ASSESSING THE PREVALENCE OF PRESCRIBED FIRE IN PACIFIC
NORTHWEST WILDFIRE MEDIA COVERAGE
A SOJC Honors Thesis
By Nathan Wilson
Approved By: ___________________________ Faculty Advisor: Associate Professor of
Science and Environmental Communication Hollie Smith
Approved By: ___________________________ Faculty Reader: Assistant Professor of
Environmental Studies Amanda Stasiewicz
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Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………… 2
Introduction………………………………………………………………………. 3
A Brief Overview of U.S. Wildfire Policy………………………………………… 4
The Effects of More Frequent, More Severe Wildfire…………………………… 5
Mitigating Wildfire Risk…………………………………………………………. 7
Literature Review………………….……………………………………………. 10
Media Framing and Wildfire Coverage………………………………………... 10
The Climate Link………………………………………………………………... 13
The Role of Solutions…………………………………………………………… 14
Methods………………………………………………………………………… 19
Data Sources and Period of Study………………………………………….…... 19
Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………… 20
Findings………………………………………………………………………….. 24
Discussion……………………………………………………………………….. 38
Study Limitations …………………………………………………….…………. 41
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………. 42
References………………………………………………………….…………… 43
Appendix A……………………………………………………………….….….. 61
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Abstract:
As climate change alters landscapes and exacerbates natural hazards like wildfires,
people increasingly experience anxiety, dread, and loss, all of which negatively impact mental
health. When the print media reports on wildfire events, previous research has shown that
newspapers primarily focus on immediate developments, such as acres burned and
containment efforts, rather than offering comprehensive discussion of wildfire, including
strategies to mitigate future wildfire risk. Prescribed fire is one strategy to do so, and many
ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest would readily benefit from more frequent, low-severity
fire. This study seeks to determine whether print media in the Pacific Northwest follows a
solutions journalism framework in their wildfire coverage, which, by highlighting solutions to
prevalent problems, can provide readers with a greater sense of optimism and self-efficacy.
Through content analysis, this study examines how often the Post Register, Idaho Spokesman,
The Oregonian, The Register-Guard, The Seattle Times, and The Spokesman-Review mentioned
prescribed fire in their coverage both during and outside of wildfire events, and the tone of that
coverage, from 2010 to 2023. It found that major Pacific Northwest newspapers rarely
mentioned prescribed fire when reporting on wildfires, but provided more coverage and more
positive coverage of prescribed fire disconnected from specific wildfire events during the study
period. These results show that large circulation print media outlets in the Pacific Northwest
had positive coverage of prescribed fire overall, but relatively narrow coverage of wildfire
events from a solutions journalism perspective.
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Introduction:
Wildfire is a progressively important topic for individuals, communities, and
governments across the globe. Wildfires can represent a substantial risk to societal systems in
many ways: causing economic and environmental damage (Artes et al., 2019); creating
significant risk to public health, both physical and psychological, during and after a fire event
(World Health Organization, 2022; To et al., 2021); and sparking local conflict that undermines
community resilience (Paveglio et al., 2015). As in many other places, the extent and severity of
wildfires in the United States are increasing (Environmental Protection Agency, 2021), but
Americans are moving into areas of greater wildfire risk (Radeloff et al., 2018). Exacerbated by
anthropogenic climate change and largely caused by a decades-long paradigm of fire
suppression (Wuerthner, 2006), what can we, as a society, do to reduce the environmental
damage and human toll of today’s catastrophic wildfires?
Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest, like many other tribes native to North
America, have put fire onto the landscape since time immemorial to engage in environmental
stewardship and support their lifestyles (Boyd, 2021; Long et al., 2021). Western science now
acknowledges the critical role of fire in improving forest resilience and maintaining ecosystem
functioning (Prichard et al., 2017; Kalies & Yocom Kent, 2016), as well as the role of prescribed
fire in lessening the severity of future wildfires (Prichard et al., 2021; Government
Accountability Office, 2019). Prescribed fire is one solution to mitigate wildfire risk, and this
study, through content analysis, explores whether print media in the Pacific Northwest frames
prescribed fire as such in its coverage of wildfire, and how it discusses prescribed fire
disconnected from specific wildfire events. Previous studies have already established that
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wildfire media coverage emphasizes short-term impacts (Nillson & Enander, 2020; Paveglio et al.
2011; Mercer & Prisbrey, 2004) and oftentimes fails to provide a holistic explanation of wildfire,
including the relationship between wildfires and climate change (Gutsche Jr. & Pinto, 2022;
Cordner & Schwartz, 2019; Morehouse & Sonnet, 2010). Less explored, however, is the
prevalence of solutions-oriented journalism in wildfire media coverage.
A Brief Overview of U.S. Wildfire Policy
While wildfire is a global phenomenon, this study focuses on the context of the U.S. and,
therefore, must begin by acknowledging our historically fraught relationship with fire. Given
that humans are uniquely fire creatures, we have an inherent responsibility to manage fire;
however, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, colonizers in the American West
intentionally disrupted Indigenous fire regimes that many landscapes depended on (Jensen &
McPherson, 2008; Pyne, 1997). This pyrophobia became institutionalized with the
establishment of the United States Forest Service (USFS) in 1905, which pushed for a vision of
forest conservation that revolved around fire suppression and actively discredited, downplayed,
and erased Indigenous knowing (Vinyeta, 2021). Motivated by figures like Theodore Roosevelt
and Gifford Pinchot, William James’ 1910 essay “The Moral Equivalent of War,” and a backward
notion of wilderness, the USFS officially condemned prescribed burning in 1923 and soon
afterward adopted the infamous 10 A.M. policy — effectively beginning a century of forest
management aimed at suppression (Wuerthner, 2006). Many of these ideas were rooted in
European policy, where the science of forestry originated and where there is no equivalent
ecological basis for fire as there is in the U.S. (Nijuis, 2015).
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Due to a surplus of manpower stemming from Depression-era emergency conservation
programs, the mechanization of firefighting that occurred after World War II, and a period of
favorable climatic conditions that spanned the mid-twentieth century, the 10 A.M. policy was
initially successful and America was winning the war on wildfire (Pyne, 1997). Amidst this
success, the USFS began to pursue partial fire suppression and warmed up to prescribed fire as
America’s cultural and ecological landscape changed with the Civil Rights Movement, the
American Indian Movement, and the Leopold Report of 1963 (Vinyeta, 2021). In the 1980s,
however, the Western United States experienced a prolonged drought and its forests were
inundated with extremely dry fuel due to continuing fire suppression efforts by the USFS. Such
circumstances set the stage for the 1988 Yellowstone Fires, a culturally symbolic precursor of
the decades of wildfire-filled summers to come (Pyne, 1997).
The Effects of More Frequent, More Severe Wildfire
As a result of the legacy of fire suppression and worsening anthropogenic climate
change, the amount of acreage burned, the length of the fire season, and the severity of
wildfires have all increased (Environmental Protection Agency, 2021). Over the past four
decades, the area burned by wildfire in the U.S. has roughly quadrupled, with the largest loss of
forest occurring in 2015 when 10.13 million acres burned (Congressional Research Service,
2022; Burke et al., 2021). While fire is typically a regenerative force essential to fire-adapted
ecosystems, their effects on ecosystem health are becoming more dire as fire severity worsens,
particularly in the Southwest. Most notably, high-severity wildfires can bake soil, effectively
sterilizing it of critical nutrients and microorganisms while also exacerbating soil erosion and
negatively impacting water quality, all of which hinder ecosystem recovery (California
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Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2022; Agbeshie et al., 2022; Murphy et al., 2018; Government
of New South Wales, 2016). Such effects can be exacerbated when they occur in tandem with
post-fire salvage logging, a practice oftentimes done by the USFS to recover a forest’s economic
value following a disturbance. While the effects of salvage logging are temporally and
site-specific, the practice can particularly harm cavity-nesting birds, can increase soil
disturbance and compaction, and can reduce the amount of organic carbon in soils; notably,
there is not consensus on how salvage logging affects the likelihood of future wildfires in
already-burned areas. (United States Forest Service, 2019b).
That being said, wildfire is not just an isolated environmental or ecological issue, it is
inherently social — inextricably intertwined with human life and societal functioning. Due to the
expansion of the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), or the transitional zone between unoccupied
land and human development, wildfire danger to lives and property is increasing (USDA, 2020).
