Since Channel One was introduced into high school and middle school classrooms in 1990, the commercial television program has been the focus of ongoing controversy. Purchased in 1994 for $250 million by K-III Communications, Channel One beams 12 minutes of programming (including two minutes of ads) into more than 12,000 schools in the United States, with an audience of more than 8 million students.

Participating schools receive the daily program along with 19-inch television sets for each classroom, two VCRs and a satellite link. Channel One sends the news via satellite early in the morning, where it is taped by each school's VCR, then distributed to individual classrooms at a designated time. In exchange for the programming and the equipment, schools are obligated to show Channel One to students as a required part of each school day. In essence, schools deliver a highly sought teen audience to Channel One, which sells the attention of captive teens to youth-oriented marketers for approximately $200,000 per 30 seconds of advertising time.

The Channel One controversy has focused largely on the introduction of advertisements into public schools. Critics and parents have argued that students are not commodities to be sold to advertisers under the guise of educational television (Educational Leadership, 1/90; EXTRA!, 9-10/91). To advocates, the ads are but a small price that schools will have to pay in order to bring new technologies and discussions of current events into the classroom (Phi Delta Kappan, 2/95).

Indeed, Channel One's mission statement touts its educational and civic value, indicating that its purpose is to "use news and current events information as a tool to educate and engage young adults in world happenings; make the daily news accessible, relevant and exciting to younger viewers; promote daily awareness of the relationship between national and world events and every teen's individual life; encourage young people to become productive and active adult citizens by proving to them that they are participants in history not just witnesses to it." After a rocky start, by 1996 Channel One was touting its acceptance by the mainstream journalistic community, citing its partnership with ABC News and favorable reviews in prominent publications, including Time magazine (12/18/95), whose television critic noted enthusiastically that "after five years on the air, Channel One News has filled an important niche."

Researchers have participated in the debate primarily by exploring the "effects" of watching Channel One, paying attention to the learning that Channel One produces. But there has been little work on the actual content of the news that 8 million teenagers watch. What messages about our nation and our world does Channel One beam to millions of teens? The news-for-ads trade off that is an implicit, and often explicit, component of the argument in support of Channel One takes for granted that Channel One delivers to students a program that we would all accept as "news." Instead of taking the news quality of Channel One for granted, however, we need to systematically study Channel One programming to determine the nature of this news.

The data for this study are videotapes of 36 Channel One programs, collected from late November 1995 to early March 1996. These 36 programs contained a total of 91 news stories and 177 on-camera sources. Stories and sources were coded on a range of dimensions, including story topic, story length, source occupation, source race and gender, and length of source appearance. The programs were also subject to more in-depth, qualitative analysis, focusing on the "frames" or interpretive patterns employed in both the news coverage and the non-news components of the Channel One program.

Style vs. Substance

The most striking aspects of Channel One are its look and feel; the program is so self-consciously stylish that the news often seems like an appendage to this MTV-like display of youth culture. The program generally begins, ends and cuts in and out of commercials with current youth music; the opening generally includes attractive and sometimes bizarre visual images or computer animation. Most of the programs are hosted in "The Hacienda," the extremely hip Channel One studio in Los Angeles, where a young, racially diverse set of reporters sit next to their laptop computers, lean against railings or sit on platforms high above the studio. The atmosphere in the studio is informal; there are rarely suits and ties for these stylishly groomed anchors, who rhetorically ask the audience "what's up" as they introduce themselves. Before we've seen any news, except perhaps a teaser for an upcoming story, the general tone-attractive and cool young people reporting news in a way that is entertaining to teenagers-has been well established.

Slightly more than half (58 percent) of Channel One's air time is devoted to news content. The remaining 42 percent is made up of ads, the "Pop Quiz," Channel One contests and activities, and the music and banter that serve as filler. Features and profiles not pegged to breaking events constitute 57 percent of news time, meaning that only 25 percent of Channel One's air time is devoted to coverage of breaking news stories. After sports, weather and plane or train crashes are subtracted, the figure is just 20 percent.

News coverage focused on a range of topics. The frequency and air time of each topic area is reported in Table 1.

The biggest surprise is the near-total absence of coverage of the economy, much less than is found in traditional news programs. Another notable finding is the disparity between frequency and percentage of air time for stories about social issues-pregnancy, school prayer, drinking, etc. While coverage of social issues ranks third in frequency of stories, social stories occupy more air time than any other category, since they are, on average, a minute and a half longer than other stories.

The 1996 presidential election was the most frequently covered subject, with 15 percent of Channel One stories focusing on various primaries and caucuses during the sample period. Next in order of frequency were coverage of sports and stories about Channel One activities, both of which were the focus of 10 percent of the stories in the sample. Stories on Bosnia accounted for 7 percent of the stories, and coverage of plane and train crashes made up nearly 6 percent of the news reports on Channel One.

Going to the Source

Despite the diverse set of anchors, in terms of both gender and ethnicity, the on-camera sources that appear on Channel One are primarily white and male. While the percentage of black sources, at 15 percent, is slightly higher than the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population, the black sources are not a very diverse lot: More than half are either athletes (42 percent) or prisoners (13 percent). Other people of color are almost invisible, and women are substantially under-represented among Channel One sources.

In coverage of breaking news, inequality of access is accentuated. The gender gap widens substantially, the percentage of black sources decreases significantly, particularly in terms of time, and other people of color virtually disappear.

Beyond simple demographics, who are the sources on Channel One news? The most frequent type of source to appear on these programs is government officials and politicians, who account for more than one-quarter of all sources and more than one-third of source time. The other major source type is students and teachers from schools that receive Channel One news-where student views are sought or where reporters cover activities at these schools-who account for more than 24 percent of sources and 15 percent of source time. This is one example of how Channel One covers itself, making the views and activities of those involved with the Channel One project central to the program.

