Media Power, Media Politics

Media Power, Media Politics This Page Intentionally Left Blank Media Power, Media Politics Edited by Mark J. Rozel...

Author: Mark J. Rozell

955 downloads 4963 Views 18MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Media Power, Media Politics

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Media Power, Media Politics

Edited by Mark J. Rozell

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC

Lunham

Boulder

New York

Oxford

ROWMAN & LITTLEHELD PUBLISHERS. INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright 0 2003 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Media power, media politics / edited by Mark J. Rozell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7425-1157-X (cloth)-ISBN 0-7425-1 158-8 (paper) 1. Communication in politics. 2. Mass media-Political aspects. I. Rozell, Mark J. JA85 .M433,2003 320' .01'4-d~21 2002153221

BTM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48- 1992.

of Paper for Printed Library

Contents

vii

Preface

1

The Presidency and the News Media John Anthony Maltese

1

2 Congress and the Media

25

3 The Supreme Court and the Press

45

4 The Media and Civil Right and Liberties

75

5

97

Mark J. Rozell

Vincent James Strickler and Richard Davis

Barbara A. Perry

Bureaucracy and the Media Jan Vemeer

6 The Media in State and Local Politics

119

7

141

G. Patrick Lynch

Political Parties and the Media C. Danielle Vinson V

Contents

vi

8 Presidential Elections and the Media

159

Mary Stuckey

9 10

The Media and Interest Groups in the United States Ronald G. Shaiko

181

The Media and Public Opinion Stephen K . Medvic and David A. Dulio

207

11 Global Media and Foreign Policy

235

Maryann Cusimano Love

12

Media Impact Louis Klarevas

265

13

The New Media Jeremy D. Mayer and Michael Cornjeld

297

14

Media Ethics and Political Communication Dan Stout

319

Index

337

Preface

T h e chapters that follow provide a traditional American Government textbook framework for understanding the role of the media in U.S. politics. Chapters analyze the relationship between the media and key institutions, political actors, and nongovernmental entities, as well as the role of the new media, media ethics, and foreign policy coverage. Why study the intersection of the media and politics? The media are a pervasive influence in American society and politics. The study of modern American politics thus requires an examination of the role of the media in legitimizing issues, framing debates, and even altering outcomes. Many journalists insist that their role is not to influence the political process, but merely to report events. Few any longer truly believe that the media are such neutral actors. Indeed, the study of media politics in the past generation has proliferated tremendously. In the political science profession, as recently as the 1970s and 1980s a relatively few prominent scholars, led by Michael J. Robinson, pointed others in the direction of coming to terms with the political influence of the U.S. media. Today there are hundreds of scholars in the discipline and in the fields of communications and mass media studies devoting their research efforts to understanding the impact of the media in politics. Journalists too have turned a critical eye toward understanding their profession’s impact in the political realm. There are public affairs television shows devoted solely to analyzing the role of journalists in vii

viii

Preface

covering political events. Many prominent reporters have written books analyzing the impact of journalism on presidential campaigns, on the politics of the White House, and on congressional activities. Many large city newspapers, such as the Washington Post, have regular columns devoted to analyzing the media. Numerous media “watchdog” groups also have developed in response to the growing impact of the media in politics. Many of these groups have political agendas and seek to neutralize the impact of the media on key issues. The conservative Accuracy in Media perceives the mainstream press as heavily tilted toward liberalism. The left leaning Fairness and Accuracy in Media sees a national press too heavily tilted toward the interests of corporate America. They are just two of the many organizations that watch the media. Public figures routinely take on the media, oftentimes to protest perceptions of inaccurate or biased coverage. In some cases the role of the media becomes a key issue in a campaign, as in 1992 when former President George H. W. Bush’s most popular campaign bumper sticker said, “Annoy the Media. Reelect Bush.” Political leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, complain of unfair coverage and criticize the media in an attempt to gain public sympathy and support. Criticism of the media seems to have worked. Opinion polls show that the journalism profession today is generally held in low regard. As public trust in political institutions declined in the 1980s and 1990s, so did support for the media. Public trust in political institutions has increased in the past year, though the media have not enjoyed a similar surge of support. Why have the media lost the public trust? There are various explanations that scholars and media observers have offered. One is that the media have become too intrusive and obsessed with the sensational, as evidenced by such cases as the saturation coverage of the Clinton scandal in 1998-1999, or of the extramarital conduct of presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1988. Second, some suggest that media coverage tilts toward the trivial, especially in campaign politics, and emphasizes such events as candidate pratfalls and misstatements while ignoring key issues. Third, as many journalists have moved from straight reporting to also analyzing the news, the public perceives them as just another set of self-interested players

Preface

ix

in the political game. Fourth, some observers suggest that the rise of “celebrity journalism,” which is characterized by certain prominent reporters commanding large public speaking fees, has made the profession appear as tainted by money and conflicts of interest as the political world. Despite these criticisms, there is undoubtedly much to praise about the U S . media and their handling of campaign and institutional coverage. Whereas the public perception is that the media are in decline, some scholars see contemporary political journalism as more professionally oriented and complete in its coverage of key events than ever before. The media received generally high marks, for example, for their crisis coverage during and the first days after the September 11,2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. A number of commissions, think tanks, and university studies have addressed the issue of improving the practice of journalism and enhancing public trust in the profession. Understanding the role of the media in U.S. politics is surely a first and necessary step in that process.

M. J. R. Washington, D.C.


1 The Presidency and the News Media john Anthony Maltese

O n e of the most important changes of the modern presidency is the degree to which presidents now engage in ongoing attempts to direct public opinion. This practice of “going public”’ has been institutionalized through the creation of a number of White House staff units designed to implement the tactic. This is but one part of a tremendous growth of presidential staff that took place in the 20th century. That growth reflected the emergence of a White House-centered system of government and a complex bureaucratic state. As Lester Seligman wrote in the 1950s, the growth of staff “altered the behavior of the president in all signijkant aspects.” Presidential leadership, he added, was no longer “a solo performance, but part of a continuing line of executive action.”2 Congress was largely responsible for the emergence of the modern presidency. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 required the president to submit a budget for the whole of government every year and created the Bureau of the Budget to help him with that task. As James Sundquist has written, this made the president a policy initiator and manager, whether he wanted to be or not.3 Soon, presidents were using the Bureau of the Budget as a central clearinghouse of legislative proposals -a means of asserting their own judgments, choices, and priorities in molding a legislative package, rather than deferring to those of individual departments and agencies in the Executive Branch! In the 1950s, President Dwight D. 1

2

John Anthony Maltese

Eisenhower created the Congressional Relations Office as a tool to lobby members of Congress and secure the passage of legislation that the president had proposed. By the 1990s, an array of staff units designed to coordinate the flow of information from the Executive Branch and to rally public support for presidential policies was firmly entrenched. Together, these staff units have had a significant impact on the president’s relationship with the media. COMMUNICATIONS STAFF

Several staff units within the White House play a direct role in communications. The most prominent of these are the White House Press Office and the White House Office of Communications. Of the two, the White House Press Office is the most well-known. Formally created by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the Press Office was an institutional response to the need to coordinate relations with White House reporter^.^ Under the direction of the White House press secretary, the Press Office (which now consists of about twenty people) disseminates the news of the day and responds to reporters’ queries. Located downstairs in the West Wing of the White House, the Press Office is largely reactive and caters to Washington-based reporters who frequent its domain? The most visible part of the Press Office is the Briefing Room, where the press secretary meets with reporters at regular intervals (usually two daily briefings). An informal morning briefing (called the “gaggle”) takes place without the intrusion of cameras, but the afternoon briefing is now televised on C-SPAN, with transcripts and audio available at the White House website (http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/briefings/). Junior Press Office staff have space next to the Briefing Room, and George W. Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was located just down the hall from the Oval O f f i ~ e . ~ The White House Office of Communicationsis less famous than the Press Office. Created by Richard Nixon in 1969, the Office of Communications was an institutional response to the need to coordinate the flow of news from the entire Executive Branch and to communicate more directly with the American people through the use of

The Presidency and the News Media

3

town meetings, local media outlets, and other forms of direct appeal. Its creation was a clear embrace of the tactic of “going public.” Housed upstairs in the West Wing by George W. Bush, it is more proactively concerned with building public support for particular policy initiatives than the Press Office, and more concerned with long-range communications planning and the coordination of the line of the day among a wide range of presidential surrogates both in and out of the Executive Branch. Originally, it was also designed to serve as a liaison with local media-a function that now belongs to the office of Media Liaison (which also arranges newspaper, radio, and television interviews with administration officials and other proadministration surrogates). Indeed, the precise structure and functions of the Office of Communications have changed from one presidential administration to the next. In the Bush administration, the Office of Communications “oversees message and communications development and planning, and works with the Advance office on planning and production of presidential events.”*A number of other staff units work with (and sometimes under the jurisdiction of) the Office of Communications. These have included the Speechwriting Office (which writes the president’s speeches), the News Analysis Office (which dissects how the media are covering the White House), the Office of Foreign Affairs (which serves as a liaison with foreign media), as well as the Office of Media Liaison? Some administrations (such as Bill Clinton’s) have also had offices of Research, Planning, and Policy Coordination that were usually supervised by the Office of Communications. In addition, several staff units that serve as liaison with specific constituencies also play an important role in communicating the president’s agenda and building support for his policies. These include staff units designed to build support for presidential initiatives on Capitol Hill (the Office of Congressional Relations), among interest groups (the Office of Public Liaison), and among members of the president’s own political party (the Office of Political Affairs). George W. Bush appointed Dan Bartlett as communications director on October 2,2001. In that post, Bartlett continued to serve as principal deputy to Karen Hughes, counselor to the president, who supervised a wide array of communications-related operations

4


in the White House, including the Office of Communications, the Office of Media Liaison, and the Speechwriting Office.1o Carl Rove, Bush’s senior adviser for strategic initiatives, also worked closely with Hughes and Bartlett, and oversaw the Office of Public Liaison. Rounding out Bush’s communications team was Mary Matalin, assistant to the president and counselor for the vice president, who served as the senior communications adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. All had offices upstairs in the West Wing. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11,2001, and the ensuing U.S. war on terrorism, the Bush administration also created a special 24-hour communications operation called the Coalition Information Center (CIC). Directed by James Wilkinson (and falling under the broader supervision of Karen Hughes), the CIC was established as part of an effort to build public support abroad for the war on terrorism-especially among Muslims in the Middle East. Such attempts to “go international” are not new.” One of the first presidents to use such a tactic in a systematic way was Ronald Reagan, who used his Office of Communications as a tool to build public support in western Europe for the U.S. decision to deploy nuclear weapons there.12 Bush’s CIC, though, is the most extensive operation of its kind, and one that reflects the ongoing need for rapid response to breaking news around the world. As Wilkinson explained: “This is the first war that has a never-ending news cycle. It may be 3 o’clock in the morning in the United States, but somewhere in the world, a journalist is on deadline. A 24-hour news cycle required the coalition to set up a 24-hour operation to communicate the facts.”13 Wilkinson’s team (a staff of some two dozen) was housed in the spacious Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. From there, Wilkinson coordinated daily press briefings at CIC offices around the world (including in London, Islamabad, and Kabul), booked interviews of U.S. officials and other proadministration surrogates on international media (ranging from the BBC to A1 Jazeera, the Arabic language satellite television network), countered “misinformation” spread by opponents of the U.S., coordinated a global line of the day, and generated photo opportunities and long-range plans to build support for U.S. pol-


5

icy. For example, the CIC waged a campaign to focus worldwide attention on how the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had repressed women. The CIC used speeches by First Lady Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, wife of the British prime minister, to highlight the issue.14 It also led efforts to portray Osama bin Laden as a “false prophet” and to distance him from the Islamic faith.15At the same time, the CIC reached out to Muslims and took actions to highlight U.S. sensitivity to Islamic tradition. It scheduled a meeting between President Bush and ambassadors from 53 Muslim countries in the East Room of the White House in honor of the holy month of Ramadan. There, the guests knelt and touched their foreheads to the floor in prayer. The president then hosted an Iftar dinner (a breaking of the dawn-to-dusk fast observed daily by Muslims during Ramadan) in the State Dining Room. The CIC also arranged for a Muslim, Yahya Hendi, to give the opening prayer at the U.S. House of Representatives, and then distributed videotapes of the prayer (in both English and Arabic) around the world. It even worked with the U.S. State Department in the printing and distribution of thousands of copies of a series of posters, “Mosques of America.”16 Wilkinson said that the operation would continue “as long as there’s a war.’717 The many White House staff units discussed above actually represent only a small fraction of the overall communications staff of the Executive Branch. Cabinet departments and Executive Branch agencies and bureaus all have their own communications staff .18 This includes both press officers and other communications strategists. News about the U.S. war on terrorism, for example, came not only from White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, CIC director Wilkinson , and other White House communications staffers such as Mary Matalin, but from spokespersons in such departments as State, Defense, and Justice. Some, such as Charlotte Beers, the undersecretary of state for public relations in the State Department, worked closely with the White House in its public relations war on terrori~rn.’~ Among other things, she spearheaded the “Rewards for Justice” campaign-a series of ads run in the United States and the Middle East that offered to pay rewards up to $25 million for information leading to the arrest of terrorists?O

6


MULTIPLE STAFF AND THE PROBLEM OF CONFLICTING MESSAGES

With so many staff units involved in communicating the president’s message, tensions sometimes arise. At times, the interests or agendas of the White House may be at odds with those of a particular department or agency in the Executive Branch. For example, tensions arose during the Nixon administration between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the White House over how to portray crime statistics. The FBI was eager to stress the negative-that the national crime rate was up-in order to increase its chances of getting more money from Congress to fight crime. The White House, on the other hand, wanted to show that it was achieving success in its “War on Crime” by downplaying the fact that the national crime rate was up and emphasizing the fact that violent crime had actually decreased?l One of the reasons that President Nixon created the Office of Communications was to ensure that Executive Branch entities toed the White House line. Nixon was suspicious of career bureaucrats, many of whom were then Democrats. As a Republican, Nixon feared that bureaucrats would thwart his policies through obstruction and negative publicity. In the end, Nixon’s Ofice of Communications convinced the FBI to back down on the issue of how to portray crime statistics, but there are limits to how successfully the White House can manage the flow of news from the rest of the Executive Branch. As the Monica Lewinsky scandal unfolded in the Clinton administration, the public statements of FBI director Louis Freeh conflicted with those of the White House. Attorney General Janet Reno also distanced herself from White House communications strategies concerning Lewinsky. Her interest in maintaining the legitimacy of the Department of Justice required a different communications strategy than one designed to keep Bill Clinton in office. Similarly, the Lewinsky affair led to conflicting communications advice from within the White House itself. The president’s legal advisers in the Office of White House Counsel urged the president to remain silent about the issue, while his political advisers urged him to speak out. Conflicts can also emerge because of turf wars. This was a particular problem for Bill Clinton because of his proclivity to set up


7

ad hoc communications units within the White House and to rely on the advice of a wide array of different advisers both in and out of the administration. With so many different individuals and staff units sharing similar functions, personality splits, policy differences, and other self-interested motivations pulled at the fabric of a seamless communications strategy. In Clinton’s first term, splits within the White House between New Democrats and Old Guard Democrats were legionF2 In the communications arena, this led to bitter disagreements and mutual suspicion between the likes of David Gergen (a former speechwriter for President Nixon, and director of communications for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan) and George Stephanopoulos (Clinton’s first communications director, who became senior adviser to the president for policy and strategy when Gergen arrived). Gergen’s appointment as counselor to the president for communications in May 1993 stunned some Clinton advisers, who wondered how a longtime Republican strategist would fit into a Democratic administration. The White House chief of staff often plays an important role in overseeing and coordinating communications strategy. Some do so very directly, as did Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta. Others delegate some of the responsibility to colleagues, as did another Clinton chief of staff, Erskine Bowles (who put his deputy, John Podesta, in charge of communications oversight)F3 Bush chief of staff Andrew Card also delegated much of the direct communications oversight, to Karen Hughes. The management styles of individual presidents and their chiefs of staff can have a significant influence on any given administration’s communications strategy. Bush’s communications operation is more tightly organized and disciplined than Clinton’s was in his first term, with an emphasis on such things as a dress code and punctuality. Communications staff, who are part of the president’s coterie of personal political advisers, serve at the whim of individual presidents. There is all but complete turnover of staff between presidential administrations (especially when control of the White House shifts from one political party to another), and there is often significant turnover of staff even within administrations.A potentially dangerous by-product of this turnover is that communications staff (especially at the beginning of a new

8


president’s term of office) can sometimes have little or no institutional memory. Such inexperience badly hurt Bill Clinton’s communications operation in the early part of his first term-a pitfall that Bush managed to avoid. CLINTON AND THE PRESS: LESSONS FROM A HONEYMOON GONE AWRY

Problems of arrogance and inexperience on the part of White House staff badly damaged President Clinton’s relations with the White House press corps in the early days of his first term. Wounds inflicted during that period never fully healed. When Clinton took office in January 1993, his press secretary was Dee Dee Myers and his director of communications was George Stephanopoulos . Myers and the Press Office then fell under the jurisdiction of Stephanopou10s and the Office of Communications. Initially, Stephanopoulos and Myers shared the responsibility for briefing reporters. Some reporters complained that not only had the press secretary post been downgraded as a result of the shared briefing responsibilities, but that Myers seemed to be out of the loop and therefore unable to answer questions to their satisfaction. At the same time, they perceived Stephanopoulos as aloof and unresponsive to their needs. As we have seen, the press secretary serves as a liaison with a stable group of veteran reporters who cover the White House. These reporters are responsible for most of the stories about the White House that go out on the wire services and appear in the major newspapers and on network and cable television news shows. In short, they play a major role in setting the tone of White House news coverage. One reason President Nixon was eager to create an Office of Communications was to bypass these veteran reporters, who he felt were hostile toward him. Local media, Nixon believed, were more conservative than the national media, and thus more receptive to his policies. Moreover, he was eager to exploit ways of communicating information directly to the people without having it filtered by the critical lens of the White House press corps. Television, radio, the use of surrogate speakers appearing in local communities, and the adroit use


9

of White House sponsored op-ed pieces were all part of this strategy as used by Nixon’s Office of Communications and its de~cendants.2~ But, despite the importance of circumventing the press corps on some Occasions, it is also important for the White House to maintain a good working relationship with them. In its early days, at least, the Clinton administration did not do that. Both substantively and symbolically, Clinton began his first term by turning a cold shoulder to the White House press corps. In the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton had very effectively followed a strategy of “narrowcasting”-using media outlets like MTV, the Arsenio Hull Show, and Don Imus’s radio talk show to transmit direct, targeted messages to particular constituenciesF5 Clinton’s communications advisers felt that the rise of the “New Media” (the Internet, cable, satellite technology, and the like) provided an unparalleled opportunity for direct communication between the White House and the American people. Sidney Blumenthal, who later joined the Clinton White House as a communications strategist, touted the possibilities of unmediated communication in an article in the New Yorker magazine. The “Old Media” (such as the bigthree network news shows) were “anachronistic,” he wrote, and were “no more likely to return than are the big bands.”26 Thus, the Clinton White House focused its energy and attention on the New Media as part of a strategy of avoiding the critical filter of the Old Media. In the process, Clinton turned a cold shoulder to the White House press corps. During his first two months in office, he did not even hold a full-scale press conference for them. He did, however, hold some 25 sessions with representatives of local media as part of an effort to target messages to specific media marketsF7 First Lady Hillary Clinton followed a similar strategy. By mid-April of 1993, she had granted interviews to 19 local television anchors, but had granted only three interviews to members of the White House press corpsF8Ann Compton of ABC News said that of the five presidents that she had covered until then, Clinton was the only one who “did everything in his power to go around, under, and away from the White House press There were other differences, too. Tom Rosenstiel has noted that when Clinton took office, the West Wing of the White House was

10


transformed overnight from a place where President George Herbert Walker Bush had enforced a dress code (men had to wear ties, women skirts) to a place with a more youthful view of anything goes. Rosenstiel described the new director of Satellite Services, 23-year-old David Anderson, as a young man with spiked hair who wore all black and had not yet finished college (he was working at night after work to finish up his degree at Oberlin). The director of Radio Operations, Richard Strauss, was also 23, and also finishing up his degree (at UCLA) at night by correspondence. According to Rosenstiel, 63 of the roughly 450 full-time White House staffers were under the age of 24. George Stephanopoulos had reached the ripe old age of 32. Veteran White House reporters experienced a generation gap. The then 63year-old David Broder of the Washington Post was quoted by Rosenstiel as saying that covering the new Clinton White House was “like coming home and finding that your kids got into the liquor cabinet.”3o But, most importantly, the extent to which the Clinton White House wanted to control the news and keep veteran reporters at bay stunned the press corps. One of Stephanopoulos’s first decisions was to close off access to the upstairs foyer in the West Wing where he and Press Secretary Myers had their offices. For more than 20 years, reporters had been free to wander that foyer in search of news. They could chat informally with communications officials or poke their head into the press secretary’s office to get a quick answer to a question. It was a clear sign that reporters and officials were on an equal playing field. Now, as Ann Compton put it, the foyer was a “no-fly zone,” symbolizing the hierarchical relationship between reporters and officials?1 In the new arrangement, reporters complained that they had to wait to be spoon-fed. Some complained that phone calls from downstairs were not returned in time for reporters to meet their deadlines?* The press corps reacted with fury. Stephanopoulos, who seemed surprised by the reaction, refused to rescind his decision to shut off the upstairs foyer. He did try to increase access elsewhere, however. He assigned two communications staffers to the lower pressroom on a permanent basis to handle reporters’ queries.33He also added an extra press briefing each day?4 But the measures did nothing to calm the irate press corps. They had lost their space and, with it, a kind of access that was irreplaceable. In turn, the White House lost


11

the goodwill of reporters. “Put it this way,” said Karen Hosler, Washington correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and president of the White House Correspondents Association: “We’re not going to cut them any breaks.”35 Stephanopoulos, the darling of the media during the 1992 presidential campaign, now received a steady stream of negative press. “Arrogant,” the media called him.36His relations with reporters at daily briefings soured noticeably. He earned a reputation for evading questions and withholding informati0n.3~In the American Journalism Review, Leslie Kaufman wrote that during briefings the press corps showed “a snickering impudence” toward Stephanopoulos that they had rarely directed toward George H. W. Bush’s press secretary, Marlin F i t ~ w a t e r . ~ ~ What the Clinton team failed to recognize in this critical “honeymoon” period was the extent to which the Old Media still mattered. Despite all the new avenues of communication created by technological advancements, a 1998 Gallup Poll showed that most Americans still relied on the Old Media as their primary source of news. Most importantly,Americans continued to trust the Old Media more than the New?9 Far from being the anachronism that Blumenthal had predicted it would become, the Old Media continued to play an important gatekeeping role for most Americans. In the new environment, narrowcasting and circumvention of the White House press corps had their place-but so did the long-standing symbiotic relationship between the White House and the Old Media. The relationship only worked if the White House courted the press corps and fed it information, rather than snubbing it. Television news coverage of Clinton was decidedly negative during his first 100 days in office: 60 percent negative according to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (compared to only 39 percent negative coverage of George H. W. Bush during his first 100 days, in 1989).@Public opinion polls taken during that period were also troubling. Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg found that 70 percent of the American people rated Clinton in the fair to poor categories, while only 28 percent chose the excellent or good categories?1 In response to such problems, the White House thoroughly revamped its communications operation. After only five months in his job, Stephanopoulos was “promoted” to senior adviser to the president for

12


policy and strategy, and was replaced as communications director by Mark Gearan. David Gergen became counselor to the president in charge of all White House communications operations. Gergen quickly set out to establish good relations with the press corps. He reopened the upstairs foyer that Stephanopoulos had shut off to reporters, quickly arranged for the president to hold a press conference, and started making arrangements for the president to meet informally with members of the press corps for dinner. He saw to it that Press Secretary Myers was included on a more regular basis in senior staff meetings so that she could answer questions more knowledgeably than she had previously been able to, and also made sure that reporters’ calls were returned before deadline and that the communications staff treated the press corps politely and with respect.“* Gergen also gave backgrounders on a regular basis to reporters and established a good working relationship with them. In July 1993, a month after Gergen took over, network news coverage was 40 percent positive (up from 27 percent in May)?3 Within the White House, though, serious rifts had emerged. Many White House staffers were suspicious of Gergen, who had served so many Republican presidents. White House chief of staff Mack McLarty, who had orchestrated the changes, also came under suspicion. Gergen attempted to mend fences with reporters by speaking openly about what he viewed as problems in the Clinton White House. As Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz has written, Gergen would “privately agree with reporters that the place was screwed up, that Clinton had glaring weaknesses-and then use the credibility of these confessions to make some positive point about the president.’”14While this was popular with reporters, it exacerbated tensions within the White House. Partly because of these tensions, Gergen could not get the White House to fashion a consistent media message. He was eager for the president to fashion a more conservative,centrist agenda, while Stephanopoulosand others argued for a more liberal one. Compounding the problem was Chief of Staff McLarty’s failure to take hold of the reins and deal directly with the conflicting camps. He was perceived as a weak leader, and given his corporate background in Arkansas, had had little experience either with either Washington or politics before becoming chief of staff. By October 1993, news


13

stories openly questioned McLarty ’s authority. Ann Devroy wrote in the Washington Post that McLarty had “maintained an unusually low-key role in the past several months, and there have been few public indications that he plays a substantive role in policy-making or communications. . . . [I]f he has a central role in the White House, it has not been visible.”45 Then, publication of Bob Woodward’s book, The Agenda, in June 1994 portrayed White House staffers as inexperienced and largely out of control. That was the last straw. McLarty was out by the end of the month, replaced by Leon Panetta. Panetta brought leadership to the chief of staff position, and he did much to bring discipline to the Clinton communications operation. He immediately began efforts to get rid of Press Secretary Myers. Initially, Clinton overruled Panetta, but Myers announced her resignation in December 1994, after the previous month’s disastrous midterm elections, in which Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress. Clinton replaced her with State Department spokesman Mike McCurry. David Gergen had already been forced out and, in August 1995, Don Baer (previously the head of the Speechwriting Office) replaced Mark Gearan as director of communications. Chastened by the midterm election results, facing some of the lowest public approval ratings of his presidency (as low as 39 percent in September 1994), and gearing up for his own reelection bid in 1996, Clinton became more disciplined in his dealings with the press. Throughout his first two years in office, Clinton had often treated reporters with contempt. Like Richard Nixon before him, Clinton felt that the press were conspiring to undo him. Howard Kurtz has written that Clinton’s staff felt that if he had an Achilles’ heel, “it was his tendency to go off half-cocked about the press.”46 Sometimes unable to control his temper in front of reporters who antagonized him, Clinton had further damaged his relationship with the press corps and fostered the image that he was petty. Out of necessity, Clinton tried to repair the damage after the 1994 midterm elections. He asked the press corps for their forgiveness. He opened up to them at informal bagel breakfasts, cultivated ties with influential opinion makers like E. J. Dionne, and scrupulously practiced his answers to questions in formal sessions with his staff before any encounter with reporters. Known as “pre-briefs ,” these

14


sessions helped to focus the president’s responses, but some said that they were also designed to limit his public displays of anger by allowing him to vent to his aides in ~ r i v a t e . 4The ~ efforts finally seemed to work. By the time Clinton won reelection in 1996, he presided over a well-oiled spin machine and enjoyed high public approval ratings. Much of his second term, though, was consumed by the Monica Lewinsky affair!* FACTORS THAT UNDERMINE THE PRESIDENT’S COMMUNICATIONS AGENDA

George W. Bush learned from Clinton’s mistakes and instituted a highly disciplined communications operation. Many of those in his administration had a great deal of experience working with the press. This was particularly true of Vice President Dick Cheney, who had served in three previous administrations, including stints as White House chief of staff (for President Ford) and secretary of defense (for the first President Bush). Cheney explained to me in 1989 that it is essential for the White House to manage the news. “That means that about half the time the White House press corps is going to be pissed off,’’ he admitted, “and that’s all right. You’re not there to please them. You’re there to run an effective presidency. And to do that, you have to be disciplined in what you convey to the country. The most powerful tool you have is the ability to use the symbolic aspects of the presidency to promote your goals and objectives.” That means the White House must control the agenda. “You don’t let the press set the agenda,” Cheney insisted. “They like to decide what’s important and what isn’t important. But if you let them do that, they’re going to trash your p r e ~ i d e n c y . ” ~ ~ In the first 100 days of the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney played an important role as an administration spokesperson on the television talk shows. He also gave weekly interviews to selected media commentators outside of W a ~ h i n g t o n .Cheney ~~ wielded unprecedented power behind the scenes, as well, playing a major role in both domestic and foreign policy?’ In contrast to President Clinton in his treatment of Dee Dee Myers, President Bush


15

made an effort to demonstrate Press Secretary Fleischer’s access and status, giving him a large office on the first floor of the West Wing (just down the hall from the Oval Office). Upstairs, Karen Hughes presided over Bush’s overall communications operation. Bush reinstated his father’s dress code, and insisted upon a highly efficient staff. But the controversial outcome of the 2000 presidential election, a narrowly divided Congress, and initially tepid public approval ratings (including, at 25 percent, the highest disapproval rating of any incoming president since Gallup polling began) undercut the president’s communications agenda. A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs showed that television news coverage of Bush during his first 100 days was only slightly more positive than it had been for Clinton (43percent positive for Bush, as opposed to 40 percent positive for Clinton, and 61 percent positive for George H. W. Bush)?* Negative coverage seemed to increase in the summer of 2001, after Republicans lost control of the Senate. Even fellow Republicans began to express concern about the admini~tration?~ A Gallup Poll conducted September 7-10, 2001, showed Bush’s approval ratings at a new low: 51 percent. Not until the galvanizing events of September 11,2001, did Bush’s stature This serves as a reminder that even an efficient, experienced, wellorganized communications operation does not guarantee good media coverage. White House efforts to manipulate the media are only half the story.Although such efforts are well documented,the actual effects of those efforts are not. The studies that do exist suggest that results of the president’s attempts to influence media coverage are, at best, m i ~ e d . 5Some ~ of this is related to the media’s incentive structure: they are driven by a desire to increase ratings and boost profits. Among the stories that sell best are ones focusing on scandal and conflict. The result has been a proliferation of “gotcha” journalism and a proclivity to~ ~ has wards what Larry Sabato has dubbed “feeding f r e n z i e ~ . ”This helped to increase negative stories about the president. In addition to this tendency toward “attack journalism,” the media are often guilty of substituting style for substance. Stories are framed as simple dramatic narratives with clear winners and losers. Less attention is focused on policy details than whether the president “won” or “lost” the last “battle” with Congress. The trend is especially apparent in television

16


news, where stories are often superficial and their pacing seems to be influenced by the assumption that viewers have short attention spans. By 1996, an average presidential sound bite on a network news story lasted only seven seconds (down from 42 seconds in 1968).57 Confronted with such obstacles, presidents have sought ways to communicate more directly with the American people. Presidential travel has increased dramatically since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Such travel reflects the “permanent campaign” now waged by presidents for public support?* Presidents use it to make targeted speeches to local constituencies, but garnering local media coverage is also an important part of such trips. For example, the Video Monitoring Service reported that a single speech by President Bush at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida on February 4,2002, generated some 86 television news reports in seven different broadcast markets in the state (not to mention additional coverage in neighboring state^)?^ Bush crisscrossed the country after his 2002 State of the Union address to tout his policies, just as he had after his first address to a joint session of Congress in February 2001 The New Media can also be used to target presidential appeals to specific constituencies, but presidents have no monopoly on such venues. The Clinton administration learned the hard way that its opponents could also use the New Media to spread charges of presidential scandal and ineptitude. Talk radio is a good example. Clinton used it very effectively in the 1992 presidential campaign to target messages to particular audiences. But, when Clinton was president, talk radio came back to haunt him. By 1997, news/talk was the most popular radio format in the United States, carried by 1,330 commercial radio stations (up from 308 in 1989).6l The 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine spurred the growth, and conservative shows came to dominate the airwaves. During Clinton’s presidency, they became a powerful tool for criticizing the administration. Some, including the mainstream media, blamed talk radio for helping to mobilize the opposition that ultimately doomed Clinton’s nomination of Zoe Baird to be U.S. attorney general in 1993.62 Democrats blamed talk radio for contributing to their disastrous showing in the 1994 midterm elections, when they lost control of both houses of Congress to the Rep~blicans.6~ President Clinton


17

publicly suggested in 1995 that conservative talk radio had fanned the flames of societal unrest that led to the Oklahoma City bombing.@And Hillary Clinton dismissed the Monica Lewinsky story in early 1998 as part of a “right-wing conspiracy,” of which talk radio was supposedly a ~ a r t . 6 ~ At the same time, the New Media were changing some of the norms of the Old Media in a way that also hurt the White House. For example, the Internet altered the way that the Old Media responded to breaking news stories. For years, the Old Media had served not only as a filter of White House news, but as a more general gatekeeper of other news. With the Internet, however, virtually anyone could post a story. Not only did the “Drudge Report” on the Internet break the story that President Clinton had had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, but the Internet came to shape the way the media covered the scandal. Most major media outlets had followed an unwritten rule that they would not use their website to break a story.& Instead, websites contained information that had already been reported in other venues. This changed with the Lewinsky scandal. As competing news organizations struggled to stay one step ahead of the competition, websites became important. The first mainstream coverage of the Lewinsky scandal appeared on the Washington Post’s website, prompting Newsweek to follow suit on theirs. In the drive to scoop the competition, errors were made. The Dallas Morning Herald, for example, posted an erroneous story on its website that a Secret Service agent was an eyewitness to a presidential tryst. The editors subsequently pulled the story, but not before other news outlets, such as ABC, had reported Such situations prompted CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield to worry about what he called an “echo effect”-news organizations picking up and repeating without independent corroboration a story from a single source. Regardless of the story’s reliability, the simple act of repetition by different news venues made the story more credible$* Around-the-clock cable news networks also contributed to the breakdown of the traditional news cycle. Bush’s Coalition Information Center, discussed above, was a response to that phenomenon. The need to fill airtime and the tendency of news networks to rely on “talking heads” to discuss the news has reinforced the echo effect.

