Importance of Media in the
New American Democracy






Representative democracy
Citizens need to know
Events Media  News
Tree falling in the forest
News shapes public opinion
Need to “make news” shapes government’s
activities
 Inevitable concern about Bias and Accountability
Bias in Historical Context
 Party Newspapers



Federalists, Gazette of the
United State
Jeffersonians, National
Gazette
Funded by government
contracts, print information
party elites want citizens to
hear
Penny Press
 Emergence of
independent press
 “News is information
about public life that
sells.”
 Muckraking,
sensationalism
 Increase in corporate
ownership
TV, Radio & Internet



99% of houses have TV
65% cable
75% use internet
Primary Source of News
 Newspapers only 10%
 TV and newspapers
22%
 TV only 55%
 Evening News
audience declined 30%
since 1980s
 But 50 million in
audience each night
Most Credible Source of News
 Radio 5%
 Magazines 5%
 Newspapers 19%
 Television 58%
3 Potential Sources of Bias
 Ideological bias of reporters/editors
 Professional/selection bias of reporters
 Profit bias of corporate owners
Liberal Media Bias
Liberal Media Bias Hypothesis
 Journalists' views are to the left of the public,
 Elite Journalists are out of touch with mainstream
American values (Bernard Goldberg- "Bias: A CBS
Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News” )

"How many members of the Los Angeles Times and St.
Louis Post-Dispatch belong to the American Legion or
the Kiwanis or go to prayer breakfasts?”
 Journalists frame news content in a way that
accentuates these left perspectives.

AIDS Victim- white housewife w/bad blood transfusion
1992 Survey
Media Bias
100
89
80
60
43
40
Public
37
DC Media
19
20
7
2
0
Clinton
Bush
Perot
% vote for President
Are journalists' political behavior to the left of the public?
On __ issues, how would you
characterize your political orientation?
70
64
57
60
50
40
Social Issues
30
Economic Issues
30
20
19
11
9
10
5
5
0
Left
Center
Right
Other
Are journalists' political views to the left of the public?
43
32
59
39
98 State of
Econ is Exc
or good)
57
Reduc $
Entitlements
64
Protect
SS/Medicare
65
Corp have
too much
power
42
Universal
Health Care
Pro
Negative
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Nafta had a
positive
Impact
“Liberal Media”?
92
77
66
56
Media
35
Public
8
Are DC Media Elitists?
I Report, You Decide
Who is the “Ultra-Conservative”?
Who is the “Moderate”?
 Gary Bauer


Pro-life
Anti SS privatization &
free trade, Pro
minimum wage
 Christie Todd Whitman


Pro-choice
Pro SS privatization &
free trade, Anti
minimum wage
Professional/selection bias of
reporters
 Professional Criteria for Newsworthiness

Drama, color, simplicity
Long Island News Experiment
 How to tell an “unemployment is increasing” story?


Framing
Causal
Iyengar and Kinder, Experimental demonstrations of the
“not-so-minimal” consequences of television news
programs, American Political Science Review, 1982
Systemic Explanations

National trend in increasing unemployment
Individual Explanations

unemployed auto
worker in Ohio
Framing (cont)
 What is the most important cause of poverty
 Systemic Framing viewers

78% say (the recession) or government and
society (references to Reagan’s policies)
 Individual Framing viewers

62% say motivation (laziness) or skills
Implications of Framing
 Individual frames encourage people to hold
individual responsible for the situation they
are in
 Systemic frames encourage people to hold
the public officials responsible.
Media Poor People
 CBS News


66% black, 34% non-black
15% working, 85% non working
-unemployed New
Orleans youth,
Newsweek
Real Poor People
 US Census


29% black, 71% non-black
51% work, 49% nonworking
Policy Consequences of
Selection Bias
 Media Poor- black and unemployed
 Real Poor- white and working
 Surveys 50% of all poor people are black
3 Potential Sources of Bias
 Ideological bias of reporters/editors
 Professional/selection bias of reporters
 Profit bias of corporate owners
Competition
 1960- 7 channels; today 500+

more ways to obtain news or avoid it.
 Changing demographics


24-hour-a-day cable news
viewers harder to attract
ABC TV/Radio,
ESPN, E!, Lifetime,
A&E, History,
Touchstone
NBC, CNBC,
MSNBC,
Telemundo, Bravo
Fox TV, SKY,
START, Weekly
Standard, Tech
Valley Guide, New
York Post
AOL, Warner Bros, Time
Warner Cable, TBS,
CNN, HBO, the WB,
Turner Broadcasting
CBS, MTV, BET, Showtime,
Infinity Radio,
Impact on News
 Shift in Business Model


