a plethora of niche-market community publications, and a wide spectrum of radio, television and internet news sources. The Toronto Star boasts the largest circulation of GTA (and Canadian) newspapers, with over 450,000 copies printed daily. Daily readership is above one million people, while the Star’s website received approximately 27 million page views per month in 2003. The Star is owned by Torstar, a major publicly traded Canadian media corporation involved in book publishing, internet and television operations, in addition to its core business of newspaper publishing. In addition to the Star, Torstar publishes an additional 108 newspapers of varying size and prominence, ranging from daily papers in medium-sized Ontario cities to small weekly community newspapers. Newspaper publishing accounted for 65% of Torstar’s consolidated operating revenue in 2004 (Torstar Corporation, 2005). The Toronto Star was founded in 1892, but the origins of its current character can be traced to the appointment of Joseph Atkinson as editor in 1899. Atkinson possessed a strong belief that a progressive newspaper should ‘contribute to the advancement of society through social, political and economic reforms’ (Torstar Corporation, 2005). More than a century later, the Star continues to base the intellectual framework of its editorial policy upon six principles he established: a strong, united and independent Canada; social justice; individual and civil liberties; community and civic engagement; the rights of working people, and; the necessary role of government (Torstar Corporation, 2005). The contemporary application of Atkinson’s principles has placed the Toronto Star in a ‘centre-left’ position in Canada’s political spectrum. During the debate over Free Trade with the United States in 1988, 80% of the Star’s coverage of the issue was considered ‘anti-free trade’ in nature (Desbarats, 1990). Also, the Toronto Star was the only major Toronto daily to endorse the left-leaning Liberal Party in Canada’s 2006 Federal election.

Methodology The key question that the research sought to determine was: What role did the print media play in the outcome of the Oak Ridges Moraine debate? Three avenues of research were used for this study: a literature review, a content analysis of the Toronto Star’s Oak Ridges coverage,1 and long interviews with various actors in the debate itself. Content analysis has been frequently used in previous investigations of the role that the media has played in environmental issues, such as analyses of public attitudes towards wildlife and media characterization of nuclear waste disposal (Arvai, 2001). Content analysis involves the systematic examination of communication or message; the goal is to break down the material into units of meaning, code these units systematically, and then analyse the results. 151 R. Christopher Edey et al.

In this research, relevant Star articles were examined, using 19 pro-conservation and an equal number of pro-development categories to score the articles. When a given article contained an element described by a pro-conservation category a score of þ1 was assigned for the category, while a pro-development element would result in a score of 71 for the relevant category. After the article had been scanned for all 38 categories, the scores were summed to create a composite score for the piece as a whole. A score above zero indicated a pro-conservation tilt, while a negative score was evidence of the reverse; the composite article scores varied between a high of 10 and a low of 77. Interviews were conducted with six key informants involved in the ORM issue to augment the content analysis and to expose what was transpiring beyond and behind the printed word (Table 1). The research was conducted over the summer and fall of 2002.

Findings The Role of the Media in the ORM Planning Issue The interviewees agreed that the print media played a significant role in the outcome of the ORM debate. Specifically, they felt that the Toronto Star’s coverage of the ORM issue was instrumental in shaping public opinion on the issue, which combined with the coverage itself, put pressure on various levels of government to act (e.g. Richmond Hill council voting down its OP amendment, the provincial government joining the opponents of development at the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) and finally the passing of the Oak Ridges Moraine Protection Act in May 2001). From a planner at a provincial ministry:

I think that media had a large role. . . . Especially with this government more than others I’ve worked for. . . . While we may have gotten a Moraine Plan of some sort, no one would have heard about these meetings of several thousand people up in Richmond Hill; and, if we did actually get a plan, it would have been a lot weaker than what it is and allowed a lot more development than it does.

TABLE 1. Interviewee code and background Code Background a Planner, Province of Ontario b Editor, GTA Newspaper c Planner, Regional Municipality d Journalist, GTA Newspaper e Senior Manager, Province of Ontario f Environmental Activist

152 The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine

What is harder to discern however, is what came first: public opinion or media coverage? Some of the interviewees addressed this situation, but there was no consensus about which party led. This was summed up by a reporter as:

. . . the chicken and the egg issue. We gave [the Moraine issue] some coverage but we only gave it coverage because we thought that people were angry about it and concerned about it. But that coverage really fuelled people’s anger concerning [the issue] and also let them know that they had a chance of doing something about it.