From 1990 to 2010, there was a 41% increase in the number of houses in WUI areas and a 33%
increase in WUI land area in the United States, making it the fastest-growing land-use type in
the nation and one that is accompanied by considerable risk (Radeloff et al., 2018). According to
the First Street Foundation Wildfire Model, in the U.S., there are 49.4 million properties with
minor wildfire risk (with a cumulative burn probability below 1%); 20.2 million properties with
moderate risk (6% maximum cumulative burn probability); 6.0 million with major risk (14%
maximum burn probability); 2.7 million with severe risk (26% maximum cumulative burn
probability); and 1.5 million properties with extreme risk (with cumulative burn probabilities of
26% and up). Such risk is most concentrated in the West and South, specifically in California,
Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma, which have the largest number of properties with at
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least 0.03% burn probability in 2022 (First Street Foundation, 2022). Considering nearly 80
million American properties are threatened by wildfires this year, a significant amount of
resources must be diverted to support wildfire prevention and protection efforts. On average,
the federal government spends $2 billion annually on local, state, and national wildfire
suppression initiatives, costs which could potentially rise to $0.83 billion annually under
conservative climate change scenarios by 2050 and perhaps to as much as $2.32 billion annually
under higher emissions scenarios (Office of Management and Budget, 2022). Apart from
suppression expenditures, Crowley et al. (2023) estimate that the annual economic and
ecological cost of wildfire is “on the order of tens to hundreds of billion dollars per year” (p. 8).
Mitigating Wildfire Risk
Today’s fire management problems exist because fire regimes — the general pattern of
wildfire in a particular ecosystem over an extended period — have been altered since
colonization, in large part due to the removal of Indigenous people and repression of cultural
burning, fire suppression, the logging of fire-resistant trees, and climate change (Jane Davis et
al., 2023). Indigenous communities, specifically those in the Pacific Northwest, have long
depended on fire to pursue environmental stewardship and create varied landscapes, from
open oak savannas to fertile meadows (Boyd, 2021; USDA Natural Resources Conversation
Service, 2009). Cultural burning is used to fulfill several socio-ecological objectives, including,
but not limited to: enhancing ecosystem health and biodiversity; cultivating tribally important
food, medicine, and weaving resources; managing wildlife; fostering spiritual connectivity
through ceremonies; and facilitating the intergenerational transfer of knowledge (Long et al.,
2021). Haugo et al. (2019) estimate that, from 1984 to 2015, approximately 13.3-18.9 million
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more hectares of Pacific Northwest forest would have burned if historic fire regimes were
restored, illustrating that ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest are in dire need of more healthy
fire.
Initially denounced as an effective management tool, Western institutions are beginning
to embrace prescribed fire, intentional fire put onto landscapes to counteract unnaturally high
surface fuel loads, improve forest resilience, and better overall ecosystem functioning (Prichard
et al., 2017; Kalies & Yocom Kent, 2016). A recent report by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and
Management Commission (2023) readily emphasized the ecological role of fire and its centrality
in wildfire mitigation efforts:
“While fire is central to this crisis, it is also a critical part of the solution. Beneficial fire —
including prescribed burning, cultural burning, and wildfire managed for resource
objectives — is necessary to restore fire-adapted ecosystems and reduce the risk of
high-severity wildfires that pose a significant threat to communities. Policy change is
needed to enable a new relationship with fire, one in which fire is no longer an
existential risk to communities and landscapes, but instead an integral and beneficial
component of our human and natural systems” (p. 3).
Under appropriate weather and safety conditions, there is broad scientific consensus that
spatially strategic prescribed fire is a useful and cost-effective tool for reintroducing wildfire into
fire-excluded forests and lessening the severity of future wildfires (Prichard et al., 2021;
Government Accountability Office, 2019). However, prescribed fire is most successful when
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applied in conjunction with mechanical thinning and should only be used in specific types of
forests that generally have a high-frequency, low-severity fire regime, which the Pacific
Northwest has in abundance (Prichard et al., 2021; Kalies & Yocom Kent, 2016). For instance,
the drought-prone forests east of the Cascades and extending into Idaho, such as ponderosa
pine and dry mixed-conifer forests, readily benefit from prescribed fire (Haflovsky et al., 2020),
and there is growing evidence that fire occurred more frequently than previously thought in the
wetter, high-elevation forests west of the Cascades (Johnston et al., 2023; United States Forest
Service, 2022a ; Bakker et al., 2019). To implement prescribed burning on a regional or national
scale, though, requires both collaborative, equal partnerships that meld traditional fire
knowledge with Western fire knowledge and mass mobilization on all levels, including tribal
governments, residents, private industry, the research community, and the federal government
(Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, 2023; Lake et al., 2017).
Ultimately, wildfires are an ecological, political, and social phenomenon that directly
influences land use, poses potentially significant risks to public and private property, and
demands mass mobilization of resources.. Whether it be through spirituality, tax dollars, or
proximity to burnable areas, we are all connected to wildfire in one way or another; thus, given
its prevalence, we must develop an understanding of how and why we, as a society, perceive
wildfire in the manner that we do. Accordingly, this endeavor must begin with a critical
examination of wildfire coverage in the media, and — particularly as climate change worsens —
what solutions the media proposes to address increasing wildfire risk.
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Literature Review:
Media Framing and Wildfire Coverage
Known as the fourth estate and serving as gatekeepers of information, the media plays a
pivotal role in cultivating an informed citizenry and influencing public opinion regarding
important debates, issues, and events (Allan, 2022). One primary way the media influences
public opinion is through framing. Entman (2007) defines framing as “the process of culling a
few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights connections among
them to promote a particular interpretation” (p. 164). Framing, along with which issues the
media chooses to cover, can determine the salience of topics on the public agenda, otherwise
known as the agenda-setting role of the media. According to Walter Lippman, the intellectual
father of agenda-setting, the media is fundamental in determining our mental maps of the
world and argued that public opinion responds “not to the environment, but to
pseudo-environment constructed by the news media” (McCombs, 2014, p. 3).
Despite journalism’s commitment to objectivity, a number of factors influence the
production of news, from who journalists are to the publications they work for. Generally,
newsrooms are not diverse spaces as 77% of U.S. journalists are white and 61% identify as male,
according to a survey by the Pew Research Center (Greico, 2018). Like all people, journalists also
hold values, attitudes, and beliefs that affect their production of content, such as personal
ideology, religious orientation, level of education, and perceptions about what journalists
should epitomize (Shoemaker & Reese, 2013). Perhaps an even stronger influence is that
journalists follow specific media routines, abide by professional roles and ethics, work within a
power-laden organizational structure, and are embedded in the social context of news
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organizations (Shoemaker & Reese, 2013; Singer et al., 2004). This socialization produces
organizational standards that are inferred from a newsroom’s policy, which commonly
delineates ideological orientation and class considerations, and may override personal beliefs
(Breed, 1955). Relatedly, elitist voices representing powerful or authoritative institutions tend to
be featured in journalism (Cox et al., 2008; Carson, 2009), while marginalized voices are often
neglected (Nelson et al. 2014), effectively reinforcing the status quo.
When it comes to natural hazard coverage, such as wildfires, the public relies on the
media as one channel to stay informed and understand potential risks (Houston et al., 2012).
The media weaves together scientific understanding, disaster response coordination, and public
understanding (Paveglio et al., 2011), which may influence the public policy response in the
aftermath of a fire, such as increasing wildfire suppression expenditures (Donovan et al, 2011).
Wildfire coverage that centers solely on disaster response sometimes results in a cycle of blame
between authorities and the public (Nillson & Enander, 2020). Generally, natural hazard
coverage is not sustained for long (Houston et al., 2012), and wildfire coverage in particular
tends to focus on immediate risk rather than a systemic explanation of the wildfire (Nillson &
Enander, 2020; Paveglio et al. 2011; Mercer & Prisbrey, 2004). Wildfire coverage is episodic
because wildfires themselves are focusing events, dramatic or harmful events that highlight the
potential for greater future harm (Birkland, 1998). Accordingly, wildfire coverage on the
anniversary of fires is more comprehensive than episodic coverage as the former is more likely
to raise wildfire-related policy problems and discuss what caused the wildfire (Kroepsch et al.,
2018).
