Ch2-1: Slide Index (1 of 3)
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Cross-National Differences in Info
Information on Hard vs. Soft News
Consumers or Citizens?
Explaining Differences in Information
The American Media System in Comparative Perspective
Preview of Findings
Performance Criteria
Properties of Media Systems: Ownership
Public Broadcasting
License Fees
Revenues of Major Public Broadcasters
Cross-National Differences in Public Broadcaster’s Market Share
Ownership and Press Freedom
Regulatory Regimes
Role of Journalists
Ch2-1: Slide Index (2 of 3)
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Strength of Political Parties
A Typology of Media Systems
Polarized-Pluralist Model
Democratic Corporatism
Convergence of Media Systems
Why Regulate News Media
The regulatory “double standard”
Public Broadcasters Deliver Public Goods
BBC Programming
The “Virtuous Circle”
BBC vs. CNN: Africa Coverage
First Phase of Regulatory Policy
Towards Deregulation
Limits on Ownership
Impact of Deregulation
Ch2-1: Slide Index (3 of 3)
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Politically Biased Programming?
Biased Programming? (cont)
Print Monopolies
The demise of “equal time”
The European Model: Free Time
UK PEBS, 1980-2005
Summary
Summing Up
Cross-National Differences in Info
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Y axis represents percent of sample answering question correctly.
Information on Hard vs Soft News
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
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Swiss
US
Comm1b
Hard News
Soft News
Y axis represents percent of sample answering correctly.
Consumers or Citizens?
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90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
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Brands
Sports
Politics
Source: Survey of Stanford Univ students; Y axis
represents percent of sample answering question correctly.
Explaining Differences in
Information
• Differences in media systems lead to
differences in the production of “civic”
information. Market-oriented media
systematically under-produce “serious”
news
The American Media System in
Comparative Perspective
Objectives:
1. Evaluating the civic performance of
American news media against the
baseline of news media in other
industrialized democracies
2. Mapping the relevant properties of media
systems
Preview of Findings
• American media preoccupied with
consumerism and audience size; reduced
levels of public affairs programming and
the dominance of “soft” news
• Access to the electoral forum based on
ability to pay (for TV advertising)
Performance Criteria
• Foster informed citizenship by delivering
information on the issues of the day and
providing exposure to a wide range of
political perspectives (“public sphere”)
• Permit candidates, parties and other
groups opportunities to make political
presentations to a mass audience
(“electoral forum”)
• Monitor the actions of government officials
(“watchdog function”)
Properties of Media Systems:
Ownership
• Ranges from exclusively private to
government ownership – most systems
feature a mix of public and private
• Well-developed “public broadcaster”
common to virtually all democratic
societies (except US)
• Less developed and authoritarian
regimes feature more extensive
government ownership and control over
programming
Public Broadcasting
“Public broadcasting” refers to television
and radio networks funded by their
government either in the form of “license”
fees or general state funds. Some public
broadcasters (for example, Radio Telefís
Éireann, the national broadcaster in
Ireland) also run commercial advertising to
supplement their revenues.
License Fees
Germany €193
UK €178
France €116
Italy €94
No license fee in Spain
Revenues of Major Public Broadcasters (in millions
of UK Pounds)
5000
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
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1
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License Fee
Ads
Govt Funds
Cross-National Differences in Public
Broadcaster’s Market Share
Ownership and Press Freedom
Regulatory Regimes
• Purely market-based with minimal state
intervention (US)
• “public service” model (Europe) – active
intervention by government to ensure
adequate civic performance
• Intervention can be both supportive
(subsidies, exemptions) and regulatory
(ownership caps, programming
requirements)
Role of Journalists
• Professionalized journalism in the US, with welldeveloped norms and codes of conduct
• Autonomy from political movements/groups;
“objectivity” in the US, “commentary” in Europe
where newspapers are affiliated with parties
(Note: dominance of partisan press in the US,
1800-1850)
• Mediated vs. unmediated coverage of political
actors – interpretive coverage in the US,
descriptive reporting everywhere else
Strength of Political Parties
• American parties weak, European parties strong
• Mass membership versus party identifiers
• Party organizations control recruitment of elected
officials in Europe; in US, “free agent” candidates
contest elections on their own with party
organizations playing a minor role
• Party-based campaigns; no messages on behalf
of individual candidates (Changing nature of
PEBs)
A Typology of Media Systems
I. “Liberal” model (US) – mass circulation
and privately owned press, dominance of
commercial broadcasting, minimal
regulation of media, professional
journalists autonomous from political
parties, but subject to subtle government
influence
Polarized-Pluralist Model
Italy, Spain as exemplars – press as
an extension of political movements,
active state intervention, dominant
public broadcaster, subsidies for
newspapers, lack of professional
norms or codes of conduct
Democratic Corporatism
Northern Europe – press freedom
coupled with active state intervention
(Sweden, Germany); strong political
parties with affiliated newspapers;
commercial media coexist with partisan
outlets and the news reflects both
objectivity and ideology
Convergence of Media Systems
• Since 1985, all three media systems are
moving in the direction of expanded
commercial broadcasting (increased
audience share of private networks) and
progressive weakening of government
regulations over news programming
Why Regulate News Media
• Regulations designed to ensure delivery of
civic performance – broadcasters as
“trustees” granted exclusive rights over a
scarce public resource in exchange for
programming in the “public interest”
• Regulations designed to promote the
industry -- FCC originally created as a
“traffic cop” to address the problem of
frequency congestion, DOD funding
instrumental in development of Internet
The regulatory “double standard”
• Operation of a newspaper printing press does
not interfere with any other press. Radio and
television, by contrast, are broadcast through
signals of a specific frequency and power.
