Chapter Six
The Media
People, Government and Communications
• The term mass media refers to the means
employed in mass communication, often
divided into print media and broadcast
media.
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The Development of the Mass Media
in the United States
• The growth of the country, technological
inventions, and shifting political attitudes
about the scope of government—as well
as trends in entertainment—have shaped
the development of the news media in the
United States.
• Those media types include newspapers,
magazines, radio, television and the
Internet.
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The Development of the Mass Media
in the United States (Cont’d)
• Magazines are most likely to influence
what are termed attentive policy elites—
leaders who follow news in specific policy
areas.
• The two-step flow of communication is
the process in which a few policy elites
gather information and then inform their
more numerous followers, mobilizing them
to apply pressure to government.
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Figure 6.1: Audiences of Selected
Media Sources
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CWW 6.1: Top Twenty-Five Nations in
Internet Penetration
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Private Ownership of the Media
• Most Americans would regard government
ownership of the media as an
unacceptable threat to freedom.
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Private Ownership of the Media (Cont’d)
• The consequences of private ownership of
both the print and broadcast media give
the news industry in America more political
freedom than any other in the world, but it
also makes the media more dependent on
advertising revenues to cover their costs
and make a profit.
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Private Ownership of the Media (Cont’d)
• Another consequence is that in terms of
sheer volume, the entertainment content
of mass media in the U.S. vastly
overshadows the news content.
• The primary criterion of a story’s
newsworthiness is the degree to which a
news story is important enough to be
covered in the mass media.
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Figure 6.2: Local Television News:
No News Is Happy News
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Private Ownership of the Media (Cont’d)
• Market-driven Journalism is defined as
reporting news and running commercials
geared to a target audience defined by
demographic characteristics.
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Private Ownership of the Media (Cont’d)
• Many networks succumb to
Infotainment—a mix of information and
diversion oriented to personalities or
celebrities, not linked to the day’s events,
and usually unrelated to public affairs or
policy; often called “soft news.”
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The Concentration of Private Ownership
• Media owners can make more money
either by increasing their audience or by
acquiring additional publications or
stations. There is a decided trend toward
concentrated ownership of the media,
increasing the risk that a few owners could
control the news flow to promote their own
political interests.
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The Concentration of Private Ownership
(Cont’d)
• At first glance, concentration of ownership
does not seem to be a problem in the
television industry because few networks
own their affiliates. However, chains
sometimes own television stations in
different cities, and ownership can extend
across different media.
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Government Regulation of the Media
• Technical and ownership regulations
include:
• The Federal Radio Act, which declared that
the public owned the airwaves and private
broadcasters could use them only by
obtaining a license from the Federal Radio
Commission.
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Technical and Ownership Regulations
• The Federal Communications
Commission which is an independent
federal agency that regulates interstate
and international communication by radio,
television, telephone, telegraph, cable and
satellite
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Technical and Ownership Regulations (Cont’d)
• The Telecommunications Act of 1996, which
• Relaxed or scrapped limitations on media ownership,
• Set no national limits for radio ownership and relaxed
local limits,
• Lifted regulations for cable systems and allowed
cross-ownership of cable and telephone companies,
and
• Allowed local and long-distance telephone companies
to compete with one another and to sell television
services.
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Reporting and Following the News
• Most journalists consider “news” as an
important event that has happened within
the past twenty-four hours.
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Reporting and Following the News (Cont’d)
• Five functions the mass media provide the
political system include:
•
•
•
•
•
Reporting the news
Interpreting the news
Influencing citizen’s opinions
Setting the agenda for government action
Socializing citizens about politics.
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Reporting and Following the News (Cont’d)
• Washington, D.C., has the largest press corps of
any city in the world, due to the number of
significant political events that occur there.
• White House correspondents rely heavily on
information they receive from the president’s
staff.
• Only about 400 reporters in the Washington
press corps cover Congress exclusively.
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Reporting and Following the News (Cont’d)
• Media executives, news editors and
prominent reporters function as
gatekeepers; they decide which events to
report and how to handle the elements in
those stories.
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Reporting and Following the News (Cont’d)
• During elections, election coverage by the
mass media focusing on which candidate
is ahead, rather than on national issues, is
termed horse race journalism.
• Candidates in elections often create
“newsworthy” situations to garner media
attention, termed a media event.
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Reporting and Following the News (Cont’d)
• In determining where the public gets its
news, television may not be as dominant a
news medium as it might seem if the
public’s specific sources of news are
accurately conveyed by them.
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Figure 6.3: Regular Use of News Media
by the Public
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Figure 6.4: Interest in the News
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Reporting and Following the News (Cont’d)
• 80% of the public read or hear the news
each day but do not absorb much of what
they saw or heard.
• This lends credence to the television
hypothesis: the belief that television is to
blame for the low level of citizen’s
knowledge about public affairs.
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The Political Effects of the Media
• Virtually all citizens rely upon the media for their
political news.
• Americans believe that the media exert a strong
influence on their political institutions and upon
public opinion, but because few of us learn
about political events except through the media,
it might be argued that the media create public
opinion simply by reporting events.
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The Political Effects of the Media (Cont’d)
• Most scholars believe the true media
influence on politics is in their ability to set
the agenda, or assimilating a list of issues
that people identify as needing
government attention.
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The Political Effects of the Media (Cont’d)
• Finally, the media act as important agents of
political socialization.
• This role is contradictory in nature, however,
because the media promote popular support for
government while eroding public confidence by
detailing less-than-successful political corruption
and television dramas about troubled police, for
example.
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Evaluating the Media in Government
• In attempting to determine if the media is
biased, the following facts are useful:
• Reporter Bias: 61% of reporters confess to
being “Democrat or liberal” while editors tend
to be more conservative
• The likelihood of a newspaper making a
candidate endorsement is closely related to
the size of its circulation
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Evaluating the Media in Government (Cont’d)
• A comparison of television news finds
more negative coverage of incumbents,
not an incumbent bias
• Whether media coverage of campaigns is
seen as pro-Democratic or pro-Republican
depends upon which party is in office at
the time.
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