And, from a regional municipal planner:

Certainly the Toronto Star was front and centre on [the Moraine issue]. So the print media had an interest in the whole thing and keeping it going, [but] would they have had an interest if there wasn’t public opinion to begin with? No. So it’s a kind of Catch 22.

Without a null option for comparison, it is difficult to ascertain the specific impact of the media. In this way, the media can be seen as a very blunt instrument. Its power and influence can certainly affect the decision-making process, but it cannot do so in a controlled or precise way. A total of 232 articles dealing with the Oak Ridges Moraine were identified and analysed. The content analysis found an overall bias that was significantly in favour of conservation. In general, columns, editorials and letters to the editor were more pro-conservation than news articles. Of the total articles, 60% were news articles, and of those, 63% were pro-conservation, 23% were neutral and 14% were classified as being pro-development. Each type of coverage is summarized in terms of bias and frequency in Table 2. The Star’s news coverage was notable for the discrepancy between the space given to development opponents and proponents to state their respective cases. In general, those opposing development appeared much more frequently than those arguing for it. Interviewees indicated that throughout the evolution of the Oak

TABLE 2. Toronto Star ORM coverage by type Per cent Average of total Type Frequency score Pro-conservation Neutral Pro-development content News articles 139 1.45 87 32 20 59.91% Columns 30 3.93 26 3 1 12.93% Editorials 16 3.69 15 1 0 6.90% Letters 45 2.16 37 7 1 19.40% Other 2 6.00 2 0 0 0.86% Totals 232 2.10 167 43 22 100.00%

153 R. Christopher Edey et al.

Ridges issue, the opponents of development sought as much media attention as they could in order to get their message out. Development proponents do not generally seek media attention to push their agenda. Instead, contemporary urban developers in the GTA, which are usually large well-financed corporations, advance their interests by making significant financial contributions to candidates for municipal office, lobbying elected local politicians and retaining ‘highly-trained and politically sophisticated business teams’ to negotiate land development issues with public planners and officials (Perks & Jamieson, 1991). Interviewees indicated that the development industry sees the media as skewed towards an ‘environmentalist’ point-of-view, and that industry representatives see little that can be done in order to mitigate the editorial bias they perceive. Thus, the development industry focuses on establishing its media profile through the purchase of advertisements extolling the virtues of their latest housing development. The Toronto Star includes advert-dominated New in Homes and Condo Living sections in every Saturday edition.

The Relationship Between the Press and the Development Opponents A key determinant of the success of the pro-conservation agenda and of its prevalence in the pages of the Toronto Star was the relationship between the reporters and the organizations that opposed development. For example, it is well known that a Star columnist wrote passionately and persuasively against development on the Moraine. What is generally not known is that the group Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM) brought the columnist along on a bus tour of the Oak Ridges Moraine in 1998, which allowed him to see first hand the complex hydrology of the Moraine while standing in a gigantic sand pit. In the words of one environmental activist: ‘It was quite an epiphany, I think, for [the columnist], because he looked around and it was like ‘holy shit, this thing is big’. Whatever created this thing called the Moraine is, was in fact a huge monumental force.’ In light of the pressures and constraints that are associated with the newspaper business, journalists and members of various policy communities tend to form relationships of mutual benefit and convenience. An editor said ‘most groups [distribute information] by press release and then begin to develop a relationship with reporters or editors. That makes it easy to get their message across and again we get into that habit where we go to certain groups for, you know, an attempt to balance a story, to cover the bases.’ This familiarity, when combined with strict deadlines, can lead to a situation where the same sources are asked for comment (and given exposure) for the sake of convenience. When asked if this trend gives these voices a disproportionate weight in newspaper coverage, the same editor replied ‘Absolutely, if it means that other voices aren’t being heard.’ The development opponents were keenly aware of the importance of this relationship. An activist said, ‘I realized that [the journalist’s columns on the Moraine] was our first bit of interest that the Toronto papers were making on [the Moraine]. STORM was very careful to nurture a relationship with [the columnist],’ and ‘We made sure that whatever events or anything that was going on, [the columnist] was aware of it and invited to it.’ 154 The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine

In this relationship, it seems apparent that simplicity works. The existing literature emphasizes that a direct and uncomplicated message is best suited to successful transmission through the print media. A reporter echoed this statement, saying:

When you come down to it, people don’t want to hear all the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of planning . . . if they’re angry about something. . . . Boiling it all down to ‘Save the Moraine’ is a great position to take because people can get behind it, even if they don’t exactly know where the Moraine starts or stops.