18


Fox News and MSNBC, in particular, relied heavily on talk shows when they joined the cable news lineup in 1996. Both recognized that talk shows were cheap and easy to produce. The proliferation of talk shows helped lead to saturation coverage of the Lewinsky scandal.69The story seemed to be “All Monica All the Time,” with pundits endlessly repeating and analyzing the story-even if they had no particular expertise in the matter?O MSNBC created a nightly show called “The White House in Crisis” to discuss the scandal-even when there was nothing new to discuss. Cable, in general, has also undermined the ability of presidents to manipulate the media. Political scientists Matthew A. Baum and Samuel Kernel1 have argued that cable has taken away a president’s ability to dominate the airwaves with a press conference or an Oval Office speech. Those who were forced to watch a presidential speech or nothing at all in the pre-cable era now have dozens of channels of alternative programming to switch to. Keenly aware of the competition and concerned about their own ratings, the networks are increasingly reluctant to relinquish airtime to the president? CONCLUSIONS

What conclusions can we draw from all of this? First, it seems clear that presidents must balance their desire to circumvent elite reporters with a recognition that such reporters are important. Despite Sidney Blumenthal’s 1993 prediction that the White House press corps and the three network news shows were “anachronistic” and were “no more likely to return than are the big bands,” it is telling that President Clinton left office in the midst of a swing dancing rage and with a renewed appreciation for the value of the Old Media. President Bush seemed to recognize this when he came to office in 2001. He carefully cultivated his relationship with the press corps, while at the same time taking full advantage of the opportunities for narrowcasting and circumvention provided by the New Media and other avenues of direct communication. In contrast, Clinton squandered good relations with the media during his first year. Arrogance, inexperience, lack of clarity about his agenda, and


19

internal conflict were rampant in his administration. Clinton should have been able to forge a close working bond with the White House press corps, yet he and his staff so alienated them that a rift continued throughout his presidency. Second, it is clear that presidents must be disciplined in fashioning and communicating their message. Here again, Bush learned from Clinton’s mistakes. He not only presided over a very disciplined staff, but followed Ronald Reagan’s example by planning a simple, clear-cut legislative agenda for his first 100 days in office. He focused on a short list of priorities that included education reform, faith-based initiatives, tax cuts, and military preparedness, and centered his communications agenda on those priorities?2 After the terrorist attacks of September 11,200 1, he sought to convey a disciplined message about the war on terrorism not only through normal White House communications structures, but also through the creation of the Coalition Information Center. Finally, it is clear that the overall presidential-press relationship is changing, largely as a result of the New Media. While seemingly giving the president unparalleled opportunities for communicating his message, the New Media may actually undermine the president’s ability to manipulate the media. It has undercut the gatekeeping role of the Old Media by allowing virtually anyone to post information, sped up the pace with which news is reported, contributed to saturation coverage of high-visibility stories, and diminished the ability of the president to dominate the airwaves. In the process, “going public”-a once potent tool in the arsenal of presidential power- has been diluted. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 . What is “going public”? How does the White House Office of Communications promote that tactic? How is the Office of Communications different from the White House Press Office? 2. How has a 24-hour news cycle affected the way the White House handles the media? Explain how the “Coalition Information

20


Center” was an attempt to adapt to the never-ending news cycle created by the New Media. 3. What missteps did the Clinton administration arguably make in its early dealings with the media? How did the Clinton administration’s handling of the media change over the course of his administration? 4. Did George W. Bush learn from Clinton’s media missteps? If so, how? What did he change or “fix”? 5. What is the New Media, and how has it altered the way news is communicated? Does the New Media help or hurt presidential attempts to lead public opinion? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Baum, Matthew A., and Samuel Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?’ American Political Science Review 93 (March 1999): 99. Davis, Richard, and Diana Owen, New Media and American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Edwards, George C., 111, and B. Dan Wood, “Who Influences Whom? The President, Congress, and the Media,” American Political Science Review 93 (June 1999): 328. Kernell, Samuel, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1993). Maltese, John Anthony, Spin Control: The White House Ofice of Communications and the Management of Presidential News, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1987).

NOTES This chapter is based, in large part, on an earlier article of mine, “The Presidency and the News Media,” Perspectives on Political Science (Spring 2000): 77-83. 1. Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1986). See also


21

George C. Edwards 111, The Public Presidency: The Pursuit of Popular Support (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983). 2. Lester G. Seligman, “Developments in the Presidency and the Conception of Political Leadership,” American Sociological Review 20 (1955): 707. 3. James L. Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1981), 39. 4. Arthur Maass, “In Accord with the Program of the President,” Public Policy 4 (1953): 77; Richard E. Neustadt, “Presidency and Legislation: Planning the President’s Program,” American Political Science Review 49 (December 1955): 980. 5. Presidents prior to FDR had also recognized the need to coordinate relations with reporters. Theodore Roosevelt ordered that a pressroom be built for reporters in the new West Wing of the White House in 1902. He also began the practice of having an aide, William Loeb, give daily press briefings. Woodrow Wilson continued the practice, and became the first president to hold regularly scheduled press conferences (starting in 1913). Although every president since Roosevelt has assigned a staff member to work with the press, Herbert Hoover was the first (in 1929) to make that a staff member’s sole responsibility.The title “press secretary” was not officially bestowed until the Press Office was established in 1933. 6. Interestingly, the White House was not a regular beat for reporters until the 1890s. Prior to the 20th century, Congress was the focus of most of their attention. For a thorough treatment of the Press Office, see Michael Baruch Grossman and Martha Joynt Kumar, Portraying the President (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). See also: W. Dale Nelson, Who Speaks for the President?: The White House Press Secretary from Cleveland to Clinton (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998). 7. Bill Clinton had a total of four press secretaries during his eight years in office: Dee Dee Myers (1993-1994), Mike McCurry (1995-1998), Joe Lockhart (1998-2000), and Jake Siewert (2000-2001). 8. “Karen Hughes Announces Dan Bartlett as White House Communications Director,” press release, October 2,2001, at www.whitehouse.gov. 9. Since the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, the White House has had a television studio where White House spokespersons can be linked by satellite with reporters from local television stations. 10. President Clinton had five communications directors during his eight years in office: George Stephanopoulos (1993), Mark Gearan (1993-1994), Dan Baer (1995-1997), Ann Lewis (1997-1999), and Loretta Ucelli (1999-200 1).

22


11. Richard Rose used the term “going international” in his book The Postmodem President, 2nd ed. (Chatham, NJ.: Chatham House, 1991), 38. 12. John Anthony Maltese, Spin Control: The White House Ofice of Communications and the Management of Presidential News, 2nd rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 195. 13. Quoted in: Johanna Neuman, “Response to Terror: Public Diplomacy Is Shaped in President’s Ornate War Room,” Los Angeles limes, December 22,2001, A3. 14. Neuman, “Response to Terror,” A3. 15. Elizabeth Becker, “A Nation Challenged: Public Relations,” New York Emes, December 15,200 1, A 1. 16. Mike Allen, “Fighting the Image War to Gain Muslim Support; Information Center Plans Prayer, Traditional Dinner,” Washington Post, November 15,200 1, A32. 17. Quoted in: Neuman, “Response to Terror,” A3. 18. For an account of these operations, see Stephen Hess, The GovemmentLPress Connection: Press Oflcers and Their Ofices (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1984). 19. Ann McFeathers, “Madison Avenue Veteran Leads US. Propaganda Effort,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 25,200 1, A 15. 20. Becker, “A Nation Challenged,” A l . 21. Maltese, Spin Control, 2nd rev. ed., 113. 22. Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Oflce (New York: Random House, 1997), 195. 23. Martha Joynt Kumar, “The Office of Communications,” Presidential Studies Quarterly (December 200 1): 6 13. 24. For a full account of this, see Maltese, Spin Control, 2nd rev. ed. 25. Tom Rosenstiel, The Beat Goes On: President Clinton’s First Year with the Media (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1994), 7. 26. Sidney Blumenthal, “A Letter from Washington: The Syndicated Presidency,” New Yorker (April 5, 1993): 42. 27. Blumenthal, “A Letter from Washington,” 42. 28. Rosenstiel, The Beat Goes On, 8. 29. Quoted in: Rita K. Whillock, “The Compromising Clinton: Images of Failure, a Record of Success,” in The Clinton Presidency: Images, Issues, and Communication Strategies, ed. Robert E. Denton, Jr., and Rachel L. Holloway (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), 126. 30. Rosenstiel, The Beat Goes On, 8-9. 31. Burt Solomon, “How a Leak-Loathing White House Is Putting the Press in Its Place,” National Journal (February 13,1993): 416.


23

32. Rosenstiel, The Beat Goes On, 10. 33. Leslie Kaufman, “The Young and the Relentless,” American Journalism Review (March 1993): 30. 34. Solomon, “Leak-Loathing White House,” 4 17. 35. Quoted in: Kaufman, “The Young and the Relentless,” 30. 36. Burt Solomon, “Even Clintonites Worry about Arrogance,” National Journal (April 10,1993): 888. 37. Burt Solomon, “Clinton’s Rhetoric,” National Journal (March 27, 1993): 774. 38. Kaufman, “The Young and the Relentless,” 27. 39. Frank Newport and Lydia Saad, “A Matter of Trust,” American Journalism Review (July-August 1998): 30. 40. Center for Media and Public Affairs, “The Disappearing Honeymoon,” Media Monitor 15, no. 3 (May-June 2001), available online at www.cmpa.com . 41. Bob Woodward, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 226. 42. Rosenstiel, The Beat Goes On, 19-20. 43. Rosenstiel, The Beat Goes On, 21. 44. Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News (New York: Touchstone, 1998), 143-44. 45. Ann Devroy, “Here’s What the White House Chief of Staff Does,” Washington Post, October 12,1993, A17. 46. Kurtz, Spin Cycle, 69. 47. Howard Kurtz, “White House at War,” Vanity Fair (January 1999): 40. 48. For various accounts of this, see Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, eds., The Clinton Scandal and the Future of American Government (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000). 49. Dick Cheney, interview by John Anthony Maltese, in Maltese, Spin Control, 2nd ed., 2. 50. Eric Schmitt, “Talk Show Debut Suggests Cheney Role,” New York Emes, January 29,200 1, A 18. 51. For a more thorough discussion of this, see Joseph A. Pika, John Anthony Maltese, and Norman C. Thomas, The Politics of the Presidency, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 2002), 408-10. 52. Center for Media and Public Affairs, “The Disappearing Honeymoon .” 53. Richard L. Berke and Frank Bruni, “Crew of Listing Bush Ship Draws Republican Scowls,” New York Emes, July 2,2001, A1 1.

24


54. Overnight, Bush’s Gallup approval rating skyrocketed to 90 percent and stayed over 80 percent into 2002. For up-to-date poll numbers, see www.gallup.com. 55. George C. Edwards I11 and B. Dan Wood, “Who Influences Whom? The President, Congress, and the Media,” American Political Science Review (June 1999): 328,341. 56. Larry J. Sabato, Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1991). 57. Matthew A. Baum and Samuel Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?’ American Political Science Review (March 1999): 99. 58. Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, eds., The Permunent Campaign and Its Future (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 2000). 59. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Presidential Travel: It’s All about Local News,” New York Emes, February 11,2002, A2 1. 60. In the two days following his February 27,2001, address to Congress, Bush gave speeches in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, and Georgia. 61. “Talking the Talk,” Insight on the News (February 9, 1998): 9. 62. Randall Bloomquist, “The Word According to Talk,” Adweek (May 3, 1993): 1. 63. Mark Hudis and Cheryl Heuton, “Talk Ratings Are Stronger Than Ever,” Mediaweek (April 8, 1996): 4. 64. Laura Rich, “Liberals in the Land of Limbaugh,” Inside Media (June 7, 1995): 1. 65. Ivo Dawnay, “Fightback at the White House: The Saving of a President,” Washington Post, February 1, 1998,22. 66. David Noack, “Clinton Sex Story Forces Print Media Changes,” Editor & Publisher Magazine (January 3 1, 1998): 62. 67. Dan Trigoboff, “The ‘Source’ Heard ’Round the World,” Broadcasting & Cable (February 2,1998): 62. 68. Trigoboff, “The ‘Source,”’ 62. 69. Alicia C. Shepard, “White Noise,” American Journalism Review (January-February 1999): 20. 70. Robin Pogrebin, “Lewinsky Story Feeds Cable News Networks,” New York Times, August 8, 1998, A10. 71. Baum and Kernell, “Golden Age of Presidential Television,” 110. 72. Mark Halperin and Elizabeth Wilner, “Bush 100 Days Marked by Short List of Goals,” April 30,2001, at www.abcnews.com.

2 Congress and the Media Mark 1. Rozell

As numerous studies have shown, political life for most Americans

is a mediated experience. People learn about our national institutions and leaders through the news media. As a study by McCombs and Shaw states, people “learn how much importance to attach to an issue or topic from the emphasis placed on it by the mass media.”’ What does the public learn from the media about Congress? Usually either very little, or at least very little that is favorable to the institution. Numerous academic studies on the media’s coverage of Congress arrive at the same conclusion: Congress receives very little respect from the national media. The news either ignores much of what goes on in the halls of Congress, or presents the institution in the most unflattering light possible. National opinion polls reflect generally negative perceptions of Congress and of its members. The exception is during periods of crisis, when Americans rally behind their government generally. Congress rarely ranks ahead of presidents in national polls, even during times of unpopular presidents. Although individual members of Congress may fare well in polls of their own constituents, members of Congress as a group almost always fare poorly in national opinion. One national poll asked respondents to rank the honesty and ethical standards of people by their professions. U.S. senators ranked 18 percent favorable, just two percentage points better than lawyers and TV talk show hosts and substantially worse than funeral directors and reporters? 25

26

Mark J. Rozell

Members of Congress bear some responsibility for the negative image of the institution. Members are very astute at protecting their own political interests by attacking the institution in which they serve. Is it at all surprising that the public often holds Congress in low esteem when the members themselves bad-mouth the institution? Scholars have long noted the phenomenon that people make differential judgments between their own member of Congress, on the one hand, and members of Congress as a group, on the other. Also, candidates for Congress use negative advertising appeals to exaggerate claims of impropriety on the part of their opponents. Imagine the esteem in which we would hold the airline industry if carriers frequently ran ads accusing each other of losing baggage, missing arrival times, and engaging in unsafe practices that endanger the public: “Unreliable. Unsafe. You just can’t trust Eagle Airlines.” A public exposed to a constant barrage of such campaign appeals cannot easily be blamed for harboring negative views of their elected leaders. There are other reasons for the public’s low opinion of Congress. One explanation is that people expect conflicting things from the institution and its members. For example, citizens perceive Congress as both too beholden to interest groups and out of touch with the public it serves. People demand expensive government programs, better-quality delivery of public services, and lower taxes. They want Congress to be responsive, to articulate various constituents’ views, yet they implore members to put an end to partisan squabbling. Constituents demand an end to pork-barrel spending, except when it benefits them. An ABC News poll found that, despite widespread complaints about such congressional perks as travel budgets and franked mail, 93 percent of respondents said that their own member should try to keep constituents informed through district visits or newsletters. And despite complaints about special interests and congressional pork, 73 percent said that their own member should try to direct more federal projects to their d i ~ t r i c t . ~ Another problem is that the public doesn’t know very much about the Congress and its activities. In mid-1995, only half of the public could identify Newt Gingrich as the Speaker of the House, even though he had received enormous coverage. Yet two-thirds of the

Congress and the Media

27

public could identify Lance Ito, the judge presiding over the doublemurder trial of former football player 0. J. Simpson. Only four in ten people were familiar with the Contract with America and only one-half knew that Congress had passed the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)." It is not surprising that people harbor inaccurate perceptions of an institution about which they know very little. Some data suggest that those segments of the public that have the most knowledge of the Congress are often the most hostile to the institution. For years, pollsters had found that an educated segment of the population provided a foundation of support for Congress and representative government even when most of the public was skeptical. Yet a study by Asher and Barr shows that, while less-informed citizens remain dubious of Congress, as people learn more about the institution they like it even less? HOW THE MEDIA COVER CONGRESS

If Congress is held in such low esteem, there is no doubt that much of this condition can be attributed to highly negative press coverage of the legislative branch's activities. To be sure, Congress has always been a favorite target for critics and comedians. Stereotypes of legislators who use public office for private gain and subvert the national interest have been a press staple since the earliest Congresses. Indeed, skepticism about the motives and activities of the nation's leaders has long been considered a necessary, and even beneficial, element of representative government. Yet some proportion is in order. In 2001-2002, the revelation that a missing person had previously been having an affair with Representative Gary Condit (D-Calif.) resulted in an avalanche of news coverage that made Condit the most recognizable face in Congress. That some law enforcement officials had openly criticized Condit for not being helpful to their investigationleading some to wonder whether the congressman knew more than he was telling -certainly justified strong journalistic interest in the story. But ultimately the intensity of the media coverage of this story pushed out of the news many items of importance taking place in Congress.

28

Mark J. Rozell

What do many of the studies of media coverage of Congress specifically reveal? Primarily that members of Congress are portrayed as incompetent, corrupt, or both, and that the legislative process is shown not to work as it should. For example, Charles Tidmarch and John Pitney analyzed all items on Congress in ten news dailies during one month in 1978 and found that journalists focused on “conflict, malfeasance and breach of public trust.”6 “On the whole,” they concluded, the press “has little good to report about Congress and its membership.” Such coverage has tended to “harden the image of Congress as a defective in~titution.”~ A major study of the impact of newspaper coverage on public confidence in institutions, also focusing on the late 1970s’ found that coverage of Congress was much more unfavorable than was coverage of either the presidency or the Supreme Court.8 Michael Robinson and Kevin Appel’s analysis of network news coverage of Congress during a five-week period in 1976 found that all news stories that presented a point of view about the institution were critical of it? Even the first post-Watergate Congress failed to receive a single favorable assessment.1° Robert Gilbert concluded that congressional coverage during the spring of 1989 emphasized scandal and further contributed to the legislature’s weak reputation.” And Norman Ornstein’s study of network news reporting on Congress in 1989 concluded that two-thirds of the coverage “concerned . . . three episodes of turmoil and scandal that had little to do with the constitutionally mandated duties of Congress.”’* Studies conducted in the 1990s also confirmed that press reporting of Congress was generally negative.13 Press coverage of Congress over the years has moved from healthy skepticism to outright cynicism. When Congress enacted a 25 percent pay increase for its members in 1946, for example, both the New York Times and Washington Post commented that the pay increase was needed to attract top-quality people to public service and that political leaders must be paid a salary commensurate with their responsibilities. The few press criticisms of the raise emphasized either the principle of public service being its own reward or the need for an even larger pay increase. The press did not lead a drumbeat of criticism of Congress for enact-


29

ing a pay increase. More recently, however, the story has been far different. To believe modem congressional coverage, the nation’s legislators are egregiously overpaid, indulged, and indifferent to the problems of constituents who lack six-figure incomes and fantastic job perquisites. The press portrait of Congress members is one of self-interested, self-indulgent politicians who exploit the legislative process for personal gain.14 Many studies have speculated about the reasons for the intense interest in scandal,rivalry, and conflict. A partial explanation is the emergence of a more aggressive, scandal-conscious news media after Watergate. Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler pointed to “a postWatergate code of ethics” in which journalists seek out scandal and delve into the personal lives of public figures and other areas once considered off-limits to reporter^.'^ Norman Omstein also noted that a new generation of investigative reporters, inspired by Watergate sleuths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, had “accentuated and refocused the media coverage of Congress” toward “scandal and ~10th.”’~ The journalists themselves confirm this tendency. A TimesMirror survey found that two-thirds of journalists downplay good news and spend “too much time on the failures of public officials .” Many journalists fear being perceived by their colleagues as “in the tank” with politicians, writes U.S. News’s Gloria Borger. Consequently, “for the press, good news is not new^."'^ According to Ellen Hume, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, “Journalists usually err on the side of negativity.”18 Furthermore, journalists are all too aware that conflict and scandal interest the public. Intense competition within the print mediawhich recently has seen declining revenues-has driven many journalists toward increased scandal coverage to satisfy what they perceive as the public’s appetite for such news. A great misfortune of this tendency has been the trend among the elite press to exhibit some of the tawdry characteristics of the tabloids. As Mann and Ornstein lament, “the prestige news outlets have adopted the sensationalist approach of their less reputable counterparts. Coverage of the House bank scandal, for example, was as overdone in the Washington Post as it was on radio talk

30

Mark J. Rozell

At one point in the 1990s, some members of Congress decided to strike back. Disgusted at constant media digging into their financial affairs, the Senate passed a nonbinding resolution requiring reporters covering Capitol Hill to file financial disclosures. Senators accused the correspondents of hypocrisy, because many who had reported on conflicts of interests in Congress had themselves accepted honoraria for speeches before lobbying and corporate groups?O The Senators knew that this resolution had no potential for impact, other than to send a message to the press of a growing discontent with journalistic hypocrisy. The Senators were not alone in this feeling, as many journalists themselves had begun to wonder whether the practice of reporters’ accepting honoraria was hurting the profession’s credibility with the public ?’ Scandal, rivalry, and conflict may also be emphasized because the legislative process is tedious-“the very driest form of human endeavor,” as Senator Alan Simpson once said?2 Consequently, reporters avoid writing process and policy stories except when they are related to interbranch conflicts, rivalries among colorful personalities on Capitol Hill, or scandal. William Safire explained that editors instruct reporters to avoid “MEGOs”: stories that make “my eyes glaze over.”23Stephen Hess examined 100 Congress stories in the New York Emes in 1991. Only five were process-oriented st0ries.2~ David Broder admits that personal scandals are exciting and interesting; stories about institutional reform will put reporters to sleep before they get to the t~pewriter.2~ According to Broder, a reporter will have an easier time selling to his editor stories of petty scandal than a good many “stories of larger consequence.’’Junket stories sell to editors “because they fit [editors’] stereotypes of graft and sin on Capitol Both Broder and William Raspberry have written that the public holds Congress in such low esteem, in part, because of the journalistic trend of emphasizing conflict and controversy over substance. They cited the example of a vitally important job-training bill in late 1995 with little news coverage. The legislation attracted so little attention because it lacked serious opposition and there was therefore no conflict to report.27 The press thus has difficulty conveying the complexities of the legislative process. The magnitude of coverage devoted to such im-


31

portant events as legislative reorganization efforts and ethics reform almost never matches the number of stories devoted to a scandal involving a single member of Congress. To the extent that the press does cover procedural issues, it seems to do so when they are related to scandals and can be explained in terms of, and as reactions to, interbranch, partisan, or personal rivalries. According to Lichter and Amundson, this tendency well documented in studies of the print media is evident in television coverage of Congress as well. They examined comprehensively the three major networks’ coverage of Congress during a period from the 1970s to the 1990s. They found that the coverage increasingly has focused on scandal, with decreasing emphasis on process and policy. “The news,” they write, “has also increasingly emphasized conflict, both within Congress and between the institution and other participants in political affairs. . . . [Tlhe tone of coverage was already derogatory a generation ago and has become worse .’728 The negative tone and narrow focus of coverage are particularly important because, as Herb Asher commented, “everything that people learn about Congress is mediated.”29And there seems to be a link between the nature of congressional coverage and poor public understanding of the legislative process. Charles 0.Jones looked at media coverage of a particularly busy week on Capitol Hill and found that even though the legislature had undertaken some important activities, “the American people learned hardly a smidgen about congressional action that directly affected them.”30“Turning specifically to the committees, one does not have to wonder why the public knows so little of this ceaseless activity on Capitol Hill. The answer is that very little attention is paid to it in the press.”31 Dye and Zeigler described coverage of Congress as “almost without exception demeaning. As a result, people regard the institution of Congress with cynicism and mistrust.” Furthermore, “the public knows very little about Congress in its abstract, institutional form.”32Mary Russell also found the lack of public knowledge of Congress due to sensational news and the failure of the press to cover procedures,rules, and long-range a~tivity.3~ In addition to being less exciting than petty scandal, institutional stones are more complicated for reporters and editors to understand

32

Mark J. Rozell

and to write about in single news stories and columns. Besides, the presidency is the focus of Washington journalism. Journalists often cover lawmaking from the vantage of how the legislature is responding to presidential initiatives. The press perceives Congress as generally incapable of leadership. Thus in normal circumstances Congress works best under the guiding hand of a strong president attuned to the national interest and willing to move the government in an activist, progressive direction. Members of Congress, according to much of the media coverage, are primarily concerned with parochial issues. A partial explanation is the difficulty of identifying a focal point in Congress. The presidency by contrast easily is personalized. The focus is the president himself. Congress lacks a single voice. It presents a cacophony of perspectives, often in conflict. As political scientist Richard Davis writes: “Its bicameral structure and the partisan divisions in both houses ensure that at least four leaders will compete for the role of congressional spokesperson, and the profusion of congressional committees and subcommittees . . . adds to the confusion .’’34 Communications scholars Robert Denton and Gary Woodward add that whereas the presidency can, if presented effectively, appear unified, “the Congress, by contrast, is more a place of arguments, political negotiation, and c ~ m p r o r n i s e . ” ~ ~ Congressional coverage also suffers because of intense media interest in the horse race of presidential campaigning. In June 1995, nearly eight months before the first presidential primary of 1996, Howard Kurtz found that the media’s interest in the campaign was high, whereas their interest in the governing process remained low, despite the fact that there was little of real substance at that time to report about the emerging campaigns. Reporter Gloria Borger candidly admitted that, “We don’t have anything very interesting to write about these days. The other choice is covering the budget, and nobody wants to write about that.”36Yet later that year, enormous media interest turned to the budget stalemate-a story easily personalized as a rivalry between the GOP congressional leaders and President Bill Clinton that oftentimes seemed petty. The press’s image of what Congress should be is clearly incompatible with the traditional role of the legislative branch. There is a strong press preference for a reform-oriented, progressive, policy-


33

activist Congress that works effectively with an activist, strong president. During a 1993 congressional studies conference at the American Enterprise Institute, a number of journalists confirmed this finding. One argued that Congress deserves praise “when Congress acts,” especially when the institution displays “heroism” and policy innovation. Several colleagues agreed ?7 Yet the Constitution’s framers designed Congress to frustrate the popular will as necessary, to not act in an efficient, innovative fashion. Consequently, the drumbeat of press criticism, interrupted occasionally by favorable coverage during unusual circumstances, helps explain the disjunction between the legislature’s intended constitutional role and journalistic expectations. No wonder Congress is held in such low public esteem, when the press criticizes the institution for behaving as the Constitution’s framers intended it to and then focuses on petty scandal and members’ peccadilloes to the exclusion of examining process and policy. Nonetheless, not all the blame for Congress’s poor repute belongs to the media. Congress needs to do a better job at educating the press and the public about its activities-what it does and why it does what it does. Otherwise, journalists and the public will continue to harbor expectations-routine efficiency, activist policymaking, large-scale internal reform, strong leadership during crises and when the president is under siege- that the institution generally is not designed to live up to. Congress indeed does a poor job of protecting its image. In Richard Fenno’s classic argument, members “run for Congress by running against Congress.”38In their districts they reinforce unfavorable opinions of the institution so that they can distance themselves from it and by implication assume the virtues that it supposedly lacks. Even electorally safe incumbents do not educate constituents about the strengths of their institution. Instead, they attack it as a way of protecting themselves p ~ l i t i c a l l y . ~ ~ Michael Robinson and Kevin Appel have also noted that members of the legislature “complain about Congress and praise themselves as individuals .”40 And James McCartney of KnightRidder commented, “Congress does a lousy job in telling a reporter what goes on. The problem with Congress is that it has no

34

Mark J. Rozell

organization and is just babble. It needs to present its information better, like the White Individual members can also orient their own behavior in a way that better protects the institutional reputation. Electorally safe members-a large group indeed-have the leeway to educate constituents properly about the Congress and take some responsibility for its actions."2 Members could also do a better job of lowering constituents' expectations of legislative performance and could avoid perpetuating conflicts that generate short-term publicity and political gain at the expense of Congress's image. Finally, responsibility for presenting a balanced and realistic representation of Congress lies with the journalists. In 1975 the former senator J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) wrote that "the national press would do well to reconsider its priorities. It has excelled in exposing . . . the high crimes and peccadilloes of persons in high places. But it has fallen short-far short-in its higher responsibility of public education."43 It is difficult to imagine that congressional coverage will deemphasize controversy, scandal, and intrigue, and focus on process and policy any time very soon. But reporters and editors can voluntarily do a better job of educating the public about Congress and representative government. Whether they are motivated by concern over fueling public cynicism toward the institution or by professional pride in factual and fair-minded reporting, journalists could truly serve the public by covering the legislative branch in a manner that befits the most representative institution of our government. THE C-SPAN EFFECT

The Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) is an important, though not clearly recognized or understood, influence on Congress. Created in 1977,the network is funded by the cable industry as a public service and provides direct and unedited coverage of congressional proceedings, as well as interview programs with journalists and scholars who follow Congress, live viewer call-in programs, and interviews with book authors. C-SPAN began coverage of House proceedings in 1979 and then Senate proceedings in 1986.


35

The audience for C-SPAN is not large-estimated at perhaps 50,000to 100,OOO people per day.44Because C-SPAN is privately funded by the cable industry, the Nielson rating system does not measure its audience size. Nonetheless, the people who watch C-SPAN tend to be highly politically interested and very inclined toward participation in representative government. An academic study shows that the typical C-SPAN viewer is well educated, has a good income, and is knowledgeable about g0vernment.4~Perhaps more significant is the fact that some of the most active C-SPAN viewers are members of Congress and their staffs, executive branch officials, and political party leaders and activists. An event covered by C-SPAN may not have a large national audience, but it is seen by a substantial number of members of the so-called political class in Washington. C-SPAN has thus become a means by which political actors in Washington keep a watchful eye on government. Examples may include White House staff members’ observing how one of their colleagues is performing as a witness at a congressional heating without having to leave the office or rely on secondhand accounts. Or lobbyists interested in a bill can watch a House or Senate debate unfold. Or merely interested citizens may become inspired by what they see happening in Congress to make contacts with their representatives. Putting Congress on television display full-time was a controversial proposition at first. Created as a deliberative body, Congress sometimes benefits from the opportunity to debate outside the public limelight. It was easier to make the case initially for direct television coverage of the House than the Senate. The House’s intended constitutional role is to be “closer to the people” than the Senate and thus more attuned to the constant shifts of public opinion. The constitutional framers created the House-with its short terms and direct election from relatively small constituencies-as an entity for reflecting the opinions of the people. By contrast, the constitutional framers created the Senate- with long terms and, initially, indirect election-as a check against the potential excesses of the House. The Senate was to be more insulated than the House from public opinion, more capable of reasoned deliberation. It is no surprise then that the Senate resisted for some time being put on display by C-SPAN. Yet ultimately senators could see the benefits from such television exposure to their own public profiles.

36

Mark J. Rozell

Some members of Congress worried that televised coverage would harm the quality of debate in the legislative branch. In particular, some representatives expressed concern that certain colleagues would grandstand before the cameras rather than engage in genuine deliberation. Others feared that the presence of television would unnecessarily lengthen debates in Congress because of the many members who would be eager for the opportunity for coverage. Yet the evidence suggests that there is probably no more grandstanding than before C-SPAN and that debates in Congress have not become longer. The exception is that more members than ever use the period for special orders to deliver speeches."6 Indeed, some have credited the rise of such figures as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) to the strategic use of special orders speeches to raise their public profiles. The major benefit attributed to C-SPAN is that it has provided a different means by which citizens can keep in touch with their government. It provides the opportunity for citizens to view Congress in action uninterrupted, rather than having to rely on the scattershot coverage of the legislative process offered by the leading news media. CONGRESS AND THE NEW MEDIA

The historic dichotomy in congressional reporting has been the highly negative coverage of the institution by national media combined with the relatively soft coverage of local Congress members by local media. In a sense, this dichotomy has served well the electoral interests of members while it has contributed to public dissatisfaction with representative government. The new media today offer the potential for the institution of Congress to communicate more effectively with the public -not merely to service the electoral needs of individual members, but also to enhance the broader institutional reputation. To date, Congress has made advances in the uses of new media, although studies suggest that the institution could be doing much better than it Congressional web pages, for example, vary substantially in quality. Some offer very detailed and useful information that is up-


37

dated regularly. Some excellent member websites in the 107th Congress are those of Representatives Henry Waxman (D), Jesse Jackson Jr. (D), and Dan Burton (R). Many member websites are not very useful and are infrequently updated. The use of e-mail has had an important impact on Congress. One study reports that the typical Senate and House member offices receive 55,000 and 8,000 e-mails per month respectively. Many of these e-mails are not constituent ones and are “blanket e-mails” that go to numerous offices at one time. The Congress Online Project reports that, once again, some congressional offices are much better equipped than others to handle the new technology. Some offices use available software programs to efficiently sift through and sort e-mails and to even provide standard replies depending on the topic of the communication. Yet many offices do not use this technology and spend enormous amounts of staff time sifting through each individual e-mail communication. And in some cases, congressional offices do not respond to e-mails, but only to traditional means of communications, particularly letters. The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11,2001, along with the threat of anthrax in congressional offices that forced the closing of some office buildings beginning in October of that year, gave an additional incentive for Congress to rely on new technology to communicate with the public. Due to the anthrax threat, a number of congressional offices were closed for a period of time and congressional mail service was seriously interrupted.Thus, e-mail became the most reliable means for constituent contact for many members. For example, one member whose office had been temporarily closed reported setting up a remote e-mail system by using a secure ID and thus remained regularly in touch with constituents. District staff members scanned their regular mail letters into computers to be e-mailed to the remote office and then responded to from there:* Another positive development in congressional communications technology is the growing public use of government and public organization websites that provide information for citizens on the workings of government, the voting records of elected officials, and information on how to contact legislative offices and federal agencies. Although many Americans with a need for government assistance do not have

38

Mark J. Rozell

Internet access, more and more citizens are finding useful information about their government through new means of communications. Perhaps the greatest difficulty created by new means of communications is the increasingly competitive nature of a news industry driven by the perceived need to deliver information to the public as rapidly as possible. Various websites, perhaps most notably the Drudge Report, have frequently "scooped" the leading mainstream media outlets on big stories and thus precipitated a trend whereby more and more of these outlets seek to outpace the Internet site competition to break stories. An unfortunate result has been that many respectable news outlets are not as careful as they used to be in sourcing information before reporting to the public. Increasingly, unconfirmed rumors about government officials and activities have been reported, and little of this kind of information has helped to educate the public about Congress and its members. If anything, much of this current trend exacerbates the media tendencies toward sensationalism and distortion of reality. Another relatively new phenomenon is the rise of the talk radio format, largely a vehicle for communications among conservatives. Talk radio programs tend to be overwhelmingly negative toward Congress, whether Democrats or Republicans control the institution. This information outlet is especially well suited to the presentation of sensational and scandal stories. The audience share of talk radio programs has grown dramatically in the past decade, at a time when daily newspaper circulation and major network news audiences have been shrinking. Americans thus are relying on a greater variety of sources of information about Congress than ever before, but there is little evidence that the quality of information has improved overall. Without a doubt, for the motivated news consumer, good and reliable information about Congress and its workings is available. The Internet indeed has spawned an unfortunate rush by competitor news organizations to produce stories, and thus the reliability of much information about Congress has been compromised. The credibility of news organizations also suffers from this tendency to produce stories too quickly. Yet the Internet is also full of excellent information about the workings of government and is a vast resource for news consumers who understand how to sift though the web for credible material.