Television and radio sets receive these signals
on a fixed number of channels, each of which
corresponds to the frequency of the signal. The
channels have to be sufficiently far apart to
avoid interference among the signals. Unlike
newspapers, the production of which is not
exclusive, "one person's transmission is
another's interference”
Public Broadcasters Deliver Public Goods
• In return for government financing, public
broadcasters are required to provide
sustained levels of public affairs
programming, and to represent a diversity
of regions, cultures and viewpoints. Thus,
public broadcasters in Europe produce
higher quantities of “serious”
programming, a likely cause of the higher
levels of political information in Europe
BBC Programming
• BBC 1, the flagship public station in the UK,
devoted 22.1% of its 2002 peak hour broadcasts
to current affairs, compared to only 9% by the
newest commercial British channel, Channel
Five
• BBC 1 airs an average of 2.2 hours of news and
public affairs programming during primetime on
weekdays; NBC, CBS, and ABC average only
one hour each
The “Virtuous Circle”
• Public broadcasters in Germany, Britain,
Sweden and other countries are market
leaders, despite their emphasis on “public
service” programming
• Commercial broadcasters mimic their
programming, leading to an increase in
“serious” content
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Number of Hits
(9/24/04)
BBC vs. CNN: Africa Coverage
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
BBC
CNN
First Phase of Regulatory Policy
• Early regulations aimed at promoting
competition and diversity; “one to a
market” rule and ban on “crossownership;” no cable operator could
control more than 30% of a market
• “Fairness doctrine” – required stations to
air balanced treatment of controversial
issues; extended to “right of reply” (Red
Lion case)
Towards Deregulation
• 1987 FCC repealed the fairness doctrine on the
grounds that access to the airwaves was no
longer a scarce resource; cable and satellite TV,
VHS tapes etc all seen as “substitutes” for basic
TV. New approach, set in motion by the election
of Reagan in 1980, relied on the market and
“regulatory forbearance”
• Time Warner challenged the cap on cable
ownership; court ruled that the cap violated TW’s
First Amendment rights to reach new audiences
Limits on Ownership
• Limits on cross-ownership eased (in cities with
>4 TV stations a single owner can control a daily
newspaper and two TV stations)
• In 1976, stations were required to air at least five
percent community programming and five
percent informational programming (defined as
news and public affairs) for a total of ten percent
non-entertainment programming. In 1984 the
FCC abandoned these requirements; it was now
sufficient for stations to “air some programming
that meets the community’s needs”
• Local news as “public affairs” programming
Impact of Deregulation
• In radio, the top twenty companies operate
more than twenty percent of all the radio
stations in the country; in local television,
the ten biggest companies own 30 percent
of all television stations reaching 85
percent of all television households in the
United States. In network television, the
owners are all giant corporations…”
• The result: homogeneity of program
content
Politically Biased Programming?
Corporate owners can encourage journalists not
to pursue stories that reflect poorly on their
parent corporations (ABC and Disney)
Owners may impose programming in keeping
with their political preferences. In 2004, the
Sinclair Broadcasting Group ordered its
television stations (which have a combined
reach of 24% of the national audience) to preempt their regular programming and broadcast
an anti-Kerry documentary film a few days
before the 2004 presidential election.
Biased Programming (cont.)