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The most frequently deployed frames in wildfire coverage are those related to
immediate wildfire risk. In their survey of wildfire coverage in the Albuquerque Journal, Arizona
Republic, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times from 1999 to 2003, Morehouse and Sonnet
(2010) found that the most common frames were changes in weather, fire suppression efforts,
and impacts on humans and property, with an emphasis on fuels management and policy rather
than climate or science. When Terracina-Hartman (2020) examined how U.S. state and regional
newspapers covered the 10 most historically significant U.S. wildfires from 2003 to 2013, the
dominant frames were threats to land or structures (65%), management resources (18%),
conflict (8%), and ecosystem losses (7%) while the most used sources included firefighters and
law enforcement, followed by citizens, government officials, industry personnel, and scientists.
Through large-scale content analysis, Sachdeva and McCaffery (2022) assessed newspaper
coverage of wildfires in the U.S., Canada, and Australia from 1986 to 2016 in which the most
prevalent U.S. frames included firefighting (7%) and local fire response (5%), followed by the fire
season (4.1%), fire survival stories (3.2%), and drought (2.7%).
Among more localized studies, the framing pattern remains the same. Paveglio et al.
(2011) analyzed newspaper coverage of the Columbia Complex Fire in Washington and the Day
Fire in southern California in 2006, finding that private property destruction was a broadly used
frame that served to reinforce the fire suppression paradigm. In another study on the 2014
Carlton Complex and the 2015 Okanogan Complex in Washington, Cordner and Schwartz (2019)
established that subsequent newspaper coverage was framed according to property damage
like burned structures (55% of Carlton articles and 37% of Okanogan articles), smoke impacts
(14% and 23%, respectively), and evacuations (20% and 44%, respectively). Evidently, wildfire
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coverage in U.S. print media is framed according to short-term — albeit necessary —
developments such as acres burned, property destruction, firefighting efforts, and evacuation
updates, and rarely includes a more holistic conversation about the ecological role of wildfire
and the factors that exacerbate wildfire.
The Climate Link
Research on wildfire media coverage has largely been conducted through broad framing
or thematic analysis, but several studies have focused on a more specific issue: whether the
media discusses climate change in the context of wildfires. Given the agenda-setting role of the
media, increased coverage of climate change has been proven to both heighten public concern
(Sampei & Aoyagi-Usiu, 2009) and issue salience (Brulle et al., 2012; Andrews & Caren, 2010;
Gamson & Wolfsfield, 1993). However, since climate change influences wildfires indirectly via
rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, journalists struggle to link climate
change with wildfires because it’s complex (Gutsche Jr. & Pinto, 2022; Berglex & Lidskog, 2019).
The role of political elites is also pronounced in climate change coverage. Through corporate
ownership and control of media companies, elites embed their ideology into such companies
and have a disproportionate amount of power in the selection of scientific news, which shapes
the coverage of highly politicized issues like climate change (Carvalho, 2007). Journalists
subsequently follow elite cues in their selection and representation of content (Carmichael &
Brulee 2016; Yin, 1999), but have moved beyond the norm for balanced reporting when it
comes to climate change (Brüggemann & Engesser, 2017; Boykoff, 2007).
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Research has shown that print media, regardless of national context, oftentimes fails to
identify climate change as a driving factor of increasing wildfire extent and severity. In their
analysis of how Swedish newspapers covered wildfires in Australia, the Mediterranean region,
and the U.S. from 2013 to 2016, Berglez and Lidskog (2019) found that only 37 of the 330
articles studied (11%) mentioned climate change, with only 9 of the 228 articles (4%) focused
on U.S. wildfires drawing the connection. Similarly, when Davidson et al. (2019) surveyed
wildfire coverage in the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald from 2000 to 2017, just 2% of
those articles referenced climate change. In a more comprehensive assessment, Hopke (2020)
examined how 35 news outlets in 5 countries (Canada, China, India, the U.S., and the United
Kingdom) covered extreme heat events from 2013 to 2018. Hopke established that articles
about wildfires most frequently linked to climate change in India (16.67%), followed by the
United Kingdom (16.64%), Canada (8.28%), the U.S. (4.71%), and China (2.95%). Of those
wildfire-related articles that mentioned climate change, they tended to be well-resourced news
outlets that had a dedicated staff working the climate beat, such as the New York Times,
Washington Post, Guardian, BBC, NPR, and Climatewire (Hopke, 2020).
In research specific to the U.S., the trend continues. Referencing Morehouse and Sonnet
(2010) again, they found that 97% of U.S. newspaper articles about wildfires between 1999 and
2003 did not address larger issues of climate change, fuel management, policy, or science.
Likewise, in their analysis of how print media covered the 2014 Carlton Complex and the 2015
Okanogan Complex in Washington State, Cordner and Schwartz (2019) learned that 15% of
articles about the Carlton Complex mentioned climate change, compared to just 9% of articles
about the Okanogan Complex that made the same connection.
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The Role of Solutions
Less explored in research related to wildfire media coverage is how the media
contextualizes and discusses solutions to more extensive and more severe wildfires, specifically
the efficacy of prescribed burning. Sometimes called constructive or problem-solving
journalism, solutions journalism is an evidence-based reporting approach that holistically covers
credible responses to social problems, according to the Solutions Journalism Network (2023).
Popularized in the early 2010s, solutions journalism is an extension of the 1960s peace
journalism movement, which questioned conflict and negativity as a news value, and the civic or
public journalism movement in the 1990s, which took a bottom-up approach to news where
citizens set the media’s agenda (Wenzel et al., 2016). In their book, The Elements of Journalism,
Kovach and Rosenstiel (2007) delineate the void that solutions journalism sought to fill:
“The press should recognize where powerful institutions are working effectively as well
as where they are not. How can the press purport to monitor the powerful if it does not
illustrate successes as well as failures? Endless criticisms lose meaning, and the public
has no basis for judging good from bad” (p. 174).
Solutions journalism is not advocacy; rather, it is an objective reporting method by which
journalists uplift stories that showcase growth or progress and question sources about potential
solutions (McIntyre, 2019). Solutions journalism is achieved through problem-solution framing
and is indicative of an active journalist. Whereas a passive journalist is simply concerned with
disseminating news stories regardless of their effect, an active journalist is a more embodied
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participant in the story and considers the effect of the story itself (Bro, 2007). According to Thier
(2016), solutions journalism stories have four main attributes: a response to a well-established
social problem, evidence of results, insights about why solutions work, and limitations of the
response.
Solutions journalism attempts to cultivate a more engaged, less apathetic audience that
is motivated to take action, but evidence on whether solutions journalism fully achieves this
purpose is mixed. In a series of six focus groups centered in a southern Los Angeles
neighborhood, which had been historically stigmatized and negatively portrayed by the media,
participants were more inspired to remediate vacant local lots after reading solutions-oriented
stories as opposed to non-solutions stories (Wenzel et al., 2016). These results also suggested
that solutions journalism offers a pathway to rebuild trust with underserved communities. In a
survey of 755 U.S. adults, the Solutions Journalism Network and the Engaging News Project
established that solutions-based journalism holds promise in at least three areas: “heightening
audiences’ perceived knowledge and sense of efficacy, strengthening the connection between
audiences and news organizations, and catalyzing potential engagement on an issue” (Curry &
Hammonds, 2014). When evaluated in an experimental setting, however, McIntyre (2019) found
that while solution information did make readers feel less negative about the problem and more
favorable to the solutions presented, it didn't impact their behavior or intention to act. Walth et
al. (2019) suggested marrying solutions journalism with investigative journalism to create
stories with a more powerful impact. This reporting paradigm could illuminate the causes and
responses to problems in a manner that holds authority figures accountable, which might be
more meaningful for readers and the community at hand. Although more research is necessary
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on the relationship between solutions journalism and civic action, solutions journalism certainly
has a role to play in maintaining a functioning democracy and improving the perception of the
news media amidst an increasingly cynical public (Powers & Curry, 2019; Walth et al., 2019).