39

CONCLUSION

Congress fares poorly in media coverage in comparison to the presidency. The legislative process is messy, the institution lacks an identifiable leader, and it also lacks a mechanism for effective communications. Unlike the presidency, which often is able to control the outflow of information, Congress is a very permeable institution, thus allowing reporters to cover just about anything that they want. There is no congressional Office of Communications or press secretary to explain what the institution is doing. Ultimately what reporters say about Congress conveys the messy nature of the legislative process as well as the inevitable partisan squabbles, scandals, and other stories that give a negative impression of the institution and its members. Some observers see hope in the additions of C-SPAN and the new media. Yet the audience for C-SPAN is limited and there is little evidence that such new media as talk radio or the Internet have replaced the influence of the major news media. Furthermore, talk radio and the Internet appear to exacerbate the media tendency to emphasize scandals, conflicts, and partisan rivalries in Congress. Despite the poor coverage of Congress, members of the institution continue to fare well electorally. If indeed members of Congress are concerned first and foremost about reelection, there is little evidence that negative coverage affects their incumbency advantages. The public thus harbors a negative view of the institution and of its members generally, but continues to reelect most incumbents anyway. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How has the nature of congressional coverage changed in the past 15-20 years? 2. What are the most important implications of relentlessly negative congressional press coverage? 3. Why does Congress have such difficulty competing with the president for media and public attention? 4. How important is accurate, high-quality coverage of the legislative process to Congress’s ability to function as a representative institution?

40

Mark J. Rozell

5. What are the leading causes of critical news coverage and press commentary about Congress?

6. What, if anything, can Congress do to combat its prevailing press image? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Broder, David S., Behind the Front Page: A Candid Look at How the News Is Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). Hart, Roderick, and Daron Shaw, Communication and US. Elections: New Agendas (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Hess, Stephen, Live! From Capitol Hill (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1991). Mann, Thomas, and Norman Ornstein, eds., Congress, the Press, and the Public (Washington, D.C.: Brookings/American Enterprise Institute, 1994). Povich, Elaine S ., Partners and Adversaries: The Contentious Connection between Congress and the Media (Arlington, Va.: Freedom Forum, 1996). Vinson, C. Danielle, Local Media Coverage of Congress and Its Members (Hampton Press, 2002).

NOTES 1 . Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of the Press,” in Media Power in Politics, ed. Doris A. Graber (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1984), 65. 2. Survey conducted by the Gallup Organization, July 19-21,1993, cited in Karlyn Bowman and Everett Ladd, “Public Opinion toward Congress: A Historical Look,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Thomas Mann and Norman Omstein (Washington, D.C.: Brookings/American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 50. 3 . Richard Morin, “YOUThink Congress Is out of Touch?” Washington Post, October 16, 1994, C1,4. 4. Howard Kurtz, “Tuning Out Traditional News,” Washington Post, May 15,1995,Al, 6 . 5. Herb Asher and Mike Barr,“Popular Support for Congress and Its Members,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Omstein, 19.


41

6. Charles M. Tidmarch and John J. Pitney, Jr., “Covering Congress,” Polity 17 (Spring 1985): 482. 7. Tidmarch and Pitney. “Covering Congress,” 481. 8. Arthur Miller, Edie Goldenberg, and Lutz Erbring, “Type-Set Politics: Impact of Newspapers on Public Confidence,” American Political Science Review 73 (March 1979): 70. 9. Michael J. Robinson and Kevin R. Appel, “Network News Coverage of Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 94 (Fall 1979): 412. 10. Robinson and Appel, “Network News Coverage of Congress,” 417. 11. Robert E. Gilbert, “President versus Congress: The Struggle for Public Attention,” Congress & the Presidency 16 (Autumn 1989): 99. 12. Norman Ornstein, “What TV News Doesn’t Report about Congress-and Should,” TV Guide 37 (October 21, 1989): 11. 13. See Mark J. Rozell, In Contempt of Congress: Postwar Press Coverage on Capitol Hill (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996). 14. See Rozell, In Contempt of Congress, chapters 2 and 5. 15. Thomas R. Dye and Harmon Zeigler, American Politics in the Media Age, 2d ed. (Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1986), 212. 16. Norman J. Ornstein, “The Open Congress Meets the President,” in Both Ends of the Avenue: The Presidency, the Executive Branch, and Congress in the 1980s,ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1983), 201. 17. Gloria Borger, “Cynicism and Tanknophobia,” U.S. News and World Report (June 5,1995): 34. 18. Quoted in Stephen Hess, “The Decline and Fall of Congressional News,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Ornstein, 149. 19. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, introduction to Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Ornstein, 8. 20. Howard Kurtz, “Senate Eyes Reporters’ Honoraria,” Washington Post, July 21, 1995, C1,4. 21. On this point see James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York: Vintage Press), 1996. 22. Quoted in Gregg Schneiders, “The 90-Second Handicap: Why TV Coverage of Legislation Falls Short,” Washington Journalism Review (June 1985): 44. 23. William Safire,“The MEGO News Era,” WashingtonStar (September 6,1973): A15. 24. Stephen Hess, “The Decline and Fall of Congressional News,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Ornstein, 150. 25. David Broder, Behind the Front Page: A Candid Look at How the News Is Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 216.

42

Mark J. Rozell

26. Broder, Behind the Front Page, 227. 27. William Raspberry, “Blow-by-Blow Coverage,” Washington Post, October 30, 1995, A17. 28. S. Robert Lichter and Daniel R. Amundson, “Less News Is Worse News: Television News Coverage of Congress, 1972-1992,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Ornstein, 139. 29. Herb Asher panel discussion comment made at “Congress, the Press and the Public” (conference cosponsored by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., May 1993, attended by the author). 30. Charles 0.Jones, The United States Congress: People, Place, and Policy (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1982), 48. 3 1 . Jones, United States Congress, 46. 32. Dye and Zeigler, Politics in the Media Age, 2d ed., 211-12. 33. Mary Russell, “The Press and the Committee System,” in Media Power in Politics, ed. Graber (Washington, D.C .: Congressional Quarterly, 1984), 228. 34. Richard Davis, The Press andAmerican Politics: The New Mediator (New York: Longman, 1992), 161. 35. Robert E. Denton, Jr., and Gary C. Woodward, Political Communication in America, 2d ed. (New York: Praeger, 1990), 284. 36. Howard Kurtz, “Hot Tips on the Horse-Race to Nowhere,” Washington Post, June 25,1995, C1,2. 37. “Congress, the Press and the Public” (conference cosponsored by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., May 1993, attended by the author). 38. Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Home Style: House Members in Their Districts (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 168. 39. Fenno, Home Style, 246-47. 40. Robinson and Appel, “Network News Coverage of Congress,” 416. 41. Quoted in Richard Davis, The Press and American Politics: The New Mediator (New York: Longman, 1992), 170. 42. Fenno, Home Style, 246. 43. Quoted in Broder, Behind the Front Page, 2 13. 44. Kenneth Adelman, “Real People: On C-SPAN Substance Can Be More Interesting Than Style,” WashingtonianMagazine (December 1992). 45. Stephen Frantzich and John Sullivan, The C-SPAN Revolution (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 232. 46. Frantzich and Sullivan, The C-SPAN Revolution, 262-64.


43

47. See, for example, Matt Carter, “Speaking UP in the Internet Age: Use and Value of Constituent Email and Congressional Websites,” PurZiurnentury Afluirs 52, no. 3 (July 1999); and the various studies posted at www.congressonlineproject.org (accessed March 19,2002). 48. “How Is Anthrax Changing Congress and How Are Offices Using Technology to Cope?’ Congress Online Project Newsletter, November 2, 2001, at www.congressonlineproject.org (accessed March 19,2002).


3 The Supreme Court and the Press Vincent lames Strickler and Richard Davis

T h e relationship between the Supreme Court and the press is an under studied area in the scholarly analysis of the mass media’s interaction with political institutions. This neglect may simply be a function of the limited attention paid to the Court by the media. Press coverage of the Court is meager, particularly when compared to coverage devoted to the president or the Congress.’ In a 1995 study, Charles Franklin and Liane Kosaki concluded: “In short, the president receives 8.3 times as much coverage as the Court, and Congress gets 4.1 times as much.”2Moreover, the limited coverage that the Court receives has been criticized as superficial, often failing to address important facts about the few cases that are covered? News coverage tends to be driven by journalistic values rather than legal salience? Given the scant and often superficial coverage, the lack of scholarly interest is understandable. But, despite inadequate media attention given to the Court, the paucity of academic interest in the relationship is perhaps best explained by the myth of the Court’s disinterest in the press. Conventional wisdom holds that the Court, sitting unseen and quiet, in its ivory temple beyond the reach of television cameras, is not interested in or influenced by the press. But this conventional view fails to recognize the deep importance that press coverage has for the Court-a court whose only substantial power is the power of public persuasion. 45

46


It is widely assumed that the Court has little interest in the press and public opinion because its only constituency is the legal profession. Such a view implies that the Court has no need or desire to communicate with the press. But Larry Berkson has identified two separate constituencies of the Supreme Court: the legal profession, as is generally assumed, and a less attentive but more important portion of the general public? This second, more subtle, constituency is the base of power for the Court. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton argued that because the Court lacks the power of either sword or purse, it is the branch of government least likely to injure: “It may truly be said to have nether FORCE nor WILL, but only merely judgment.”6 Without formal constitutional powers, the Court is potentially weak. It should rightly fear that the president, Congress, and the states will not comply with its decisions unless it can assert some authority that they will respect. “[Tlhe only power that the Court can assert is the power of public ~pinion.”~ Thus, to act with independent power, the Court must have the support of the general public. The Court has even acknowledged this need. In the Court’s opinion in Planned Parenthood of southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter wrote that “[tlhe Court’s power lies . . . in its legitimacy, a product of substance and perception that shows itself in the people’s acceptance of the Judiciary as fit to determine what the Nation’s law means and to declare what it demands.”* The Court has been remarkably successful at maintaining popular support. Studies have generally found that aggregate support for the Court consistently exceeds that of Congress and the executive branch? In addition, the Court’s high level of support has remained stable over time.1° Such support is not an accident, but is a product of the Court’s carefully crafted reputation. To promote public respect for it and its decisions, the Supreme Court attempts to project images of expertise, unanimity, and independence. The Court’s image of expertise is seen in its visual trappings, its robes and rituals, and in the backgrounds of the justices, which suggest the distance of an intellectual aristocracy. While other politicians are expected to relate to the common man, Supreme Court justices are expected to be on a social and educational level above most

The Supreme Court and the Press

47

citizens.” Mediocrity is not tolerated. When G. Harrold Carswell was nominated to the Court in 1970, despite his thin legal qualifications, Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska defended him by saying that “there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they.”12 Carswell, not surprisingly, was not confirmed. In addition to the expertise of individualjustices, the Court is perceived as having a collective, institutional wisdom. It is the product of the continuity of long-tenured justices, immersed in their work and regularly interacting. This is particularly true with regard to constitutional issues, wherein the Court is believed to “possess a special competence.”I3 The Court’s image of unanimity is cultivated particularly when the Court’s power is under attack from other institutions. Examples of the Court’s tendency to close ranks when its power is threatened can be seen in the unanimous opinions rendered in the civil rights cases of Brown v. Board of Education and Cooper v. Aaron, wherein state governments challenged the authority of the Court, and in U.S. v. Nixon, wherein the president threatened to ignore the Court’s ruling. The importance of unanimity is particularly evident in the Cooper opinion, which, in an unprecedented show of solidarity,all nine justices signed as coauthors.The intent of the Court to encourage public compliance through its united opinion is hinted at in a memorandum that Chief Justice Earl Warren circulated to the other justices, urging that the Brown opinion be “short, readable by the lay public, nonrhetorical, unemotional, and, above all, not accusatory.”14Even in the deeply divisive cases arising out of the 2000 presidential election controversy, Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing BoardI5 and Bush v. Gore,I6 the Court desperately tried to maintain the illusion of unanimity by issuing their rulings as unsigned “per curiam” decision^.'^ The image of the Court’s independence is acquired through creating the perception of distance from, and immunity to, the political process. The Court’s apparent detachment from politics is made possible by its nonelective status. However, the image requires cultivation. As was admitted in a dissent in the case of Baker v. Carr: “The Court’s authority -possessed of neither the purse nor swordultimately rests on sustained public confidence in its moral sanction.

48


Such feeling must be nourished by the Court’s complete detachment, in fact and in appearance, from political entanglements.”18 Thus, the Court must interact with the public to sense what it must do to maintain public confidence and transmit appropriate messages to its most important constituency. But it lacks the mechanisms available to other political actors, such as commissioned polls, district offices, newsletters, and town meetings, to both hear from and speak to its public. The Court needs an information conduit to accomplish these purposes, and that conduit is the press. In this model, the role of the press-based on the Court’s need to maintain its power by maintaining public deference to its decisions-is to cultivate a positive image of the Court. The potential effect of the press in promoting the needs of the Court is enormous, since the public generally knows little about the Court or its actions. Though a few major decisions may penetrate mass awareness through saturation media coverage, and become a permanent part of the mass political lexicon, most do not. Sometimes even the groups most affected by decisions of the Court are unaware of them. A mid1970s survey of Florida high school teachers showed that only 17 percent of them were aware of the Engel v. Wale decision, which disallowed school prayer.19 Gregory Caldiera concluded: “Citizens, as individuals, evince little or no knowledge of or concern for the Court; to the extent that they express sensible opinions, they base judgments on the vaguest and crudest of ideological frameworks.”20 The media, however, have the power to overcome such pervasive ignorance and stimulate public awareness of even obscure issues, at least temporarily. In a 1993 study, Charles H. Franklin, Liane C. Kosaki, and Herbert Kritzer compared public attention before and after the release of Supreme Court decisions involving six different policy areas. They found that in five of six areas, including the dry topic of taxation of interstate catalogue sales, mass awareness of the policy area increased sharply immediately following the decisions. This awareness, however, declined dramatically in the ensuing months.21In a follow-up study, Franklin and Kosaki demonstrated that these surges of awareness were a function of media coverage?* The justices recognize the importance of the press in disseminating the views of the Court to the public. Earl Warren acknowledged


49

this relationship when he wrote that the issues handled by the Court should be “well understood and intelligently appraised by the public. Since the public cannot be expected to read the opinions themselves, it must depend on newspapers, periodicals, radio, and television for its inf~rmation.”~~ In 1956, referring to a news clipping about an opinion, Justice Harold H. Burton wrote to Warren: “This shows that the opinion is being understood and taken as it was intended to be taken-at least by the writer of this e d i t ~ r i a l . ”And ~~ in 1966 Earl Warren wrote to a reporter that he was “pleased beyond words” with the reporter’s coverage of the Mirandu decisi0n.2~ There is ample evidence that justices pay close attention to the press, not just when important decisions are at stake but on a regular basis -with particular concern for how they are portrayed. ABC News reporter Tim O’Brien related a conversation with Justice Antonin Scalia in which Scalia made specific comments about O’Brien’s stories. Stuart Taylor, of American Lawyer magazine, received congratulatory personal notes from Justices William Brennan, Louis Powell, and Sandra Day O’Connor after writing profiles of eachF6 The justices also take an interest in negative stories. Chief Justice William Burger once called news correspondent Fred Graham into his chambers to complain about a story Graham had done for the CBS Evening News.27And Justice William 0. Douglas wrote a scathing letter in response to a Washington Post story about the Court; though he decided not to send it, it can be found in his papers. It reads in part: “It is amazing how little the press knows about Supreme Court procedures. A country paper that we read at Goose Prairie can be excused, but not the Washington Post, whose editors could find someone to give them a seminar on judicial procedure any time they choose.”28Later, in his autobiography,Douglas called the press “depraved,” and he concluded that newspapers use the editorial page as “a club by the publisher against the Douglas and Burger were not alone in their anger. A biographer of Justice Abe Fortas wrote that Fortas held a “hatred of the press,” and that he called reporters “dirty” and “crooked .”30 Despite recognizing the press as a conveyer of their views and images to the public, the justices generally do not acknowledge that influence flows the other way. When asked in an interview

50


what influence public opinion has on justices’ opinions, Justice William Brennan emphatically stated, “none.”31 But even with such vehement disclaimers, the justices occasionally hint that they do notice the political world about them. Justice Scalia, in his concurring opinion in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services wrote: We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging ustheir unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will-to follow the popular will .32

Whereas Scalia admitted to noticing expressions of public opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist more explicitly acknowledged its possible impact during a 1986 speech, prior to his elevation to chief justice: Judges, so long as they are relatively normal human beings, can no more escape being influenced by public opinion in the long run than can people working at other jobs. And if a judge on coming to the bench were to decide to hermetically seal himself off from all manifestations of public opinion, he would accomplish very little; he would not be influenced by current public opinion, but instead by the state of public opinion at the time that he came onto the bench.33

And one justice admitted in a background interview that public opinion may at least influence the Court’s agenda, saying, “people just demand that the Supreme Court resolve an issue whether we really ought to or not. That does affect us Though justices may claim that they are not making their decisions with the press or public in mind, there is evidence in their conduct that suggests otherwise. In a systematic study by David G. Barnum, the major Court actions of the 1960s on minority rights were found to be prompted by public opinion, while the Court was unwilling to act in areas such as busing and legalization of homosexuality where their decisions would be counter-maj0ritarian.3~Further evidence is provided by Roy B. Hemming and B. Dan Wood, who used a multiple regression analysis to show that Supreme


51

Court justices respond directly to changing public preferences by marginally adjusting their own attitudes and decision outcomes?6 A possible explanation for the justices’ sensitivity to public opinion was put forward by James A. Stimson, Michael B. MacKuen, and Robert S. Erikson, who suggested that justices engage in “rational anticipation.” They explain: “[I]nstitutionally minded justices will want to avoid public defeat and the accompanying weakening of the Court’s implicit authority: They will compromise in order to save the institution. All this implies paying some attention to what the public wants from g~vernment.”~~ Though the Court must be responsive to public will to achieve deference to its decisions and maintain its power, it must not appear to be responsive to public opinion, for to do so would cast doubt on its independence and weaken its power. Thus a paradox exists for the justices’ conduct-they must engage in image making while denying that they do so. They resolve this dilemma by actively cultivating an image of aloofness. An example of such self-conscious aloofness was related by Tony Mauro, a reporter for USA Today, when David Souterjoined the Court: We had a reception at the press room for Justice Souter. . . . [Wlhen a justice comes onto the court . . . [w]e invite all the justices down for wine and cheese. . . . At the very end of it, Souter turned to us and said, “Well, thank you for this. I enjoyed it. Let’s do it again when I retire.” We realized as he walked away, [that] you just don’t see them much. Once they get life tenure, they tend to get inaccessible-until they’re old and they want to adjust their obituaries?*

The reality is that the justices do engage in subtle maneuvering to influence public opinion, but they do not wish to be seen doing so. Stuart Taylor made the following observation about Justice Scalia: Scalia is one of the most interesting [of the justices] because he is a ball of energy. He writes very forceful opinions. He does the same in oral argument. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to be a public figure, he’s very conscious of that. When he’s giving a speech, he doesn’t want to be televised. He doesn’t want anyone from the press to cover it. When he’s making a speech somewhere if he sees a television camera, he’ll go off stage and say “I’m not going back on until that camera is gone.”

52

Kncent James Strickler and Richard Davis

The explanation he gives is that he doesn’t think Supreme Court justices should be public figures, out on the hustings making arguments. He can’t resist doing it; he just doesn’t want the image of what he’s doing widely disseminated. I think there was an element that some of the other justices felt he was getting a lot of attention, he was hotdogging too much and so I think he has legitimate reasons for being concerned. But there is a certain tension between his urge to assert himself and his desire not to be perceived as asserting himself in certain ~ a y s . 3 ~

The Court’s near obsession with maintaining anonymity outside of its written opinions can be seen in the details of a recent agreement it reached to have the transcripts of its oral arguments posted on the Internet. While the attorneys arguing a case are to be identified, and the chief justice may be identified when announcing the name of the case, none of the questions are to be attributed to a particular justice. Instead, the word “Question” is to be substituted in the posted transcript for the name of the justice who is actually asking the question.4O In addition to cultivating respect through an image of aloofness, justices sometimes actively engage the press to accomplish other ends, such as protecting their personal images. In the past, Justices Harry Blackmun and William Rehnquist granted interviews specifically to correct what they considered mistaken views of their personalities*: While other justices, for example William Brennan and Byron White, punished the press by cutting themselves off from reporters when they felt they were treated unfairly (though, after years of silence, Brennan embraced the press near the end of his tenure, when his power on the Court was waning and his legacy was in question)!* A second motive for the justices to engage the press is to acquire external assistance for internal disputes. Justices sometimes use press interactions and public speeches as opportunities to express their views to sympathetic audiences, and to criticize colleagues or other 0fficials.4~But the more common avenue for such expressions is the dissenting or concurring opinion. Dissents and concurrences, which serve no authoritative function within the legal system, are often designed to gain press and public attention for a particular justice’s view outside the Court. Dissents are much more likely to be


53

reported by the press than concurrences, probably due to the drama of their inherent conflictP4 Justices increasingly have found dissents and concurrences useful tools for expressing individual views separate from the majority of the Court. The number of such individual expressions by justices has increased over time. Up until the 1950s, the number of Court opinions and individual opinions was roughly the same for each term. Since the 1950s, the number of individual opinions has grown to more than double the number of Court 0pinions.4~The increase in the quantity of individual opinions in recent years caused David O’Brien to conclude that “individual opinions are more highly prized than the opinions of the A third motive of the justices in their press interactions is to affect the larger political environment as it touches the Court. Justice William 0. Douglas publicly criticized oil companies!7 Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken out against conservatives being intimidated from speaking their In 1986, Justices Brennan and Stevens indirectly debated Attorney General Edwin Meese in the press concerning original intent and judicial a~tivism!~ Justices sometimes even participate in the public debate over Supreme Court nominees. Justice John Paul Stevens publicly endorsed the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court,So while Justice Thurgood Marshall publicly questioned the credentials of David Souter?’ Thus the Court has an active but often subtle or hidden relationship with the press. That relationship is essential for individual justices in reaching personal objectives and for the Court as a whole in maintaining its power. To more fully understand the importance of this relationship it is helpful to examine the mechanics of reporting on the Supreme Court beat.

COVERING THE COURT

Approximately fifty reporters are assigned to the Supreme Court. Twelve to fifteen work full-time or nearly full-time on the Court; the rest cover other beats as well. The Court beat is high in prestige, due

54


to its proximity to power, but low in desirability as an assignment for most reporters, due to the need to rely primarily on documents and the relative paucity of interviews with sources?* While many journalists are general assignment reporters and move from beat to beat, Supreme Court reporters are unique in their stability. In a survey of Court reporters in the early 1990s, half said they had been on the beat for more than six ~ e a r s . 5Such ~ lengthy experience is a relatively recent development. In 1974, tenure on the Supreme Court beat averaged little more than 2.5 years.54 Longevity is an advantage at the Court because many legal issues arise repeatedly, allowing journalists to accumulate expertise. Another distinguishing characteristic of the Court beat is the legal background of many reporters. Some legal training is the norm among Court regulars, several of whom have law degree^?^ Such specialized training is another recent development. In 1964, Chester Newland found that few Court reporters were trained in legal matLegal training helps reporters to understand the Court’s processes and communicate with legal experts as sources. Having a legal background also provides additional access for some reporters. C N ” s Roger Cossack, as a privilege of his membership in the Supreme Court Bar, was able to listen to the first half of the oral arguments in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board from the Court’s lawyers’ listening room, and then slip out to be the first to report on the proceeding^.^^ Despite the prestige associated with their assignment, the sporadic nature of press coverage of the Court often relegates these reporters to the fringes of the journalistic community. “Face time”time on the air-tends to be lower for broadcast reporters covering the Court than for other broadcast reporters. However, a few Court regulars, such as Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio, Tony Mauro of USA Today, Lyle Denniston of the Baltimore Sun, and Tim O’Brien of ABC News, have become media personalities who deliver speeches about the Court and even are interviewed by others as experts on the Court. At the beginning of each term, reporters select from the Court’s “Order List” (cases accepted for oral argument in that term) a small number of newsworthy cases on which to focus their limited re-


55

sources. Some reporters also read through the thousands of requests made to the Court for cases to be heard (called certiorari petitions) to target key cases as early as possible. One reporter commented that “an increasing portion of my effort went into sifting through the Supreme Court docket in search of whiz-bang fact situations that might make it on [the Court’s agenda].’’58 Such selectivity drastically reduces the number of cases that are given press attention. In 1989, of the 144 decisions handed down by the Court, only 35 (24 percent) received any network news coverage, and only 16 (1 1 percent) were covered by all three major broadcast networks?9 Through this selection process, the media, while not necessarily dictating what the public thinks, certainly influences what it thinks about. The quantity of coverage devoted to a particular issue, or a particular case, is an important signal for the public in judging its importance.@’ Television coverage in particular imposes additional limits on story choice and coverage. Tim O’Brien explained that “[olne of my stories, if it runs a minute-forty . . . that might be one column in a newspaper. Barely a column. . . . We can’t be as comprehensive as you can in a newspaper simply because we do not have the time.”61 Broadcast journalists attempt to present Court stories as human dramas. For example, in covering a case about victim impact statements, Tim O’Brien traveled to Memphis to interview the family of a woman and her daughter who had been stabbed to death. Toni House, the late public information officer for the Court, once observed that “what television is able to do is put a human face on the decisions when they are allowed to. They go out and put the people who were involved on camera.”62 Wire services reporters are also differentiated from the others because in most cases they file their stories first. One estimated that he spent three minutes reviewing a decision before filing the lead, and thirty minutes before filing the whole st0ry.6~Early wire stories then shape the framing of stories by other reporters. Those cues become particularly important when a decision is complex and the implications of the decision may be unclear. If a case is reported, typically it is at one or more of three stages: when the certiorari petition is submitted, when oral arguments are made, and when the decision is handed down. This process provides

56


multiple opportunities for coverage, particularly of a case dealing with an already high profile issue such as abortion or school prayer. Oral arguments often provide the best opportunity to show conflict and introduce an issue. But, since they lack finality and tend to be technical and dry, they can easily be skipped over in anticipation of covering the decision. One reporter lamented: “Sometimes I come out of an oral argument with hardly a quotable quote.”64 Even if a story is not immediately filed, however, oral arguments can help the reporter to understand the issues and may reveal the attitudes of the justices, thereby hinting at the coming decision. When a decision is announced, the Court’s Public Information Office immediately distributes the opinions in printed f0rm.6~At that point, reporters must read and begin to interpret the decision. Interpretation is facilitated by extensive preparation before the decision is announced. Court reporters spend the bulk of their time reading documents related to cases. Frank Aukofer of the Milwaukee Journal explained: Most of the stuff that you need is right there at the Court-you have read the briefs, the amicus briefs. There isn’t much need to go out and interview anybody. Sometimes to personalize it, to make a better story out of it, I will go out and talk to the people involved or talk to their lawyers. On a big case, when you have 20-30 amicus briefs, you pretty much get the gist of what’s going on from the documentation at the Court. It’s a nice, comfortable way to operate as a reporter because it’s all there right in front of y0u.6~

Because primary sources such as certiorari petitions and briefs are readily available to reporters, the decisions and the reasoning behind them are not usually a surprise for those who cover the C0urt.6~ Even with months of preparation, however, decision reading can be a difficult task for reporters. Carl Stern observed that “[the justices have] got too many clerks, so they write these horrendously long law review articles for decisions. . . . The plain fact is that Supreme Court decisions today look like the periodic tables in The difficulty of converting a complicated, legalistic opinion into a mass audience news story led New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse to describe herself as “a kind of tran~lator.,’~~ But in


57

filling this role, the reporters often need help, and they frequently get that help from each other. Supreme Court reporters operate in a competitive,but also collegial atmosphere.They write stories independently, but they often compare As Carl Stern explained: notes after oral arguments and You cannot go to the principal actors and ask them what they meant. You have to figure it out yourself. . . . We would frequently . . . put our heads together and kind of ask each other, “What do you think it means?”. . .I can’t think of any press operation that I’ve experienced or did experience in almost thirty-four years of journalism that was as collegial as the Supreme Court press

One part-time Court reporter explained that the regulars are important to those who cover the Court as part of a much larger beat because “once in a while you get a complex decision with no clear majority. Then I would talk it over with some of my colleagues who would have covered the case more closely.’772 This process was exposed for all the world to see when the complicated decision in Bush v. Gore was handed down on live TV. Reporters, reading frantically, were obviously befuddled at first. One asked a colleague, “Can you make heads or tails of it?” Another correspondent admitted, “All us aren’t sure what is going on.”73Eventually, after the reporters had debated their initial interpretations on air with each other and their anchors, and had managed to read the opinions in more detail, they began rendering more enlightened summaries of the decision. Another solution to the problem of interpretation, since the justices themselves refuse to clarify their written opinions, is to go to outside sources. Interest groups happily volunteer to interpret decisions and their implications. Some groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, keep offices near the Court building for easy access to news conferences immediately after decisions. Several interest groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Chamber of Commerce,hold briefings in the D.C. area to inform reporters of their positions on upcoming cases. Competition to be sources in Court stories is intense among interest groups. Interest group representatives mill about the Supreme

58


Court plaza after a decision looking for opportunities to share their spin with reporters. As a dramatic example, following his oral argument on behalf of A1 Gore in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, attorney Lawrence Tribe “proved media-savvy, storming the microphones [on the plaza] after the hearing so that he, not [Bush’s attorney Ted] Olson, got on the tube [first].”74Elite reporters avoid the plaza and let the groups chase them. One reporter related that “people are falling all over themselves to offer you information, offering stories, offering access to major players.”75 Linda Greenhouse commented that “I don’t make too many phone calls. People call me.’776The most sought after sources are more likely to return the call of an elite reporter. Reporters also will turn to academic experts as sources for stories or just for confirmation of the reporter’s interpretation of the decision. Court reporters surveyed said that legal experts are their most frequent Legal pundits such as Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School and Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford Law School are famous as sources, not only because they are experts, but because they are quick to return calls and are good at translating the decisions into lay terms. Parties to a case also become sources. This is particularly true when one party is an interest group or the U.S. government. Another source is counsel in the case, who usually are willing to speak to the press. Reporters keep lists of willing sources, categorized by issue. The choice is often influenced by accessibility. One reporter admitted that his sources are “people you can get through to.”78Reporters often solicit strong rhetoric in an attempt to get a good quote. One news magazine reporter said, “I try to get a key quote to illuminate the issue-a quote that is funny, or sexy, or unusual, or in a slightly off beat way illuminates the Experts who can best meet the sound bite imperative are most likely to be used again. Thus stories about the Court often focus more on reactions to decisions than on the decisions themselves.80 Two-thirds of Court journalists surveyed said that their editor’s influence was important in their work.81 Because the Associated Press and other wire services get their stories out first, they affect the approach of editors to their reporters’ Editors rely on


59

wire service reports to monitor their reporters’ choices and use information from the wire in negotiating length and angle of stories. If the approach of a nonelite reporter differs from that on the wire, it is likely to be challenged by the reporter’s editor, and the reporter will bear the burden of proof. Editors exert control over the content of Court stories. Two-thirds of reporters surveyed said that their editors want their stories changed to better explain technical points. Such content concerns can make stories more readable, but not necessarily more informative. Under editorial influence, many reporters omit much of the reasoning behind the decisions, because their editors consider it beyond their audience. Carl Stern found that approach frustrating: [A]ny words I used to describe the Court’s reasoning were rejected as beyond the understanding of the average Joe. Analogies were usually substituted from sports or warfare. . . . There’s many a time . . . that I took . . . if not a verbatim quote at least the essence of what a justice had said and was told by a producer to change this or that. And I would say, “But that’s not what he said,” and they would say, “well that’s what he really meant.” And I would say, “No, that’s not what he meant, and that’s not correct.” And then it came down to, “Do you want to get on the air tonight or don’t you want to get on the air tonight?”83

THE CONTENT OF COURT COVERAGE

Another wrinkle in the reporter’s job is the decreasing space and time devoted to Court stories. News media organizations are forcing reporters to explain the Court with more brevity. Lyle Denniston, longtime Supreme Court reporter for the Baltimore Sun, observed that in the mid-1980s he was given 28 to 30 inches of column space for a story, but by the mid-1990s he was receiving only 16 in~hes.8~ The shrinkage of coverage has not just affected newspapers but television as well. Using data from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, Doris Graber found the amount of network news time devoted to the Court had dropped from 3.9 percent to 2.4 percent over a five-year period. While an average of 26 minutes a month was

60


given to the Court during 1990-199 1, only eight minutes was about the Court during the 1994-1995 term.85 The decline in attention to the Court reflects the media’s emphasis on newsworthiness. Court decisions that survive the filtering process must reflect news valuesF6 Only those involving drama and conflict and that seem proximate to the lives of viewers will be covered. In Lyle Denniston’s words, a story is newsworthy if it is “an object of contemporary fa~cination.”~~ Media critic James Fallows observed: “Get the ratings and you’re forgiven all else. The sin there is not being inaccurate. The sin is being boring.”88 Fred Graham sarcastically noted that it can be argued that Supreme Court “proceedings are so dull that it is a public service to keep them off the tube.”89 The Court itself may have contributed to this decline in interest. The Warren and Burger Courts made history with milestone cases on school desegregation,obscenity,and abortion, but the Rehnquist Court has been more restrained. Its restraint may be as much a matter of subject opportunity as it is of judicial choice. Lyle Denniston explained: There is no such thing anymore . . . as a landmark precedent-setting decision like Brown or . . . Roe v. Wade. The salami is sliced thinner and thinner and thinner. In trying to cover a First Amendment case now you almost have to be a Talmudic scholar to slice the difference between the dogmatic principles the Court is going to follow.go

Another factor that discourages press coverage is the justices’ aversion to personal stories. Stories about the Court are rarely about personalities, scandals, or the institution-they are about the cases. In 1989-1990, 74 percent of network stories concerning the Court were about cases on the current docket. In 1994 the same figure had risen to 84 percent?l The exceptions to docket-centered coverage are almost always resignations and confirmations of justices ?2 The quest for newsworthiness produces a distorted picture of the Court. Often the impression is of a Court dominated by social polAssociated icy issues “to the exclusion of other types of Press coverage during 1989-1990 varied according to case content. First Amendment and civil rights cases were overreported relative to their percentage of the docket, while cases involving judicial power, federalism, and the economy were underreported?4