• Sinclair had previously ordered its ABCaffiliate stations not to air an episode
(which they denounced as political) of
Nightline, in which Ted Koppel read the
names of all American military personnel
killed in Iraq.
• Disney refused to distribute Michael
Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911,” and CBS
refused to air an anti-Bush ad made by
Moveon.org during the 2004 Super Bowl.
Print Monopolies
• Between 1910 and 2000 the number of
dailies fell from 2,202 to 1,483. The
number of cities with competing dailies
dropped from 552 in 1920 to just 25 in
1987.
• The percent of total circulation attributable
to the ten largest newspaper chains in the
United States now stands at 51% for
weekday and 56% for Sunday
newspapers.
The demise of “equal time”
• The equal-time rule was designed to ensure that
the public would have roughly equal exposure to
the perspectives of opposing candidates. The
FCC has rendered the rule meaningless by only
requiring that broadcasters make available time
to candidates on equal terms. Thus,
candidates who cannot afford to buy the same
amount of ad time as their opponent (a frequent
occurrence for challengers running against
congressional incumbents) are denied access to
the public.
The European Model: Free Time
• In every industrialized democracy other than the
United States, political parties are granted
blocks of free airtime for during campaigns
• In the UK the amount of airtime is based on the
number of candidates being fielded by each
party, in France broadcasters are obliged to
grant equal airtime to candidates irrespective of
their prominence or electoral strength
• the party election broadcasts are required to be
carried not just by the public channels, but also
by the commercial stations
UK PEBS, 1980-2005
Summary
News media in democratic societies are more
likely to make good on their civic responsibilities
when:
1 Society adopts a relatively stringent regulatory
framework that requires minimal levels of public
affairs programming
2. Broadcasters are given some protection from the
market. Publicly funded television networks have
the necessary cushion to deliver a steady flow of
substantive, “hard” news;
Summing Up
• Among modern democracies, the US
media system ranks as the most
commercialized and unregulated
• American news organizations free to
“shirk” their civic responsibilities
• Consequences include uninformed and
misinformed citizens
Overview: From Party- to Media-Based
Campaigns
• Reform of the nomination process, the onset of
public financing of presidential campaigns, and
universal access to television combined to
create a new system of campaigns in which free
agent candidates rely on media strategies to
appeal to voters
• Mass media replaced political parties as the
principal link between candidates and voters
Party-Based Politics
• Parties aggregate interests and provide popular
control over policy
• Nominate candidates and mobilize citizens to vote
• Reduce information costs of voting (voting for
party equivalent to voting on the issues)
• Disseminate campaign messages (PEBs vs. ads)
• Control candidates’ policy positions (party-line
voting in parliamentary systems)
[two party versus multi-party systems; members
versus identifiers]
Primaries in the Pre-Reform Era
• Humphrey: “you have to be crazy to go into a primary …
worse than the torture of the rack.”
• Primaries pursued by weaker or insurgent candidates
who wished to demonstrate their vote-getting ability (JFK
in 1960, Kefauver in 1952)
• “Before 1968, the pursuit of a presidential nomination
principally by entering primaries constituted a high risk
strategy. The increasing presence of television, the
decline in the influence of political parties, the success of
John Kennedy… all suggested that it would prove to be
more useful in the years ahead.” (Polsby, p. 16)
Prelude to Reform
• Dissatisfaction with Vietnam War among Democratic activists;
emergence of Eugene McCarthy as the “anti-war” candidate
• McCarthy’s strong showing in 1968 NH primary brings RFK into the
race
• Humphrey stays out of the primaries and counts on “insider” support
to win the nomination
• The spectacle of the Democratic convention (”sea of blood”) and
Nixon’s defeat of Humphrey send the Democrats down the path of
reform
• Party caucus and delegate primary banned as methods of selecting
delegates to the nominating convention
• “affirmative action” in the selection of delegates
• Candidate primaries emerged as the dominant method of
nomination
Varieties of Primary Elections
1. Closed Primary – limited to party registrants only;
favors “ideologically pure” candidates (case of Tom
Campbell v Bruce Herschensohn for CA Senate)