Climate change is one area where solutions journalism is actively employed. Since
climate change is an inherently fatalistic issue with global implications, climate change reporting
must toe a very fine line between constructive hope and constructive doubt — it must not
portray climate change as insurmountable while also evoking just enough concern to motivate
action (Marlon et al., 2019). One way to build constructive hope is by discussing climate
solutions, which there is a clear appetite for. In a survey of 505 members of the Society of
Environmental Journalists, Borth et al. (2021) found that journalists included adaptation and
resilience stories (80%), adequate policy responses (78.8%), and considered renewable energy
(67.2%) in their reporting on climate change. The American public also has a broad interest in
consuming news stories about actions taken by their local community (76%) and how the U.S.
government responds (79%) to global warming (Maiback et al., 2020). Discussing solutions in
climate change reporting increases readers’ perceived behavioral control, a proxy for support
for collective climate change adaptation — suggesting that solutions journalism enables
reporters to communicate the danger of climate change without depressing support for
mitigation efforts (Thier & Lin, 2022). This affirms an analysis of climate futures in four
magazines across India, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. completed by Guenther et
al. (2020), which illustrated a shift from apocalyptic framing in climate change stories, like global
doom and local tragedies, to more sustainable future visions with empowering solutions
beginning in the early 2000s.
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Unfortunately, research on solutions journalism as it relates to wildfire coverage is scant,
especially in the Pacific Northwest. In the aftermath of Colorado’s two most catastrophic
wildfires in 2012, Crow et al. (2017) performed a narrative analysis of 876 local newspaper
articles on the wildfires, finding the majority of articles (66%) did not define a policy problem
and did not consistently indicate that risk can be mitigated through policy or other human
actions. In another Colorado-specific study, this time on wildfire coverage in Larimer County
from 2008 to 2018, Jacobsen et al. (2022) established that the media fixated on immediate,
short-term solutions — primarily increasing fire suppression capacity — while only two articles
described more comprehensive fuels management, such as prescribed fire and thinning, which
were published months after the wildfires began.
Given the potential of solutions journalism to, at minimum, make readers feel more
optimistic about a problem, and, at maximum, motivate collective action; the lack of research
on solutions journalism within wildfire media coverage; and the beneficial role of prescribed fire
on certain ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest, this study addresses the following research
questions:
RQ1: To what extent does print media in the Pacific Northwest discuss prescribed fire
in the context of wildfire events?
RQ2: When mentioned in any context, is prescribed fire discussed with a positive or
negative valence?
RQ3: Has the frequency or valence of prescribed fire coverage in the Pacific Northwest
changed over time?
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Methods:
Data Sources and Period of Study
The primary data sources for this study were daily newspapers in the Pacific Northwest
with the largest circulation, two from each state, to ensure a broad sample. In Idaho, these
newspapers include the Idaho Statesman, which is based in Boise and has a weekly circulation
of 48,000, and the Post Register, eastern Idaho’s main news outlet that distributes 24,000
newspapers weekly. As for Oregon, The Oregonian has the largest weekly circulation of about
394,000, and chiefly serves Portland, while The Register-Guard has the second largest weekly
circulation at about 30,000 and primarily covers the Eugene-Springfield area. In Washington,
The Seattle Times is the largest news outlet in the state circulating over 1.44 million newspapers
weekly, and, to the east of the Cascades, The Spokesman-Review disseminates 66,000
newspapers daily throughout Spokane and outlying areas (Official USA, 2024; Standard Rate and
Data Service, 2024). The newspaper articles were sourced from Newsbank.com since the
database provides wider access to regional and local outlets than other platforms (Buntain et
al., 2023).
Although this study solely focused on print media, it acknowledges the importance of
social and digital media platforms as news sources and their increasing relevance for wildfire
communications (Brengarth & Mujkic, 2016). However, for a study such as this which seeks to
characterize the regional character of wildfire coverage, print media may be more appropriate
given the non-regional character of most broadcast and online media (Davidson et al., 2019).
Furthermore, newspaper articles can provide comprehensive coverage of disaster-related topics
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(Quarantelli, 2002), offer more in-depth coverage than broadcast media (Dreidger, 2007) and
remain a readily used source for information about wildfires (Steelman et al., 2015).
Only articles published from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2023, were considered
for analysis. Recency and length were critical factors: This study was interested in how print
media in the Pacific Northwest currently reports on prescribed fire and, in order to adequately
assess change in frequency and valence over time, an extensive period of study was necessary.
Moreover, out of the five wildfire seasons with the most acres burned in the U.S. since 1996,
four of those seasons occurred within this span, averaging 6.85 million acres burned annually
(National Interagency Coordination Center, 2023; National Interagency Coordination Center,
2013). Considering there were several record-breaking seasons during this period, in theory,
reporters had ample opportunities and motivation to convey strategies that would mitigate
wildfire risk, intensity, and severity.
Data Analysis
This study engaged in content analysis, or the systemic analysis of “recorded human
communication,” which is an ideal method for analyzing print media (Babie, 2016, p. 324).
Content analysis is readily used in similar studies on framing and wildfire media coverage
(Sachdeva & McCaffery, 2022; Terracina-Hartman, 2020; Cordner & Schwartz, 2019; Crow et al.,
2017; Morehouse & Sonnet, 2010; Paveglio et al., 2011), and this study built off those
already-established methods. My coding structure was both descriptive, for quantitative coding
of the frequency at which print media in the Pacific Northwest discusses prescribed fire, and
thematic, for qualitative coding of the valence, tone, and language of those discussions. I
developed codes both deductively, based on pre-identified themes and topics related to the
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research questions and review of the existing literature, and inductively, with additional codes
identified after reading and coding a sample of articles. Deductive content analysis is used when
previous knowledge can drive the structure of analysis and the purpose of the study is theory
testing, whereas inductive content analysis is preferred when former knowledge is either
meager or fragmented (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Generally, inductive content analysis involves
creating a list of all possible categories in a dataset, then collapsing those that are similar or
dissimilar into broader higher-order categories, which help to describe a phenomenon (Dey,
1993). Since there is large amount of literature on framing and wildfire media coverage overall,
but much less research on prescribed fire specifically in the Pacific Northwest, I developed most
of my subcodes inductively.
To answer RQ1, I searched for English-language articles with headlines that contained
the boolean string “wildfire” OR “forest fire” OR “brush fire” OR “wildland fire” in Newsbank,
generating 981 results. Terracina-Hartman (2020) used the same combination of search terms,
and although “brush fire” and “wildland fire” are rarely used by reporters (Morehouse &
Sonnet, 2010), I included them to capture the greatest range of wildfire events. I only searched
for those terms in headlines to ensure relevance. Then, I excluded articles from my sample
based on several criteria: if the article was a duplicate, was too short (less than 200 words), was
a letter to the editor, didn’t have a byline, or metaphorically used any of the above search
terms. Since the efficacy of prescribed fire is ecosystem-dependent, I also excluded articles that
were originally published outside of the study area or written about a wildfire event outside of
the study area. After filtering out articles that met any of my exclusion criteria, I was left with a
sample of 607 articles. Once downloaded and transferred to NVivo 14, I used to the text search
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function to identify articles that contained the boolean string “prescribed fire” OR “prescribed
burn” OR “prescribed burning” OR “controlled fire” OR “controlled burn” OR “controlled
burning” OR “broadcast burn” OR “broadcast burning” OR “cultural fire” OR “cultural burn” OR
“cultural burning” OR “ecological fire” OR “ecological burn” OR “ecological burning” OR “Native
burn” OR “Native burning” OR “Indigenous fire management” OR “Indigenous fire stewardship”
anywhere in its text. A total of 64 articles mentioned any of the above search terms, and of
those articles, only 20 mentioned the search terms more than once.
To answer RQ2 and RQ3, I required a sample larger than 20 articles, so I conducted a
second search. Since print media in the Pacific Northwest seldom provides an in-depth
discussion of prescribed fire in its coverage of wildfire events, I broadened my search to include
articles that mentioned prescribed fire anywhere in its text — regardless of whether the article
focused on a wildfire event. Newsbank limits searches to nine fields, so I first excluded
“broadcast burn” and “broadcast burning” because they are a technical, specific type of
controlled burn along with “Indigenous fire management” and “Indigenous fire stewardship”
since they were only recently formalized (Coughlan et al., 2023). I then repeatedly substituted
my remaining terms in Newsbank until I determined the following boolean string which
generated the most results: “prescribed fire” OR “prescribed burn” OR “prescribed burning” OR
“controlled fire” OR “controlled burn” OR “controlled burning” OR “cultural burn” OR “ecological
fire” OR “ecological burn.” This search returned 406 articles. After filtering these articles
according to the same exclusion criteria, except for the geographic limitations, I had a sample of
234 articles. Since this study is interested in measuring detailed stories, it was necessary to
eliminate articles that only mentioned the search terms once as both a proxy for depth of
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coverage and to ensure an accurate valence assessment (Pew Research Center, 2024).