61

Furthermore, what coverage there is of Court decisions tends to be superficial.Elliot Slotnick and Jennifer Segal found that only 27 percent of stories about Webster referred to the fact that a Missouri law was being challenged, and that “a full 45 percent of Bakke stories ~~] [concerning Regents of University of California v. B ~ k k e lacked specific content about the nature of Bakke’s claim or the factual scenario underlying it.”96 Slotnick and Segal concluded that reporting on the Bakke and Webster decisions was “relatively ahistorical and a~ontextual.”~~ Glossing over the details is not the only shortcoming of Court reporting. Justices are rarely mentioned by name?* The Court as an institution and its members were nearly invisible in the coverage of Bakke and Webstet-.%A content analysis of Court stories spanning from 1984 to 1989 revealed that only one-third of Time magazine stories and one-fifth of CBS news stories mentioned a justice by name.lWIn fact, interest groups were noted by name more often in Court stories than were the authors of Court opinions.lo1Moreover, case votes (indicating how many justices did or did not endorse the majority outcome in a particular case) are rarely reported. Slotnick and Segal found that in 1989 the votes of the justices were reported by the networks in about one-half of the cases. By 1994 such reports almost never occurred.lo2 A striking example of selectiveness and inaccuracy can be seen in the press coverage of certiorari petitions. Very few certiorari denials are reported by the networks: only 18 out of 4,705 in 1989. The few that are reported deal with issues such as abortion, equal protection, and privacy.lo3But despite the small number of certiorari stories, covering such a narrow range of subjects, the stories are fraught with error. In coding the Court’s decisions for their 1989-1990 study of network Court coverage, Slotnick and Segal found news media coverage of merit decisions they could not locate on the docket. Later they discovered that these phantom decisions were actually certiorari denials.lWIn the 1989 term, 48 percent of reports about certiorari denial were mistakenly presented as merit decisions, 27 percent were presented ambiguously,and only 24 percent were reported accurately.105Court Public Information Officer Toni House said that the worst thing reporters do is misrepresent certiorari denials, making them sound like decisions.lo6

62


In short, press coverage of the Court is minimal and superficial. Biases and mistakes in reporting present the public with a distorted view of the Court’s work. Given these realities, it is no wonder that the Court attempts to influence press coverage. THE DANCE BETWEEN THE COURT AND THE PRESS

Supreme Court justices seek to control press coverage of the Court by leading the press in a shrouded dance-restraining it at one moment, directing it at another, and all the while holding shrouds before their faces to mask themselves and their efforts. One may question whether there is enough contact between the justices and the press to claim that they dance; but despite a lack of formal personal encounters, such as interviews and news conferences, justices and reporters do interact regularly. The justices specifically shape press coverage by directing the press to their written work, by being selective in their public interaction, by providing background information, by attempting to shut off other points of access, and by avoiding issues of contention, thereby focusing attention on minor matters such as working conditions. Such efforts are not new. The Court began to institutionalize its relations with the press in the 1930s. In 1935 the Court opened a Public Information Office with a Court employee designated to help the press.lo7In 1947 the Court appointed a full-time public information officer. The Court carefully chooses not to use terms such as “press secretary” or “press office.” Although the Public Information Office deals primarily with the press, the title implies that the office simply gives information to the public, without acknowledging the press as the obvious conduit of that information. In other branches of the federal government a press secretary provides advice about how policy will play with the public, but the Court’s Public Information Officer does not provide similar counsel. Toni House, who served as public information officer through the Burger and Rehnquist years, once said, “My job is peculiar in Washington because this office doesn’t spin, it doesn’t flap, it doesn’t interpret. Our job is to put the news media together with the information that they need to cover the Court.”’o8


63

The Public Information Office provides official information, available to the general public as well as the press, and nothing more, thus reinforcing the Court’s message that they are unconcerned with politics. In reference to crank calls and advocacy mail, House remarked: “People don’t realize we [the Court] don’t care what they think.”lo9Former Erne reporter Jerome Carter said that the Supreme Court is “the only beat in the federal government where if you ask them a question they stare at you and say, ‘That’s your job. I’m not here to do that.”’”O Despite these seeming barriers, as an institution, the Court says a lot to the press-in official documents. The number of certiorari petitions, Court orders, briefs, and opinions that a reporter is expected to have a knowledge of is astounding. For example, Richard Carelli of the Associated Press estimated that he spent 50 percent of his time reading the four thousand certiorari petitions filed each year.”’ The volume of material generated by the Court led Washington Post reporter Fred Barbash to say: “No other institution explains itself at such length, such frightening length.”l12 By feeding the press an almost overwhelming volume of documents, the Court focuses press attention on the justices’ work product. Thus, most news stories about the Court are simply about the content of the justices’ opinions.l13 But the justices realize that their written communication may not tell the whole story. Hence, they also interact with reporters in other, more direct, settings. Regular reporters on the Supreme Court beat occasionally are given off-the-record interviews with the justices. The justices prefer such settings, in which they can direct the press without appearing to. In these encounters they bind the press to maintain the perception that they do not interact-as the price for the interaction. During these sessions, the justices usually refuse to discuss current cases, and reporters know better than to ask. But they do discuss their roles in past decisions and offer insight on the Court’s inner machinations. In an early 1990s survey of Court beat regulars, only three surveyed said that they had never had an off-the-record interview with a justice. Half reported such interviews with a majority of the justices, while two said they had interviewed every current justice. Two-thirds said they had been granted off-the-record interviews in every term.l14

64


But the justices do not just provide information; they also limit it. The clerks who serve the justices each term are potentially valuable news sources because they are privy to the Court’s handling of current cases. However, the justices prevent such leaks. Clerks are strongly warned by the justices not to talk to reporters and are teased about the “20-second rule”-that if they talk to a reporter they will be fired within twenty seconds.’15 Even when leaks occur, the justices can discredit them by simply altering their plans. Tim O’Brien remarked that the Court can “make you look foolish if you say decision on such and such day. . . . The Court doesn’t like it when someone announces their decision before they do.”116Because the Court eventually goes public with its decisions, some Court reporters argue, it is not worth the risk of reporting a leak that might be wrong or that might offend the Court. The Court has been successful enough at plugging leaks that the reporters do not expect them, nor do they try to cultivate them. Without reliable alternative sources, the reporters simply wait for the Court to speakthrough its written opinions. The extent to which the justices care about the Court’s press exposure is seen in their efforts to facilitate accurate coverage. In addition to providing a pressroom and issuing opinions promptly, and other measures designed to accommodate the press, they sometimes alter their procedures to help reporters get the story right. For example, when Carl Stem told Chief Justice Burger that he had misreported a decision on the air (thinking it had been the reverse decision), Burger ordered that clarifying headnotes be attached to future decision^."^ In another case, the Court changed its former policy of not announcing on what days decisions would be handed down, after reporters complained that they did not know when to come to the Court to receive the decisions. The Court now announces on what days decisions will be handed down, but not which decisions will be released on a particular day.l18 The Court also changed a policy of delivering all opinions on Mondays, after lobbying from reporters to spread the load through the week.lI9 Those changes occurred because the Court realized that too many decisions were going unreported, due to its unpredictable schedule and excessive volume on a given day. They were clearly designed to make Court reporting eas-


65

ier and more complete. Thus, although the Court has occasionally made changes to assist the press, these changes have always been designed so that the Court benefits from more accurate and more extensive press coverage of its written work. As part of its effort to restrict and control its coverage, the Court also has resisted the televising of its arguments and decisions. Several justices have publicly expressed their concerns that electronic access to oral arguments would damage the Court. In 1996, Justice David Souter told a House Appropriations subcommittee,“I think the case is so strong that I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom it’s going to roll over my dead body.”12oLess extravagantly, Justice Stephen Breyer, in a November 2000 speech, argued that allowing cameras in the courtroom would weaken the “public’s trust” in the Supreme Court-perhaps because the justices’ unedited foibles would be laid bare or they would appear to be playing to the camera.121 The Court’s reluctance to be on camera came to a head during the Bush v. Gore legal battle in the Florida recount cases.122The Court was faced with extraordinary pressure to open its doors for the first time to television cameras. Television networks petitioned for access and newspaper editorials criticized the Court for being unresponsive to those requests.123Moreover, a threat from Senators Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.),to force cameras into the nation’s highest courtroom through legislation, still hung in the air.124 The Court solved its dilemma by barring television access as it had always done, to preserve its mystique, but while also allowing audiotapes of the oral arguments to be distributed immediately following their conclusion, to diffuse the pressure for open access. Though it was not nearly the degree of access that the networks had sought, the Court’s “[qluickly releasing an audiotape was, by the [Clourt’s 18th-century standards, The Court’s handling of the Florida recount cases demonstrates how tenuous the Court’s position is. There will be increasing public demands for a more open and accessible Court to match a mediadriven political and social environment. What will be the next step the Court will take to satisfy those demands? How will it maintain its aloofness and mystique under intense public pressure to conform to a media environment with which it is highly uncomfortable?

66

Encent James Strickler and Richard Davis

The dance between the justices and the press will continue. Indeed, it must continue in order for the justices to maintain their desired public image in an age that calls upon them to settle many pressing political issues, such as the election of the president of the United States. Yet, whether the Court will be able to continue to hold up its shroud is the main question dominating the future relationship between the Supreme Court and the press.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Do the actions of the Supreme Court deserve more media coverage? If so, whose fault is it that they don’t receive sufficient press attention? 2. Should press coverage of Supreme Court decisions continue to focus on cases involving personal rights and liberties (as it currently does), or should more attention be given to cases dealing with economic issues? If economic cases deserve more attention, how can this be accomplished? 3. Despite the superficial nature of media stories about the Supreme Court, is press coverage of the Supreme Court really inaccurate? If so, are these inaccuracies extreme enough to be worthy of public concern? 4. Is the general public capable of understanding the actions of the Supreme Court? If not, is this a good reason to shield the Court from intense press scrutiny? 5. Is the dependency of the press on interest groups and pundits to flesh out its coverage of Supreme Court decisions problematic? What other options are available to the press? Do these options have significant problems as well? 6 . Would it be helpful or troublesome if Supreme Court justices met with reporters to further explain their decisions beyond what is found in their written opinions? 7. Should Supreme Court arguments be televised? What impact might this have on the work of the Court? Should even currently private Supreme Court deliberations -like similar congressional hearings, debates, and accompanying votes -be televised?


67

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Alexander, S. L., Covering the Courts: A Handbook for Journalists (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1999). Davis, Richard, Decisions and Images: The Supreme Court and the Press (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1994). Denniston, Lyle W., The Reporter and the Law: Techniques of Covering the Courts (New York: Hastings House, 1980). Grey, David L., The Supreme Court and the News Media (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Slotnick, Elliot, and Jennifer A. Segal, Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That’sFit to Air? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

NOTES An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Perspectives on Political Science, “The Invisible Dance: The Supreme Court and the Press,” Richard Davis and Vincent James Strickler, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 85-92, Spring 2000. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 13 19 18th Street, N W ,Washington, DC 20036- 1802. Copyright 0 (2000). 1 . Dorothy A. Bowles and Rebekah V. Bromley, “Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court during the Reagan Administration,” Journalism Quarterly 69 (Winter 1992): 948-59; Richard Davis, “Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Communications and the Law 9 (October 1987): 43-58; Michael Solimine, “Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court,” Journalism Quarterly 57 (Winter 1980): 661-63. 2. Charles H. Franklin and Liane C. Kosaki, “Media, Knowledge, and Public Evaluations of the Supreme Court,” in Contemplating Courts,ed. Lee Epstein (Washington,D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1995), 352-75. 3. Richard Davis, Decisions and Images: The Supreme Court and the Press (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1994); David Ericson, “Newspaper Coverage of the Supreme Court,” Journalism Quarterly 54 (Autumn 1977): 605-607; Ethan Katsh, “The Supreme Court Beat: How Television Covers the U.S. Supreme Court,” Judicature 67 (June-July 1983): 6-12;

68


Elliot E. Slotnick and Jennifer A. Segal, Television News and the Supreme Court: All the Naos That’s Fit to Air? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 105. 4. Davis, Decisions and Images; Jerome O’Callaghan and James 0. Dukes, “Media Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Caseload,” Journalism Quarterly 69 (Spring 1992): 195-203. 5. Larry Berkson, The Supreme Court and Its Publics (New York: Lexington Books, 1978). 6. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Mentor, 1961), 465. 7. Philip B. Kurland, “‘The Cult of the Robe’ and the Jaworski Case,” Washington Post, 23 June 1974, C2. 8. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833,865 (1992). 9. Jeffery J. Mondak and Shannon Ishiyama Smithey, “The Dynamics of Public Support for the Supreme Court,” Journal of Politics 59 (November 1997): 1114-42,1119; Thomas R. Marshall, Public Opinion and the Supreme Court (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 10. Roger Handberg, “Public Opinion and the United States Supreme Court, 1935-1981 ,”International Social Science Review 59 (1984): 3-13; Joseph Tanenhaus and Walter Murphy, “Patterns of Public Support for the Supreme Court: A Panel Study,” Journal of Politics 43 (February 1981): 24-39; Marshall, Public Opinion and the Supreme Court. 11. John R. Schmidhauser, Judges and Justices: The Federal Appellate Judiciary (Boston: Little Brown, 1979). 12. Richard Harris, Decision (New York: Dutton, 1971), 110. 13. John Brigham, The Cult of the Court (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 7. 14. Earl Warren, “Memorandum to the Conference,” Earl Warren Papers, box 57 l , Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (5 May 1954). 15. Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000). 16. Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). 17. There is a common misperception that Bush v. Gore was a straightforward 5-4 decision. In fact, the controlling opinion in that case was an unsigned per curiam. In addition to the per curiam opinion, the decision was accompanied by a concurrence signed by three justices (Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) and dissents signed by four (Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter). (Interestingly, though Souter and Breyer are counted as dissents, they agreed with the per curiam opinion that Florida’s recount was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds, but they disagreed about the appropriate remedy-so some observers even count it as a 7-2


69

decision.) From these concurring and dissenting opinions one can deduce that the vote on the per curiam opinion was in reality 5 4 , with Justices Kennedy and O’Connor, with the three concurring justices, completing the majority. It is critical to note, however, that the per curiam opinion was not signed as a five-vote majority, but was left anonymous. If the dissenting justices had not chosen to make public their disagreement, the controlling per curiam opinion would have offered no clues about how many justices agreed with it. The issuing of the decision as a per curiam decision was obviously an attempt to project unanimity-an attempt that was spoiled by the dissenting justices. This attempt by the majority to imply unanimity when it did not exist can be best understood as an effort to avoid appearing partisan. Obviously, at least two of the Court’s members were concerned enough about how the decision would be received by the public, if the Court’s 5-4 split were explicitly acknowledged, that they refused to sign it (even though it is generally assumed that Justice Kennedy was the author of the per curiam decision). 18. Baker v. C a v 369 U.S. 186,267 (1962) (J. Frankfurter and J. Harlan dissenting). 19. Lawrence Baum, The Supreme Court, 3d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1989), 206. 20. Gregory Caldiera, “Neither the Purse nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court,” American Political Science Review 80 (December 1986): 1209-26,1223. 21. Charles H. Franklin, Liane C. Kosaki, and Herbert Kritzer, “The Salience of United States Supreme Court Decisions” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2-5 September 1993). 22. Franklin and Kosaki, “Public Evaluations of the Supreme Court.” 23. Earl Warren to Louis H. Pollack, 23 June 1966, Earl Warren Papers, box 617, Library of Congress. 24. Harold H .Burton, memorandum, 15 April 1956,Earl Warren Papers, box 349, Library of Congress. 25. Earl Warren to Edward P. Morgan, 25 June 1966,Earl Warren Papers, box 617, Library of Congress; referring to Miranda v. State ofArizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). 26. Davis, Decisions and Images, 112. 27. Fred Graham, Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman (New York: Norton, 1990), 103. 28. Melvin I. Urofsky, ed., The Douglas Letters: Selectionsfrom the Private Papers of Justice William 0.Douglas (Baltimore: Adler & Adler, 1987), 66-67.

70


29. William 0. Douglas, The Court Years, Z939-Z975 (New York: Random House, 1980), 197,206. 30. Bruce A. Murphy, Fortas (New York: William Morrow, 1988), 229-30. 31. Baum, The Supreme Court, 129. 32. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490,535 (1989) (J. Scalia concurring). 33. R. W. Apple Jr., “Justices Are People,” New York Times, 10 April 1989, A l . 34. H. W. Perry Jr., Deciding to Decide: Agenda Setting in the United States Supreme Court (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991),259-60. 35. David G. Barnum, “The Supreme Court and Public Opinion: Judicial Decision-Making in the Post New Deal Period,” Joumal of Politics 46 (1985): 652-66. See also Marshall, Public Opinion and the Supreme Court; Richard Funston,“The Supreme Court and Critical Elections,”American Political Science Review 69 (September 1975): 795-8 l l . For an opposing view see Jonathon Casper, “The Supreme Court and National Policy Making,” American Political Science Review 70 (March 1976): 50-63. 36. Roy B. Flemming and B. Dan Wood, “The Public and the Supreme Court: Individual Justice Responsiveness to American Policy Moods ,” American Journal of Political Science 41 (April 1997): 468-98. 37. James A. Stimson, Michael B. MacKuen, and Robert S. Erikson, “Dynamic Representation,” American Political Science Review 89 (September 1995): 543-65,555. 38. Davis, Decisions and Images, 1 13. 39. Davis, Decisions and Images, 1 1 1. 40. Charles Lane, “Full Court Press; Oral Arguments: Few Concessions Online,” Washington Post, 6 November 2000, A33. 41. Davis, Decisions and Images, 106. 42. Davis, Decisions and Images, 106-107. 43. Davis, Decisions and Images, 106-109. 44. Elliot E. Slotnick, moderator, “The Media and the Supreme Court” (roundtable panel discussion sponsored by the American Political Science Association, in Washington, D.C., broadcast on C-SPAN, 4 September 1993), quoted in Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 185. 45. David M. O’Brien, Storm Center, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), 318-19. 46. O’Brien, Storm Center, 267. 47. Davis, Decisions and Images, 54. 48. Neil A. Lewis, “Justice Thomas Raises Issue of Cultural Intimidation,” New York Times, 14 February 2001, A28.


71

49. Stuart A. Taylor Jr., “Meese v. Brennan,” New York Emes Magazine, 6 & 13 January 1986,17-21. 50. Stuart A. Taylor Jr., “Justice Stevens, in Unusual Move, Praises Bork as a Nominee to Court,” New York Emes, 1 August 1987, A1 . 51. “Marshall Says He Never Heard of Bush’s Nominee,” New York Emes, 27 July 1990, A12. 52. Stephen Hess, The Washington Reporters (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1981), 18-19,58-59. 53. Davis, Decisions and Images, 66. 54. Everette Dennis, “Another Look at Press Coverage of the Supreme Court,” Wanova Law Review 20: 765-99. 55. Davis, Decisions and Images, 67. 56. Chester A. Newland, “Press Coverage of the United States Supreme Court,” Western Political Quarterly 19 (March 1964): 15-36, 17-18. 57. Peter Marks, “Without Pictures, TV Networks Were Scrambling,” New York Emes, 2 December 2000, A9. 58. Graham, Happy Talk, 237. 59. Franklin and Kosaki, “Public Evaluations of the Supreme Court,” 352. 60.Franklin and Kosaki, “Public Evaluations of the Supreme Court,” 366. See also generally Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 61. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 48. 62. Slotnick and Segal, TelevisionNews, 47. 63. David Shaw, Press Watch (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 125. 64. Davis, Decisions and Images, 76. 65. Elder Witt, Guide to the Supreme Court (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1990), 7 13. 66. Davis, Decisions and Images, 73. 67. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 80. 68. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 54. 69. Slotnick, “The Media and the Supreme Court,” quoted in Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 29. 70. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 41. 71. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 42. 72. Davis, Decisions and Images, 65. 73. Megan Garvey and Bob Drogin, “On Cold Nights, Shedding Light Isn’t Easy: Television Scrambles to Make Sense of the Complex Legal Decision Live on the Air,” Los Angeles Emes, 13 December 2000, A24.

72


74. Howard Kurtz, “TV’s Court Watchers Put an Ear to the Closed Door,” Washington Post, 2 December 2000, C 1. 75. Davis, Decisions and Images, 87. 76. Davis, Decisions and Images, 87. 77. Davis, Decisions and Images, 86. 78. Davis, Decisions and Images, 86. 79. Davis, Decisions and Images, 90. 80. Newland, “Press Coverage of the United States Supreme Court,” 15-36. 8 1. Davis, Decisions and Images, 94. 82. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 44. 83. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 67-73. 84. Davis, Decisions and Images, 95. 85. Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 3d ed. (Washington D.C .: Congressional Quarterly, 1997), 270-72. 86. Stephanie Larson, “How the New York Z h e s Covered Discrimination Cases,” Journalism Quarterly 62 (Winter 1985): 894-96. 87. Slotnick, “The Media and the Supreme Court,” quoted in Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 27. 88. James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 278. 89. Graham, Happy Talk, 102. 90. Slotnick, “The Media and the Supreme Court,” quoted in Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 62. 91. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 167. 92. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 167-68. 93. Davis, Decisions and Images, 52-53. 94. Davis, Decisions and Images, 136; Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 226-28; and generally O’Callaghan and Dukes, “Media Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Caseload.” 95. Regents of the Universityof California v. B a k , 438 U.S. 265 (1978). 96. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 105. 97. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 104-105. 98. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 182. 99. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 154. 100. Davis, Decisions and Images, 134. 101. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 183-84. 102. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 185. 103. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 201. 104. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 197.


73

105. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 199. 106. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 190. 107. Lewis Wood, “Press Needs Met by Supreme Court,” New York Emes, 5 January 1936,7. 108. “Cameras in the Courtroom,” C-SPAN broadcast, 14 March 1996, Washington, D .C . 109. Davis, Decisions and Images, 47. 110. Davis, Decisions and Images, 48. 111. Rorie Sherman, “The Media and the Law,” National Law Journal (6 June 1988): 32-36,33. 112. Quoted in Mitchell Tropin, “What Exactly Is the Court Saying?’ Barrister Magazine 68 (Spring 1984): 14. 113. Solimine, “Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court,” 661-63; Davis, “Lifting the Shroud,” 43-58. 114. Davis, Decisions and Images, 120. 115. Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 417. 116. Davis, Decisions and Images, 124. 117. Slotnick and Segal, Television News, 84. 118. S e e Mark H. Woolsey, Fred Graham, and James E. Clayton, letter to Earl Warren, 6 October 1965, and Earl Warren, memorandum for the clerk, 16 November 1966, Earl Warren Papers, box 666, Library of Congress. 119. David L. Grey, The Supreme Court and the News Media, 36-37; and Davis, Decisions and Images, 36. 120. Quoted in Laurie Asseo, “And Now, the Supreme Court Live?’ Sun Diego Union-Tribune, 2 6 November 2000, G6. 121. Quoted in “TV and the Supreme Court; The Issue: High Court Denies Coverage of Arguments Friday; Our View: Its Objections Treat Americans Like Children,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, 28 November 2000, A34. 122. Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000); and Bush v. Gore 531 U.S. 98 (2000). 123. See, for examples, “TV and the Supreme Court,” A34; “Court Misses Opportunity,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 28 November 2000, A 14; and “Opening the Hearing to Cameras,” San Francisco Chronicle, 29 November 2000, A26. 124. Lane, “Full Court Press,” A33. 125. Kurtz, “TV’s Court Watchers,” C1.


4 The Media and Civil Rights and Liberties Barbara A. Perry

T h e phrase “civil rights and liberties” denotes a host of basic individual rights that are constitutionally or statutorily protected and that Americans possess in relation to the government or public entities. Purists may point out that technically civil rights usually concern matters of race, ethnicity, gender, age, or other social characteristics, whereas civil liberties connote First Amendment freedoms (speech, press, religion, assembly) or criminal rights that Amendments Four through Eight of the U.S. Bill of Rights protect.’ This chapter focuses on how the media portray and cover civil rights and liberties through sources of popular culture (films, television, and fiction), as well as print and broadcast journalism. POPULAR CULTURE

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has a flair for the dramatic, as evidenced by the gold stripes that he added to his judicial robe in 1995 after seeing a similar costume in a Gilbert and Sullivan play. He clearly relished the theatrical moment presented to him on June 26,2000, when he announced the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dickerson v. United States: the case that offered yet another challenge to the famed Miranda rights. A palpable shiver of excitement stirred the audience in the packed courtroom as Rehnquist began to 75

76

Barbara A. Perry

recite: “You have the right to remain silent. If you choose not to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.” If the chief justice had asked the spectators to join him in the recitation, the vast majority could have obliged. The Miranda rights, so named for the defendant in the 1966 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court prescribed that the constitutional rights against self-incrimination and to an attorney be read to all suspects as they are taken into custody, are now known verbatim by viewers of televised crime dramas. Criminal defendants in foreign countries are disappointed to learn that their own country’s constitutional protections may not be as broad as those they see portrayed in imported American TV programs? From the early days of television in the 1950s, courtroom drama series such as “Perry Mason” and “The Defenders” captivated American audiences and introduced them to the basics of the judicial process and criminal rights. Who could forget Perry Mason’s weekly nemesis, prosecutor Hamilton Berger, leaping to his feet to demand that the judge exclude Mason’s evidence as “incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.” Viewers might not have been able to pass the bar exam’s section on evidentiary rules, but at least they had a sense that not all evidence was admissible. A steady stream of TV law, police, and private detective series has provided a staple of prime-time entertainment. In the 1970s these shows were led by “Mannix,” “Cannon,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Hawaii Five-0,” and “Kojak.” In the 1980s an ensemble cast on “L.A. Law” paved the way for more recent hit dramas like “NYPD Blue” and “Law and Order.” Even situation comedies familiarized Americans with the lowest levels of the judicial process. “The Andy Griffith Show” related the comedic exploits of a small-town sheriff who also served as the justice of the peace. He could arrest Mayberry scofflaws as a police officer and then try them as the judicial officer of first resort. (Andy Griffith returned to the small screen some years later to produce and star in “Matlock,” about a lawyer/private detective who helped to defend his predictably innocent clients.) Most recently, pseudo-real television courtroom shows have proliferated. Led by “The People’s Court,” “Superior Court,” “Divorce

The Media and Civil Rights and Liberties

77

Court,” and “Judge Judy,” these half-hour trials supposedly portray real-life conflicts in a “small-claims court” atmosphere, that is, with a scaled-down judicial process that eliminates issues of “jurisdiction, notices to defendants, pleadings, discovery, and choice of a judge or jury trial, all of which can be argued, replied to, and motioned again~t.”~ Clearly, such programs make an impact on their viewers; a poll conducted in 1989 showed that while 54 percent of respondents could name Judge Wapner as the then-presiding judge on the “People’s Court,” only 9 percent of those polled could identify William Rehnquist as the chief justice of the United state^!^ The silver screen has also served as a conduit for images of the law, justice, and civil rights and liberties. As political scientist Ernest Giglio has noted in his recent book on politics and film, movies serve as “visual opportunities for filmmakers to challenge the conventional wisdom and established doctrine on particular legal issues such as abortion and capital punishment.”6Some of America’s classic films, especially Westerns, address the importance of the rule of law. The Ox-bow Incident (1943), starring Henry Fonda as a cowboy who understands that law is the “conscience of humanity,” portrays the ugliness of mob rule when a vigilante posse, ignoring Fonda’s entreaties, serves as the judge, jury, and executioner of three men who are wrongly accused of murder. In High Noon (1952) Gary Cooper, a Western town’s sheriff, stands alone to duel outlaws who, after serving jail sentences for which he is responsible, return to seek their revenge. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) pits James Stewart, as a principled lawyer, against John Wayne, who represents the frontier version of justice at gunpoint? In different settings, other films have emphasized the necessity for due process and the rights of the accused. As Giglio queries rhetorically, “Could there be a more heroic lawyer than Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), the movie based on Harper Lee’s semiautobiographical book of the same title? Played to perfection in an Oscar-winning performance by Gregory Peck, Finch willingly accepts a judge’s request that he represent a poor black man accused of raping a white girl in a sleepy, Depression-era Alabama town. “Atticus’ acceptance [of the hopeless case] is a lesson to audiences that even marginalized groups are entitled to the best

78

Barbara A. Perry

defense possible under the American legal system.”8 Although Finch stares down a lynch mob intent on killing his jailed client, he is unable to save him from conviction by a prejudiced jury. Later, the sheriff informs Atticus that authorities fatally shot his doomed client as he tried to escape their custody. If Atticus Finch is the paradigmaticfictional lawyerhero, the famed criminal attorney Clarence Darrow played that role in real life and was subsequently portrayed on stage and screen by no less than Spencer Tracy, Orson Welles, and Henry Fonda. Inherit the Wind (1960), originally a successful Broadway play, is a highly entertaining depiction (using fictitious names for Darrow and the other principle characters) of the infamous 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” in which a Tennessee schoolteacher was tried for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution against state law. While introducing viewers to Darrow’s clever courtroom advocacy (as artfully portrayed by Tracy), in which he made his opponent, William Jennings Bryan (played by Fredric March), look foolish, Inherit the Wind also teaches lessons about First Amendment freedoms of expression and religion. The 1959 movie CompuZsion, based on the 1924 “thrill murder” committed by Leopold and Loeb, provides a forum for Welles as Darrow to make a convincing oral argument against the evils of capital punishment. In fact, Darrow’s closing remarks at the LeopoldLoeb trial saved his clients from execution? By the 1970s, Darrow, long dead, still captured the imagination of producers; Henry Fonda offered a superb portrayal of the great criminal lawyer in a one-man stage play entitled simply “Darrow,” which ultimately was filmed for television viewers. On a larger scale, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) raised universal questions about human rights in its depiction of the post-World War I1 Nazi War Crimes Trials. Media critic Steven Scheuer has described the brilliantly acted film with an all-star cast as “searing” in its exploration of “the degree to which an individual or a nation can be held responsible for carrying out the orders of their leaders, however heinous the commands may be.”*oU.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who served as the American chief counsel at the Nuremberg Trials, opened his statement to the tribunal with these words: “That four great nations [the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union], flushed with victory and stung by in-


79

jury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason. . . . [Tlhe world yields Of the no respect to courts that are organized merely to twenty-two defendants -representing the highest levels of the Nazi German war machine that had wreaked death and destruction on Europe-twelve received the death penalty, seven were imprisoned, and three were acquitted.12Media mogul Ted Turner produced an updated version of the Nuremberg Trials for his cable television networks in 2000, complete with the improbable casting of Alec Baldwin as Justice Robert Jackson. Apparently not finding the historic plot sexy enough, the Turner version added an alleged affair between Jackson and his secretary, who accompanied him to Germany. Yet made-for-television movies can provide a direct lesson to viewers on civil rights and liberties. The 1980 TV production of Gideon’s Trumpet is exemplary. With Henry Fonda in the title role, the film (based on journalist Anthony Lewis’s book of the same name) tells the true story of Clarence Earl Gideon, an illiterate drifter who in the early 1960s was arrested, tried without legal counsel (per Florida law at that time), convicted, and sentenced to jail for breaking and entering a pool hall and stealing money from its Coke machine. From his cell, Gideon wrote as best he could in his own hand on tablet paper his “pauper’s petition” to the U.S. Supreme Court. Amazingly, the Court (led by Chief Justice Earl Warren) accepted Gideon’s appeal, assigned as his counsel one of the finest legal minds in the country, future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, and ruled in his favor. There is hardly a student in the United States who has not heard of the precedent established in Gideon v. W~inwright’~-that,under the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel guarantee, states must provide all defendants, even in noncapital cases, an attorney at trial. Three years after handing down its landmark Gideon ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court would include the guarantee of counsel in the Miranda rights that all suspects must be read upon being taken into custody. Popular novels, many of which have been produced for television and the giant screen, have offered readers exposure to courtroom drama, the criminal justice system, and the legal profession. From Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series to modern legal thrillers

80

Barbara A. Perry

by real-life attorneys-turned-authors, John Grisham and Scott Turow, the entertainment industry has captured a significant audience with such books/films as The Firm, The Client, The Pelican Brief, and The Brethren (all by the prolific Grisham) and Presumed Innocent (by Turow). More recently, another lawyerbest-selling novelist, David Baldacci, has struck gold with his legal thrillers, The Simple Truth, Absolute Power, The Winner, Total Control, and Saving Faith. The last one sold 25 million copies in 33 1ang~ages.l~ PRINT A N D BROADCAST JOURNALISM: A U.S. SUPREME COURT CASE STUDY

In 1994-1995, I served as a judicial fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, which gave me the perfect opportunity to view the entire body of the Court’s work from the inside, while following media coverage of the tribunal and its decisions. Here I offer a systematic analysis of how selected print and broadcast journalists covered civil rights and liberties cases during the 1994-1995 term of the highest court in the land. For an understanding of the print medium’s coverage, I chose to follow the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both are national newspapers read throughout the country; in addition, their stories on the Supreme Court are reported via wire services in local and regional newspapers. I also examined a year’s worth of C-SPAN coverage of the Supreme Court. Civil rights and liberties cases did not always hold prominent or numerous positions on the Supreme Court’s docket. In 1935-1936 only 2 out of 160 signed written opinions were on issues involving “basic human rights.” By 1979-1980 the proportion of civil rights and liberties cases decided by the high court has more than doubled (80 out of 149). In the 1990s the Court’s total case output declined sharply, but the civil rights and liberties case ratio remained nearly constant (in 1994-1995, 49 out of 94).15 Media coverage of the Court’s 1994-1995 cases was typical in its emphasis on civil rights and liberties issues, which resonate with the general public. Thus, previews of the term by Linda Greenhouse (the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter) and Joan Biskupic (then the Wash-


81

ington Post’s Court reporter, now with USA Today) summarized cases on racial and gender discrimination, freedom of speech, and the death penalty, as well as Congress’s authority to restrict possession of guns near schools. Labeling cases as “landmarks” at the outset of the Court’s term is problematic for journalists, because the justices have only selected half of their caseload for the term when they meet for their opening oral argument on the first Monday in October. Moreover, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas have both accused the press of ignoring genuinely precedent-setting cases in less glamorous areas like banking, taxation, and administrative law. By the time the Court hands down the cases with the most public interest (particularly the civil rights and liberties decisions), usually in the last few weeks of the term, the press knows which decisions to showcase.Then the problem for journalists is analyzing numerous complex decisions in literally a few hours, in order to make press deadlines, and persuading editors to devote the necessary space or airtime to afford thorough coverage of the outcomes. Nevertheless, coverage of the denouement of landmark, or otherwise highly publicized, decisions is generally thorough, accurate, and balanced in national publications like the Post and 7imes. Like C-SPAN, the three major television networks are deprived of videotape of the Court’s announcement of decisions; in addition, by virtue of their news program formats, they usually devote less than several minutes to cases. CN”s “Headline News” offers just what the name suggests on Supreme Court decisions, but had in 1994-95 the option of providing lengthier coverage on its “Burden of Proof ,” a half-hour treatment of legal issues by lawyers Greta Van Susteren and Roger Cossack. June 12,1995, was illustrative of news coverage at the end of the Court’s term. That day the floodgates opened on the backlog of cases awaiting decision before the justices’ summer recess. The justices announced eight rulings, the most important of which were Adarand v. Peiia and Missouri v. Jenkins, two closely monitored decisions on race. The Washington Post banner headline the next day said it all: “Court Toughens Standard for Federal Affirmative Action.” Biskupic’s article on the 5-4 Adarand decision was commendable for sorting through the complexities of Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion and explaining its technicalities in a manner