A community activist added that ‘Knowing your facts, obviously, and just sitting and talking with [journalists]’ is what pays off for community groups seeking to get their positions broadcast in the print media. In the case of the Moraine debate, the groups that opposed development were highly successful in gaining and maintaining access to the print media, and thus were able to push their agenda and message to the public at large. They were also successful in changing how the issue was framed in the print media and in identifying a print media outlet amenable to their agenda and concerns.

The Framing and Evolution of the Oak Ridges Debate Despite its known importance to the GTA’s ecosystem and the strong deve- lopment pressures in the municipalities north of Toronto, the Oak Ridges Moraine was not prominent in the media for the long period leading up to the 1999 spike in coverage (see Figure 2). Furthermore, the media spotlight was not attracted to the Oak Ridges issue solely because of development pressures. A vital moment in the development of the media coverage was the allegation of scandal surrounding a former Ontario Municipal Affairs Minister that surfaced in October of 1999. The Minister was accused of inappropriate behaviour in regard to several development applications on the Moraine. When this story broke, it naturally attracted media attention, which presented a major opportunity for the groups that were already active in working to protect the Moraine to get their views aired to a larger audience. According to one such activist:

It was then strategic to turn this political scandal into an environmental issue, and then [we] kept hammering at this. Each press conference, each press release was again just hitting those main points. . . . So it was a very successful campaign in that instance. Suddenly it was like bang! It becomes an environmental issue.

The pro-conservation groups were effective in their efforts to push their agenda into the passing spotlight of the media. The issue of urban development on the Moraine, which was first defined by the inappropriate conduct of a politician, quickly became framed in environmental terms. This development greatly advantaged the environmental groups working to stop development on the Moraine as the debate was now being contested on their territory and in their language. 155 R. Christopher Edey et al.

FIGURE 2. Number of ORM items in the Star, and the applicable stages of the issue-attention cycle throughout the study period.

The framing of the issue continued to develop as time passed. The Star’s Moraine coverage gradually moved from a discussion of an environmental issue to a broader discussion of urban sprawl, urban growth and the current model of new greenfield development in general. A senior manager at a provincial ministry noted that:

[The columnist] was covering the much broader issues around the Oak Ridge Moraine from a columnist’s standpoint and stitching [the story] together from more than just a land development issue, to tie it in with growth management, urban sprawl, environmental protection, inter-regional jurisdictions and the role of the Ontario Municipal Board.

A community activist added:

The Star made the connection [between the various issues] and did a wonderful plan view of the sprawl. That allowed us to launch into hitting the government that this is now a political situation on their hands. . . . The environmental groups set the agenda and used the media, and the media was excellent to help bring that campaign to a successful end. 156 The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine

The Issue-Attention Cycle The Star’s coverage was broken down chronologically to facilitate its comparison to the issue-attention cycle. Table 3 presents the characteristics of the Star’s coverage as the issue developed. Few articles appeared in the Star on the subject of the ORM in the years 1995 to mid-1997 (these articles were outside the formal study period and were not analysed). This extended absence of Oak Ridges, despite the existence of an important issue, conforms to the pre-problem stage of the issue-attention cycle. During the study period that followed (June 1997 to July 1999) only 10 articles were found; however, these included a number of pro-conservation columns and a 1998 editorial calling for government action to protect the Moraine. The period that followed was characterized almost solely by pro-conservation columns on the Moraine, although there were only six total items during this time (August and September 1999). Coverage of the Moraine increased dramatically following the scandal and ensuing resignation. It was at this point that the Star (in the form of editorials) began to regularly call on the Province to take protective action on the Moraine. A higher percentage of columns, editorials and letters also appeared. This first peak of coverage, which conforms to the alarmed discovery phase, is notable for its above-average bias in favour of conservation. It is also interesting that this media peak occurred before the dramatic council meeting in the Moraine municipality of Richmond Hill. One can only conclude that the heavy media coverage and its focus on the existing conflict between the pro- and anti-development factions contributed to the sense of a showdown on the Oak Ridges Moraine. The interviewees identified Richmond Hill’s council debate over the proposed rezoning of 2,800 hectares of rural land to urban uses, which carried over from late 1999 into 2000, and the subsequent OMB hearing, as the flashpoint of the issue when public attention and opinion, as well as media coverage, intensified. The lead- up to the OMB hearing produced intense pro-conservation coverage (an average of 18 articles per month with an average bias of 2.62). This period was also notable for