Accordingly, I did the same text search in NVivo14 that I used for my original sample to identify
articles that mentioned prescribed fire and all its iterations more than once, leaving me with a
second sample of 101 articles.
When assessing valence, I sought to determine whether articles gave more weight to the
benefits and advantages of prescribed fire, or to the risks and challenges. Based on my
understanding of the literature, I expected the ecological value of prescribed fire to be among
the prominent benefits and smoke impacts to be the main risk discussed. Following an inductive
coding process, I first read through 20 articles at random to identify key themes related to the
valence of prescribed fire mentions. I then developed three categories for the benefits and
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advantages of prescribed fire and three categories for the risks and disadvantages of prescribed
fire, incorporating additional categories and subcategories as I coded my sample (see Table 1
above). Next, I proceeded to code my sample at the paragraph level, examining whether each
paragraph was thematically about the benefits and advantages or risks and challenges of
prescribed fire. After coding each article, which I did three separate times to ensure all codes
and subcodes were accurately accounted for, I assigned it an overall valence score based on the
criteria outlined above in Table 2.
Findings:
RQ1 questions the extent to which print media in the Pacific Northwest discusses
prescribed fire in their coverage of wildfire events, and, in short, those discussions are limited.
Out of 607 articles published between 2010 and 2023, the practice of prescribed fire is
mentioned in 64 articles (10.5%) about wildfire events and referenced more than once in just 20
articles (3.3%). This supports the findings of several other studies that established wildfire
coverage typically revolves around immediate risk and short-term developments, like property
destruction or evacuation routes, and seldom includes a broader discussion of wildfire, like its
relationship to climate change or the ecological role of fire (Gutsche Jr. & Pinto, 2022; Nillson &
Enander, 2020; Terracina-Hartman, 2020; Cordoner & Schwartz, 2019; Paveglio et al. 2011;
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Morehouse & Sonnet, 2010; Mercer & Prisbrey, 2004). Of those articles, 18 were published
during the fire season, which spans from May through October and is when practitioners
generally avoid prescribed fire. Both The Seattle Times and Post Register published five articles
that mentioned prescribed fire more than once, followed by The Oregonian (4), the Idaho
Statesman (3), The Spokesman-Review (2), and The Register-Guard (1).
RQ2 looks more broadly at all coverage of prescribed fire and seeks to determine
whether that coverage is positive or negative in valence. Of the 101 applicable articles, 61
devoted more space to discussing the benefits and advantages of prescribed fire rather than the
risks and challenges, whereas 22 articles had a negative valence, 17 had a mixed valence, and
just one article had no valence (see Figure 1). Of the six newspapers studied, The Register-Guard
published the most articles with a positive valence (17), followed by the Idaho Statesman (11)
along with The Spokesman-Review (10) and Post Register (10). Both the Idaho Statesman and
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Post Register published six articles with a negative valence, which was more than the four other
newspapers. The Seattle Times produced the fewest number of articles with a positive valence
(5), the most articles with a mixed valence (5), and the least total articles (11) (see Figure 2). The
Seattle Times serves the largest metropolitan area out of all six newspapers, and since
prescribed fire is generally more routine in and around smaller cities, this factors into their
comparative lack of coverage. Furthermore, The Register-Guard is based in Eugene, the
traditional homeland of the Kalapuya people who actively put fire onto the Willamette Valley
for thousands of years (Boyd, 2021). Eugene’s city government also coordinates a relatively
robust prescribed fire program with various local park and conservation agencies, both of which
may explain The Register-Guard’s outsized positive coverage (City of Eugene, n.d.).
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Moving from overall valence to specific subject codes, newspapers talked about
ecological improvement most frequently, which appeared in 75 articles. It also had the greatest
number of subcodes. As for the other benefits and advantages, 45 articles referenced how
prescribed fire can help protect communities, 16 mentioned that prescribed fire is an
expression of Indigenous cultural heritage and stewardship, four articles discussed how the
practice can reduce the financial cost of wildfires, and three articles connected prescribed fire
with increased firefighter training opportunities (see Figure 3). Being the largest category,
newspapers provided an array of reasons as to how prescribed fire can enhance the quality of
and life on natural landscapes, including removing excess dead fuel, improving native habitat,
recycling soil nutrients, fostering ecological resilience, and several others (see Appendix A for
examples of all codes and subcodes). For example:
“The first step of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy calls for
creating a wildfire-resistant landscape. One way to do that is to use prescribed burning
to burn debris on the forest floor to reduce the fuel load” (Culver, 2018).
“Prescribed burns reduce fire danger, but the main objective of Tuesday's effort was to
rid the area of blackberry bushes and dead vegetation, in order to open up the soil for
germination and enhance the habitat for native plants and insects, including Fender's
blue butterfly — an endangered species — and Kincaid's lupine, which is a federally
listed threatened species” (Moran, 2011).
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" ‘It's really taking material that's not very useful, because it's dead, and it's
accumulating, and it turns it into something useful, (like) meaningful nutrients for the
soil,’ Rau said” (Cyr, 2023).
“We found that tree mortality was high in untreated or recently thinned forests, but
lower in forests that had been recently thinned and prescribed burned. Our results,
along with other studies in the western United States, provide compelling evidence that
thinning, in combination with prescribed burning, can make forests more resilient”
(Prichard, 2017).
When it came to community protection, newspapers noted that prescribed fire can not only
contain already burning wildfires and establish a buffer around communities, but also reduce
the long-term amount of smoke generated by wildfires:
“Crews dig ‘hand lines,’ removing vegetation in a long line through the forest about 3
feet wide. Bulldozers cut much larger lines, about 8 to 10 feet across. Air tankers drop
retardant, creating lines where flames won't pass through slurry-coated woods. And
firefighters light controlled burns. All the efforts have the same goal. ‘They are removing
the fuel from the fire's path,’ Kauffman said. Fuel is anything that can burn” (Darling,
2017).
“The Millie Fire, which burned nearly 25,000 acres in the Three Sisters Wilderness in
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2017, could have been much worse had the area near the town of Sisters not been
treated with controlled burns before the wildfire” (Williams, 2018).
“Conducting controlled burns under good weather conditions generates far less
pollution than massive smoke plumes from the huge wildfires that broke out amid last
summer’s heat. At their peak, the Okanogan fires in August, for example, generated air
pollution 20 times worse over a 24-hour period than the 2009 controlled burn that
caused the fuss in Yakima, state air-quality data show” (Brunner & Bernton, 2015).
Newspapers also described several reasons that Indigenous peoples in the region have used and
depended on prescribed fire to sustain their lifestyles since time immemorial:
“Tribes in the Pacific Northwest have used fire as a tool to shape the landscape for
thousands of years. The touch of flame kept huckleberry and camas fields abundant. In
areas where tribes hunted deer and elk, fire created a mat of forage plants on the forest
floor, a favorite food for the ungulates. Burned areas recycle nutrients more efficiently
and help to control the spread of invasive species” (Williams, 2018).
“Native peoples, less than 150 years ago, proactively burned the landscapes we
currently inhabit – for personal safety, food production and enhanced forage for deer
and elk. In some places, people still maintain and use traditional fire knowledge. As we
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too learn to be more fire-adapted, we need to embrace fire not only as an ongoing
problem but an essential part of the solution” (Prichard, 2017).
As for the risks and challenges, 38 articles highlighted how setting prescribed fires
involves several temporal, spatial, and resource-related limitations; 34 articles mentioned that
the practice exposes nearby communities to harmful smoke; 21 articles discussed the risk of
prescribed fires transitioning to wildfires; and just one article noted they jeopardize the
aesthetic value of landscapes. Of the factors that make prescribed fires difficult to implement
and ineffective, newspapers stressed they are dependent on both weather conditions and
seasonality, have very little funding available, and that wildfires rarely encounter areas treated
with prescribed fire:
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“Even if plenty of dollars are available, pulling off large-scale burns is no sure thing.
Prescribed fires have relatively narrow weather windows in the spring and fall when they
can be carried out…When it is too moist, the fires don’t generate enough heat to get
the job done. So even if a crew is ready to go, the burn may have to be called off”
(Bernton, 2018).