82

Barbara A. Perry

comprehensible to the average reader. (She avoided the mistake made by a Time magazine reporter, appearing on PBS’s “Washington Week in Review,” who stated that the Court had struck down the affirmative action plan at issue in Adurund.) Biskupic observed that the ruling, which required that judges apply “strict scrutiny” to federal affirmative action programs, jeopardized all such programs. The decision returned the program at issue to the lower court for adjudication using the “strict scrutiny” standard. Moreover, Adurund overturned a 1990 precedent framed by retired Justice William J. Brennan, signaling an ideological shift on the high court.16 According to Biskupic, the shift was also evident in the Jenkins case. In that decision, the justices ruled by another 5-4 vote that a federal judge had improperly attempted to integrate the public schools of Kansas City, Missouri, by ordering massive expenditures in order to attract students from surrounding suburbs. Biskupic also added a portion of Justice Thomas’s stunningly emotive concurring opinion, which took the Kansas City plan to task for trying to attract white students in order to improve urban schools. Wrote Thomas: “It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.”I7A separate article by two of Biskupic’s colleagues at the Post focused on the political ramifications of the two rulings.18 Greenhouse folded more of the political implications of the Adurund ruling into her lead article on the case, declaring that the decision was “likely to fuel rather than resolve the debate over affirmative action” and noting that “the Supreme Court today cast doubt on the constitutionality of Federal programs that award benefits on the basis of race.” She elaborated: “By refusing to foreclose affirmative action as a constitutional option, the Court has done little to relieve President Clinton, as well as other elected officials now confronting the issue, of the need to make and defend their own policy choices .”I9 Eventually, President Clinton would announce cutbacks in, but not elimination of, federal affirmative action programs. Greenhouse reflected more detail from the Court’s majority opinion in Jenkins, and she also quoted directly from Thomas’s bitter concurrence?o In addition, the Times ran a separate article labeled “Reaction,” in which another of the paper’s reporters described re-


83

sponses to the Adarand decision among interest groups on both sides of the issue and within the Clinton administration?l The Post and Emes had their editorials ready to publish the day after Adarand and Jenkins came down. The Post was far less chagrined over the two rulings, saying simply that “a sharply divided Supreme Court is demonstrating the difficulty the entire government is having with the future of affirmative action programs.”**The paper did not see the two decisions as marking the end of an era but rather signaling the need to find alternatives to traditional policies to remedy racial discrimination. The Times took a much more pointed position, announcing: “The Supreme Court, a place where minorities once looked for racial justice, did what it could yesterday to halt the progress its own decisions once sparked.” The New York paper angrily labeled Justices O’Connor, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, along with the Chief Justice Rehnquist, a “constitutional wrecking crew,” because their majority opinions limited remedial programs that address the history of segregation in this c o ~ n t r y ?For ~ those who believe that the Emes and Post are cut from the same ideological cloth, these editorials from the two papers reveal marked differences in their responses to two controversial Supreme Court rulings. Subsequent news analyses of Adarand speculated about the ramifications of the decision along practical, political, and strategic lines. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and James Fallows, former editor of U.S. News and World Report, have both criticized the press for spending too much time engaging in such activity, but the articles that appeared in the Post and the Times were certainly moderate and informative in theorizing about the impact of Adarand on businesses, presidential politics, and public opinion?4 Predictably, George Will was less than pleased with the compromise ruling penned by Justice O’Connor’s controlling opinion in Adarand. He argued that the Court “would have made significant history” if Justice Scalia’s concurrence, arguing that the government can never justify racial discrimination against whites as a remedy for past discrimination against minorities, would have set the precedent in the On the other hand, William Raspberry, a more liberal columnist, pointed out the irony of Justices O’Connor and Thomas voting against affirmative action, when they both had

84

Barbara A. Perry

benefitted from it in their elevation to the nation’s highest court; and Thomas had advanced throughout his academic and professional career because of racial preference policies F6 Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer took yet another approach to the case, arguing that Adarand was relatively insignificant because the Supreme Court would no longer be the major battleground for affirmative action cases. Rather, Krauthammer argued, “it is best for democracy -indeed it is best for conservatism- that such revolutionary decisions be made not by nine wise (wo)men in black robes but by the people, in Congress and in their legislature^."^^ In Krauthammer’s view, nine justices in black robes, wise though they may be, are the antithesis of democracy by the people. Indeed, the unelected federal judiciary has often been portrayed as undemocratic, but history demonstrates that the Supreme Court breathed life into constitutional guarantees of rights to minorities and women, whose voices had been excluded from electoral politics or so diluted as to be ineffectual. The most provocative decision of the 1994-1995 term produced equally divergent editorial reaction, but news coverage of it was accurate, if slightly sensational. Announced on April 26, 1995, U.S. v. Lopez, in which the justices by a close 5-4 vote struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act as overstepping Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, marked a departure from nearly 60 years of the Court’s jurisprudence. From the time of the announcement of the decision until the following week, the newspapers and airwaves were filled with stories on Lopez. Greenhouse was most dramatic in her lead: “The Supreme Court today dealt a stinging blow to the Federal Government’s ability to move into the realm of local law enforcement.”28 Biskupic addressed the political relevance of the justices’ decision, writing that “the Court added its voice to the nation’s increasingly volatile debate over the size and roles of the federal government. . . . The decision immediately acquired extra resonance because of the Oklahoma City bombing,” only one week earlier, after which Resident Clinton and Republican leaders had called for more investigative powers for the federal g0vernment.2~In a follow-up article the next day, Biskupic included responses from a host of experts in the field, who called the Lopez decision “breathtaking and historic.”30


85

The Washington Post, in a short editorial published two days after the announcement of the Lopez decision, agreed with the Court’s majority that Congress had not met the standard of proving that the guns it intended to ban from zones around schools had any relation to interstate commerce. Rather than assuming a “the-sky-is-falling” approach, the Post reasoned (incorrectly in hindsight) that the Lopez opinion did not foreshadow a “fundamental restructuring of federalstate relation^."^' On the other hand, the New York Times waited another day to ponder the case and then issued a longer and more strident response to Lopez. It declared that the Court had “taken an unfortunate historical turn and needlessly questioned previously settled law.” The Times accused the justices of crippling Congress’s efforts to address a national problem as they had done in the early days of the New Deal and concluded that “to strip Congress of the power to function is a throwback to the misguided rulings of earlier times.”32 One of the Court’s last decisions in 1994-1995 garnered the most sensational headlines from the front page to the sports page. With two frail members of the Court’s old liberal bloc (Justices Hany Blackmun and William Brennan) looking on wanly from the audience, the justices had announced their decision in Vernoniu School District v. Acton. By a 6-3 vote the Court upheld the Oregon school district’s policy of random urinalysis drug testing for middle and high school student athletes. Biskupic’s narrative on the decision noted that the Court’s ruling “could touch the lives of millions of schoolchildren.” At the heart of Justice Scalia’s majority opinion was the argument that students are children who do not enjoy the same rights as adults and who are committed to the custody of school officials acting in the place of parents. Moreover, Scalia’s opinion for the Court returned to the issue raised at oral argument-that drug testing cannot be considered a violation of student athletes’ right of privacy when they have no expectation of privacy in school locker rooms and restrooms. As Scalia succinctly expressed it, “School sports are not for the bashf ~ l . ’The ’ ~ ~Post also carried a brief excerpt of the majority’s opinion and an article reporting that the Court’s ruling had strong support from high school athletes in the Washington area. Nevertheless, the Post’s editorial on the case sided with Justice O’Connor’s reasoning in dissent, which argued that all searches are intrusive, especially

86

Barbara A. Perry

those that involve the person, as opposed to homes, papers, or personal effects. The newspaper maintained that millions of students should not be exposed to such intrusive measures when the vast majority of them are innocent of wrongdoing. As she often does, Greenhouse focused on the historical and strategic oddities of the case, observing that for the first time the Supreme Court had upheld random drug testing. She also reported that the voting lineup in the decision was “unusual,” with conservative and liberal justices mixed on each side of the c a ~ e . 3The ~ Times included lengthier excerpts from the majority and minority opinions. Like the Post, the Times reported that local high school athletes, their parents, officials, and coaches endorsed the Court’s ruling. Unlike the Post, however, the Times wrote that educators predicted that practical considerations would prevent widespread testing of student athletes. The Times editors agreed with those at the Post that the Supreme Court had erred in permitting what the Times called “a needless and dangerous relaxation of the Fourth Amendment’s safeguard against unreasonable In its sports section, the New York Times carried another editorial questioning the constitutionality of the kind of drug testing upheld by the Court in Vemonia?6 Although headlines and stories on Supreme Court decisions may occasionally reflect modem media sensationalism and even hysteria, oral arguments at the Court are more likely to provide grist for the mills of journalists seeking the proverbial “Man Bites Dog’, story. Vernonia, brought by fifteen-year-old aspiring football player James Acton, was one such case. During the oral argument of Acton’s case, Chief Justice Rehnquist opened the way for some locker-room humor with his reasoning that urinalysis is hardly a violation of privacy when boys’ locker rooms are rarely private, with their rows of open urinals and “guys walking around naked.” Justice Breyer added that he did not think that providing a urine sample was necessarily an intrusion on privacy because urination is a fact of life. Or as Breyer put it (betraying a male perception), “It isn’t really a tremendously private thing.” The attorney for James Acton had to concede that everyone urinates. Then, visibly nervous over the tough questioning he was facing, the advocate also conceded, “In fact, I might do so here!” That line brought down the house. Joan Biskupic reported the ex-


87

change word for word in her article on the oral argument in the next day’s Post. She correctly observed that “the talk in the stately courtroom, ringed in red velvet and white marble, was decidedly unceremonious.”37 Biskupic’s inclination to report the humorous dialogue is understandable; nevertheless, if the Court’s oral arguments were televised, undoubtedly such atypical comments would be the only sound bite from the dialogue included on the evening news. Despite the media’s tendency to scour oral argument sessions for atypical andor humorous events (which are becoming more typical with wits like Justice Scalia on the bench), journalists tend to provide adequate summaries of the dialogues that occur between justices and counsel at these fascinating public spectacles. If the case is highly controversial, protestors may gather on the front plaza to picket, and they will be joined by the media, attorneys, and interest group advocates attending the post-argument news conferences. C-SPAN is able to portray the atmosphere outside the Court on such oral argument days most accurately with its cameras trained on the parade of public officials, attorneys, and interest group members who are all too happy to oblige reporters waiting to solicit the perfect sound bite?8 Indeed, the exterior scenes after oral arguments can offer quite a contrast to the quiet dignity of the actual courtroom drama. For example, the impromptu press conference on the Court’s front plaza after argument in the case of U.S. v. X-citement video, which questioned the interpretation of a federal child pornography statute, took on a circus atmosphere as reporters jostled for position and interrupted each other’s questions. Pete Williams, NBC’s Supreme Court correspondent, interjected in the midst of the comments of one of the attorneys in the case that he should not use technical words like “scientei’ (even though that term, meaning “to act knowingly,” was crucial to the statute’s interpretation) because “stations all over America will turn off.” Williams also truncated a fellow reporter’s inquiry about “strict liability” with the observation that CNN viewers would understand the question’s meaning, but Nl3C viewers would n0t.3~It is rare that we have the opportunity to watch the dumbing down of the news by the American media before our very eyes. With over 7,000 appeals arriving at its doorstep every year (and acceptance of fewer than 100 annually), one of the most important

88

Barbara A. Perry

duties of the Supreme Court is determining which cases to reject. In addition, the Court receives emergency appeals in death penalty cases (usually as the time of execution draws ominously near) and in other time-sensitive legal disputes (like the Watergate controversy, national strikes in essential industries, the Clinton sex scandal, and the 2000 presidential election). Obviously, the media cannot report all denials of appeal; but when they do so, short broadcast sound bites sometimes encourage the misperception that the Supreme Court has made a substantive decision. In fact, such a denial simply leaves intact the lower court’s ruling. The print medium has the space to feature more details about denied appeals in cases that capture readers’ interest-though, once more, a fine line exists between simply reporting such details and sensationalizing a case. One case from the 1994-1995 term is particularly illustrative. It concerned the Court’s denial of the application for a stay of execution in the case of one Jesse DeWayne Jacobs, convicted of murder by the state of Texas and sentenced to die on January 4,1995. The story burst on the national scene when the Court voted 6-3 against Jacobs’s appeal of his impending execution. In a rare dissent from such a denial of appeal, Justice Stevens argued that “at a minimum” Jacobs’s death sentence should be stayed. Even the Vatican newspaper, L’Obsewatore Romano, commented on the case, writing that the execution was “monstrous and absurd”; it compared the Supreme Court to Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands of Jesus Christ’s trial before turning him over to the Jews for crucifixion. The outrage over the Jacobs case was understandable.Authorities in Texas had retreated from their original position that Jacobs had been the triggerman in a plot with his sister to kill her rival in a love triangle. In the sister’s subsequent trial, prosecutors decided that she actually had pulled the trigger and that Jacobs had been an accomplice.Yet when the Supreme Court denied Jacobs’s appeal, his death sentence went forward as scheduled. The next day Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen analyzed the decision of the Court’s majority, which apparently saw no matter of law to dispute in this case: “A jury had made its decision, and even if it had been given information by the prosecution that was later contradicted, it could not be overruled. This [Supreme Clourt prefers to deal with law. It has little interest in jus-


89

tice.”40 Two weeks later, Nat Hentoff wrote in the Washington Post that the Supreme Court had “appallingly” failed the defendant in the Jacobs case and that the Court “had diminished itself.”41Although several journalists and scholars have argued in recent years that the Supreme Court’s sharply diminished case output and its efforts to remain aloof from the policy process have removed it from center stage of the American governmental system, the conflict over a murder case from Texas proves that at any moment the Court’s actions (or inaction) can catapult it to the forefront of American consciousness via the media. (The U.S. Supreme Court’s crucial decisions in Bush v. Gore should have permanently laid to rest the irrelevancy argument.) Of course, acceptance of cases can prompt headlines, too. In February 1995 the Supreme Court announced that it would hear during its next term a Colorado gay rights case that raised the question of whether the state’s constitutional amendment, barring all local measures protecting homosexuals against discrimination,violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law. Both the Post and the Zmes noted that this case, Romer v. Evans, would offer the Court the first opportunity to rule on gay rights in a decadeP2Paul Barrett’s Wall Street Journal article on the granting of certiorari in Romer focused more on the potential political fallout from the case, noting that the anticipated ruling in the case would come in 1996, “practically guaranteeing that it will become an issue in the presidential election campaign.”43In its landmark 1996 decision, the Court struck down the Colorado amendment that barred protective legislation for gays. If the Court accepts an appeal early enough in its term, the case will be argued and decided before the justices adjourn for the summer. In such circumstances, the media are likely to report in more detail on the granting of certiorari, as they did in 1994 with acceptance of a majority-minority district case from Louisiana. The consolidated cases of Louisiana v. Hays and U.S.v. Hays would, as Biskupic wrote in her Washington Post article, “test the constitutionality of congressional districts that were drawn to consolidate racial minorities and enhance their political power.” Quoting from two spokespersons on opposite sides of the case, the Post article captured the essence of the debate. The attorney representing the Louisiana voters who had brought suit in the case against the black-majority

90

Barbara A. Perry

district commented, “The civil rights movement was about bringing people together. What’s happening now is that we are balkanizing our society by carving up congressional districts based on race.” On the other side, a member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund countered, “The question is whether there will be anyor hardly any as there are now-blacks in Congress.”“”C-SPAN also covered the Court’s acceptance of this potential landmark case with spokespersons from both sides of the dispute. At first, the guests wanted to cut immediately to the heart of the substantive issue in the case, but the moderator wisely kept bringing them back to procedural matters before returning to the merits of the c a ~ e . The 4 ~ public affairs network performs a public service by informing viewers of how the Supreme Court operates as well as about cases and issues that come before it. Ultimately, the Court dismissed the Hays case because the Louisiana voters bringing the suit did not live in the challenged district and, therefore, lacked standing. The justices split narrowly in a Georgia reapportionment case heard the same day, ruling that when race was the “predominant factor” in establishing legislative districts, they should be presumed unconstitutionalP6 With the exception of C-SPAN, television’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court is sparse at best. Political scientist Doris Graber’s calculation of evening network news coverage of the three branches of the federal government (coincidentally during the same time period as my case study) revealed that the president’s share of television time amounted to roughly 80 percent, compared to 17 percent for Congress, and 2 percent for the Supreme C0urt.4~Translated into actual airtime,ABC ,for example, presented approximately 17 hours for presidential coverage, 5 for congressional, and a mere 34 minutes for Supreme Court stories between August 1994 and July 1995. Nevertheless, Graber points out, when the media do cover the Court, they are most likely to emphasize civil rights and liberties issues!8 Her conclusions are buttressed by those of political scientists Richard Davis, Elliot Slotnick,and Jennifer Segal.49While Slotnick and Segal find that televised coverage of the famed affirmative action Bukke case (1978) and the Webster abortion case (1989) was accurate if not extensive, they are particularly concerned over the “dramatic decline in the extent and nature of the [Supreme Court] coverage” (even of civil rights and liberties decisions) between 1989 and 1994:O


91

BEYOND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

News coverage of crime and the criminal justice system provides another means of increasing public knowledge of civil rights and liberties. Within the last decade, the trial of 0.J. Simpson-the ex-football star, sports commentator, and Hertz poster boy-for the high-profile slaying of his ex-wife created a national obsession with criminal rights and the judicial process. Many Americans made the trial a part of their daily lives. (There were even bizarre stories of people who did nothing but watch the trial and who worried about how their lives could go on once a verdict was rendered.) An average of 2.3 million households viewed the trial’s coverage every weekday from noon to 8 p.m. During the same time period one year earlier, CNN had averaged 470,000 households tuned in to its programming?l Through the Simpson case the media discovered a public interest in the judicial process and nurtured it. The Court TV network had been covering state judicial proceedings long before 0. J. Simpson went on trial, but new television programming geared toward public interest in the law has developed in the wake of the Simpson case. Roger Cossack and Greta Van Susteren, CN”s commentators throughout the trial, went on to have their own daily program on the network, “Burden of Proof,” which covers current legal issues in a thirty-minute format. CN”s executive vice president Ed Turner concluded, “The public has become far more educated about the way the judicial system works. . . . The public has come to realize that they have a right to see what one-third of their government is doing.”52 Graber has noted that “[gleneral news about crime and the work of the justice system is also important in creating images of the quality of public justice. Here a plentiful media diet is available, especially on local television news where nearly 12.5 percent of the coverage is devoted to the topic.” Yet she fears that “[llike stories about other government activities, crime and justice system stories tend to focus on sensational events, often at the expense of significant trends and problems in the legal system that might benefit from greater public attent i ~ n . At ” ~least ~ some scholars are attempting to determine the impact of local media coverage of crime, not on the public, but on actors in the judicial process itself. David F’ritchard, a journalism professor, intriguingly, if not surprisingly, discovered in his study of Milwaukee

92

Barbara A. Perry

that the more extensive the newspaper coverage of a criminal case, the less likely the district attorney’s office was to negotiate a plea bargain in the case. In other words, increased publicity about a crime would place political pressure on a D.A. to take the case to a jury trial?4 Criminal trials often raise the issue of media access. While the media would like to have unfettered access to the judicial process, most judges have erred on the side of protecting the defendant’s right to a fair trial, which might be compromised by extensive and/or adverse media coverage. In fact, courts have never absolutely protected the media’s free press guarantees under the First Amendment. Justice Hugo Black, in his last opinion before retiring from the U S . Supreme Court in 1971, delivered the staunchest argument for an unfettered press as a watchdog to protect the public from arbitrary governmental power. In the historic Pentagon Papers Case, Black, who could garner only one other vote (that of Justice William 0. Douglas) for his absolutist position, argued that the Founding Fathers intended that “[tlhe press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the G ~ v e r n m e n t . ”Although ~~ a majority of the Supreme Court voted to allow the New York Times and Washington Post to publish the top-secret papers prepared by the Pentagon as a history of American involvement in Vietnam, the press must still bow to other countervailing claims in performing its duties; such claims include the right to privacy, shield laws, gag rules, libel and slander laws, and national security. In the realm of press coverage of public officials and public figures, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the media virtual carte blanche to contribute to a robust public debate without fear of liability for libel or slander.56 The new media, however, will prompt further controversy about their role and freedoms in American society. For example, can Matt Drudge, a self-proclaimed journalist who reports on political scandals via his popular website, the “Drudge Report,” be sued for libel? What about congressional and state legislative attempts to regulate Internet pornography? The web, cable television, 24/7 news coverage, talk radio, and downloadable music may indeed be revolutionizing the way Americans relate to media and vice versa, with in-


93

evitable, if as yet unpredictable, ramifications for the media’s links to civil rights and liberties. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 . Should popular culture (like TV shows) guide justices in deciding on cases, for example, upholding the Miranda decision? 2. What is the impact of court shows (dramas and documentaries) on people’s views of the judiciary? 3. Can coverage of crime in the “24/7” format of cable television rob the accused of criminal rights? 4. Where should courts draw the line on opening trials to the media? 5. Watch one of the movies listed in the chapter. How did it affect your views of the law, lawyers, civil rights and liberties? 6 . Should cameras be allowed to cover Supreme Court oral arguments in order to expand public understanding of civil rights and liberties? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Davis, Richard, Decisions and Images: The Supreme Court and the Press (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994). Giglio, Ernest, Here’s Looking at You: Hollywood, Film, and Politics (New York: Peter Lang, 2000). Graber, Doris, Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1997). Paletz, David L., The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences. (New York: Longman, 1999). Perry, Barbara A., The Priestly Tribe: The Supreme Court’s Image in the American Mind (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999). Pritchard, David, “Homicide and Bargained Justice: The Agenda-Setting Effect of Crime News on Prosecutors” in Doris Graber, ed., Media Power in Politics, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2000). Segal,Elliot E ., and Jennifer A. Segal, Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That’s Fit to Air? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

94

Barbara A. Perry

NOTES 1. Henry J. Abraham, “Civil Liberties: Rights and Obligations,” in American Democracy: Institutions, Politics, and Policies, by William J. Keefe et al. (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1983), 74. 2. Dickerson v. United States, 530 US.428 (2000). 3. I actually heard of such cases from an Austrian lawyer who described how criminal defendants in his native country demanded to have their rights read to them! 4. Wende Vybomey Dumble, “And Justice for All,” in Television Studies, ed. Gary Bums and Robert J. Thompson (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1989), 106, as quoted in David L. Paletz, The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences (New York: Longman, 1999), 299. 5. Barbara A. Perry, The Priestly Tribe: The Supreme Court’s Image in the American Mind (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 124. 6. Ernest Giglio, Here’s Looking at You: Hollywood, Film, and Politics (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 118. 7. Giglio, Here’s Looking at You, 119. 8. Giglio, Here’s Looking at You, 127. 9. Giglio, Here’s Looking at You, 130-31. 10. Steven H. Scheuer, Movies on TV and Videocassette, 1991-1992 (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 552. 11. As quoted in Perry, The Priestly Tribe, 33. 12. Scheuer, Movies on TV and Videocassette. 13. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). 14. Marie Arana, “David Baldacci: Double Exposure,” Washington Post, “Book World,” February 18,2001,8. 15. Henry J. Abraham and Barbara A. Perry, Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States, 7th ed. (New York: Oxford, 1998), 5. 16. Joan Biskupic, “Court Toughens Standard for Federal Affirmative Action ,” WashingtonPost, June 13, 1995, A 1. 17. Joan Biskupic, “Desegregation Remedies Rejected,” Washington Post, June 13,1995,Al. 18. John F. Harris and Kevin Merida, “Ruling May Sharpen Debate on Preference Policies,” Washington Post, June 13, 1995, A6. 19. Linda Greenhouse, “By 5:4, Justices Cast Doubts on U S . Programs That Give Preferences Based on Race,” New York Times, June 13, 1995, A l .


95

20. Linda Greenhouse, “Justices Say Lower Courts Erred in Orders in Desegregation Case ,”New York Times, June 13,1995, A 1. 21. Tamar Lewin, “5-4 Decision Buoys; For Others It’s a Setback,” June 13,1995, D5. 22. “The Future of Affirmative Action,” Washington Post, June 13, 1995, A20. 23. “A Sad Day for Racial Justice,”New York Times, June l3,1995,A24. 24. See Peter Behr, “A Rush to the Defense of Affirmative Action,” Washington Post,June 14, 1995,Al; John F. Harris, “For Clinton, a Challenge of Balance,” Washington Post,June 14,1995, Al; and Linda Greenhouse, “In Step on Racial Policy,” New York Times, June 14, 1995,A5. 25. George Will, “ A f f i a t i v e Action: The Court’s Murky Ruling,” Washington Post,June 14, 1995,A24. 26. William Raspbeny, “. . .And Americans’ Ambivalence,” Washington Post,June 14,1995, A24. 27. Charles Krauthammer, “Affirmative Action: Settle It out of Court,” Washington Post,June 14,1995, A25. 28. Linda Greenhouse, “High Court Kills Law Banning Guns in a School Zone,” New York Times,April27,1995, Al. 29. Joan Biskupic, “Ban on Guns Near Schools Is Rejected,” Washington Post,April 27,1995, A 1. 30. Joan Biskupic, “Court Signals Sharp Shift on Congressional Powers ,” Washington Post,April 28, 1995, A3. 31. “Federalism and Guns in Schools,” Washington Post, April 28, 1995,A26. 32. “The High Court Loses Restraint,” New York Times,April 29, 1995, A22. 33. Joan Biskupic, “Court Allows Drug Tests,” Washington Post,June 27,1995,Al. 34. Linda Greenhouse, “High Court Upholds Drug Tests for Some Public School Athletes,” June 27, 1995,A5. 35. “Unwarranted Student Drug Testing,” New York Times, June 28, 1995, A18. 36. Ira Berkow, “No Cause, No Testing for Drugs,’’ New York Zimes, June 28,1995, B9. 37. Joan Biskupic, “Supreme Court Looks into the Locker Room,” Washington Post,March 29, 1995,A9. 38. “America and the Courts,” C-SPAN, December 3,1994. 39. “America and the Courts.”

96

Barbara A. Perry

40. Richard Cohen, “Justice Derailed,” Washington Post, January 5, 1995, A27. 41. Nat Hentoff, “The Court Has Diminished Itself,” Washington Post, January l4,1995,A25. 42. Joan Biskupic, “Court to Consider Colorado’s Attempt to Negate Local Gay Rights Laws,” Washington Post, February 22, 1995, A15; Linda Greenhouse, “Supreme Court to Rule on Anti-Gay Rights Law in Colorado,” New York Times, February 22, 1995, A l l . 43. Paul Barrett, “High Court to Decide Whether States May Ban Laws Protecting Homosexuals,” Wall Street Journal, February 22, 1995, A4. 44. Joan Biskupic, “High Court to Rule on Race-Based Congressional Districts,” Washington Post, December 10, 1994,A3. 45. “America and the Courts,” C-SPAN, December 17,1994. 46. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995). 47. Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1997), 27 1. 48. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 307-309. 49. See Richard Davis, Decisions and Images: The Supreme Court and the Press (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994), chap. 4;and Elliot E. Slotnick and Jennifer A. Segal, Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That’s Fit to Air? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chaps. 4-5. 50. Slotnick and Segal, Television News and the Supreme Court, 187. 5 1. “Trial Rewrites Media’s Rules on Coverage,” USA Today, October 4,1995,5B. 52. “Trial Rewrites Media’s Rules.” 53. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 310. 54. David Pritchard, “Homicide and Bargained Justice: The AgendaSetting Effect of Crime News on Prosecutors,” in Media Power in Politics, 4th ed., ed. Doris Graber (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 2000), 283. 55. New York Times v. U.S.,402 U.S. 713 (1971). 56. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).

Bureaucracy and the Media ]an Vermeer

Americans do not think much of government bureaucrats, and I mean that in both its ambiguous senses: Most of us rarely think about the federal bureaucracy, its employees, and the work it performs. When we do, most of us do not think kindly of them, either. During normal times, the work of the bureaucracy takes place behind the scenes, virtually out of view of the public and, for that matter, of the news media. With scant coverage, the bureaucracy’s work rarely shows up on citizens’ radar screens. Mistakes or problems, however, give the press a reason to report on executive agencies. If that is all the information about the bureaucracy people normally come across, it is only natural that they treat those problems not as exceptions but as typical. Hence, when Americans think of the bureaucracy at all, they generally think of it negatively. That is not new. For generations, public and politicians have railed against shortsighted, misguided, and bloated bureaucracies in Washington. Mark Twain took one of his typically caustic tacks in an 1887 letter: “The departmental interpreters of the laws in Washington . . . can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.”l Former Alabama Governor George Wallace used to refer to decision makers in the various agencies comprising the executive branch as “pointy-headed bureaucrats.” Stories about the number of regulations one agency or another issued to control cabbage growing or pickles for hamburgers reinforced 97

98

Jan Vermeer

images of people in Washington out of touch with the real world making life miserable for everyone else. Legends persist that only by filing form after form-in triplicate, at least-can one prove compliance with bureaucratic regulations. Some of the criticisms may be justified. When they are, the news media do not hesitate to point out bureaucratic foolishness. For instance, in 1994 the U.S. Department of Agriculture found itself having to decide how to label poultry that had been briefly but not extensively frozen. They decided that, probably for food safety while the meat was being transported, chickens could be labeled as fresh, even though they had been frozen. Editors at the Fresno Bee railed at this apparent absurdity: “How long can such nonsense remain frozen in law?”2 Journalists think no more kindly of the federal bureaucracy than the rest of us do. When tragedy or calamity occurs, and government responds effectively, however, news coverage portrays government personnel in complimentary terms. Employees of state and local agencies, like their counterparts at the national level, usually suffer from negative press. But bureaucrats at all levels enjoyed widespread praise in the media for their response to the events of the fall of 200 1. New York City firefighters and police offcers, especially, were portrayed as heroic and effective. Kids throughout the nation dressed up in NYPD and FDNY costumes at Halloween. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responded quickly and efficiently to the needs of victims of the World Trade Center catastrophe and reaped media praise as well. When the crisis passed its peak, however, criticisms in the media returned. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in charge of airport security, seemed unable to tighten security at the nation’s air terminals enough, drawing fire in the press. The FBI, Department of Justice officials, and the Center for Disease Control were taken to task for their inability to deal quickly with the anthrax contamination that followed closely on the heels of the airplane hijackings. Within several months after the September 11 tragedies, news treatment of the bureaucracy returned, it seemed, to normal. In the next section, I will outline some general considerations about the federal bureaucracy that will help us understand the nature of press commentary about governmental agencies. Then, a short discussion of

Bureaucracy and the Media

99

the work of others on news accounts of the executive branch will provide a lead-in to an examination of what editors of local daily newspapers said in 1994 about federal offices in their editorials. Some concluding comments will tie the ideas together for you. POLITICS A N D ADMINISTRATION

Our negative views of the bureaucracy result in part from the decidedly awkward and almost untenable position the federal bureaucracy occupies in the political system. While agencies are charged with administering policy, they have limited authority to adjust those policies to prevent problems. Bureaucrats must administer programs fairly, which usually means uniformly across the nation, even when circumstances differ. A policy that works well in most places may not work well in some. In addition, when a federal department performs well, the White House takes credit; when it performs poorly, the agency must take the blame. Further, sometimes agencies seem to respond more to the constituencies most concerned with their policies (clientele groups), even when those preferences conflict with the “public interest .” Although bureaucracies fit awkwardly into the U.S. system of representative democracy, they nevertheless form a sigruficantcomponent of the national government. They represent the element of government with which people are most likely to come into contact. The Post Office delivers the mail, the National Weather Service provides forecasts, and the Social Security Administration sends out checks. The negative images of bureaucracy do not automatically extend to the transactions people have with such agencies. Charles Goodsell reports that most citizens evaluate the bureaucracies they deal with rather favorably? Not only do people think they are treated well and properly, but generally they are also satisfied with the way the agencies handle their complaints when problems do arise. In most day-to-day dealings with the bureaucracy, people think well of government agencies. As Brian Cook puts it, “when government bureaucrats serv[e] people’s wants and needs, as is usually the case in close, specific, client-oriented encounters, public administration wins positive public judgments.’’4

100

Jan Venneer

The negative judgments about bureaucracies arise, it seems, more out of the impressions the public forms about the operation of the administrative apparatus of government generally. Cook suggests that “the impact [administrative agencies] have on public policy” presents a perspective that “violates basic expectations” people hold? That contrast between expectations and reality arises out of the disjunction between what programs are intended to do (e.g., maintain air quality) and what they accomplish (e.g., mounds of paperwork and expensive testing). Bureaucracies may not be able to overcome that gap in expectations. For an agency to adapt a policy, for instance, to every locality may require more information than it has. So testing for certain pollutants in drinking water makes sense for most locations but becomes inappropriate in areas where those pollutants rarely occur. But agency personnel may have no way of knowing enough about the circumstances in which their regulations are going to be applied to make exceptions or may not have the authority to exempt some localities from general requirements!As a consequence, bureaucracies wind up requiring people, businesses, and local governments to take sometimes onerous actions that will have no effect on the problem the program is designed to alleviate. These patterns make people unsure about whose interests agencies pursue. It is a question of responsiveness. To whom is the bureaucracy accountable? On one level, an easy answer for the public is to no one, since bureaucrats working with civil service protection enjoy considerable job security. On a deeper level, the answer is more complex. Agency personnel are accountable to Congress, to the president, to the public, and to the specific clientele they serve. John T. Scholz and B. Dan Wood, for instance, found that “political responsiveness” helped explain variation in the probability that the Internal Revenue Service would audit a taxpayer’s return? However, the groups that agency personnel serve frequently have conflicting goals. The conclusion citizens draw is that agencies are less concerned with the public good or the difficulties their regulations cause than they are with protecting their power and their clienteles. Agencies develop “political alliances,” which results in “a style of policy making that emphasizes minority interests and muffles . . . majoritarian interests.”* Because of such clientele politics, agencies


101

become spokespeople for special interests, as has happened with the Department of Education and teachers and the FAA and the airlines, to cite just two examples. Agencies’ concern with the public interest is then easily questioned. “Red tape” and various delays inherent in any large administrative agency simply become evidence of a reluctance on the part of the bureaucracy to act expeditiously in the national interest. No matter, then, how satisfactory citizens’ personal contacts with the bureaucracy are, the overall impression of governmental agencies being slow and unresponsive, imposing burdensome requirements, and working to protect special interests even at the cost of the public good overwhelms the positives. But if it is not personal experience that accounts for public opinion on the bureaucracy, then the source must be elsewhere. Could it be media coverage? BUREAUCRACIES IN THE MEDIA

Media attention to the federal bureaucracy is sporadic at best. In part, this pattern reflects the needs of the agencies involved and therefore how readily they make news available to reporters. David Paletz points out that “departments vary considerably in their desire and need for media c~verage.”~ “Some agencies, such as those responsible for consumer protection,” says Stephen Hess, “need attention; others may consider publicity counterproductive to their mission, as CIA director William Casey concluded when he eliminated his agency’s separate press operation.”10 Agencies that welcome media coverage run larger press operations, issue more press releases, and make it easier for journalists to find and report the news emanating from the agency. The purpose? “To keep Congress and the public informed about the good they and their programs are doing.”” Agencies that find media coverage intrusive at worst and useless at best devote few resources to helping reporters cover their work. Studies of news coverage of the bureaucracy are relatively rare. Stephen Hess’s work cited above, one of the most insightful on the nexus between press and agency, includes the bureaucracy-news media interaction as part of a larger study exploring reporters and

102

Jan Vermeer

government officials in Washington generally. As do journalists themselves, he devotes more attention to the White House and to Capitol Hill than to agencies that comprise the executive branch. David Morgan, in his study of government press information officers (PIOs), notes significant differences between the more visible and the less visible agencies.I2 His study, however, is so centered on the activities of the PIOs and their relationships with reporters that the overall pattern of agency press coverage does not emerge. As a consequence, political communication scholars know comparatively little about media coverage of the bureaucracy. It is clear that beat assignments and general newsworthiness will affect whether news stories are filed and used. We lack, however, the degree of specificity about attempts to influence content, to “manage the news,” or to use media coverage as a political tool that we have in our knowledge of White House and Capitol Hill news operations. One can then only speculate about the tone and content of news about the federal bureaucracy. Three suppositions seem appropriate.13 First, stories about failures and conflict-or “a notable suc~ess”’~-arisingout of agency actions will appear often. The Forest Service, for instance, probably received more coverage in the spring of 2000, after its “controlled burn” around Los Alamos, New Mexico, devastated the area, than it had in several previous years combined. Second, the actions of the more familiar governmental agencies (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency and the Social Security Administration) or a well-known official (such as C. Everett Koop or James Watt) will be reported more frequently than the actions of more obscure agencies. Finally, agencies whose actions affect the market area of the news outlet in question will be in the news more than other agencies. These three suppositions may indeed reinforce each other. A failure by a well-known agency affecting a local area will generate even more substantial news coverage because it combines all three factors. All other things being equal, the more newsworthy a story, the more prominence and space a newspaper will give it. The most prominent news stones about federal agencies average readers are likely to come across in their local papers will then dramatize their shortcomings, mismanagement, and disregard for what should have been done.


