News is Mixed on Education Coverage

Reports from advocacy-oriented think tanks have better odds of making the news than university research

A report released today finds that though university and government research gets the most play in two of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, reports produced by advocacy-oriented think tanks have the best chance of being cited by journalists.

The report, authored by Holly Yettick of the University of Colorado at Boulder, suggests that think tank research is over-represented in the media. It is estimated that university-based studies conducted in 2007 were 14 to 16 times the number of think-tank based studies, yet Education Week, The New York Times and The Washington Post cited university-based studies just twice as often as think tank studies.

Yettick indicates that this is likely due, at least in part, to the skill and resources think tanks devote to publicity for their reports, using sophisticated marketing campaigns targeting journalists, policy makers and the public for which university professors generally lack the resources and motivation to do.

Yettick also reports that other research has found that reporters who write about education rarely use peer-referenced academic journals as sources of information and often fail to cite the advocacy orientations of the think tanks that produced cited studies.

The report concludes with recommendations to journalists including the expansion of their source lists to include university researchers and peer-reviewed journals and a more careful vetting of think tank reports to ensure they meet high research standards similar to those used by academically based researchers.

Find Holly Yettick's full report, The Research that Reaches the Public: Who Produces the Educational Research Mentioned in the News Media?, at www.greatlakescenter.org.

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