“Thinning and prescribed burning have increased steadily in Idaho since 2001, but have
been hindered nationwide by federal policies that require agencies to take money from
other programs when the federal firefighting money is exhausted. The Forest Service
shifted $250 million from other accounts…including money from hazardous fuel
treatments…to pay for firefighting this year. Firefighting costs are $700 million over the
appropriation” (Barker, 2015).
“Various studies have also shown that the probability that a wildfire will encounter a
‘fuel reduction’ site is extremely small — typically less than 1%” (Wuerthner, 2023).
One of the main challenges of conducting prescribed fires is managing smoke, which
newspapers emphasized can lessen the quality of life in nearby communities and involves
navigating strict air quality regulations:
“A big concern is air pollution. Luke Montrose, a Boise State University environmental
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toxicology professor, said he worries about deliberately introducing smoke into
communities that have already had wildfires in summer. ‘The exposure becomes chronic
then, because it's year-round,’ Montrose said” (Kasler & Blanchard, 2021).
“Agencies with more resources battled strict smoke management regulations, which
prevented Wildlife Department prescribed fire manager Matt Eberlein from burning
more than 7 or 8 acres of what was scheduled to be a much larger burn at Oak Creek, 14
miles west of Naches, this fall. He said the department aims for 2,000-3,000 acres
annually, but they fell far short of that mark this year in part due to the state's air quality
regulations and smoke restrictions” (Thompson, 2018).
“Frustrating matters, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule this spring
for the Clean Air Act that would further regulate smoke particles. The rule could add
additional complications to the use of prescribed burning throughout the country”
(Clark, 2023).
Related to temporal and resource limitations, prescribed fires also pose the risk of transitioning
into wildfire in dry, windy conditions and/or as a result of poor planning. Newspapers frequently
highlighted previous prescribed burns that escaped control:
“In California in 1999, a fire set by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to eradicate
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noxious weeds near Redding got loose and burned 2,000 acres. Investigators blamed the
Lowden Ranch Fire on a supervisor who ignored hazardous conditions. A 2012 fire gone
wrong in Colorado killed three people. A 2000 fire in New Mexico burned 200 homes
and 45,000 acres, and even threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory” (Kasler &
Blanchard, 2021).
“In New Mexico last year, a controlled burn sparked that state’s largest wildfire, leading
to a pause on prescribed burning. Also last year, a ‘burn boss’ leading a prescribed burn
was arrested in Oregon after the intentionally set fire jumped the containment line and
burned 20 acres of a private ranch” (Wozniacka, 2023).
Several thematic differences emerge when examining differences in code prevalence
across individual newspapers, primarily between those to the west of the Cascades (The
Oregonian, The Register-Guard, and The Seattle Times) and those to the east (The
Spokesman-Review, Idaho Statesman, and Post Register) (see Figures 4 and 5). Western, more
urban newspapers like The Register-Guard and The Seattle Times mentioned how prescribed
fire can protect communities in a greater percentage of their articles (58.3% and 72.7%,
respectively) than Eastern, more rural newspapers like The Spokesman-Review and the Post
Register (35.7% and 15.8%, respectively). When discussing risks and challenges, all newspapers
west of the Cascades devoted a nearly equal proportion of their coverage to the resource
limitations and smoke impacts associated with prescribed fire. The Spokesman-Review,
however, discussed the smoke impacts of prescribed fire in 57.1% of their articles (just 14.2%
mentioned resource limitations) while the Idaho Statesman and Post Register did so in only 20%
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and 15.7%, respectively, of their articles. Out of all newspapers, the Idaho Statesman and Post
Register also noted how prescribed fires can grow into wildfire the most (in 30% and 31.5% of
their articles, respectively).
Considering RQ3, both the frequency and amount of positive prescribed fire coverage in
the Pacific Northwest increased during the study period (see Figures 6 and 7). Prescribed fire
coverage peaked in 2021, which saw 15 articles published, and positive prescribed fire coverage
peaked in 2019, which saw nine articles published. Multiple environmental, political, and social
factors underlie these trends. For one, the number of wildfire-related newspaper articles has
steadily increased over time, with significantly more articles being published in the U.S.,
Australia, and Canada from 2005-2015 than in the prior two decades (Sachdeva & McCaffery,
2022). Likely driven by the relationship between climate change and heightened wildfire extent
and severity, more media attention on wildfire, theoretically, prompts more deliberation about
the efficacy of prescribed fire. Accordingly, it’s no surprise that prescribed fire coverage peaked
following 2020, the second-worst fire season in terms of acres burned over the last half-century
(National Interagency Coordination Center, 2023). Around 2.5 million fewer acres burned in the
2022 wildfire season compared to 2020, but the USFS announced a 90-day moratorium on
prescribed fire after two escaped burns caused the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires in New
Mexico, the largest in state history (United States Forest Service, 2022b). This may explain why
both the frequency and amount of positive prescribed fire coverage fell significantly in 2022.
As for wildfire policy, Congress passed The Federal Land Assistance, Management, and
Enhancement (FLAME) Act in 2009, creating additional avenues for firefighting funding and
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mandating the development of a National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, which
came to fruition in 2014 (United States Forest Service, 2009). Under the motto “all hands, all
lands,” it established a streamlined, localized decision system and risk framework for wildfire
management, and prioritized prescribed fire as a means for mitigating wildfire risk (Forests and
Rangelands, 2014). Congress also initiated the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program (CFLRP)
in 2009, which took a community-centric approach to landscape rehabilitation and similarly
situated prescribed fire as a key fuel reduction strategy (United States Forest Service, 2019a).
According to the National Interagency Coordination Center, the annual number of prescribed
fire projects conducted by all federal agencies jumped from 16,882 in 2010 to 202,434 in 2017,
which is when the center stopped collecting prescribed fire data (2017).
During the study period, Indigenous rights and knowledge became more prominent as
well, among both the public and academia. The Dakota Access Pipeline controversy of 2016 and
2017 brought questions over tribal sovereignty and treaty rights to the national stage, and the
NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led activist and advocacy organization, formally launched its
LANDBACK campaign in 2020 (Herscher, 2017; Manning, 2020). Furthermore, a systematic
review of scientific literature published in the Pacific Northwest by Coughlan et al. (2023) found
the number of articles that mentioned Indigenous burning practices steadily increased from
1971-2022. Altogether, a combination of especially severe wildfire seasons, federal policies that
put more prescribed fire onto the landscape, and growing recognition of Indigenous rights and
fire stewardship likely caused an increase in Pacific Northwest prescribed fire coverage and
explains why that coverage was heavily positive.
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Discussion:
This study established that print media in the Pacific Northwest rarely discusses the
efficacy of prescribed fire in their coverage of wildfire events, but, in recent years, has
increasingly provided positive coverage of prescribed fire disconnected from specific wildfire
events. Again, this is consistent with previous research that found wildfire coverage generally
focuses on the immediate and short-term, rather than providing a systemic explanation of
wildfire, its connection to climate change, and how we can mitigate future risk (Gutsche Jr. &
Pinto, 2022; Nillson & Enander, 2020; Terracina-Hartman, 2020; Cordoner & Schwartz, 2019;
Paveglio et al. 2011; Morehouse & Sonnet, 2010; Mercer & Prisbrey, 2004). Considering that the
media’s primary responsibility when covering natural hazards is to help the public understand
potential dangers (Houston et al., 2012), expecting reporters to talk about prescribed fire when
a wildfire is actively burning homes and taking lives may be unreasonable. This begs the
question: What responsibility, if any, does print media in the Pacific Northwest have to include
and frame prescribed fire as one part of the solution to more severe wildfires in its coverage of
wildfire events?
As climate change becomes more extreme, parts of the American public are
understandably concerned. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 73%
of adults who identified as Democrats said that climate change news makes them anxious for
the future, and 63% of U.S. adults, regardless of political affiliation, worried that the harm
caused by climate change will get a lot or a little worse during their lifetime (Kennedy & Tyson,
2023). Likewise, Google searches for “climate anxiety” soared 565% nationally between 2020
and 2021 (Yoder, 2021). A scoping review that examined 63 studies on the relationship between
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wildfires and mental health found that rates of PTSD, depression, and generalized anxiety all
increased immediately following wildfires to years after (To et al., 2021). Another study by Zhu
et al. (2024) analyzed nearly 1.9 million emergency department visits across five western states
(California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah) from 2007 to 2018, and found that wildfire
smoke events led to a 6.3% rise in mental health-related visits.
