What you see is news

Abstract

This article uses the Nexis database to explore the global media reporting of Bt maize and Bt cotton between 1996 and 2015 in terms of trends over time and how this relates to region (North America, Europe and Asia) and topic (six in total) of focus. While Bt cotton and Bt maize are ‘genetically modified’ (GM), there are differences between them in terms of the extent and pattern of media reporting. An apparent spike in media reporting of Bt maize between 1998 and 2001 is largely linked to the North America and Europe regions, and covers the period just after the first commercial release of that variety. For Bt cotton, the broad trend in media reporting mirrors the increase in Bt cotton area, and a sharp rise in press reporting as of 2008/2009 in Asia follows a rapid increase in the area of Bt cotton in India since that time. For both crops, the count of articles classified as ‘Environment and natural resources’ was significantly higher than for the other topics and for both crops, the topic ‘Safety, accidents and disasters’ had the lowest count. The media picks up on many signals within the GM crop arena, and may have a significant influence given that the public may rely heavily upon the media for its information regarding GM.