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Dissertation Information for Beverly Ann Deepe Keever

NAME:
- Beverly Ann Deepe Keever

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Journalism and Mass Communication

SCHOOL:
- University of Hawaii (USA) (2000)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Millennia lost, islanders unseen: "The New York Times" framing of United States nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, 1946--1962, and the bittersweet legacy

Abstract: "This dissertation assessed the performance of The New York Times , using as criteria principles announced on August 19, 1896 by incoming publisher Adolph S. Ochs and continued by his successors: (1) giving all the news, (2) giving it impartially without fear or favor, (3) considering all questions of public importance, (4) inviting discussion from all shades of opinion.

Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to assess 4,300-plus Times articles stored online or on microfilm and to incorporate data from multidisciplinary sources, including FBI files on Times men obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The dissertation concluded that The Times largely failed to put its principles into practice when covering 86 U.S. nuclear weapons tests from the dawn of the atomic-bomb age through the last U.S. detonation in the Pacific in 1962. Times framing emphasized U.S. technological prowess, but minimized or ignored the negative impact of that prowess on Marshallese and their homelands.

Measuring the lack of specificity and context in Times coverage was effected by analyzing 128 articles published by and indexed in the newspaper from 1946-62 on the topic of plutonium, a deadly element if ingested. Only one of the 128 Times articles mentioned plutonium's 24,000-year half life--meaning 500,000 years of radioactive existence--a newsworthy fact not subject to scientific debate or government security. The 500 radioactive millennia absent from Times newspages deprived readers of a material fact essential for grasping the stakes of the nuclear age, for holding elected government officials accountable on a timely basis for decision-making affecting themselves and their descendants for about 20,000 generations and for fathoming the negative impact of U.S. nuclear weapons tests on Marshall Islanders and their ancestral homelands.

Only 56 percent of the 86 tests were disclosed and published in The Times when they occurred. By failing to demonstrate its self-advertised fearless independence and to challenge U.S. secrecy on the yield of the 86 tests, The Times abetted the government in hiding from the world an explosive force of at least 128,704 kilotons. This destructive force equates to detonations of 8,580 Hiroshima-size bombs from 1946-62. That's 10.31 weapons per week or 1.47 per day.

Four recommendations are made."

MPACT Scores for Beverly Ann Deepe Keever

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:31:06

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