Official appearances are, on average, more than twice as long (33 seconds) as appearances by Channel One students and teachers (15 seconds); only one Channel One student (a potential Olympic swimmer) appeared for longer than 25 seconds. This suggests the top-down communication pattern that Channel One promotes: Officials define the important issues and the parameters of discussion, and brief on-screen student comments present a semblance of student participation.

Coverage of domestic politics in particular includes a very narrow range of perspectives. Government officials and politicians made up 69 percent of the sources, and accounted for 86 percent of the source time. Men accounted for 91 percent of sources and occupied 93 percent of the source time. And 94 percent of the sources on domestic political stories were white, accounting for 97 percent of source time.

Coverage of international issues is rather different. Half of the sources in these stories were from outside the United States. The inclusion of voices from outside the United States resulted in substantial racial diversity here, with whites accounting for 55 percent of sources and occupying 59 percent of source time.Channel One's coverage of social issues makes use of sources that are far more representative. The male/female ratio is 58-42 percent, a substantially higher proportion of women than in other topic areas. Eighty percent of the sources are white and 17 percent are black in stories about social issues. These stories are also the least reliant upon officials; government officials and politicians only account for 8 percent of sources. Instead, the primary sources are teenagers and their parents (31 percent), professionals (20 percent, mostly doctors and lawyers), Channel One students and teachers (14 percent) and students and teachers from schools that do not receive Channel One (13 percent).

Seventy-five percent of the culture stories were about sports; the sources were largely Channel One-affiliated athletes and coaches (40 percent) and professional athletes (20 percent). While nine out of 10 sources in cultural stories were men, 60 percent were white and 40 percent were black. The black sources were all either high school or professional basketball players.

Absent from Class

This relative homogeneity of Channel One's sources stands in stark contrast to the diversity of its on-camera staff. This is indicative of the substantial difference between the multicultural appearance and the substance of the reporting at Channel One news. In fact, race and ethnicity are almost never an issue in the newscasts; it is as if the existence of a multicultural staff erases the social and economic meaning of racial difference in U.S. society. Even when Channel One made an effort to foreground race, as in its Black History Month interview with Rosa Parks, the focus was solely on history-the civil rights movement of the '60s-with little effort to explore either the contemporary implications of the civil rights movement. The bottom line is that Channel One packages multiculturalism as a style, but does little to give students resources for making sense of the complexities of racial inequality in our society today.

Similarly, as noted earlier, Channel One pays very little attention to economic news. Only three of the 91 stories focused on the economy: one story on changing interest rates and two stories (both in the same day) about the flat tax proposal. Why would economic news be of so little interest to Channel One news? One could make a persuasive argument that economic questions are of central concern to today's teenagers. What kinds of jobs are available today, how is the labor market changing, and what kinds of skills are required? What are the economic prospects for the next generation? Channel One does not provide students with resources to be able to understand, in even the most rudimentary way, the workings of the economy or the significance of economic developments.

Given that Channel One is much more likely to air in less affluent schools (Morgan, Channel One in the Public Schools), the absence of reporting about economic inequality is particularly significant. Indeed, for working class and poor students who are required to watch Channel One, the news does little to include stories about their lives, communities or concerns. In short, Channel One reflects the deeply structured inequalities in American society; in failing to talk about inequality, however, Channel One helps to reproduce and legitimize these inequalities.

The absence of economic news, however, does not mean that there are no economic messages on Channel One. These appear each day in the two minutes of advertising imbedded in the news. Economic messages are reduced to the general promotion of consumption-as ads promote candy, cereal, new movies and video games.Channel One (whose parent company also owns RJR Nabisco) does not promote a corporate perspective in a heavy-handed or direct way, as some critics had initially feared. Indeed, given the absence of economic news stories, corporate spokespeople are virtually nonexistent on Channel One. However, without any substantive economic news to give students the ability to make sense of the economy, the corporate advertising becomes the principal lens through which economic questions are addressed on Channel One news. The implicit message is that students' relationship to the economy is solely as consumers, well-prepared to purchase the products and lifestyles that Channel One promotes.

Simplifying Political News

In contrast, Channel One regularly covers the political world, with a particular focus on the presidency and Congress. As with most major news outlets, the coverage focuses substantial attention (69 percent of domestic political sources) on government officials and politicians. The one major difference is that while network television news increasingly relies upon "expert" commentators for news analysis, Channel One rarely uses this journalistic approach (6 percent).

Although Channel One does not follow the standard news script that employs experts in prominent roles, it does follow its own set of conventions in coverage of controversial issues, both inside and outside the world of politics. Channels One's approach, with rare exceptions, is to frame these stories as debates between two clearly demarcated sides. These sides coincide with the perspectives advanced by the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Although Channel One does not follow the standard news script that employs experts in prominent roles, it does follow its own set of conventions in coverage of controversial issues, both inside and outside the world of politics. Channels One's approach, with rare exceptions, is to frame these stories as debates between two clearly demarcated sides. These sides coincide with the perspectives advanced by the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties.

For example, a story on the welfare system is set up as a debate between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. A story on sending U.S. troops to Bosnia is framed as a debate between President Clinton and his Republican critics. Coverage of the federal budget is also a "battle" between the president and Republicans. The same general approach frames reporting on the flat tax, punishment for violent teenagers and the proposed amendment to ban flag-burning. And when a representative of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, appeared as a rare expert in a January 30 story about teenage pregnancy, the two sides were drawn clearly-without any competing definition-as the "pro-family community" versus "the left."

The "two sides" approach is a convenient journalistic framework: It provides drama, protects reporters from claims of "bias," and brings a semblance of order to a complex world. However, such an approach often obscures more than it illuminates.