103

Are there reasons for journalists to comment favorably on federal agencies? Yes. When an agency successfully accomplishes a mission or steps back from a mistake it had made, one would expect resulting good press. Positive comments, however, presented as exceptions to a generally negative pattern do little to challenge general perceptions of problems and bureaucratic mismanagement. EDITORIAL COMMENTARY

As part of a larger study, I examined all the editorials in ten daily newspapers from medium-sized cities across the nation. The papers ranged from the Fresno Bee, which included numerous editorials about national political affairs,to the Lansing, Michigan, State Journal, whose editors rarely addressed those matters. The editors devoted considerable attention to the workings of the federal bureaucracy, although they wrote more often about Congress and the president. As expected, their commentary centered on dissatisfaction with agency decisions or agency actions. Actions by familiar agencies-the Environmental Protection Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Defense-bore the brunt of the editorial criticism. Unfamiliar agencies, such as the Departments of Commerce, Labor, State, and Transportation, were virtually invisible in these editorials. When agency actions affected local concerns, editors responded. When agency actions offended editorial sensibilities, editors took up their pens. When agency leaders transgressed ethical boundaries, editors took to the pulpit. Occasionally, successes stimulated editorial commentary, but rarely so. Editorial attention was reserved for the bureaucracy’s mistakes and missteps, thereby reinforcing the public’s image of problems and ineptitude that has plagued governmental agencies for decades. Local Concerns and Bureaucratic Action

Few concerns are more local in nature than the condition of the land and the water in an area. The Environmental Protection Agency

104

Jan Vermeer

(EPA), charged with maintaining the quality of the environment, ran into some editorial roadblocks in 1994 when its regulations or proposed regulations collided head-on with local conditions. Safe drinking water was one of those issues. The EPA proposed a limit for radon in drinking water of around 200 picocuries per liter. In New Mexico, where naturally occurring radon concentrations reach over 2,000 picocuries per liter, meeting the EPA’s standards “could cost . . . communities hundreds of millions of dollars.” Calling it a “ridiculously stringent standard,” the Albuquerque Journal editors called for “a dose of common sense and proportion” that “the federal government too often lacks.”15 The Lincoln, Nebraska, Journal similarly objected to an EPA water monitoring requirement “for hundreds of substances that may or may not be present and may or may not be harmful,” suggesting that it be postponed “until [communities] found a foolish Swiss banker or a buried treasure big enough to pay for it.”16 EPA procedures get a lot of criticism. The EPA’s air quality proposals for California, for instance, were “drawn up in Michigan by consultants who have had little or no contact with California”- who, according to the Fresno Bee, “thought Sacramento was a suburb of Los Angeles.”17 The Raleigh News & Observer charged the EPA with failing to sponsor “research to supply [the] facts” about the right way to protect the “coastal plain ecosystem.” The problem, the paper noted, was that the EPA was “treating the likes of Weyerhaeuser Co. as if they were pioneers in buckskins instead of corporate timber behemoths.”18 What many people would consider typical bureaucratic bungling was the subject for a rare Lansing State Journal editorial about national issues: the EPA “threatened to fine about 900 small water systems in Michigan for neglecting to file drinking water test results.” In fact, the reports had been submitted, but the EPA had lost them. “Unbelievable,” the paper said; the situation “must have taxpayers rolling their eyes with frustration as they watch another federal bureaucracy in action.”19 Boise Idaho Statesman editors voiced several concerns about the bureaucracy’s management of wilderness areas around the state. They opposed Forest Service proposals to limit jet boats on the


105

Snake River in the Hells Canyon area, calling it “unfair” to restrict access before “the land, water quality, fishery and wildlife” had been hurt?0 But editors were pleased with the “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s sensible reintroduction plan” to bring the gray wolf back to the Idaho wildsF1 They also applauded the Forest Service’s “eminently sensible approach” for forest preservation, providing “the timber industry with a reasonable supply of trees to cut down, while ending the destructive management practices of the past.”22 The paper kept a watchful eye on wasteful spending, though: it sharply criticized the expenditure of $70,000 on a “ski playground” outside Yellowstone Park for the use of park employees, calling it “an arrogant misuse of public funds.”23 Similar examples from almost any one newspaper could be developed, in which local concerns affected by the national bureaucracy generate editorial comment. The Albuquerque JoumaE published five editorials in five weeks about the Interior Department’s policies in managing federal grasslands, concerned about what effect proposed increases in grazing fees would have on ranchers in New Mexico. “It would be unconscionable for the Democrats in Santa Fe and their fellow Democrat from Arizona [Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt] by way of Washington to collaborate in rewriting the grazing rules without hearing from and considering . . . the needs of the people who have lived here for generation^."^^ One could readily write an editorial on almost any subject from the perspective of these local newspapers: “Although the agency has lofty goals in mind that we all appreciate and value, it suffers from major difficulties in reaching the right decision. The right decision for this area means taking into account what makes us different. The agency has not done so, and as a consequence, it will cause more problems than it will solve. If it would rid itself of its bureaucratic blinders, it would recognize that the proper decision is the one we are suggesting here.” Whether it is the impact on North Carolina tobacco farmers of the Food and Drug Administration’s declaration that nicotine is a d d i c t i ~ e ?or ~ the difficulties Nebraska farmers would have if their new pickup trucks had less power in order to meet Department of Transportation fuel economy the argument is the same. The bureaucracy

106

Jan Vermeer

has failed adequately to understand and therefore to address the real problems people face. The National Bureaucracy

Editors’ responses to actions taken by agencies in the federal bureaucracy understandably dealt with a large variety of issues, from immigration and milk additives to the metric system and school lunches, reflecting the range of concerns addressed by federal programs of one sort or another. Local readers were affected by these issues no more than anyone else was; editors therefore had no particular local interests to speak for or defend. As a result, their commentary departed from the pattern we identified in the previous section. Generally, editors criticized bureaucratic actions. For the most part, the criticism contrasted agency decisions with basic values. The release of the report detailing Federal Bureau of Investigation actions in the Ruby Ridge affair resulting in the deaths of two people led the Albany Times Union to charge the FBI with running “roughshod over the lives of citizen^."^^ The FBI, it said, “should not be in the business of executing suspected criminals in the field.” Less dramatically, the Providence Journal disagreed with the Food and Drug Administration’s refusal to require that milk from cows treated with a synthetic growth hormone that increases milk production be labeled as such. Labeling would let people themselves “decide which risks they find acceptable”; otherwise, “the government wrongly deprives citizens of this important choice.”28The Lincoln Journal and the Albany Emes Union sided with the Providence paper. Lincoln editors insisted that if consumers “want the information, they should get the information. . . .Their government should not stand in their way.’729Albany editors bluntly asked, “why should consumers trust the government . . . on this matter? It’s not as if the government has not counseled us falsely in the past on health matters.”30 These examples illustrate the extent to which editors view the results of bureaucratic decision making skeptically. Not only does it reach results too frequently inconsistent with basic principles of this society, but it is also slow and cumbersome. The FAA’s work is a case in point, according to the Fresno Bee: “A cumbersome risk ben-


107

efit analysis process has delayed implementation of safety reforms that have long been regarded as cost effe~tive.”~’ In hyperbolic fashion, the Albuquerque Journal described the EPA’s Superfund caustically: “as fast and effective in restoring the nation’s worst toxic waste sites as Superman cleaning up an illegal kryptonite dump.”32 One would think that a slow process would enable agencies to reach results consistent with shared values. According to the editors, that does not happen. When the Commission on Immigration Reform proposed that a national identity card be issued to everyone as a way of combating illegal immigration and its accompanying problem, the hiring of undocumented aliens, several newspapers jumped on the idea. Providence readers learned that the proposal “has the potential for the invasion of privacy . . .Big Brother and all that.”33The Emes Union in Albany compared it to “an internal identity card of the kinds that had become so infamous in Europe at one time.”34When an agency withdraws a proposed rule that would, if implemented, conflict with underlying civic principles, editors applaud. For instance, the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger pronounced it “the wise thing” to do when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decided not to implement a guideline dealing with religious expression in the workplace. The editors’ rationale? “It is not the business of the federal government to decide what is proper religious expression and what is not.”35 Surprisingly, relatively few editorials lambasted federal agencies for stereotypical bureaucratic bungling. Several, however, fit the pattern. Lexington, Kentucky, editors gave a “thumbs down” to the EPA for granting $500,000to Utah State for “rounding up cattle and fitting them with a device that will measure the amount of methane released when a cow belches.”36Raleigh editors labeled the building of a new facility for the National Reconnaissance Office a “marbleclad $304 million megaboondoggle.” Calling it “a child of Cold War . . . secrecy-paranoia,” the paper decried the use of federal funds for “exterior marble from Italy and Norway [and] a racquetball court as well as aerobics and locker rooms.”37 When the Internal Revenue Service printed half a million income tax forms in Spanish and only 718 had been used and submitted by May, the Providence Journal gave “the IRS credit for at least trying,” but it called the targeting of

108

Jan V e m e r

non-English speaking populations “dubious .” People showed “those well-intentioned IRS officials what an ordinary taxpayer could have told them in a minute: In a country where 327 languages are spoken, it makes sense to concentrate on English.”38 When agencies do something right, however, editors make note of that, too. Both the Albuquerque Journal and the Raleigh News & Observer applauded the Department of Agriculture’s proposed new standards for lower-fat school lunches, even though the changes would not be met with “cheers in the l u n c h r ~ o m . ”Parents, ~~ according to the Albuquerque paper, should support the “long overdue” changes and “yank” school lunches “out of the past and into the present.’” When the Food and Drug Administration, “after years of pressure from consumer and health groups,” adopted new seafood safety rules, the Fresno Bee said consumers would no longer be “playing roulette with the fish course” in their meals.4l The Jackson editors liked the Women, Infants and Children program (it “works for Mississippi’s babies”) and urged the state’s representatives in Congress to protect it. “The reduction in Mississippi’s infant mortality rate,” they pointed out, “can be directly attributed to the WIC program.”42 To achieve objectives they agree with, editors are ready to compromise what would in other contexts be overriding values. Regulating secondhand smoke, for instance, which involves “even more government intrusiveness in the lives of Americans,” is nonetheless acceptable in light of “the potential lives saved.”43Despite the lack of a “clear indication of a disease burden” caused by dioxin contamination, the Albany editors wanted the EPA to “err on the side of caution” and to “begin curtailing those activities that result in the production of dioxins.”44 Even that usual bugaboo, too much regulation, can be swept aside if the goal is worth it: Meeting the requirements of new EPA landfill regulations may be “expensive,” and involve a “lot of federal regualation [sic],”but “those regulations are very much valid and very much needed” to ensure “safer and cleaner drinking water.”45 Problem Children

For the most part, federal bureaucrats are faceless, nameless people. Rarely does an editorial mention one by name, with two exceptions.


109

When heads of Cabinet-level departments take an action deserving comment, the editors usually refer to them specifically. There is nothing noteworthy here. But when a lapse in judgment occurs, editors name names and fire when ready. These missteps can be readily explained and therefore avoided, editors suggest. Officials have lost touch with basic values and have begun to think of themselves as special. At the same time, officials need to realize that they have a responsibility to adhere to higher standards than the rest of us. They are, after all, the public’s servants. Or so the editors would have us think. In late 1994, President Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders when her blunt remarks, especially about masturbation, made her a liability to his administration. Seven newspapers explained the departure, all but one agreeing that “she was increasingly ham-handed, and her clumsy brand of candor became a luxury the Clinton administration could no longer Elders, according to the editors, lacked the “subtle touch. She got her points across with a ledgeh hammer,"^^ and she “broached serious and sensitive subjects without seeming to recognize their seriousness and ~ensitivity.”~~ “Good riddance!” exclaimed the Jackson editors. “Her opinions were far too extreme for average Americans to stoma ~ h . Her ” ~ “bumptious ~ public statements . . . all of which seemed designed to give maximum were indicative of the fact that she “never grasped the fact that the opinions of the surgeon general . . . carried the weight of the office.”51In the opinion of the editors, the problem was not simply Elders’s statements but her failure to recognize the higher standards an officeholder has to meet. The exception? The Lincoln Journal editors thought “that President Clinton [had] been looking for a reason to fire” Elders, and “apparently decided he had found The Providence editors agreed that “the White House had been looking for a reason to fire her,”53but none but the Nebraska editors thought her actions did not warrant her dismissal. An ethical cloud hung over Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy after disclosures that he had accepted gratuities from food processors whose plants his department inspected. After a period of denying that the gifts had influenced his decisions, Espy resigned his office. This incident presented the stereotypical case bureaucracy-haters

110

Jan Vermeer

love to cite: special favors from special interests groups perhaps influencing officials’ decisions, and the officials in question bending their ethics at the expense of the public interest. Editorial criticism ran true to form. The Albany rimes Union called the Espy incident “a wake-up alarm about the ethical conduct” of Clinton a~pointees.5~ Lincoln readers were told that Espy “failed to keep proper distance between regulating agency and regulated interest” and that “his moral compass,” if he will “get it functioning . . .is pointing toward the Only Espy’s home-state Jackson Clarion-Ledger was restrained in its criticism when the story broke. “Espy,” it said, “showed poor judgment. . . . He should have known better.”56But, it said three weeks later, “accepting gifts and campaign contributions from special interests is enshrined” in Congress. “Shouldn’t Congress . . . be on the same footing regarding ethics?’57 By the time Espy resigned, the Raleigh News & Observer was agreeing with its Jackson counterpart about the disparity between the ethical standards acceptable in Congress and those applied to the bureaucracy. Members of Congress, the paper pointed out, “countenance the very behavior that cost Espy his job.”58Both Albany and Lincoln editors regretted the need for the resignation: Espy was “once a promising public servant with a strong record of accornpli~hment,”~~ said the Times Union, and the Lincoln Journal praised him for having “launched some commendable policy initiatives.”@’ The Albuquerque Journal claimed that the White House shared the blame for having “failed to establish and enforce the high ethical standards it promised for presidential appointees.”61 The arrest and conviction of Aldrich Ames for spying for the Soviet Union and Russia while working for the Central Intelligence Agency also stimulated a burst of editorials critical of the federal bureaucracy. Although the papers generally deplored Ames’s treason, which led to the execution of at least ten Russians working undercover for the CIA, the main thrust of the editorials was aimed at the CIA itself, not the mole. How could the CIA have failed “to discover the spy in its headquarters?’62“The far more important matter” than Ames’s duplicity, the Albany editors said, was “how it was possible for a CIA officer with top secret clearance to have peddled such sensitive information for so long without having been found “Any


111

overworked narc working for a small county sheriff’s department could have done better” than the CIA, said the Fresno Bee.64 Editors used the incident as an opportunity to criticize the CIA and to imply that greater oversight of this agency was sorely needed. The Fresno Bee questioned “the agency’s own internal security practices” and raised a “more basic” concern: “the poor performance of U.S. intelligence concerning a range of major events, from predicting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to understanding the fragile state of the Soviet economy in the years preceding the Soviet Union’s collapse .”65 Albany editors agreed: “the agency has failed almost every important test of intelligence gathering put to it.”66 The Ames matter “may just shove Congress over the edge into real ~ v e r s i g h t ”of~ the ~ CIA, the editors of the Albuquerque paper hoped. “[A] complete restructuring” is needed, Albany editors argued, “SO that Congress has greater day to day oversight over what the CIA is up to.”68 “It’s obvious,” said the Raleigh News & Observer, “that the agency needs streamlining and refocusing,” so that it no longer functions “in an absence of full public ac~ountability.”~~ CONCLUSION

Far from being invisible, the federal bureaucracy appears frequently in local daily newspaper editorials. Most agency personnel, however, would no doubt prefer the commentary be more positive. Although one should not characterize the editorials dealing with federal administrative agencies as uniformly negative, criticism and disagreement appear much more often. This pattern resembles the tone of news coverage generally, with journalists seemingly judging negative news more newsworthy. Occasional complimentary discussion finds its way into the editorials, but not enough to affect one’s overall impression. Editors showed little hesitation in reinforcing stereotypes of the bureaucracy. Mismanagement, wasteful spending, ethical lapses, and just plain incompetence stimulated editorial responses regularly. If readers thought federal agencies were out of touch with the

112

Jan Venneer

world they lived in, editorial commentary would back that idea up. If readers felt that bureaucrats were more concerned with special interests than doing what was right for the nation, editorials provided examples. If readers worried that their tax dollars were not being put to good use, editors told them they had good cause to worry. By devoting as much editorial commentary to the federal bureaucracy as they did, the editors subtly emphasized to their readers the importance and relevance of these administrative agencies to their lives. However, editors’ choices of topics highlighted offices such as the EPA, the CIA, INS, and the Forest Service. Regulations and restrictions emerging from the EPA, INS, OSHA, and other such agencies stimulate comment, while the actions of many other governmental departments pass unnoted. The image of the federal bureaucracy thus generated is one of an intrusive government regulating for its own sake. By contrast, editors rarely devoted much space to agencies’ success. Agencies that adopted regulations to protect the public received little if any credit. Offices that successfully accomplished their goals did so without notice. Editors provided no counterweight to the heavy emphasis on bureaucratic ineptitude and mistakes. Even though editors frequently admitted that agency officials were acting conscientiously and in good faith, editors still criticized their actions. Success, the normal outcome of agency action, did not reach the editorial columns -not enough controversy there. Bureaucrats were generally anonymous. With the exception of well-known agency personnel (e.g., Attorney General Janet Reno), editorials rarely mentioned individual officials by name. The mistakes editors called to readers’ attention were caused by someone holding some position in the bureaucracy. By keeping bureaucrats anonymous, editors reinforced the conception of a giant organization in which real people and real interests get lost. Keeping bureaucrats nameless also implied that the problem lay in the structure itself, not in the people who staff it. The criticisms embodied in the editorials carried an implicit validation of basic societal values. An individual’s right to choose, for instance, outweighed bureaucratic convenience. Efficiency was worthwhile, but not if it involved a restriction on privacy. Not only did the


113

criticisms, then, reinforce the consensual societal values editors identified with, they also quietly distinguished the good people who read the local paper from the bureaucrats in Washington who just did not get it. The underlying theme that these contrasts between agency actions and widely shared values demonstrated was that government personnel are indeed out of touch with what is important and right. Unfortunately, as the survey of the editorials shows, editors did not stick to that position. When editors liked proposals for governmental action, then a conflict with basic values could be accommodated. Then, a restriction on choice may be worth it; then, an increase in regulations may be a small price to pay. To put it differently, referring to basic values in criticizing agency actions is a strategic choice. When other outcomes seem more desirable, however, strategy calls for flexibility, even when strongly held values come into play. Attentive readers of these editorials would, over the course of the year, recognize the extensive impact of executive branch actions on their lives. They would have, however, little reason to change how they view the bureaucracy, nor would they have any reason to disagree with Ronald Reagan’s famous aphorism: government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1 . In your local newspapers, does the news coverage of the federal bureaucracy parallel the editorial commentary on the bureaucracy? Is the news coverage more likely to focus attention on bureaucratic mistakes and on personalities in the federal agencies or accomplishments and successes? 2. Which federal agencies receive the most media attention? Which receive the least? Do you think the amount of attention an agency gets is connected to its importance? Or is it related to other factors? What might some of those other factors be? 3. Find several stories in your local media that pertain to federal agencies. Can you determine from the news accounts how the story was generated? Did the agency issue a press release or hold a news conference? Did interest groups or public officials

114

Jan Venneer

outside the agency do something to lead to the story? Did the reporter himself or herself initiate the coverage? Can you formulate some general explanations for what you discovered? 4. Although we think of the bureaucracy as located in Washington, D.C., a lot of federal employees work in offices scattered across the nation. Would you expect news coverage and editorial commentary about local offices of federal agencies to be more favorable than coverage about the agencies’ central D.C. offices? Why do you think so? 5. Should federal agencies pay attention to the news coverage and editorial commentary they get? Why do you think so? Defend your position both in terms of the needs of a functioning democracy and in terms of the efficient and effective administration of governmental policies. 6. Is news coverage of federal agencies related to the tendency of the media to find local connections to the stories they run? If so, how does that affect the portrait of the federal bureaucracy the public sees? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Cook, Brian J., Bureaucracy and Self Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Graber, Doris A., Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1997). Goodsell, Charles T.,The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, 3d ed. (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1994). Hess, Stephen, The Government-Press Connection (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1984). Paletz, David, The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences (New York: Longman, 1999).

NOTES 1 . Quoted in “Twain’s Letters in Demand; Luckily, Supply Abundant,” Omaha Sunday World Herald, 2 December 200 1 , 21A.


115

2. “Icy Hand of Bureaucracy,” Fresno Bee, 24 December 1994, B6. 3. Charles T. Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, 3d ed. (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1994), esp. chap. 2. 4. Brian J. Cook, Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 3. 5. Cook, Bureaucracy and Self-Government, 3. 6 . For an examination of a policy that allows bureaucrats to use their discretion to reflect state differences, see Lael R. Keiser and Joel Soss, “With Good Cause: Bureaucratic Discretion and the Politics of Child Support Enforcement,” American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (October 1998): 1133-56. 7. John T. Scholz and B. Dan Wood, “Controlling the IRS: Principals, Principles, and Public Administration,” American Political Science Review 42, no. 1 (January 1998): 141-62. 8. Jack H. Knott and Gary J. Miller, Reforming Bureaucracy: The Politics of Institutional Choice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1987), 124,133. 9. David Paletz, The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences (New York: Longman, 1999), 264. 10. Stephen Hess, The Government/Press Connection (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1984), 101. 11. Randall B. Ripley and Grace A. Franklin, Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, 3d ed. (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1984),96. 12. David Morgan, The Flacks of Washington: Government Information and the Public Agenda (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986). 13. These suppositions are based on conventional conceptions of “newsworthiness.” For two lists of factors that comprise newsworthiness, see Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1997), 106-108; and Jan Pons Vermeer, “ForZmmediate Release”: Candidute Press Releases in American Political Campaigns (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 17-18. 14. Paletz, The Media in American Politics, 265. 15. “Don’t Impose Stringent Radon Limits for Water,” Albuquerque Journal, 31 July 1994, B2. 16. “Drinking Water: Testy about Testing,” Lincoln Journal, 16 October 1994,12B. 17. “Wrong Turn on Air Quality,” Fresno Bee, 5 August 1994, B6. 18. “Not Swamped with Facts,” Raleigh News & Observer, 3 February 1994.

116

Jan Venneer

19. “Leaky: EPA Water Reporting Defies Explanation,” Lansing State Journal, 23 July 1994,4A. 20. “Hells Canyon for Everyone,” Boise Idaho Statesman, 7 July 1994. 21. “Wolf Reintroduction Plan Good Compromise for Idaho,” Boise Idaho Statesman, 23 November 1994. 22. “Forest Ripe for Policy Change,” Boise Idaho Statesman, 14 December 1994. 23. “Decision $70,000 Too Late,” Boise Idaho Statesman, 4 November 1994. 24. “Hear All the Voices,”Albuquerque Journal, 23 January 1994, B2. 25. “Tobacco Woes Are Real,” Raleigh News & Observer, 4 August 1994. 26. “Pickups: A Power Trip,” Lincoln Journal, 13 September 1994,8. 27. “Questionable Tactics,” Albany Times Union, 25 December 1994, B-4. 28. “This Milk Needs Labeling,” Providence Journal, 6 February 1994, D10. 29. “Milk Hormone: Consumers Entitled to Labeling,” Lincoln Journal, 17 February 1994,16. 30. “Tell Us What’s in Our Milk,” Albany Times Union, 28 February 1994, A-6. 3 1. “How Safe Is Air Travel?’ Fresno Bee, 22 December 1994, B8. 32. “Superfund Super-snafu.” Albuquerque Journal, 7 February 1994, A6. 33. “A National I.D. Card,” Providence Journal, 5 August 1994, A12. 34. “We Don’t Need National ID,” Albany Times Union, 17 November 1994, A-12. 35. “Harassment: Forget Rule for Religious Harassment,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 22 September 1994, IOA. 36. “Ups and Downs: Beaver Hits Middle Age; Methane Matters,” Lexington Herald-Leader, 4 June 1994,A12. 37. “Here’s What They Hate,” Raleigh News & Observer, 14 November 1994. 38. “IRS’s Bilingual Flop,” Providence Journal,9 September 1994,A12. 39. “When the Carrot Sticks Fit,” Raleigh News & Observer, 25 June 1994. 40. “Get the Fat Out,” Albuquerque Journal, 18 July 1994, A6. 41. “Better Odds on Seafood,” Fresno Bee, 25 January 1994, B4. 42. “WIC: Mississippi Needs This Vital Program,” Jackson ClarionLedger, 25 November 1994,14A.


117

43. “Clearing the Smoke,” Albuquerque Journal, 10 February 1994,A16. 44. “The Danger of Dioxin,” Albany Times Union, 17 September 1994, A-6. 45. “Garbage: New Regulations Costly but Needed,” Jackson ClarionLedger, 11 April 1994,6A. 46. “Elders’ Exit,” Fresno Bee, 13 December 1994, B4. 47. “Dr. Elders’ Verbal Hemorrhages,” Albany Times Union, 13 December 1994, A- 18. 48. “Elders’ Fire Too Hot,” Raleigh News & Observer, 13 December 1994. 49. “Elders: Loose Cannon Clinton Could I11 Afford,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 13 December 1994, 10A. 50. “Elders’ Nonmedical Leave,” Providence Journal, 13 December 1994, A12. 5 1. “Elders’ Brash Mouth Led to Her Removal,” Albuquerque Journal, 15 December 1994,A20. 52. “Joycelyn Elders: Victim of Damage Control,” Lincoln Journal, 13 December 1994,6. 53. “Elders’ Nonmedical Leave.” 54. “Spies and Mr. Espy,” Albany Times Union, 14 August 1994, E-4. 55. “Espy: Choose Door Marked ‘Exit,”’ Lincoln Journal, 17 August 1994,16. 56. “Espy: Example Telling, but Charges Weak,” Jackson ClarionLedger, 10 August 1994,8A. 57. “Espy: Criticism Bounced Back to Congress,” Jackson ClarionLedger, 30 August 1994,8A. 58. “From Espy to Lobby Reform,” Raleigh News & Observer, 7 October 1994. 59. “Mr. Espy’s Tattered Credibility,” Albany Times Union, 5 October 1994,A-12. 60. “Agriculture: Time for a Fresh Face,” Lincoln Journal, 5 October 1994, 14. 61. “Secretary of Agriculture Not Only One to Blame,” Albuquerque Journal, 5 October 1994, A10. 62. “A Bizarre Tale of Greed,” Lexington Herald-Leader, 26 February 1994,A10. 63. “Fix the CIA,” Albany Times Union, 1 March 1994,A-14. 64. “The Keystone Spooks,” Fresno Bee, 5 March 1994, B4. 65. “The Questions after Ames,” Fresno Bee, 2 May 1994, B6.

118

Jan Vermeer

66. “The CIA Needs Watching,” Albany Emes Union, 16 August 1994, A-10. 67. “Ames Affair May Spark Congress to Rethink CIA,” Albuquerque Journal, 3 October 1994, A6. 68. “Clean House at the CIA,” Albany Emes Union, 13 November 1994, B4. 69. “Smarter with Intelligence,”Raleigh News & Observer, 30 December 1994.

6 ~~~

~

The Media in State and local Politics G. Patrick fynch

No one would have predicted it in the 1950s, but at the beginning of

the 2 1st century, scholarly attention within political science has once again focused on the American states. State governments once again have power over significant public policies. Governors, even those who aren’t former professional wrestlers, are receiving the national spotlight and helping to shape the national agenda on issues such as education and health care reform. State legislatures are gaining stature and resources. It’s now common and perfectly acceptable to hear politicians, such as President Bush, answer questions about public policy by saying, “Let the states decide for themselves.” The current renaissance of interest in state politics has given political scientists an opportunity to explore topics that have been studied extensively at the national level but not at the state level. For example, scholars have now studied the possibility of economic retrospective voting in state elections,l fiscal policy differences between Democrats and Republicans in state budgets? and models of Supreme Court decision making in the states? Despite these recent increases in both state political power and scholarly research on the states, there is one very conspicuous gap in our knowledge about state politics. While there has been a virtual mountain of literature written about the impact of both the news media and paid political advertising on national politics, scholars have largely overlooked the role of the media in the states. This oversight 119

120

G. Patrick Lynch

exists despite ample evidence that state campaigns are getting much more expensive and media oriented.“ There may be a good reason for this oversight. The structure of the news media works against quality news coverage of state politics. Also, until recently, only gubernatorial candidates regularly advertised on television. I have three broad goals in this chapter. First, I outline what we know about both news coverage of state politics and paid advertising during state political campaigns. Second, I discuss some of the difficulties that state politicians face in getting fair and adequate coverage of their activities reported to voters. Finally, project some trends that should give governors, state legislators, and other state officials more limelight in the next century. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE NEWS MEDIA A N D STATE POLITICS?

There has been relatively little research on how the news media influence state politics. Most work in this area has documented how little coverage the press gives to state politics. In the 1970s, William Gormley showed that state governments suffered “from a serious visibility pr~blem.”~ He found that newspapers devoted less than 18%of their stories about state and local news to politics. Television was even worse, with less than 14%of all state and local news stories on television addressing politics and/or government- a policy that Gormley called “benign neglect.”6Other observers, such as Tom Littlewood, did not dispel the notion of an inadequately reported state political system? This trend in news coverage continued through the 1980s and 1990s. Doris Graber referred to news coverage of state politics as “Swiss cheese journalism,” arguing that “Swiss cheese has more substance than holes while the reverse is true for the press” in their coverage of state government? Why does state politics get so little attention from the media? Graber attributes the holes in state media coverage to market failure-state political news appeals to only a small portion of the news media’s readership or audience-and to shallow media expertise. I will address both of her points in more detail below.

The Media in State and Local Politics

121

With several of my colleagues, I have been looking at the perceived impact of the news media on the daily politics and policy making of American states. We have relied on surveys of state politicians to get their impressions of the importance of the press in the politics of their states. While political scientists may be ignoring the role of the press in state politics, politicians certainly are not. They have long viewed newspapers and the wire services as important players in state politics? Surprisingly, state politicians have tremendous respect for the importance of the wire services-particularly politicians from rural districts. However, even politicians from urban and suburban districts believe that wire service reporters are typically more experienced and write better stories then their counterparts in television, radio, and newspapers. In this way, the role of the media is different in state politics then it is on the national level. However, national trends in media coverage are beginning to be felt in state politics. For example, television has begun to make its presence felt in state politics. Between 1995 and 1998, the number of politicians in our surveys who rated the political importance of television as “high” had more than tripled.1° In fact more than 85% of our respondents in 1998 rated the political importance of television as either “high” or “medium,” placing it just behind the print media in terms of political impact.” Our respondents were quite critical of the quality of the coverage provided by television news, but they acknowledged that state political television news reached more people with more powerful images than the print media did. There has been more work done on the impact of the media on state campaigns. Gubernatorial races are now heavily influenced by paid advertising. Gubernatorial campaign expenditures have increased dramatically over the past 20 years, and those increases are largely the result of larger media budgets.’* Gubernatorial campaigns now spend millions of dollars, and much of that money goes to television and radio ads and media consultants. We are even starting to see greater reliance on campaign ads in state legislative races. Hogan’s work shows that, while voter contact is still very important in state house races, campaign ads are becoming a more important part of state legislative campaign budgets, particularly in larger, more populated states.I3

122

G. Patrick Lynch

My survey research of state politicians is consistent with this stream of research. In 1998,97% of state politicians surveyed agreed that politicians in statewide campaigns used broadcast television advertising. In addition, more than half of those surveyed said that legislative candidates were using cable television ads in their campaigns. Cable television provides legislative candidates with relatively inexpensive and efficient ways to reach voters in their district^.'^ This recent heightened interest in campaigns and the growing consensus that state politics is becoming more similar to national politics may prompt more research on the media. However, virtually no scholar has examined what role the news media play in state politics and government. Graber and Gormley point out a fundamental problem. The news media provide very little coverage to state politics and government. Why is this so? If we consider the factors that go into news selection, this neglect is not surprising. The media like to focus on conflicts, major crises and disasters, major figures, and Washington politic^.'^ Daily coverage of state politics fits none of these categories. Therefore, unless a governor is caught in a scandal, such as Kirk Fordice in Mississippi, or state legislators are selling votes, as in South Carolina in the early 1990s, then state politics won’t receive national or local coverage. This is particularly true for television, which needs visual images to produce stories. Education and welfare policy aren’t as visual as earthquakes and presidential press conferences. WHAT IS NEWS?