Profitability > Reporting
Ratings driven
 FCC scraps “Public Service Requirement”
Declining Amount of News
 Government news stories on "ABC World
News Tonight" dropped from 40.2% of all
stories in 1977 to 15.9% in 1997
 In 1997, Time Magazine, ¼ the number of
government stories as in 1977
Less Coverage of Government
 Department of Veteran's Affairs, 2 reporters
 Interior Department, not 1 reporter
 Full time Wisconsin state government
reporters, 24 in 1972, 12 in 1996
Big Increase in Soft News
 consumer oriented - health, business, and
technology
 Why
“Spectacle Stories”
BTK: Out Of The Shadows
48 Hours
Dateline
Primetime Live
 Are Your Kids Fans of 'Ultimate
Fighting'?
48 Hours
 Bad Girls What would drive well-educated
suburban girls to become armed robbers? 48 Hours
looks at the case of four Texas teen-agers charged
after a robbery spree last year. (Dec. 28,
 Dead Men Tell No Tales Tommy Lynn Sells
claims he's killed scores of people over the past 18
years. And as 48 Hours reports, it was a 10-year-old
girl that helped bring him to justice.
Dateline
 Actor leading the fight for a cure for Parkinson’s
disease
 Conjoined twins Kathleen and Charity Lincoln
undergo a risky operation.
 Breaking away Follow four families as they
struggle to move out of the housing projects. Maria
Shriver reports in this Special Interactive
Documentary
Avg Time Devoted to 9 News Categories by local tv
disaster
9%
weather
8%
human interest
14%
sports
16%
state policy
9% national policy
7%
local policy
5%
local economy
4%
Happy talk
28%
Is Soft News Bad?
Soft News
The Next Leader of the Free World?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWpvk
LCvu4
 Will the internet revitalize democracy and
increase the voice of citizens in political
affairs? Why or why not? What are the
potential advantages and disadvantages
of this medium over traditional media
sources like television?
 Can the Internet improve our democratic
system and remove the problems of
media bias? How? In what ways could it
threaten or undermine our democratic
system?
Politics in Cyberspace
 Will new technologies revive democratic politics?




“Offer a means of reestablishing the connection between
voters and candidates” email, chat room
“dramatically change the quality of information readily
available to voters”, wide spectrum of political groups
CNN et al will develop multimedia sites devoted to
political coverage
More “unmediated sources of information”
Politics in Cyberspace
 Will new technologies revive democratic politics?




Will reduce the cost of political contributions .. Open the
electoral process to groups and candidates who have
traditionally been priced out of the political market
Voters will have more candidates to choose from
Will make it easier to participate via email
Easier to do fund raising
Politics in Cyberspace
 Concerns






Fair and equitable access, certain segments of the
electorate may be disadvantaged
Requires a high level of motivation
Rise of formal and informal neo-intermediaries
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/
Being an intelligent citizen
 Newspapers
 Magazines
 Commercial orientation of networks
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) aims to
organize a majority consituency of low- to moderate-income people across the
United States. The members of ACORN take on issues of relevance to their
communities, whether those issues are discrimination, affordable housing, a quality
education, or better public services. ACORN believes that low- to moderate-income
people are the best advocates for their communities, and so ACORN's low- to
moderate-income members act as leaders, spokespeople, and decision-makers within
the organization.
Media Power
Agenda Setting and Framing
 Agenda Setting- media don’t tell people what to
think, but what to think about. Public concerns
about issues is shaped by what the media covers
or not.
 Frames- “persistent patterns of cognition,
interetation, and presentation, of selection,
emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbolhandlers routinely organize discourse, whether
verbal or visual.” Gitlin


frame shape what or how people think.
Iraq is framed as part of war on terror.
Putting Acorn on the Public
Agenda
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mTx9FmgRM
 Figure 1
Agenda Setting p. 772
Media – Fair and Balanced?
 CNN p. 774
 National Newspapers- “competing truth claims”

“Ohio Republicans and Democrats traded
accusations today…” p. 776
 Local Newspapers- Minn. Star Tribune,
Cleveland Plain Dealer- use local sources to
create local narrative.
 Fact Checking

P. 777 5 potential fact check statements
 Time 9th top 10 scandals
 US News and World Report Acorn 4th in top
10
 Fox News- Acordn 2nd in 9 stories
mainstream media missed
 Glen Beck 1,224 mentions of ACORN, Al
Qaeda 50 times, Van Jones 267 times. Iraq
James Keefe- Pimp Acorn
Undercover Video