TABLE 3. Toronto Star ORM coverage by period Content type Issue-attention Average Deviation Time period cycle phase A C E L O Total score from mean Jun ’97 – Jul ’99 pre-problem 3 1 1 3 2 10 3.10 47.62% Aug ’99 – Sep ’99 pre-problem 2 3 0 0 0 5 1.00 752.38% Oct ’99 – Dec ’99 alarmed discovery 20 7 1 10 0 38 3.02 43.81% Jan ’00 – May ’00 alarmed discovery 46 15 11 21 0 93 2.62 24.76% Jun ’00 – Sep ’00 cost realization 29 0 1 7 0 37 0.24 788.57% Oct ’00 – Feb ’00 cost realization 29 2 1 4 0 36 1.14 745.71% Mar ’00 – May ’01 cost realization 10 2 1 0 0 13 3.08 46.67% Totals 139 30 16 45 2 232 2.10 0

A—articles, C—columns, E—editorials, L—letters, O—other.

157 R. Christopher Edey et al. the decision of the Ontario government to join the groups opposing development at the OMB hearing, a move that the Star had been calling for. The OMB hearing acted as magnet for all the concerns over the Moraine, focusing attention on Richmond Hill, which straddled the threatened corridor that linked the two halves of the Moraine. According to a regional municipal planner, ‘It [looked that] in the spring of 2001 as if the province was going to lose, big time.’ Public opinion had galvanized quite strongly on the side of preservation and protection of the Moraine. There was continuous coverage of the two phases of the hearing, although its intensity and pro-conservation bias were significantly reduced in comparison to the preceding months. With the coverage at this point essentially summarizing the positions of the opposing sides at the OMB hearing, the issue moved into the third stage of the issue-attention cycle,therealization of the costs of progress or problem resolution. In May 2001, the Province of Ontario intervened decisively by passing the Oak Ridges Protection Act, which effectively froze development for the time being. The Act was followed up by a protection plan in April 2002, which drew mixed reactions from development opponents. What has proved to be interesting is that the apparent resolution of the issue has not yet diminished its prominence in the Toronto Star. In the three years since the study period ended with the passing of Protection Act (May 2001), there have been a total of 474 articles mentioning the Oak Ridges Moraine, an average of almost 13 per month. Factors that can explain the continued presence of this issue on the pages of the Star include: a commitment on the part of the Star to follow the issue to its ultimate conclusion, continued public interest and the fact that general municipal, provincial and federal elections have all occurred during this time frame. The future of the Oak Ridges Moraine was an issue of note in the October 2003 Ontario Provincial election. It is also important to recognize that the overall debate about land use, development and urban growth never really ends. The topic never receives the sort of conclusive resolution that the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement did after the agreement was signed. In fact, the extensive attention paid to the Oak Ridges Moraine issue, and public interest therein, may have led to increased media focus on GTA land use debates that followed, keeping the topic on the media agenda when the issue-attention cycle predicted that its prominence should have receded. In summary, the Oak Ridges Moraine issue initially developed in accordance with the issue-attention cycle; however, the predicted drop-off in coverage has either not occurred or has yet to occur. Oak Ridges has kept its ‘legs’ and defied the established cycle for the three reasons identified in the literature review, namely: highly active and effective informal policy communities (e.g. STORM), a high level of knowledge of and interest in this debate on the part of the general public in the GTA, and an apparent desire on the part of the Star to keep Oak Ridges prominent on its pages. In sum, the larger debate over land use in a growing urban region never really ends.