Reporters do not arbitrarily select the news. Members of the news media generally form a consensus on the “major” international, national, and local stories of the day. There is a substantial amount of overlap among the various local and national nightly news programs. But how does this consensus on the news form? Why do reporters follow some stories but not others? What are the criteria that editors and producers use in choosing the news? Most reporters have “standard operating procedures” that dictate what they cover, and most editors have similar procedures to


123

help them determine what will become news. Who are the news “gatekeepers” and what do they look for in stories to make them “newsworthy”? GATEKEEPERS

Every half hour CNN’s Headline News promises to take you “Around the World in 30 Minutes.” It is doubtful that any television newscast or newspaper could provide complete “around the world” coverage in 30 hours let alone 30 minutes. News organizations must make decisions about what stories to run from the massive amount of potential news available to them every day. Part of the potential news comes from unplanned events, but a substantial part of the news is also planned and structured. For example, many private and public organizations hire public relations firms who solicit news coverage by inviting reporters to events. Also, technology has made getting information much easier. Therefore, editors and producers have a lot of news to choose from. Different media face different decisions in choosing their news. For example, structuring a television newscast is fundamentally different than laying out the front page of a newspaper. After commercials, a television newscast has roughly 20 to 22 minutes to broadcast news, weather, and sports. In some markets sports and weather comprise more than 30% of the typical newscast.16 This places a premium on brevity and simplicity. Robert MacNeil, former coanchor of the widely respected MucNeiULehrer NewsHour on PBS, noted that even in broadcast journalism the emphasis is “to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, and rno~ernent.”’~ In contrast, newspapers can present many more stories, but most readers only notice and read prominently placed stories. The process of making the “news” involves the gathering of information by reporters, the sorting of that information by publishers and producers, and then the packaging and presentation of that news in the newspapers we read and newscasts we watch.

124

G.Patrick Lynch

Because of their control over the information that makes it onto television newscasts and into newspapers, reporters, editors, and producers can be thought of as “gatekeepers.”18 In short, they hold back a flood of information-potential news-and allow a small trickle of it-news-to be seen and read by their viewers and readers. Unfortunately, most of the traditional standards used by gatekeepers impede coverage of state politics. Since networks and large newspapers must make money to survive, a premium is put on stories that appeal to readers and viewers. Scholarly work on the content of most news stories has found, not surprisingly, that the news focuses on conflicts, major crises and disasters, major figures, and Washington politics .I9 These biases steer the news media away from providing thorough coverage of state government and politics. As states gain more political power from the federal government, this may create significant problems. Here are some of the criteria gatekeepers use to help decide what news to let through the floodgates. As you will see, none of these standards helps promote good coverage of state politics. VIEWER INTEREST

Readers or viewers must first believe that news stories are interesting, important, or relevant to their lives. To this end, journalists often “personalize” stories to make them seem real to the audience. Gary Woodward calls this the “search for expressive ‘moments’ with emotional intensity.”20 For example, a story about welfare might combine a review of welfare policy and a profile of a welfare family struggling to make ends meet. This gives the story a human face for the audience, who can now link welfare with names and faces. On the surface this practice would seem to benefit coverage of state government and politics, because state governments now handle welfare. Personalizing should increase awareness of the role that state government plays in people’s lives. Unfortunately the practice of “personalizing” often has the opposite effect. The news media are trying to make ratings or sell newspapers. Editors and reporters must present news that’s easily digestible to their audiences. There-


125

fore, the human side of the story, which appeals to mass audiences, is often emphasized at the expense of detailed coverage about the policy, which is viewed as dry and dull. This is especially problematic for television news because of the limited time available for each story. If a “personalized” story about welfare reform in Wisconsin receives two minutes on a nightly newscast-a fairly long block of time- then typically one-half of that story will focus on a “personalized” family. This leaves one minute to summarize welfare reform. “Personalizing” stories often allows for coverage of important state political issues on the news, but it can also leave readers misinformed about the details of these state government policies. THE “NON-TECHNICAL BIAS” IN THE NEWS

State politics can be more technical and appear less exciting than national politics. For example, foreign affairs, which plays an important role in national politics, is much “sexier” to journalists than state budgets. However, journalists not only view state politics as less interesting, they are also generally not trained in the nuances of state politics and government. For example, state political news covers a wide range of public policies. Knowledge about education, economic development, social welfare, and road construction aren’t acquired overnight. It takes experience and savvy to report on state government well. This is especially true when journalists cover stories that are more technical in nature. Because many journalists lack the background to cover state politics and government, they often have to rely on information from politicians and policy makers when they are writing and producing state political stories. In these instances, politicians and policy makers are making the news. It is the politicians who are dictating the spin of the story because they provide the “facts” necessary for journalists. In 1984, both state and local government officials in Washington State were pushing hard for Seattle to become the home base for a U.S. Navy task force. To bolster support for the plan, then Governor John Spellman released a study on the economic impact

126

G. Patrick Lynch

of the proposed base construction. Based on that study, the Seattle Times reported that if the task force were based in Seattle 10,000 jobs would be created in the metropolitan area. However the Times failed to note one detail of the study-that 9,000 of those jobs would be filled by military personal rather than locally unemployed citizens. The reporter lacked the background in economic development to sift through the numbers and accurately present the news.2l CRISIS REPORTING

“Crisis” stories are regularly reported on by the news media. As Doris Graber notes, stories involving either natural or man-made disasters, violence, or conflicts are much more likely to receive news Numerous studies of the content of broadcast and print news have consistently found that coverage of violent crimes dominates the news. Of course this is not a new development. The newspapers of the penny press in the mid- 1800s began covering crime and scandal stories to increase their readership. More recently, in his study of the most prominent stories on the nightly local news in Indianapolis, Dan Berkowitz found that accidents/disasters and crime were two of the top three topics aired. Political stories were third, but as we shall see below, in large cities most political stories do not involve state p0litics.2~ How does this emphasis on crime and violence impact coverage of state government? Coverage of violent crimes usually involves local law enforcement officials and focuses on local aspects of the crime, squeezing out coverage of state politics. International conflicts and wars are the business of the national government. Some disaster coverage may discuss state government officials. How well state government responds to natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes is often measured in the press. This coverage still doesn’t provide the public with news of the normal business of state government. MUCKRAKING/INVESTIGATlVE JOURNALISM

Unlike our previous criteria, muckraking can put state political news in the limelight, but it does not always paint an attractive pic-


127

ture of state government to the public. Muckrakingjournalism is antagonistic, investigative reporting of political events and figures. The term muckraking was first coined by President Theodore Roosevelt. He used it to describe the aggressive, scandal-seeking style of newspaper reporting that was common during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The best recent example of muckraking would be the Watergate break-in scandal during the Nixon administration. However, muckraking is not limited to coverage of national politics. State reporters have aggressively pursued investigative stories about state political leaders since the advent of machine politics in the late 19th century. The often cozy, but corrupt, relationship between machine politicians and state legislators received a lot of attention from newspaper reporters anxious to sell papers in the highly competitive markets of major cities. Muckraking has many appeals for reporters and editors. Scandals get headlines and sell newspapers, but “dry” reports about policies typically do not. Since most journalists are “non-technical” in their backgrounds it is easier for them to write investigative pieces than technical ones. However, reporters themselves often rightly see investigative coverage as part of their civic responsibility. And such stories can lead to coverage of state politics. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, who helped free two men wrongfully prosecuted by the Illinois attorney general, argued that by “holding their feet to the fire,”24the news media keep politicians on their toes and help to prevent abuses by government officials. In 1983, ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico was brutally murdered during a break-in at her family home in DuPage County near Chicago. Then DuPage County state’s attorney, Republican James Ryan, prosecuted Roland0 Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez for the crimes, despite serious questions about the quality and validity of the evidence and testimony against them. Both men were convicted for the crime and sentenced to die in the Illinois gas chamber. Then in 1985 Brian Dugan, a man with a history of sex offenses, confessed to raping and killing Jeanine Nicarico. Prosecutors, including Ryan, held fast to their contention that Cruz and Hernandez had been involved in the crime. At the time of the trial the Chicago Sun-Times ran a series of articles questioning the conviction of the two men, but the story soon faded from public view.

128

G. Patrick Lynch

Enter Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn. In 1994 Zorn began researching the Cruz case. He was unconvinced that Cruz and Hernandez had had anything to do with Nicarico’s abduction and killing. He began researching the details of the case and writing articles critical of State’s Attorney Jim Ryan’s handling of the case. At one point Zorn even challenged Ryan to a public radio debate over the facts of the case. Partially as a result of Zorn’s digging, both Cruz and Hernandez were granted new trials. During Cruz’s trial the judge granted the defense’s motion that the charges be dropped, and Hernandez was subsequently freed. The pressure on a Republican politician from a writer for what had traditionally been a Republican newspaper also led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to examine Ryan’s actions during the prosecution of Cruz and Hernandez. The special prosecutor filed charges against Ryan and several others involved in Cruz’s initial conviction. After a trial, which spawned intense national media coverage, the police officers and prosecutors involved in the Cruz case were acquitted by a DuPage County jury in the spring of 1999. ”GOTCHA JOU R NA 1ISM”

However, overzealous or potentially misleading investigative reporting can be counterproductive. Our surveys found that many state politicians believe that journalists are primarily interested in pursuing what one state government official called “gotcha journalism.” In contrast to investigative journalism, “gotcha journalism” is when the news media try to catch politicians in embarrassing or compromising positions taken largely out of context. “Gotcha journalism” usually has very little to do with government policies or practices. Instead journalists focus on the lives of politicians outside of the state house or governor’s mansion. Recently, the nation’s governors have been a frequent target for reporters pursuing “gotcha” stories. In Mississippi, Republican Governor Kirk Fordice’s personal life became front-page news after it was revealed that he was involved with a high school sweetheart-who wasn’t his wife. A reporter saw the governor on a flight


129

from Atlanta to Memphis kissing his companion. He quickly snapped photos, which created a statewide sensation, of the couple with a disposable camera. Making matters worse, Fordice had sharply criticized President Clinton’s behavior during the impeachment proceedings. Fordice was also forced to resign from his post as cochair of Dan Quayle’s presidential campaign F5 Or, consider the case of the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). The NCSL designs the conference to promote the exchange of new ideas among state representatives and senators from all over the U .S. There are numerous lectures and seminars to give legislators the opportunity to learn about new trends in other states and improve the quality of their work. But lately the conference has served as an opportunity for journalists to try to catch legislators in compromising situations-playing golf, lounging by the pool, drinking at bars, or yachting all afternoon-presumably at taxpayers’ expense. The situation has gotten so bad that many state legislators refuse to go to these trips, even if they pay for them with personal funds, because of concern over adverse press coverage. For example, many didn’t attend this year’s meeting, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, because they didn’t want to receive the negative pressF6 Obviously, abuses of taxpayer dollars should be covered by the press. However, many of these stories ignore important facts and take legislators’ actions out of context. In recent years, television stations and newspapers have sent reporters, often undercover with false press credentials, to do nothing more than follow legislators outside of the business sessions. In one instance KING-TV of Seattle sent a camera crew with the sole purpose of photographing people at the pool of the hotel where the conference was being held. The crew never reported on the vast majority of the participants who were diligently w0rking.2~Such reporting often leaves out important details and can be very misleading. In the case of the NCSL, many state legislators do not make enough money to afford the trip-the average annual pay of a state legislator is $18,500-and must pay for it with personal fundsF8 Certain legislators may turn the convention into a junket rather than an opportunity to work, but the tendency of the media to ignore the constructive aspects of the convention is just “gotcha” journalism.

130

G. Patrick Lynch

POOR POLL COVERAGE

The news media also do a fairly poor job when it comes to reporting on polls. Instead of reporting the results of polls and how different types of respondents feel about problems, issues, candidates, and government, the news media only broadly report the results of polls. A recent analysis by the Mason Dixon Polling Organization criticized news organizations that treat polls like football scores. It provided several examples in which news organizations misled readers by not interpreting or understanding polls correctly. For example, in elections undecided voters tend to break toward incumbents, yet news organizations regularly ignore this fact-even if there is a large number of undecided voters and the incumbent holds a lead. As Mason Dixon noted, “[Iln a situation where an incumbent leads 48%-36% a week before an election, it is not uncommon for the challenger to eventually win 5 1%49%. Still, the headline or lead story will scream, ‘Governor Jones leads by 12 points in reelection bid .”’29 H O W THE ECONOMICS OF NEWS IMPACTS STATE POLITICAL COVERAGE

For every source of news in the U.S., with the exception of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, journalism is a business, and businesses must make profits. To understand how the news media work, we must consider how market forces influence news selection. The drive for ratings decreases state political coverage in two ways. First, as I have already discussed, state news is not “sexy” or crisis oriented unless it is personalized or involves “gotcha” stories. Second, as we shall see below, state political news does not have a natural audience. However, market forces play another role in determining how the news media cover state politics and government. In the past 30 years there has been an amazing change in the ownership patterns of media outlets. There are now far fewer companies owning newspapers, wire services, and television and radio stations than in the past. Twenty-three companies now control the vast majority of the


131

more than 25,000 print and broadcast outlets in the United States. In short, a few big corporations now dominate the media industry. Within a single state, one or two firms may own many of the news outlets and thus have effective control over much of the political information available to the public. Despite the growth of Fox and cable alternatives there are still three dominant networks (firms) in the television industry -ABC, CBS, and NBC. There are now fourteen dominant chains (fms) in the newspaper industry. And the demise of the UP1 wire service has left AP as the predominant wire outlet in the United States. Furthermore some of these media corporations often own both electronic and print outlets. The growth of web-based news services may eventually provide individuals with a wider variety of news sources, but currently a person’s “corporate” news choices are extremely limited. What are the ramifications of this change on state political news? Let’s consider North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer is part of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, which also publishes the Miami Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Wilmington Star is owned by the New York Times Company. The state’s “paper of record,” the Raleigh News and Observer, was recently bought out by the McClatchie newspaper chain, located in northern California. The corporate ownership of all three newspapers is now located in a different state. Decisions crucial to those papers, and their coverage of state political news, are now made by individuals without a single tie to the state and almost certainly little knowledge about North Carolina. Obviously editors will still retain a lot of authority over what gets published in each paper, but “absentee” ownership detracts from the quality of state and local coverage. Some observers, most notably Ben Bagdikian, have bemoaned this concentration of media ownership, arguing that corporate interests have begun to influence decisions made about news coverage. While Bagdikian agrees that the days of blatant bias within the media have largely passed, he argues that a subtler type of bias has crept into news coverage, supporting the views of the corporate ownership. As more newspapers and television stations are owned by fewer companies, the local flavor and traditions in news reporting may vanish. Others have argued that the trend toward fewer media

132

G. Patrick Lynch

companies has created more homogeneous local newspapers and television newscasts. If these concerns are valid, such trends would further limit quality state political news. For national news outlets, business considerations strongly discourage coverage of state politics. Typically, news about a particular state has limited national appeal. Therefore state news is unlikely to generate higher ratings for national news broadcasts or increase circulation for national newspapers. For local or even regional news outlets, coverage of state politics is also an expensive proposition with limited financial rewards. It is expensive to maintain a news bureau, or just one full-time reporter, in the state capital. Instead, many newspapers and television stations report on their metropolitan area rather than about state politics. There are alternative ways for news organizations to cover the capital. Television stations send remote crews to do live interviews and broadcasts from the state legislature. Camera crews are normally sent to react to breaking news. These types of stories help to fill the gap in state news, but they don’t substitute for an experienced, knowledgeable, full-time reporter. Full-time reporters have more experience in and insight into state politics and break stories themselves. A second, cheaper alternative is to use either wire services or news services that write stories and then sell them to newspapers and television newscasts. News services keep full-time reporters in state and foreign capitals and Washington, D.C.; these reporters write stories that are printed in smaller papers throughout the U.S. For example, Cox News Service-which is a part of Cox Newspapers (owner of 15 newspapers including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)and Cox Communications (which owns Cox Cable, Cox Digital TV,and Cox Digital Telephone)-provides coverage to other papers for a fee. News services allow smaller papers to get state news more cheaply, but as you can see, these news services are hardly independent, which again raises the question of how absentee owners influence news selection. METROPOLITAN NEWS

By 1920, the U.S. had become a predominantly urban nation, with large, industrial cities full of foreign immigrants. In these cities dozens


133

of newspapers competed for readers. As the demographics of the country have changed, newspapers and television news have also changed. Millions of Americans left major cities for suburbs, and businesses followed. Now all U.S. cities have sprawling suburban areas. Newspapers and television news now have metropolitan audiences that encompass cities and suburbs rather than just cities. Readers from different parts of a metropolitan area may not share the same interests. Important news in the suburbs may be insignificant in the city. Newspapers and television stations must maintain their circulation and viewer base while balancing the interests of different audiences. They also must attract advertisers to survive. Advertisers want to reach both urban and suburban audiences. Suburban audiences are particularly important to advertisers because a large percentage of the nation’s retail sales is now done in suburban areas. However, most major newspapers are based in cities and have substantial economic interests in the central city area. The news media have tried to deal with these changes in their audiences in three ways. First, journalists still use the central city area as a unifying symbol for the metropolitian area. Despite the explosive growth in suburban populations and declines in urban populations, newspapers still allocate significant space to reporting on city news because even individuals in suburbs are more likely to identify with the central city than with another suburban area?0 The news media focus on other “unifying” news. Professional sports stories are of interest to people living in both the city and suburbs, and sports coverage in newspapers and television broadcasts is growing. Second, newspapers and television news pay greater attention to suburban news. Newspapers now engage in zoning. Zoning is when a newspaper changes its content in the same edition for readers in different parts of the metropolitan area. The change is usually in the advertising, editorial, and news content of the local sections of the paper. Zoning not only lets newspapers reach a broader audience, but it also allows them to compete with suburban newspapers. Most major regional newspapers, such as the Atlanta Journal-constitution, the Hartford Courant, and the Los Angeles Emes, zone their paper every day?’ Third, newspapers have added sections that contain nontraditional news. If you were to compare the newspapers of the early 20th century with those of today, you would find that today’s newspapers

134

G. Patrick Lynch

have many more sections that report on entertainment, art, automobiles, health issues, home repair and decor, and food “news.” Newspapers have done this to compete with the diversity of news programming available on television. However, it takes resources away from state political news. While growing coverage of suburban and nontraditional news helps the news media gain a broader metropolitan audience, it has squeezed out news on state politics and government. This has led to what Phyliss Kaniss calls “city myopia.”32Print, television, and radio reporters are far more likely to know city politics and, therefore, will pursue and write stories that address metropolitan politics. As suburbs continue to grow, suburban news will become more prevalent. Reporters aren’t going to travel to the state capital. There is plenty of metropolitan news right outside their front doors. Major cities produce the kind of crime and violence stories that help to fulfill a standard I mentioned earlier, and most news organizations maintain their offices in central cities. If the state capital is a major media market, that may partially offset the “city myopia,” but even in those situations, it’s likely that state political news will play second fiddle to metropolitan news. Most urban radio stations also ignore state politics. Radio news receives its highest ratings during “drive time,” when commuters are heading to and from work. In order to appeal to the broadest audience possible, radio news coverage focuses on city issues. Regional talk shows with a political flavor (hoping to tap into the popularity of Rush Limbaugh, among others) deal predominantly with national political issues. When they do address state political issues, radio talk shows don’t necessarily provide the most objective coverage available. THE TWO-NEWSPAPER TOWN

In the early 20th century, competition among newspapers in large cities was cutthroat. The movie The Front Page depicts life in a big-city newspaper office during the 1930s. Competition for stories among the numerous papers in town was so intense that at one point the movie’s main character, a seasoned newspaper reporter,


135

actually hid an accused murderer in his office in exchange for an exclusive interview. In recent years the number of papers in direct competition in the same cities has declined dramatically. For obvious reasons more news outlets is a good thing. The more choices that individuals have for news the more likely they are to be well informed. Also, competing papers fighting for readers will cover news more aggressively and fully than a single newspaper. FCC regulations try to promote as much competition as possible in individual media markets, but there are loopholes to these rules, in particular as they relate to cross-ownership-ownership of both a radio station and newspaper, for example. According to Ben Bagdikian, 98% of all American cities now have just one daily newspaper. Most of the remaining 2% are large cities with extensive metropolitan As I noted earlier, newspapers in major cities have refocused their coverage on metropolitan news and de-emphasized state news. Since the number of newspapers is also declining, less state news is getting through to readers in cities, suburbs, and small towns. SOME CAUSE FOR HOPE

There are some glimmers of hope on the horizon. In some recent elections, the news media in several states tried to provide voters with more policy information about the candidates. Fearing that issues had been lost among all the attack ads and charges, some news outlets made an effort to cover how candidates stood on the issues. For example, several papers in 1996 and 1998 sent questionnaires to candidates for state executive and legislative offices. The papers then printed the candidates’ answers in a forum prior to the election. Rather then simply endorsing candidates, the newspapers tried to give their readers tangible information about the candidates’ policy positions. The Chicago Tribune asked the gubernatorial candidates in Illinois about their views on education, gambling, airport construction, and taxes. In California, the Sacramento Bee gave extended sketches of each incumbent state legislator and hisher challenger in its readers’ districts in 1996 and 1998. The news media can

136

G. Patrick Lynch

also sponsor debates between the candidates and endorse candidates through editorials. Politicians are becoming more sensitive to the press and learning how to work with reporters to improve coverage. All governors, some state agencies, and a growing number of legislatures have established press offices to work with-and even cater to-the news media and its needs. This means each governor has a press secretary or communications director. Many governors and state legislative leaders now have weekly television or radio shows to maintain their public profiles and promote their preferred policies. State legislators have also recognized the need for a news media liaison who works either for a party caucus or the party leadership. This means legislators try to slant the views of reporters by providing information favorable to their own views. If legislators can scoop the news media with press releases and pre-written stones, they can present in a positive way the perspective they feel is most important.

CONCLUSION For a variety of reasons, the American news media are ill equipped to adequately cover state politics and policy. The news media have inherent biases toward either local/metropolitan coverage or national political news. The policies that state governments follow require more experience and technical expertise than the typical state political reporter may have. Furthermore, when the media do turn their attention to state politics, it’s often to unearth scandal or pursue “gotcha” journalism, not provide constructive coverage of state politics. Many of these problems will not be improving soon. Vertical ownership in the media business will further decrease the amount of state political news audiences receive. As suburbs continue to grow, newspapers will have to zone their papers and further dilute coverage of topics like state government. But the news media are trying. As the examples from the Chicago Tribune and Sacramento Bee show, newspapers are trying to provide voters with more practical political information about state leaders. And as governors and state legislators gain more power, the news media will focus more on state politics. But the biases in news


137

coverage present significant challenges to state politicians and voters. If voters can’t get useful political information about incumbents, how will they choose candidates in elections? How can politicians try to rally public support for political issues without media coverage? These are significant challenges for the new generation of state politicians. DISCUSSlON QUESTIONS

1. What might be some effects of the increasing use of television ads in state campaigns? 2. Who are the “news gatekeepers’’ and what criteria do they use to determine which stories they cover? In what ways do their standards impede coverage of state politics? 3. How does the change in ownership patterns of news organizations affect coverage of state politics? Why? 4. How have newspapers and television stations adapted to the increase in suburban populations? How do these changes affect coverage of both state and metropolitan political news? 5. As states gain more political power, what are some potential problems of limited state political coverage? 6 . How have the media and politicians tried to increase state political coverage? What more could they do? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Atkinson, Lonna Rae, and Randall W. Partin, “Economic and Referendum Voting: A Comparison of Gubernatorial and Senatorial Elections,” American Political Science Review 89 (1995). Bennett, W. Lance, The Politics uflllusiun, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1988). Flemming, Gregory N., David B. Holian, and Susan Gluck Mezey, “An Integrated Model of Privacy Decision Making in State Supreme Courts ,”American Politics Quarterly 26 (1998). Gans, Herbert, Deciding What’s News (New York: Vintage, 1969). Gormley, William, “Coverage of State Government in the Mass Media,” State Government News 52 (1979).

138

G. Patrick Lynch

Gray, Virginia, and Herbert Jacob, eds., Politics in the American States (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1996). Kanis, Phyliss, Making Local News (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Woodward, Gary C., Perspectives on American Political Media (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997).

NOTES 1. Lonna Rae Atkinson and Randall W. Partin, “Economic and Referendum Voting: A Comparison of Gubernatorial and Senatorial Elections ,” American Political Science Review 89 (1995): 99-107. 2. Robert C. Lowry, James E. Alt, and Karen E. Ferree, “Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States ,” American Political Science Review 92 (1998): 759-74. 3. Gregory N. Flemming, David B. Holian, and Susan Gluck Mezey, “An Integrated Model of Privacy Decision Making in State Supreme Courts,” American Politics Quarterly 26 (1998): 35-58. 4. See, for example, Thad Beyle, “Governors: The Middlemen and Women in Our Political System,” in Politics in the American States, ed. Virginia Gray and Herbert Jacob (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1996). 5 . William Gorrnley, “Coverage of State Government in the Mass Media,” State Government 52 (1979): 46-5 1. 6. Gormley, “Coverage of State Government,” 46. 7. Tom Littlewood, “What’s Wrong with Statehouse Coverage?” Columbia Journalism Review 10 (1972): 3 9 4 5 . 8. Doris Graber, “Swiss Cheese Journalism,” State Government News 36 (1993b): 19-21. 9. Thad Beyle and G. Patrick Lynch, “Measuring State Officials’ Views of the Media,” Comparative State Politics 14, no. 3 (June 1993): 3 2 4 1 . 10. G. Patrick Lynch, “The Media and State Politics: The View from Political Elites” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Savannah, Ga., November 1999). 11. Lynch, “The Media and State Politics.” 12. Beyle , “Governors .” 13. Robert E. Hogan, “Voter Contact Techniques in State Legislative Campaigns: The Prevalence of Mass Media Advertising,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 4 (1997): 55 1-7 1.


139

14. Lynch, “The Media and State Politics,” 16. 15. Herbert Gans,Deciding What’sNews (New York: Vintage, 1969); and W. Lance Bennett, The Politics oflllusion, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1988). 16. Stephen Hess, Livefrom Capitol Hill! (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1991), 49. 17. Gary C. Woodward, Perspectives on American Political Media (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), 44-45. 18. There is an ocean of research on this topic. For a good review from the field of journalism see Dan Berkowitz, “Refining the Gatekeeping Metaphor for Local Television News,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 34 (1990): 55-68. 19. The literature here is vast. The classics include Gans, Deciding What’s News; and Bennett, The Politics of Illusion, 2nd ed. 20. Woodward, Perspectives on American Political Media, 78. 21. Phyliss Kaniss, Making Local News (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 92. 22. Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1993), 118. 23. Berkowitz, “Refining the Gatekeeping Metaphor,” 60. 24. Eric Zorn, phone interview by author, July 1995. 25. Sue Anne Pressley, “Mississippi Scandalized by the Governor’s Love Life ,” Washington Post, July 13, 1999, C 1. 26. Alan Rosenthal, “Ethics: Political Protocol,” State Government News 39, no. 3 (1996): 35. 27. Peter Brown, “Gotcha Journalism: Journalists Efforts to Expose Politicians,” State Legislatures 20, no. 5 (May 1994): 22. 28. Brown, “Gotcha Journalism.” 29. Mason-Dixon Polling Organization, Understanding “Undecided” Voters, July 7, 1999, at www.mason-dixon.com/mason-1ine.htm. 30. Kaniss, Making Local News. 3 1. Kaniss, Making Local News, 60. 32. Kaniss, Making Local News, 74. 33. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 8-9.


7 Political Parties and the Media C. Danielle Vinson

In 1998, the Democratic Party ran an ad in South Carolina criticizing Republican Senate candidate Bob Inglis’s record on education during his time in the House of Representatives.The ad featured school-aged children talking about several unpopular votes Inglis had cast on education and concluded with the children asking, “Mr. Inglis, what were you thinking?’ Although most of the country had never seen the ad, it was significant-not so much because of what it did (Senator Ernest F. Hollings, a 32-year incumbent, probably would have won without it) but because of what it represented. In congressional and local races across the country in 1998,party organizations actively ran these kinds of issue ads in a variety of media to influence the outcomes of elections. This expanded a trend begun in 1996 and signaled a new chapter in the interaction between political parties and the media. Much has been made in recent decades of the decline of parties. Increasing numbers of split-ticket voters and people who identify themselves as political independents, a tendency toward divided government, and some political candidates’ reluctance to attach themselves too closely to a party label suggest that parties are less relevant to the political system than they once were. Contributing at least in part to this apparent decline in party power have been the media, because of their growing role as an intermediary between public officials and citizens. At their high point, parties connected citizens to candidates and to government officials. Parties helped to recruit candidates, and party 141

142

C. Danielle Vinson

leaders often controlled nominations. Voters’ strong attachments to a party often determined how they voted. In the 1970s, as voters gained more of a voice in the nominating process through primaries, candidates were forced to appeal directly to the public rather than rely on the party. The media became an important tool for communicating with voters. Simultaneously, reporters found covering candidates rather than parties more to their liking, because it suited the evolving journalistic formats that emphasized entertainment as much as information. Candidate-centered coverage allowed the media to focus on real people rather than abstract labels or faceless parties, personalities rather than intangible ideas and dry issue positions. The combination of primaries and media coverage helped to create more candidate-centered campaigns. And presumably, candidates who won election with little help from the party felt less tied to the party platform once they were in office. Furthermore, they continued to rely on the media and campaign tactics to enact their policies, rather than working through the parties in government. Thus, the media arguably contributed to the decline of the parties. However, the parties in the United States have always been adaptive. As the party-sponsored issue ads of the 1998 elections indicate, political parties are finding new ways to play an important role in the political system, and the media are a centerpiece of the new strategy. Parties have evolved into communications organizations that often act as a mouthpiece and communications strategist for politicians both in campaigns and in government. This chapter looks at how the media have enabled parties to secure their place and influence within the political system. We begin by looking at the parties’ emerging role in campaigns and then turn our attention to the party in government. Finally, we will examine how trends in media coverage of politics have helped to reinvigorate the parties. CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION

In recent years, when we have heard about parties in campaigns, they have been playing the role of fund-raiser. National and state

Political Parties and the Media

143

party organizations, along with the House and Senate party campaign committees, raised hundreds of millions of dollars during the 2000 election cycle. Because of limits on direct contributions to candidates, however, much of this money was raised in the form of soft money- $158.9 million for the Republican National Committee (RNC) and $136.6 million for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the 2000 election cycle.’ This means that parties can spend the money on so-called party-building activities, but they are limited in how much they can coordinate explicitly with their candidates. Traditionally, parties spent much of this money on polling and get-out-the-vote activities. Beginning in the 1990s, larger amounts of soft money have gone toward issue advocacy through a variety of media-mailings as well as advertising on television and radio. Parties discovered that they could get around limits on express advocacy for a candidate by simply avoiding words like “vote for” or “defeat .” Thus, in 1996 the RNC created ads that talked about the life of Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole and noted that he valued discipline and hard work, but did not actually tell people to vote for him. The RNC also aired ads attacking President Bill Clinton’s record. The RNC’s $3 million ad campaign helped to keep Dole’s campaign going through the summer after he had reached his preconvention spending limits? Recognizing the growing importance of the media in political campaigns -especially for presidential and congressional races parties have spent their money on issue ads to supplement the candidates’ own expenditures. In one study of 17 competitive House and Senate races in 2000, researchers found that parties outspent the candidates on radio and television ads? Often the parties’ ads complement the candidates’ campaigns and in some cases almost appear to be coordinated with them. For example, in the 1998 South Carolina Senate race, the state Democratic Party’s ads and mailings supporting incumbent Senator Fritz Hollings reinforced the same issues and themes used in Hollings’s own campaign, focusing on benefits to senior citizens, education, and the environment? Many of the party ads used the same visuals as ads paid for by Hollings. The result was a consistent message repeatedly delivered to voters through a variety of media channels.

144

C. Danielle Vinson

In some circumstances, the party and its candidate may take on distinct but complementary roles through their ads and interaction with the media. Candidates may emphasize their own qualifications and records while party leaders attack the opponent. For example, in Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District race in 2000, both parties paid for attack ads against the opposing party’s candidate, at the same time the candidates themselves tried to remain more cordial. Thus, while the Republican Party attacked Democratic candidate Diane Byrum for voting to borrow money from a state trust fund for veterans and wondered if she could be depended on to protect the Social Security trust fund if she were in Congress, the Republican candidate appeared in a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ad authorized by his campaign in which he claimed that he “believe[d] in bringing people together, not tearing down other^."^ By employing this strategy, parties may help their candidates distance themselves from the possible backlash of going negative. But even as issue advocacy by the parties has been welcomed by many candidates, it has not been without problems. In a few cases, the party’s message has unintentionally undermined its own candidate. In the 1998 South Carolina Senate race, the state Republican Party’s hard-hitting ads against the Democratic incumbent turned out to be a major headache for the Republican candidate, Bob Inglis, who had pledged to run a civil campaign. After one of the ads was played during a debate between the two candidates, Inglis agreed with Hollings that the ad was ridiculous in its claims and presentation, and he spent much time denouncing the ads to reporters who used the party’s efforts as an opportunity to question Inglis’s sincerity about his commitment to a courteous campaign? And in one well-documented national example in 1998, the NRCC and the RNC, hoping to help GOP congressional candidates, cooperated in a nationwide campaign entitled “Operation Breakout” only to see it fail to produce. The party spent $10 million on a national ad campaign that reminded voters of President Clinton’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky in the final weeks before the election? However, the ads appeared to backfire, as Republicans lost seats in Congress. It is obvious from campaign fund-raising and spending reports over the last decade that parties have reasserted themselves in elections even


145

as election coverage by the media has remained candidate centered. But much of the parties’ resurgence has come from their willingness to use the media, particularly for advertising, sometimes without much emphasis on the party label itself? The results are most apparent in congressional elections, in which the airwaves are often swamped by political ads paid for not only by candidates but also by parties. The involvement of the parties has made some races more competitive than they might otherwise have been. In the Michigan Senate race in 2000, incumbent Republican Spencer Abraham raised $3.6 million more than his Democratic challenger, Debbie Stabenow. But more than $4 million in soft money expenditures by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, much of it in issue ads, supplemented Stabenow early in the contest, allowing her to reserve her own funds for the final weeks of the campaign? Despite trailing Abraham in the polls for much of the fall, Stabenow eked out a narrow victory on election day. Under the right conditions, the ad campaigns made possible by the resources of the national parties and their party campaign committees in Congress can nationalize congressional campaigns. Both parties have experimented with a common theme or agenda in congressional elections. In 1994 House Republican candidates signed the “Contract with America” in an orchestrated media event on the Capitol steps, and the Contract was published in TV Guide. Even though fewer than 20 percent of voters were familiar with the Contract prior to the election,I0 GOP candidates highlighted some of the issues in their own campaigns, and ultimately, the Contract became the agenda for the new Republican majority in 1995. In 1996,the Democrats demonized House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his conservative revolution to pick up seats in Congress. Even though Republicans did not lose their majority in Congress, the national campaign allowed congressional Democrats to suggest that the election was evidence that Republicans needed to expand their agenda and embrace more moderate policies. While the national themes in 1994 and 1996 appeared to benefit the respective parties, the failure of the Republicans’ 1998 Operation Breakout campaign reveals the limits of this communication strategy. A national ad campaign seems to work best when the party can put a face on the opposing party and link it to issues or policy

146

C. Danielle Vinson

problems the public is concerned about. In 1994, the face was President Bill Clinton and the public concern was big government and higher taxes and deficit spending. In 1996, the Democrats could point to House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the face of the Republican Party, which was attempting to go further in cutting or limiting programs than much of the public wanted to go. Operation Breakout in 1998 ran into the problem that Clinton was not as universally disliked as Republicans had expected, and possibly more importantly, a large part of the public was either opposed to impeachment or at least tired of hearing about it. Either way, it made for a weak issue around which to try to rally support. In 2000, with no individual to represent either party” and no single issue arousing public concern, both parties retreated from a national campaign with common themes, even in the presidential election. Both national party organizations focused most of their attention on a handful of battleground states and tailored the ads for the state. For example, in Iowa, the DNC ran an issue ad against George W. Bush that mentioned Texas’s falling SAT scores, and then said Iowa (second in SAT scores) “doesn’t need a Texas plan for its schools.”12 In Florida, the Democrats talked about toxic chemicals dumped into Texas waterways and then asked Floridians to “imagine Bush’s record in Florida’s everglade^."'^ For their part, in the congressional campaigns, Republicans not only stuck to local issues, they even paid for some ads that praised Republican members of Congress for voting against their party on some issues.14 GOVERNING

In government, the parties have become very visible communicators increasingly adept at using media to focus on their agendas and frame policy debate. This strategic use of the media can be seen in the efforts of congressional party leaders to capture media coverage by coordinating the communication of their membership. It can also be seen in the national parties’ availability to national media and experimentation with their own party-produced media. We will look in some detail at each of these developments.