While the news media is not responsible for the psychological well-being of American
citizens, it is responsible for reporting on issues of public concern (Allan, 2022). With the
relationship between wildfires and negative mental health outcomes, along with eroding
community resilience more broadly, some Americans are personally impacted (Paveglio et al.,
2015). Fundamentally, journalism exists to serve the public: But when it comes to wildfire
coverage, is simply informing the public about the number of acres burned, containment
efforts, evacuation routes, and otherwise enough? I contend that journalism can be better —
that the news media should do more, especially in the Pacific Northwest where many
ecosystems would readily benefit from prescribed fire (Johnston et al., 2023; Haflovsky et al.,
2020; Kalies & Yocom Kent, 2016). Though it may not be appropriate to highlight the efficacy of
prescribed fire during wildfires, there are opportunities for solutions-oriented coverage outside
of the fire season or on the anniversary of wildfires. Complex, time-intensive stories are difficult
to pursue due, however, especially since national newsroom employment has declined by 26%
since 2008 (Walker, 2021). While an important constraint, public faith in journalism is also
declining: Only 32% of Americans said they trust the news media “a great deal” or “a fair
amount” in 2023, the lowest historical reading apart from 2016 (Brenan, 2023). Solutions
journalism can not only improve public trust, but make seemingly intractable problems, like
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increasing wildfire severity, tractable and help the public feel more optimistic about managing
those problems (Curry & Hammonds, 2014; Wenzel et al., 2016). When appropriate and
possible, solutions journalism can benefit readers and the industry.
For instance, when survey participants read solutions stories as opposed to problem
stories, they reported significantly greater confidence in the fairness and truthfulness of
solutions stories (Thier et al., 2021). Furthermore, discussing solutions in climate change
reporting has been shown to increase readers’ perceived behavioral control, a proxy for support
for collective climate change adaptation (Thier & Lin, 2022). In order to be effective, though,
solutions journalism stories must identify a response to a well-established social problem,
evidence of results, insights about why solutions work, and limitations of the response (Thier,
2016). While some articles that mentioned prescribed fire outside of a specific wildfire event
had these elements present, not all did. For example, several articles simply covered a local
prescribed fires and discussed the benefits and/or risks, but did not explain how prescribed fire
fits into the larger picture of forest management, climate change, and wildfire risk (Phillips,
2011; Glazar, 2014; Darling, 2019; Kauffman, 2020). By definition, these stories are not solution
journalism stories.
However, it is notable that the majority of articles that mentioned prescribed fire
disconnected from a wildfire event were positive and that the frequency of those articles,
regardless of valence, increased from 2010 to 2023. The paradigm of fire exclusion originated in
public discourse during the early 20th century, and the news media has perpetuated that
narrative since (Pyne, 1997). Reflecting early management practices by the USFS, the news
media tainted wildfire as the “enemy” of human settlement and the environment (Paveglio et
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al., 2011). My results indicate that, at least in the Pacific Northwest, this is no longer the case
for the papers included in this study. All six regional newspapers published more articles about
the benefits and advantages of prescribed fire than the risks and challenges, reflecting what
Indigenous peoples have known since time immemorial (Boyd, 2021), what Western science has
only recently acknowledged (Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, 2023;
Government Accountability Office, 2019), and what management agencies like the USFS have
decided to implement (National Interagency Coordination Center, 2017) — that prescribed fire
improves ecological sanctity and reduces wildfire risk in appropriate areas. Ultimately, print
media in the Pacific Northwest is providing more nuanced, accurate coverage of prescribed fire
generally, but fails to do so in their wildfire-specific coverage.
Study Limitations:
This study has several limitations worth acknowledging, most notably being the type and
character of media analyzed. While print media is a critical facet of wildfire communication, it’s
by no means the only medium or forum where that information propagates, from broadcast, to
social media, to newer apps like Watch Duty. In order to truly characterize how the news media
frames prescribed fire, it’s necessary to conduct a more extensive analysis that incorporates
more than one type of media. By focusing on a specific geographic area, the results of this study
also are not generalizable. Likewise, by targeting six regional newspapers with the widest
circulation, this study overlooks smaller, more rural newspapers that cover areas where
prescribed fire is more common, which may invite more frequent and nuanced discussions.
Furthermore, this study did not capture all articles that mentioned prescribed fire. As noted in
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the methodology section, prescribed fire has a number of synonyms, but Newsbank only allows
for nine search terms and does not have a function to amalgamate searches without article
overlap. I used the combination of search terms that generated the most results, but I certainly
excluded some applicable articles from my second sample and did not search any other
databases apart from Newsbank. Lastly, I was the only person coding the data and did not code
for the frequency at which different subcodes appeared in the sampled articles, which would
have invited more in-depth analysis than simply looking at the larger parent codes.
Conclusion:
The news media, and particularly print media, helps the public understand several
aspects of wildfire: its causes, containment efforts, the extent of damage, evacuation orders,
and so on. As established through a range of studies, however, this coverage is seldom
comprehensive, oftentimes neglecting climate science and the ecological role of fire, but there
is very little literature that addresses solutions in the context of wildfire coverage. This study fills
part of that gap. Through analyzing content from the six largest circulating newspapers in Idaho,
Oregon, and Washington, this study established that Pacific Northwest print media rarely
discusses prescribed fire in their coverage of wildfire events. By placing more emphasis on the
benefits and advantages of prescribed fire, however, regional print media has increasingly
moved away from narratives rooted in fire suppression and has acknowledged the role of
healthy fire, but separate from wildfires themselves. Additional research is necessary to
determine why this separation between wildfires and prescribed fire — between problem and
Wilson 43
solutions — occurs, and how the production of full-fledged, solutions-oriented wildfire coverage
may impact readers in the Pacific Northwest both psychologically and behaviorally.
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Appendix A:
Benefits and Advantages
Ecological Improvement:
● Removing dead, dry fuel
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○ “The first step of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy calls
for creating a wildfire-resistant landscape. One way to do that is to use
prescribed burning to burn debris on the forest floor to reduce the fuel load”
(Culver, 2018).
● Promoting new growth of native plants, trees, and fungi
○ “ ‘The preserve is a pretty remarkable success story in restoration — being
transformed from a Scotch broom field to a largely native camas prairie,’ said
Sanders Freed, restoration manager for the Bureau of Land Management. ‘That
work has taken decades utilizing all tools in the restoration toolbox — including
prescribed fire’ ” (Grivas, 2023).
● Minimizing the spread of invasive species, insects, and diseases
○ “Fire can enhance the germination of many native plants and give them an edge
against invasive plants. ‘Charcoal reduces the effect of a chemical (that) diffuse
knapweed or Barnaby's thistle produce to enhance their ability to out-compete
native plants,’ he said. Ash is a fertilizer for the new growth, he added” (Landers,
2015).
● Decreasing soil erosion and recycling soil nutrients
○ " ‘It's really taking material that's not very useful, because it's dead, and it's
accumulating, and it turns it into something useful, (like) meaningful nutrients
for the soil,’ Rau said” (Cyr, 2023).
● Providing forage for wildlife
○ “ ‘Heat is required to stimulate germination of some native plants like evergreen
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ceanothus,’ he said. ‘That translates into stimulating regrowth of forage for deer."
One study found that ceanothus is a top 50 percent winter forage for deer, he
said’ ” (Landers, 2015).
● Improving habitat for native wildlife
○ “Prescribed burns reduce fire danger, but the main objective of Tuesday's effort
was to rid the area of blackberry bushes and dead vegetation, in order to open
up the soil for germination and enhance the habitat for native plants and insects,
including Fender's blue butterfly — an endangered species — and Kincaid's
lupine, which is a federally listed threatened species” (Moran, 2011).
● Reducing carbon emissions from wildfires
○ “The study is the first landscape-scale look at how prescribed burns affect carbon
emissions. Widespread prescribed burning could reduce carbon output from
forest fires by an average 18 percent to 25 percent, the researchers found. In
some forest types, the carbon reductions were as high as 60 percent” (Kramer,
2010).
