The National Media and American Politics. The Media of Yesteryear The first American newspapers (printed in the 1690s) were often controlled by the government.

The National Media and American Politics

The Media of Yesteryear

• The first American newspapers (printed in the 1690s) were often controlled by the government supporters and political parties. They were rarely independent.

• Battles over the rights of newspapers to publish served as the basis for our 1st Amendment right to “Freedom of the Press”.

John Peter Zenger NY Weekly Journal

(in Court, 1735-1736)

Yellow Journalism

• By the 1890s 'yellow journalism' sold millions of newspapers.

• Throughout the 19th century, payoffs to the press were common.

• Yellow journalism today.

Pulitzer vs. Hearst

Technological Advances

• Newspapers became cheaper and easier to produce and distribute. The telegraph and telephone made reporting simpler and faster.

• Radio became widely available in the 1920s.

• Television was introduced in the late 1940s.

• Cable Television was invented in the 1970s, (CNN was founded in 1980.)

• The Internet became easily accessible in the late 1990s.

The Contemporary Newspaper

A number of newspapers have a national audience and are considered quite influential:

– The New York Times

– The Wall Street Journal

– USA Today

– The Christian Science Monitor

– The Washington Post

– The Los Angeles Times

Television News

• The Networks– ABC (Charles Gibson)– CBS (Katie Couric)– NBC (Brian Williams)

• Cable TV

– PBS

– CNN

– FOX

Interactivity: Citizens As Journalists

• The new technologies break the journalist's monopoly, making some of the new news an unmediated collaboration between the sources and the audience.

• Citizens can program their computers to retrieve their own "news."

Reporting the News

• “Real” (Six O’Clock) News

• In Depth Reporting & Analysis (60 Minutes, Nightline)

• “Info-tainment” aka “Going Tabloid”

Where is the dividing line?

Television Network Programming

• A full transcript of the typical nightly network news broadcasts – foreign and domestic – would not fill half of the front page of an average daily newspaper.

• Yet ¾ of the American people routinely depend on this source for most of their foreign affairs information.

Characteristics of the News

Superficial describes most news coverage today

Sound Bites: Short video clips

Sound Bites keep getting shorter: – 1968/43 seconds– 2000/7 seconds

The Pace of the News

• The increasing rapid pace of electronic news and television’s global coverage shortens the time frame for policy responses.

– In 1961, when the Berlin Wall went up, President Kennedy had 8 days to respond to the provocative action.

– In 1989, when the wall came down, President Bush (41) was forced to respond overnight.

Finding the Political News

• Beats: Specific locations from which news frequently emanates, such as Congress or the White House.

• Trial Balloons: An intentional news leak for the purpose of assessing the political reaction.

• Interdependency: Reporters and their sources depend on each other- one for stories, the other to get them out.

Media & Events

How Politicians Use the Media

• Politicians and government officials often stage media events (to get free media coverage).

• Candidates and politicians try to control or 'spin' media focus on campaign and policy issues.

• Candidates and politicians may 'leak' a story to the press in order to get their story out (without being the focus of that story).

The 1st Reporter

• Press Secretaries announce Presidential policies and Presidential reactions to news. It is their role to put the news in perspective favorable to the incumbent administration.

The Media and Politicians

• Politicians are also media consumers.

• Research indicates that roughly 2/3s of officials in policy making positions reported that the media was their most rapid source of information.

• Over 4/5s indicated that the media were an important source of information.

New York Times

“I’ve said many times that I never learned from a classified document anything I couldn’t get earlier or later from the New York Times.”

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

An Alternative View of Reporters

Reporting the News

• Is there bias in the News?

– Many people believe the news favors one point of view over another.

– ASNE Survey: 78% of Americans believe the news is biased

• Liberal vs Conservative Papers (The Denver Post vs the Rocky Mt. News?)

• Political Ads– Types– Role of Money– Examples

Denver Post 2002

SENATE Endorsed

Incumbent 10

Challenger 0

OPEN SEAT Endorsed by Post

Republican Democrat

Formerly Republican 2

Held by… Democrat 1 4

Questioning Political Editorials

• Should newspapers or any media endorse political candidates? (Is this evidence of their bias, an indicator that they have a preference and a right to express it, or an indication of a positive force media can play in elections?)– Newspapers favor the status quo. – Newspapers are hesitant to oppose incumbents

(Evidence of the “strange bedfellows” effect?)– Even in “open seat” races there are common

tendencies to suppose party holding the seat now.

Types of Biases

– Generally not very biased along liberal / conservative lines.

– But, generally are biased towards what will draw the largest audience.

On social issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?

On economic issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?

Left 30% Left 11%

Center 57% Center 64%

Right 9% Right 19%

Other 5% Other 5%

Media Self-Identification

 to the left of

the publicto the right of

the public

Protecting Medicare & Social Security

  X

The expansion of NAFTA   X

Requiring employers to provide health insurance

  X

Stricter environmental laws X  

Concern over corporate power   X

Taxing the wealthy   X

Government guaranteed medical care

On these issues journalists appear to be…

Common Biases

• White

• Male

• Elite

• Nationalistic

Imperviousness of Beliefs: Why it may not matter if media is biased

• Generally neither reading nor watching the news alters what people think.

• Selective perception is a pervasive human tendency.

– People search for “comfortable” information that “fits” with preexisting beliefs.

– People screen out or reject information with which they disagree.

Agenda Setting

• The mass media may not be successful in telling people what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling their audience what to think about.

• This power is greatest among those who are neither interested nor involved in politics and hence lack political “sophistication”.

The Media’s Role

The mass media perform a mediating role, i.e., it helps to shape political attitudes and choices but does not determine them.

Government Regulation of the Electronic Media

• Print media are exempt from most governmental regulation. Electronic media are not.

• Airwaves are considered public property and are leased to networks and private broadcasters by the government.

• Government also allocates the use of frequencies and channels so that radio and TV do not overlap and jam each others' signals. And so certain segments of the airways are available for defense.

Summary - A Complex Relationship

• The relationship between the media and policymakers is both subtle and complex.

• Television has quickened the pace of the news but it by no means determines American public policy.

• However, it is also clear that the media is a powerful institution that affects multiple facets of American political life.

The Inadvertent Audience

• Television provides the mass of American people with an infusion of policy information that most neither like nor want.

• There are three consequences of this forced media:

1. Television may explain the decline of confidence in the nation’s leadership.

2. Being uninterested, Americans are unlikely to have strong convictions about issues as do those who regularly follow political affairs.

3. Policy ideas must fit into “one-liners” that will fit into 30, 60, or 90 second slots on the evening news.