Conclusions and Recommendations The research indicates the presence of first- and second-level agenda setting on the part of the Toronto Star throughout the Oak Ridges debate. The first level, telling 158 The Media, Planning and the Oak Ridges Moraine the public what issues to think about and the transfer of salience, was clearly demonstrated by the consistent and thorough coverage of the issue as it moved from a political scandal to a debate over development in Richmond Hill and into the halls of the OMB. The articles from August 1999 to May 2001 on the subject of the Moraine and the public opinion samples (which showed a high level of public awareness of the ORM issue) over the same period of time demonstrates both a commitment to showcase the issue and a successful transfer of salience to the public at large. Second-level agenda setting, telling the public how to think about an issue, is apparent in the pro-conservation bias identified by the content analysis and the Star’s editorial position, which was also strongly pro- conservation. Two factors are important for changes in public opinion—the nature of the media portrayal and the frequency of attention by the media to the issue in the past. When the media portray an issue in an unambiguous way with dramatic, convincing and clear evidence, public attitudes are more likely to change (Protess et al., 2003). This is exactly how the Star portrayed the ORM issue. On one side there were the wealthy and powerful developers, who had the ear of the provincial government and a developer-friendly Ontario Municipal Board. Opposing them was a rag-tag collection of environmental and community groups, overmatched local govern- ments and later on the Province of Ontario. The above characterization may not have been entirely true to reality, but it was the image that the Star painted for its readers in its columns, editorials and to a lesser extent, its news articles. John Forester (1993) argued that ‘stories matter’ in inter-office communications between planners, while the media makes use of ‘narrative templates’ to simplify complicated issues for effective transmission (Murray, 2001). Planning stories may be inherently messy, but provide the details that matter and the practical material with which planners have to work. They also teach us that, ‘Before problems are solved, they have to be constructed or formulated in the first place’ (Forester, 1993, p. 510). It follows that whoever constructs and formulates the narrative surrounding the planning problem at hand will have an advantage in pushing their preferred solution through the stories that they tell. The success of pro-conservation groups in defining the narrative template in their terms and using the media to tell their story had a great impact on the planning debate and decision in the case of the Oak Ridges Moraine. The key factors in the success of the pro-conservation agenda in relation to the Star were: the manner in which the debate was represented and framed in the Star, the evolution of the framing of the Oak Ridges issue over time, the relationship between the pro-conservation groups and the media, and the impact of media coverage on public opinion. The opponents of development were consistently portrayed in a more favourable light, and were given more time and space to get their message across. The interviewees agreed that media coverage does affect public opinion and that the Star portrayed the issue in a manner that lends itself to altering public opinion. We can conclude that the Toronto Star played an important role in forming and shaping the nature of the debate and public opinion on the Oak Ridges Moraine issue. It is abundantly clear that the media can exert significant influence on planning issues and that planners must be aware of the media’s role. Ideally, planners 159 R. Christopher Edey et al. should begin to see and use the media as a tool to inform the public and to advocate community planning goals and strategies. Thus, it is prudent to see media coverage and formal public participation in planning activities as part of an overall consultative process and to develop strategies and approaches that seek to reinforce and coordinate these two activities. Secondly, planners also must be able to use the media to counter negative perceptions or publicity regarding their proposals. This is especially important in countering NIMBY-type arguments faced by all planning professionals. Relationship building is necessary to accomplish the above goals and it need not be complicated or difficult. For example, planners can arrange for regular casual lunch meetings with local reporters or ‘drive-arounds’ in the community to showcase and discuss current and future projects and ideas. Most reporters will not have expert knowledge of planning matters and if planners do not take the initiative to get their point of view across, another group with its own agenda and motivation will fill the vacuum with its narrative template. Journalists, like planners, are busy people and are not immune to cutting corners in the interest of deadlines.

Note 1. Content of all types (e.g. news articles, editorials, columns etc.) between June 1997 and May 2001 that contained the phrase ‘Oak Ridges Moraine’ within their first two paragraphs were identified and analysed. Since the Star was clearly the agenda-setter in this case and it is clearly the largest newspaper in the region, we focused our research only on its coverage.

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