● Increasing the ecological diversity and resilience of forests
○ “We found that tree mortality was high in untreated or recently thinned forests,
but lower in forests that had been recently thinned and prescribed burned. Our
results, along with other studies in the western United States, provide compelling
evidence that thinning, in combination with prescribed burning, can make forests
more resilient” (Prichard, 2017).
● Restoring historic fire regimes and patterns
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○ “However, the imprints of recent fires are large, and it will take many small to
medium wildfires to restore the diverse mosaic these landscapes need and once
supported. Managing naturally ignited wildfires that burn in the late season or
under favorable weather conditions, in combination with prescribed burning, will
be essential to restore self-regulating landscapes” (Prichard, 2017).
Community Protection:
● Decreasing wildfire intensity and severity
○ “Meanwhile, the value of a forest that's been thinned, logged or cleared by
prescribed burn that brings a raging crown fire to the ground where firefighters
can control it has been proved repeatedly over the past 20 years. A prescribed
fire in the Tiger Creek area on the Boise National Forest brought the 1992
Foothills Fire ... near this year's Elk and Pony complex fires ... to the ground in an
incident that was cited as an example for years afterward. A similar prescribed
burn on the Salmon National Forest dropped the Clear Creek fire west of Salmon
from its run through Douglas firs in 2000” (Barker, 2013b).
● Containing already burning wildfires
○ “Crews dig ‘hand lines,’ removing vegetation in a long line through the forest
about 3 feet wide. Bulldozers cut much larger lines, about 8 to 10 feet across. Air
tankers drop retardant, creating lines where flames won't pass through
slurry-coated woods. And firefighters light controlled burns. All the efforts have
the same goal. ‘They are removing the fuel from the fire's path,’ Kauffman said.
Fuel is anything that can burn” (Darling, 2017).
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● Creating a buffer area around communities
○ “The Millie Fire, which burned nearly 25,000 acres in the Three Sisters
Wilderness in 2017, could have been much worse had the area near the town of
Sisters not been treated with controlled burns before the wildfire” (Williams,
2018).
● Establishing a refuge for firefighters
○ “In this thinned-out forest, they helped halt the northern advance of the North
Star wildfire, one of the largest of summer blazes that consumed hundreds of
square miles across the state. ‘This definitely gave us the upper hand to hold the
fire where we wanted,’ said Matt Marsh, a Forest Service task-force leader who
directed the effort. A case in point is the 850-acre tract that was used by the
Forest Service crew in its successful stand to defend the Aeneas Valley in
Okanogan County, this summer” (Brunner & Bernton, 2015)
● Reducing long-term smoke impacts
○ “Nearby communities need to learn to live with some smoke from controlled
burns, but it's a trade-off for reducing the risk of deadly, fast-moving blazes in the
summer, he said. ‘How do you like your smoke? Do you like it as these big
wildfire massive events that trap you in your house a week at a time or some
prescribed burning smoke in the spring and the fall when weather conditions
aren't too bad,’ he said” (Urness & Arthur, 2021)
Cultural Heritage:
● Indigenous peoples used prescribed fire to clear hunting paths, increase foraging
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abundance, improve community safety, and other purposes
○ “Tribes in the Pacific Northwest have used fire as a tool to shape the landscape
for thousands of years. The touch of flame kept huckleberry and camas fields
abundant. In areas where tribes hunted deer and elk, fire created a mat of forage
plants on the forest floor, a favorite food for the ungulates. Burned areas recycle
nutrients more efficiently and help to control the spread of invasive species”
(Williams, 2018).
○ “Native peoples, less than 150 years ago, proactively burned the landscapes we
currently inhabit – for personal safety, food production and enhanced forage for
deer and elk. In some places, people still maintain and use traditional fire
knowledge. As we too learn to be more fire-adapted, we need to embrace fire
not only as an ongoing problem but an essential part of the solution” (Prichard,
2017).
Reducing the Financial Cost of Wildfires:
● Can decrease the amount of money spent on wildfire suppression and firefighting
○ “But the 2 percent that escape containment are increasingly likely to burn under
extreme conditions on lands that are thick with fuel , accounting for 97 percent
of the wildfire suppression costs and area burned. Since the early 1990s,
foresters have argued that we could reduce these costs and the areas burned if
we could implement a combination of mechanical thinning — logging — and
prescribed burning” (Barker, 2015).
○ “In fact, Oregon prepared a cost benefit analysis in 2012 and found that for every
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$1 million spent on forest restoration, there is $5.7 million generated in
economic returns, and that for every $1 invested in restoration, the state saves
$1.45 in suppression” (Astor, 2021a).
Firefighter Training Opportunities:
● Allows firefighters to train for wildfires and gain hands-on experience
○ “ ‘It’s also an opportunity to get our personnel practice for a real wildfire event,’
said Capt. Sean Allen of the Idaho Falls Fire Department. Henry’s Creek
volunteers rely on controlled burns and training events held by the BLM to
prepare farmers and ranchers on how to combat fires. Association Chairman
David Rafferty said the group had not had a full meeting with all of its volunteers
in several months because of the coronavirus and had fallen slightly behind on
new member training before last week’s controlled burn” (Kauffman, 2020).
Risks and Challenges
Temporally, Spatially, and Resource-Limited:
● Dependent on both weather conditions and seasonality
○ “Even if plenty of dollars are available, pulling off large-scale burns is no sure
thing. Prescribed fires have relatively narrow weather windows in the spring and
fall when they can be carried out…When it is too moist, the fires don’t generate
enough heat to get the job done. So even if a crew is ready to go, the burn may
have to be called off” (Bernton, 2018).
● Lack of funding and labor intensive
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○ “Thinning and prescribed burning have increased steadily in Idaho since 2001,
but have been hindered nationwide by federal policies that require agencies to
take money from other programs when the federal firefighting money is
exhausted. The Forest Service shifted $250 million from other
accounts…including money from hazardous fuel treatments…to pay for
firefighting this year. Firefighting costs are $700 million over the appropriation”
(Barker, 2015).
● Ineffective if implemented in remote forests, rather than around communities
○ “Fuel treatments should be strategic and focused primarily near communities
and homes. Typically, fuel reductions more than 100 feet from a structure
provide no additional protection” (Wuerthner, 2021).
● Difficult to implement in dense, climate-affected forests
○ “First, we must recognize that Oregon cannot burn our way out of the problem,
and stating climate change as the sole reason for our wildfires is unhelpful
because our forests are too dense in many places to safely apply prescribed fire.
If climate change is the problem, then it seems like addressing climate change is
the only solution. This rhetoric is not helpful or accurate” (Astor, 2021b).
● Small likelihood of wildfires encountering treated forests
○ “Various studies have also shown that the probability that a wildfire will
encounter a ‘fuel reduction’ site is extremely small — typically less than 1%”
(Wuerthner, 2023).
Smoke Impacts on Nearby Communities:
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● Produces smoke that worsens air quality in adjacent communities
○ “A big concern is air pollution. Luke Montrose, a Boise State University
environmental toxicology professor, said he worries about deliberately
introducing smoke into communities that have already had wildfires in summer.
‘The exposure becomes chronic then, because it's year-round,’ Montrose said”
(Kasler & Blanchard, 2021).
● Must contend with strict air quality regulations
○ “Frustrating matters, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule this
spring for the Clean Air Act that would further regulate smoke particles. The rule
could add additional complications to the use of prescribed burning throughout
the country” (Clark, 2023).
Transitioning to Wildfire:
● Can become out-of-control depending on weather conditions and planning
○ “Forest Service officials Greg Burch and Arik Jorgensen waited from a trail within
the East Mink Creek Nordic Center last month, listening to the workers report
their positions and observations about the wind's behavior on handheld radios.
Two water engines were parked in the vicinity in case the controlled burn were to
grow too large” (O’Connell, 2010).
○ “In New Mexico last year, a controlled burn sparked that state’s largest wildfire,
leading to a pause on prescribed burning. Also last year, a ‘burn boss’ leading a
prescribed burn was arrested in Oregon after the intentionally set fire jumped
the containment line and burned 20 acres of a private ranch” (Wozniacka, 2023).
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Loss of Aesthetic and Recreational Value:
● Lessens the natural beauty of a landscape
○ “He and the Forest Service's local fire managers support what the Canadians
have done, but Timm is skeptical that large Canada-style winter burns, along with
the necessary logging, could get the support needed from Idahoans who want
their scenic views unchanged” (Barker, 2013a).