Selling sustainable mobility: The reporting of the Manchester Transport Innovation Fund bid in UK media

This paper examines how complex transport projects are reported in the media using the Transport Innovation Fund bid for Greater Manchester as a case study. It demonstrates how projects are simplified and distorted in the media in a systematic way. Such distortion is explained by a scheme’s perceived newsworthiness, its complexity and the contemporary nature of news media production. The paper has implications for future research in this area and the implementation of sustainable transport policy. It urges transport professionals to both better understand, and engage directly with, the media if they are to maximise the benefits of efforts to shape travel behaviour.

Research Highlights
► Transport proposals are systematically distorted in the media.
► The complexity of costs and benefits of transport proposals makes media over-simplification hard to avoid, especially given trends in media production.
► Transport planners and researchers need to give more thought to media engagement.
► Further work is needed on media production and receipt in the context of transport policy debates.