2. Modified closed primary (CA) party registrants +
independents
3. Open primary – any registered voter eligible; may
encourage centrist candidates able to attract crossover votes. Possibility of strategic voting
4. “Blanket” primary – both party candidates on same
ballot (Proposition 198 and ensuing Supreme Court
Decision)
Changes in Delegate Selection
Summary: The Impact of Reform
 Weakening of party organization and elites
 Increased candidate autonomy-reduced entry
costs (public financing)
 Importance of media coverage and “momentum”
 Personal factions rather than broad-based
coalitions as the dominant strategy (additional
problem of unrepresentativeness of primary
electorate)
 Professionalization of campaigns
Primary Calendar – 1960 & 2004
•
1960
• Jan 20
• Jan 27
• Feb 3
2004
Iowa
NH
AZ, DE,
NM, OK, SC
• Feb 7
ME
• Feb. 10
• Feb 17
• Feb 24
• Mar 2
MI, WA,
• Mar 8
NH
TN, VA
WI
UT, ID
“Super
Tuesday”
TX,FL,LA
•
1
29
TOTAL:
•
1960
Mar 16
April 5` WI
April 12 IL
April 19 NJ
April 26 MA, PA
May 4 AL, OH, IN
May 11 NE, WV
May 18 MD, OR
May 25June 7 FL, CA,
NY, SD
16
2004
IL
PA
IN, NC
WV
AR, KY, OR
NJ, MT
10
Percentage of Delegates Selected
1968
1996
Week 1-3
2
26
Week 4-6
8
74
Week 7-9
43
74
Week 10-12
58
87
Week 13-15
100
100
TV NEWS (CBS) COVERAGE OF 1980 PRIMARIES
IA
NH
IL
PA
NY
CA
# of Seconds
% of total
2940
2815
2000
1950
1515
1205
14
14
10
9
7
6
Seconds per Delegate
34
69
7
7
4
3
Primary Turnout: Early vs. Late Contests
(Source: Mayer, “The front-loading problem”)
Date
1996 Republican
N.H. (2/20)
2/24-3/2
3/5-3/26
Average Turnout
N of States
42%
22
18
(5)
(22)
52
26
26
(6)
(11)
40
17
(11)
2000 Republican
N.H.
2/8-2/29
3/7
2000 Democratic
N.H.
3/7
“Big Mo”
• Morris Udall, one of the Democratic candidates
in 1976 on Carter’s victory:
“Carter won NH by 29% to my 24%, came in
fourth in Massachusetts, and then beat Wallace
by three points in Florida. In the next two weeks
he shot up 25 points in the Gallup Poll… It’s like
a football game in which you say to the first team
that makes a first down: ‘hereafter your team
has a special rule – your first downs are five
yards and we’re going to let your first touchdown
count 21 points. Now the rest of you bastards
play catch-up under regular rules … .’
Trends in Candidate Support Nationwide: 2004
Democratic Primaries (Princeton Survey Research Telephone
Interviews with Registered Democrats and Independents)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
03 003 003
04 004 004 004 004 004
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/2
/2
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/2
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1
1
1
2
2
2
1
1
1
Y axis indicates percent intending to vote for candidate
Kerry
Dean
Edwards
Clark
Trends in 2004 New Hampshire
Polls (American Research Group Three-Day Tracking
of Likely Democratic Voters)
D
ec
26
-2
D
8
ec
30
-3
Ja 1
n
Ja 4-6
n
10
Ja -12
n
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Ja -18
n
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-2
3
27
-J
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45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Y axis indicates percent intending to vote for candidate
Dean
Kerry
Clark
Edwards
Endorsements
Al Gore
"Howard Dean really is the only candidate who
has been able to inspire at the grassroots level all over
this country the kind of passion and enthusiasm for
democracy and change and transformation of America
that we need in this country. We need to remake the
Democratic Party; we need to remake America; we need
to take it back on behalf of the people of this country.
So I'm very proud and honored to endorse Howard Dean
to be the next president of the United States of America."
Endorsements (cont.)
Bill Bradley
"The Dean campaign is one of the best things to happen
to American democracy in decades...His campaign offers
America new hope. His supporters are breathing fresh
air into the lungs of our democracy. They're revitalizing
politics, showing a way to escape the grip of big money
and to confront the shame of forgetting those in need."
“Free Agent” Candidates
• Minimal eligibility requirements (1K signatures in
Vermont; 1% of the party’s registered voters in CA)
• Rise of “celebrity” candidates with minimal elective
experience – Arnold in CA, Corzine in NJ; contrast with
stringent membership requirements and party leader
influence in Europe
Bringing the Parties back in
• Soft money contributions in 2000 and
2004
• Party lists and GOTV
• Endorsements
• “Super delegates” In 2004, the superdelegates cast 798 votes at the Dem.
convention, more than a third of the
2,160 required to win the nomination.