147

While party leaders have traditionally been among the most covered members of Congress in the national media, they have in recent years shown a greater willingness to go public through the media to accomplish their party's goals. Since 1981, party leaders in Congress have become more visible in the media, with a majority of their media appearances related to legislation in Congress.I5This is in stark contrast to earlier eras in Congress, in which legislation was worked out behind closed doors. As they have increasingly gone public, party leaders have not merely tried to carry out their own personal agendas. Rather, they often seem to shape their messages around issues "owned" by the party-that is, issues about which there is consensus within the party.I6 Doing this has allowed them to gain more credibility and power as spokespersons in Congress. News coverage of coordinated efforts to go public-that is, a group in Congress or an individual speaking on behalf of a group attempting to gain media attentionreflects the growing power of party leaders to speak for their members. News coverage of Congress in 198 1 reveals that even though party leaders were active in seeking and gaining media attention for the legislative agenda, committee chairs and ranking minority members, speaking for their cohorts on their committee and sometimes for their party, seemed most successful in communicating through the press. Party leaders were responsible for only 24 percent of the coordinated efforts to go public, and committee chairs accounted for most of the other successful attempts to gain coverage. However, by 1993, almost 45 percent of the cases in which the press covered coordinated public strategies in Congress were led by party leaders.17 That percentage increased even more when the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in 1995. Using the media to promote the party's agenda, party leaders not only improve their own credibility and visibility as spokespersons for their parties, but they make it more likely that other members of the party will work with them to publicize the message.'*To this end, we have seen both parties in both houses of Congress pay more attention to involving their members in coordinated communication.From calling press conferences on the Capitol steps with many members of the party participating, to lining up special orders speeches on a common

148

C. Danielle Vinson

theme, to orchestrating deliberate obstructionist tactics, party members in Congress have found ways to cooperate with each other to attract media coverage that helps them accomplish their goals. But the party caucuses, particularly in the House, have tried to extend their influence even further by institutionalizing their communications apparatus. In the House, the Democratic Policy Committee, under the auspices of the Democratic leader, defines the caucus’s message and attempts to disseminate it.19 For the House Republicans, this falls under the duties of the chairman of the Republican Conference, with considerable input from the other Republican leaders. In the Senate, these responsibilities largely fall on the party leaders, though the policy committees and particularly the Republican conference chairman have begun to play more of a communications role. In addition to keeping members informed about the party’s message, these leaders and groups provide party members with talking points and themes to emphasize on trips back to their districts or states during weekends or congressional recessesFO For example, as members headed back home for the Memorial Day recess in 200 1 , Senate Republican leaders suggested a “Gas Price Busters Tour” in which members would “travel to gas stations around their states, highlight the skyrocketing price of gasoline and make the pitch for the [Bush] administration’s energy plan”; the leadership provided talking points, a sample press release, and a sample op-ed on the issueF1 As party leaders in Congress and their rank-and-file members have found new ways to utilize the media to accomplish their policy goals, the national party organizations have not been idle. They too have become more active in communicating their parties’ messages publicly, and the media have been a centerpiece of this strategy. In 1993, when Haley Barbour became chairman of the RNC, he made it clear that his job was not just to raise money, but to be a spokesperson for the party and its agenda. Evidence of the enhanced communications role of the chairman can be seen in New York Times coverage of party chairs. Barbour averaged nearly 31 mentions a year in the Times during his four years at the helm of the RNC, more than three times the average yearly coverage of his four predecessors. Barbour also became a frequent guest on news talk shows and even hosted his own satellite television show.


149

While Barbour took the lead in making the Republican Party aware of the importance of a communications strategy, the Democrats have also recognized the potential of the party chair to be a chief spokesperson of the party. During most of the 1990s, the Democrats divided the party chairman’s responsibilities between two peopleone who would manage the day-to-day operations of the party and fund-raising and another who would be the chief spokesperson. Usually a behind-the-scenes party activist such as Don Fowler, who served from 1995 to 1997, was given the first position, while a media-savvy elected official such as Senator Christopher Dodd (1995-1997) or Colorado Governor Roy Romer (1997-1 999) took on the more visible job of party general chairman to deal with the media. Most recently, the Democrats restored both roles under one title, but they chose Terry McAuliffe, who appears equally comfortable with fund-raising and media relations, to fill the position. In addition to incorporating media relations into the job of party chairman, the party organizations have taken advantage of the fairly recent concept of governing as a permanent producing issue ads to influence congressional and public debate and to generate public support or opposition to particular policy proposals. Around Memorial Day weekend in 200 1, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) paid for television ads in California that blamed President George W. Bush’s energy policy for the blackouts in C a l i f ~ r n i aThose . ~ ~ ads were followed up by radio ads paid for by the DCCC and the DNC that ran in Republican districts around the country and suggested Bush’s plan would do nothing to help families who faced the possibility of canceling summer vacations because of the high price of gasolineF4 The parties and their related organizations have also experimented with new media, including satellite television and the Internet, to communicate their message and to coordinate their members. During Haley Barbour’s tenure as chairman, the Republican National Committee had a weekly television program called The Rising Tide. In appearance, it followed the format of a combination news/talk show, with reports on current events in Washington, D.C., and a segment hosted by the party chair that included commentary. The stories were done from a Republican perspective, relying primarily on Republican sources. The reports on the program and additional stories put

150

C. Danielle Vinson

together by the show’s staff were made available via satellite to local television stations around the country. More recently, the parties have paid more attention to the Internet as a way to communicate their message to the public and to party members. Both the RNC and DNC have websites that include links to the party platforms, information about issues in the news, contact information for national and state party organizations, and a way to register to receive e-mail updates from the parties. Recognizing that the Internet is an important medium for young people, the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats ,extensions of the national parties, have their own websites with information about local chapters of these organizations and other party res0urces.2~ While the party organization websites are primarily designed to connect the public to the party, the congressional party websites try to equip congressional members to carry the party7smessage to the public and to the media. The Senate Republican Conference and the House Democratic leader have websites that include a focus or message of the week, and the House Republican Conference website includes an issue focus complete with fact sheets (some localized for different states), talking points, current news on the issue, and speeches others have made on the issue. PARTIES IN THE NEWS MEDIA

To this point, the chapter has focused on how parties have used the media to reassert themselves in the political system. But this is not just a story of the parties figuring out the media. The way the news media cover politics, particularly in this age of 24-hour news channels and televised political punditry, has helped to reinvigorate the parties. Often when we think of parties and the media, the discussion devolves into whether there is a partisan bias in the press. Although there may never be agreement or conclusive evidence that the political preferences of reporters , editors, or publishers and owners create a consistent political bias in political coverage, there is a clear trend (bias?) across all news media from CNN (derisively labeled the Clinton News Network by conservatives for its alleged


151

liberal leanings) to FOX News (“fair and balanced,” but in a conservative sort of way?). All of them “exalt contr~versy.”~~ Since the 1970s, journalists have engaged in a brand of reporting that has alternately been called adversarial, critical, or attack journalism. Rather than simply reporting what political elites say and do, journalists have questioned public officials and their motives, looked for opportunities to catch them in wrongdoing, and highlighted conflicts among them. According to Patters~n?~ journalists have been careful to avoid appearing partisan by having the criticisms and attacks on politicians come from their political adversaries.And this is where the parties have benefited. Democrats are the natural adversaries of Republicans. “The media look to the two political parties as the ‘teams’ that are competing in the game of national politics . . . [and present] every situation as Republicans versus the Democrats. . . . Thus, from the public’s point of view, the parties still play a meaningful role in structuring policy debates.”** In addition to seeking out conflict, the media have added more interpretation to their reporting and pr0gramming.2~Newspapers now include “news analysis” stories, and network and cable television stations now have panels of experts and pundits to discuss the top stories on their newscasts and political talk shows. Often these formats pair supporters of each party to discuss (or yell about) current issues. Party chairs frequently appear opposite each other, as do media-friendly members of Congress from opposing parties. Presumably, the presence of a representative from each party insures balance. Although this tends to oversimplify issues, and may ignore intra-party divisions and bipartisanship, it does enhance the perception that the parties are central in policy debates. Furthermore, as the national party organizations and the party caucuses in Congress work more closely to create their messages, their members are able to use the new media formats to publicize the parties’ agendas and positions on issues. Finally, the media coverage of parties has helped the parties extend their influence beyond what their resources would otherwise allow, particularly in campaigns. Media coverage of political advertising during campaigns has increased in the last two decades?O Therefore, when party organizations launch an ad campaign, whether it is issue advocacy to prop up their candidates during an

152

C. Danielle Wnson

election or, in a nonelection year, an attempt to influence policy debate, they can target the ads to a few major media markets, confident that the news media will cover the ads and broaden the reach to the rest of the country. In the 2000 presidential campaign, both parties paid for advertising in a handful of battleground states, but thanks to ad watches meant to evaluate the ads, people all over the country saw the ads replayed on news shows or described in detail in their local newspapers, thus extending the parties’ reach. News coverage of the parties, though giving them more visibility and a way to disseminate their message, may not be all good news for the parties. Because the parties have become the de facto representatives of political conflict for journalists, they may be blamed for what the public perceives to be wrong with the system. People often associate terms such as “partisan bickering” and “gridlock” with the parties. Thus, while the parties have used the media to reassert themselves in the political system, and while media coverage has made the parties more visible in public debate, the image the public has of the parties may not necessarily be favorable. Furthermore, media coverage of minor parties is virtually nonexistent. Coverage of the parties in the New York rimes reveals this marginalization. It is not uncommon for the Democratic and Republican parties each to be mentioned prominently (in the headline or first paragraph) in more than 400 stories a year in the Times. In contrast, between 1995 and 2000, the Reform Party drew prominent attention in more than 100 stories in only three years-only once in a nonelection year, during Reform Party Governor Jesse Ventura’s first year in office. The Green Party received this extensive coverage only in 2000, when well-known government watchdog Ralph Nader ran as the party’s nominee for president. In the other years, these parties gained prominent notice in fewer than 30 stories, and the Libertarian Party was never mentioned prominently in more than 12 stories during a year. Unless a third party has a high-profile candidate or elected official who can command media attention on his own-such as Ross Perot, who had money to buy his own advertising and make himself a credible candidate, and Ventura, a former wrestler, and Nader-the party is unlikely to gain notice and be taken seriously by the media as a player in policy debate.


153

CONCLUSION

Not long ago, there were whispers that the parties were in danger of becoming irrelevant in American politics, in part because the media had become a more important intermediary.However, we have seen in this chapter that the parties have redefined their place in the political system by taking advantage of opportunities the media afford. Issue advocacy has been an effective tool for parties to aid their candidates during political campaigns and to frame policy debates beyond the context of elections. Better media relations and coordinated communication among party members both within Congress and in the national party organizations have allowed the parties to capitalize on the media’s willingness to discuss policy in the context of party conflict. But even as the parties have used the media to reassert their political importance, several questions about the relationship between American parties and the media exist. The first of these relates to recent political developments and their consequences. At the time of this writing, it appears that some form of campaign finance reform limiting soft money contributions and the use of issue advocacy during an election will be passed by Congress and signed into law. How this will affect the parties’ communications role depends on two things: first, how successful the parties and potential contributors are in adapting to the new fund-raising requirements, and second, whether or not the courts decide that restrictions on issue advocacy are constitutional. It seems likely that parties will continue to find ways to raise large amounts of money, but restrictions on election-year issue advocacy may force the parties to do more issue ads outside the campaign window or find other forms of media than broadcast advertising to communicate their messages. In addition to the questions raised by coming political developments, there is a lack of knowledge about the effects of party communications on the public or political officials. Do issue ads influence debate, and does coordinated communication of the party message in Congress affect public opinion or policy outcomes? There is also little research on how the media cover parties-not in the sense of political bias that favors one party over another, but in

154

C. Danielle Vinson

the sense of what the public learns about parties from the media and what kind of perceptions coverage creates about the parties and their role in the political system. Answers to these questions await further scholarly research, which should bring us a better understanding of how political parties influence political communication, political processes, and policy outcomes in the end. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How has the media enabled parties to reassert themselves as important participants in the political system? 2. How can party advertisements in campaigns benefit a party’s candidates? How might party ads create problems for candidates? Without coordinating with their candidates, what can parties do to ensure their ads help rather than hurt their own candidates? 3. In congressional and presidential campaigns, what are the advantages and disadvantages of party ads focusing on national issues or themes rather than local concerns? 4. What challenges do parties and their leaders face in communicating through the media? How have party leaders in Congress attempted to overcome these challenges? 5. How have parties used new media such as the Internet? How might these new tools be effective ways to enhance the role of parties in the political system? 6. How does the media cover political parties? What do we learn about parties from the media and what kind of perceptions about parties might coverage create? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Harris, Douglas B., “The Rise of the Public Speakership,” Political Science Quarterly 113 (Summer 1998): 193-213. Lipinski, Daniel, “The Outside Game: Communication as a Party Strategy in Congress,” in Communication and US.Elections: New Agen-


155

das, ed. Roderick Hart and Daron Shaw (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Magleby, David B .,ed ., Outside Money: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 1998 Congressional Elections (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). , The Other Campaign: SoftMoney and Issue Advocacy in the 2000 Congressional Elections (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). National Democratic Committee Website. www.democrats.org . National Republican Committee Website. www.rnc.org.

NOTES 1. Paul S. Herrnson, “The Congressional Elections,” in The Election of2000,ed. Gerald M. Pomper (New York: Chatham House, 2001), 167. 2. James Bennet, “The Ad: New GOP Drive, New Finance Debate,” New York Emes, 31 May 1996,A20. 3. David B . Magleby, Election Advocacy: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 2000 Elections (Provo, Utah: Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, Brigham Young University, 2001), 30. 4. Bill Moore and Danielle Vinson, “The 1998 South Carolina Senate Race,” in Outside Money: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 1998 Congressional Elections, ed. David B. Magleby (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 100. 5. Eric Freedman and Sue Carter, “The 2000 Michigan Eighth Congressional District Race,” in Election Advocacy, ed. Magleby, 195-97. 6. Moore and Vinson, “1998 South Carolina Senate Race,” 99-100. 7. Karen Foerstel, “Parties, Interest Groups Pour Money into Issue Ads,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports (3 1 October 1998): 2948. 8. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Everything You Think You Know about Politics . . . And Why You’re Wrong (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 15. 9. Michael W. Traugott, “The 2000 Michigan Senate Race,” in Election Advocacy, ed. Magleby. 10. Clyde Wilcox, The Latest American Revolution? The 1994 Elections and Their Implications for Governance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 2. 11. Neither presidential candidate in 2000 seemed particularly eager to hitch his campaign to the congressional contests, and in many cases, congressional candidates were happy to keep their distance from the presidential

156

C. Danielle Vinson

candidates. James W. Ceaser and Andrew E. Busch, The Pei$ect Ee: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election (Lanham,Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,200 1). 12. Peter Marks, “The 2000 Campaign: The Ad Campaign,” New York Times, 17 October 2000, A l . 13. Marks, “The 2000 Campaign.” 14. Ceaser and Busch, The Pei$ect Tie, 224-26. 15. Douglas B. Harris, “Going Public and Staying Private: House Party Leaders’ Use of Media Strategies of Legislative Coalition Building” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 2000). 16. Patrick J. Sellers, “Leaders and Followers in the U.S. Senate” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 1999). 17. C. Danielle Vinson, “Going Public Congressional Style: When Congress Appropriates a Presidential Strategy” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 1999). 18. Sellers, “Leaders and Followers.” 19. Daniel Lipinski, “The Outside Game: Communication as a Party Strategy in Congress,” in Roderick Hart and Daron Shaw, Communication and US.Elections: New Agendas (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 200 1). 20. Lipinski, “The Outside Game.” 21. A1 Kamen, “In the Loop: The Sore Corps,” Washington Post, 16 May 2001. 22. Timothy E. Cook, Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 23. Mike Allen, “Democrats Turn Energy on Bush,” Washington Post, 20 May 200 1, A9. 24. Howard Kurtz, “Daschle on Jeffords’s Switch: It’s the Demographics,” Washington Post, 27 May 2001, A4. 25. For examples of party and leadership websites, see www.mc.org; www.dnc.org; www.youngrepublicans.com; www.yrock.com; www.yda.org; www.gop .gov; and www.house.gov/democrats/welcome.html. 26. Thomas E. Patterson, “Bad News, Period,” PS: Political Science & Politics 29 (March 1996): 17-21. 27. Patterson, “Bad News, Period.” 28. L. Sandy Maisel, “Political Parties in a Nonparty Era: Adapting to a New Role,” in Parties and Politics in American History, ed. L. Sandy Maisel and William G. Shade (New York: Garland, 1994), 275.


157

29. Darrell M. West, The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment (Boston: Bedfordst. Martin’s Press, 2001). 30. Darrell M. West, Air Wars: TelevisionAdvertising in Election Campaigns 1952-1 996,2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1997).


Presidential Elections and the Media Mary Stuckey

Research and commentary on the influence of the media in presidential elections has become a minor cottage industry.’ The consensus of opinion is both clear and consistent: the media are responsible for the weakening of the national political parties and a concomitant increase in the influence of journalists over that of professional politicians.2 The media thus have contributed to the shallowness of political discourse, undue attention to “image” over “substance,” and an impoverishment of our national politics generally. Like the asteroid in Deep Impact or the aliens in Independence Day, in short, the media are looming “out there,” plotting the destruction of civilization as we know it. Their window of opportunity for the accomplishment of this destruction occurs with regularity, every four years. And with regularity, every four years, scholars and pundits appear- usually on national media-warning us that the sky is falling and that the polity cannot long sustain the potential damage. Miraculously, however, we manage to survive yet another election cycle, and although our politics are ever more wounded, still we struggle on. This is, of course, hyperbole. But it is not altogether inaccurate,even so. Public discourse about the media tends toward the apocalyptic,and the media are convenient scapegoats for the myriad ills that are thought to assail us. Often, academics are little better, and often bring judgment as well as analysis to the study of media influence in elections. There are three main areas of research on media influence in presidential 159

160

Mary Stuckey

campaigns: studies that focus on the structural aspects of campaigns and the media’s influences on those structures; those that focus on the relative power of the media; and examinations of the content of campaign communication. In general, they are pessimistic, and, in my view, are all based on common misperceptions about political communication in general and campaign communication in particular? The most important of these misperceptions are: that when it comes to campaigns, the media matter more than anything else; that there was a golden age of political communication, and that we have fallen from grace; that television is both different and separate from culture; and finally, that voters are passive and imprisoned victims of television. All of these perceptions have a grain of truth in them; this chapter is by no means a defense of the media. It is, however, an effort to put the media coverage of campaigns into a larger context. Consequently, I will discuss some of the trends of mediated campaigns, question the general understanding of how the media operate with reference to a broader context, look with particular attention at the last presidential election, and reflect on whether the events of the last election alter these trends and this understanding in significant ways. COVERING PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

The media in the United States are businesses, and follow the dictates of business practice: These dictates mean that the media will perform in predictable ways, and will follow routines of newsgathering, production, and presentation. Successful campaigns are generally those that understand and use these routines, and that derive themes ‘that resonate through them. These processes are not neutral; they are widely considered to have clear, and often deleterious, effects on campaigns and on politics in general? Campaigns are important elements of media political coverage. During an election year, campaign news comprises between 13 percent (newspapers) and 15 percent (television) of news stories: and the content and style of such stories is remarkably uniform? Such uniformity is the product of routines and incentives that demand ex-

Presidential Elections and the Media

161

citing, dramatic events; change within a thematic context; and stories that can be presented in a “balanced’ and “objective” manner. Thus, coverage of complicated issues and events will be reduced to an easily dramatized conflict between personalities, and “both sides” given equal time and roughly equal coverage. Candidates, of course, play to these routines, and coverage is a major (if not the major) consideration of the contemporary campaign. Nearly everything a candidate does is geared toward the media, especially television! Not only have mediated events, such as the now obligatory appearance on Larry King, various other talk shows, and televised “town hall meetings” become campaign standards, but nearly all personal appearances are orchestrated with television in mind. “Media events” are campaign staples, and a failure to respect deadlines, the need for interesting video, and the demand for fresh news is certain to relegate a campaign to the status of “also-ran.” It is also problematic, however, for a campaign to engage in too much “news management.” Events that are seen as too orchestrated, too contrived, too “unrealistic” do not receive much air time. The political conventions are prime examples of this. When policy was actually made on convention floors, when controversy was possible, the conventions received “gavel-to-gavel” coverage. But the more the parties tried to control conventions, to present precise, clearly defined, and contrived images to the public through the media, the less coverage they received. Now, with the onset of cable as competition, the networks simply cannot afford to risk losing the audience; they provide coverage of key speeches and summaries of events, and leave the bulk of convention coverage to cable channels such as C-SPAN. The relationship between the media and political candidates has become so intertwined that veteran political journalist Robert Shogan asserts that the media “have been reduced to filling the role of enablers without fully realizing it or intending it, they allow and sometimes abet the abuse of the political process by the candidates and their handler^."^ According to Shogan, the media need the candidates, the candidates need the media, and the political process is damaged by the relationship that therefore develops between them. This perspective, of course, rests on a somewhat rarefied notion of what the political process requires for its integrity and proper functioning.

162

Mary Stuckey

The need for candidates to court the media is directly related to the phenomenon most often associated with the rise of the mediaspecifically television- the weakening of political parties. The media have, in many ways, replaced the parties as sources of political information, as providers of political ideology, and as winnowers of candidates.1° Through both news and entertainment fora, the media are powerful sources of what issues are on the national agenda, and how those issues will be understood and framed. While this research overwhelmingly indicates that the media are important as sources of what the public will think about, there is also good evidence that they have little influence over specific positions on those issues. That is, the media tell us what to think about, but not what to think." This can, however, be taken too far. Voters rely on many sources for their political information, including peers and family,12 and process mediated information in a variety of ways, all of which lessen the media's ability to force an agenda on an unwilling public.13 In addition, political parties remain the best predictor of the national vote, and of an individual voter's political preferences. Parties in the U.S. have always been weak, and the fact that they are further weakened may or may not be disastrous. Finally, the weakness of political parties is not solely the fault of the media; structural developments, such as the reforms of the McGovern-Fraser Commission in 1968, and the consequent initiation of primaries, have had much to do with weakening the parties. It remains true, however, that in the absence of strong and popular parties, the media presently fill a void. But they do not fill this void particularly well. As Tom Patterson insightfully notes: The proper organization of electoral opinion requires an institution with certain characteristics. It must be capable of seeing the larger picture-of looking at the world as a whole and not in small pieces. It must have incentives that cause it to identify and organize those interests that are making demands for policy representation. And it must be accountable for its choices, so that the public can reward it when satisfied and force amendments when dissatisfied. The press has none of these characteristics. The media has its special strengths, but they do not include these strength^.'^


163

The weakening of the political parties as organizing entities has contributed to the rise of candidate-centered campaigns.15 Candidatecentered campaigns have contributed to the fragmentation and lack of coherence that characterizesour national politics, and that makes those politics more difficult for citizens to assimilate and understand. The more confusing politics becomes, the more necessary are the media as interpreters. The cycle, once established, becomes self-reinforcing. The media, especially cable and most especially the Internet, are also viewed as furthering the fragmentation of our national political life. The idea here is that there is-or once was-a common culture, and that cable and the Internet allow smaller, more fractured groups to participate in smaller, more narrow cultures. Consequently, the media further the interest-group politics that are seen as increasingly dividing and not unifying the diverse groups that comprise the national polity.16 Cable and the Internet are seen on the one hand as potentially enabling democracy17 and on the other as contributing to its demise as a viable form of political organization.’* What we know about how the Internet and other forms of new media will affect our politics is that we don’t yet know how the Internet will affect our politics. In terms of the more traditional media, given the absence of strong partisan leaders, journalists and pundits have become the voice of political authority. Where the Sunday morning talk shows and other venues dedicated to political chat used to be devoted solely to interviews and discussions with political actors, they now also include analysis by journalists. Commentators often interview one another in the effort to derive political understanding. Whereas the point used to be exclusively to cover political events, there is increasing concern over journalists’ tendency to become part of those events .19 This self-referential tendency, disturbing in all political contexts, is particularly important in campaigns, in which voter information tends to be low (especially in the early stages), and in which such commentary can have correspondingly greater effects. Take, for instance, the example of Bill Clinton, in 1992 the undeclared winner of what political consultant turned commentator Paul Begala dubbed the “pundit primary.”20Clinton benefited in numerous ways from the media’s attention, not least of which

164

Mary Stuckey

was an increase in his ability to raise money, accompanied by a drop in the fund-raising potential of his rivals. Punditry is an increasingly visible element of the coverage of national campaigns, as once and future aides to officials and candidates take to the airwaves in what are supposed to be “objective” roles as analysts rather than producers of policy. Often, as in the case of George Stephanopolous, their role is to provide “inside” knowledge of the workings of the White House or the campaign. They fill air space-often considerable amounts of air space-but it is questionable whether they fill that space with politically meaningful information?l This assertion, of course, rests on the notion that only policy information is politically relevant, that gossip and process information are somehow less worthy than the “real” information we fondly suppose was once the province of political parties. The media fill more than an informational void, however; as the Clinton example indicates, the media also have supplanted the political parties as winnowers and kingmakers. Surely, the campaign coverage of “media darlings” like George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Colin Powell would not have been likely in a context dominated by parties rather than journalists. Coverage of candidates like Joe Biden and Gary Hart has also contributed to this process by removing candidates from contention, often before primary voters are given an opportunity to express their preferences. This phenomenon is most apparent in “frontloading,” or disproportionate coverage given to early primariesF2 As of June 1999,for instance, the electorally meaningless straw polls in Iowa were touted as the first salvo in the campaign wars, and their impact on the Elizabeth Dole and Pat Buchanan campaigns were thought to be all but definitive. For such a conclusion to be widely aired long before the election, and long before the majority of voters are even willing to begin thinking about starting to pay attention, would be laughable if it didn’t have such clear consequences. Important among these consequences is the tendency to search for small inconsistencies, which are then used to discredit a candidate in what is conventionally termed “gotcha journalism.” This “need” to find flaws rather than focus on basic reporting of facts tends more often to eliminate potentially viable candidates than to uncover real malfeasance F3


165

A major instrument of such kingmaking/winnowingis the coverage of polling. Most often associated with “horse race” coverage, polls tend to become benchmarks for campaigns; position in the polls is the definitive marker of the success or failure of a campaign. Certainly, they affected Elizabeth Dole’s ability to garner funds and attention in the 2000 preprimary season. The effects of polls are not limited to the fates of particular candidates, but have policy implications as well. Negative coverage of George Bush’s ability to “get it,” surely had an effect on the election of 1992, as did coverage of the ineptness of the Carter administration in 1980. Polls, as Kathleen Frankovic says, “not only sample public opinion, they define it.”24While polls have long been an integral part of political coverage, they are now more necessary to the media than ever and are thought to create rather than merely to define or report public opinion. Polls increase the attention reporters give the horse race, and determine the nature and extent of candidate coverage. According to this view, polls deepen the debasement of political processes?’Yet polls also underline the importance of public opinion, and in so doing, may actually increase voter interest and involvement in ~ampaigns.2~ The cumulative effects of polls thus remain ambiguous. Despite the fact-or because of it-that election 2000 was “too close to call” for weeks before the actual election, the polls became the story of the campaign, as “Americans were polled, polled, and repolled. And the media reported what were often two- and three-point statistically insignificant leads faithfully.”28Because these polls carried no “news,” they contributed nothing but tension and drama to the campaign-but tension and drama make for “good” stories, and so the polls were covered incessantly.Certainly, the influence of polls on election night 2000 created enormous difficulties, both for the candidates and for the political ~ystem.2~ We are so dependent upon the national media for our political information, the argument goes, and are generally so ignorant of how to interpret that information, that greater care in the use of polls is certainly called for. Largely as a result of polling, but also because of the visual nature of television, modem campaigning is sometimes blamed for the further debasement of political discourse?O Despite the evidence that most presidential candidates make policy-oriented promises

166

Mary Stuckey

and, if elected, try to keep those promises,3’ scholars and pundits insist on the hollowness of candidate appeals, the shallowness of candidates themselves, and the emptiness of political discourse?2 Certainly, the tendency to cover events such as debates as if they are about performance rather than policy-focusing on sighs or stammers, shrugs or smirks33-while perhaps revealing something of candidate character, can hardly be said to contribute to public understanding of policy. But some elections- 1988 is a notable example-are simply empty of meaningful issue discussion, and the media cannot cover what is not there to begin with. Other elections -and 2000 is a good example-are notable for the amount of policy that is discussed. The 2000 election had enormous amounts of issue content, and was neither reducible to jokes about “lock boxes,” nor was it so reduced by the media. If there i s substantive issue discussion, the media do cover it; they may do so in fragmented, personalized, and potentially trivializing ways, but it is also true that politics has always been full of the fragmented, the personal, and the trivial. Nonetheless, the very fact of the media is considered to have an impact on the ways in which political communication is structured and pre~ented?~ an impact that is not necessarily positive, if one wants a rational, well-informed electorate who are interested in issue-based information as a basis for making knowledgeable decis i o n ~ ?Held ~ up to anything approaching that standard, American election communication is woefully lacking. The question is whether or not that is either an appropriate or a realistic standard for political practice. CAMPAIGNS IN CONTEXT

The crucial point made by critics of the media’s roles in national elections is that media influence matters more than anything else as a determinant of the vote. There is considerable evidence that this is not the case. In his analysis of the 1980 campaign, for instance, former speechwriter and now journalist Jeff Greenfield details the shattering of various myths about election coverage. He concludes


167

that “television and the media made almost no difference in the outcome of the 1980 presidential campaign. The victory of Ronald Reagan was a political victory, a party victory, and victory of more coherent-not necessarily correct, but more coherent-ideas, better expressed, more connected with the reality of their lives, as Americans saw it, than those of Reagan’s principal opponent, a victory vastly aided by a better-funded, better-organized, more confident and united party.”36In Greenfield’s view, while the campaign was transmitted through the media, the campaign, not its mediation, determined the winner and loser. Yet the idea of media dominance is still very much with us, and still hampers our understanding of elections. No campaign can succeed without the media, just as no campaign can succeed without organization, money, some semblance of issue positions, and a host of other factors. But the media are not the sole determinant of campaign success. They may not even be the primary determinant. That we often talk as if they are is a tribute to the self-referential nature of election coverage, which tends to place media in the center of campaigns, not to the actual processes of campaigns and elections. Voters, for instance, have myriad and important resources. Selective exposure affects how voters get information, and selective perception helps to determine how that information will be processed.37 Predispositions, the opinions of peers, social status, race, gender, and other demographic considerations are significant indicators of how mediated information will be received ?* Voter indifference to media may also be an important filter; there is considerable evidence that voters do not agree with what the media consider important issues, the ClintonLewinsky scandal being the most obvious recent example. In at least one area, the voters are influenced by the media without agreeing with them. If nothing else, we know that voters do not like negative campaigning, but that it w0rks.3~Negative campaigning not only separates voters from the opposition, however; it may also separate voters from the political process, and may be related to the increase in voter disenchantment with the electoral process.40 The assumption that the media have contributed to the demise of substantive political communication in campaign contexts is based,

168

Mary Stuckey

however implicitly, on the notion that there was a golden age of political communication, and that political discourse has since been on a long, downhill slide. This tendency is most notable in Roderick Hart’s work, in which he urges citizens to “just say ‘No”’ to television,l” but it is a prominent strain throughout media research.“2The problem is that, in its simplest form, the assumption is simply not accurate. Not only is it difficult to make clear distinctions between “symbol” and “substance ,” but campaign communication has always relied on image, and has often been trivial, prurient, and downright shallow. There was, for instance, little substance in torchlight parades, campaigns based on whiskey jugs in the shape of log cabins, or in slogans such as “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Negative campaigning is also not a recent phenomenon. While it is often argued that negative politics are either a relatively new developmenp3 or are at least a qualitatively different one,4 there is considerable evidence that “going negative” has been around for some time, and that the practice has long involved personalization, distortion, and misinterpretation of issues. In 1864, for example, a variety of racist themes were conflated into accusations that Republicans advocated miscegenation, which would “be of infinite service to the Irish.” Democrats labeled Abraham Lincoln “the widowmaker,” and referred to him as “Abraham Africanus the First,” implying that he was “tainted” with “negro blood.”45 Next to this, the claims concerning Grover Cleveland’s illegitimate child, not to mention Jimmy Carter’s alleged “meanness ,” seem trivial. Furthermore, the assumption that television has demeaned and trivialized politics erroneously treats television as unprecedented in popular culture history. Historically, the dominant media (from books to vaudeville to movies to television and computer games) have always been blamed for the deterioration of popular culture.“6 It is probably more sensible to understand television’s place in popular culture in more restrained terms. The media alone are neither panaceas for our political ills nor the causes of them. Blaming the media is also tantamount to arguing that voters are somehow dupes, incapable of recognizing the efforts to manipulate them that are so obvious to scholars and to media critics. This argument gives us the image of voters trapped in “news prison,”47unable


169

to break free (or able to do so only with great difficulty) of the ideological and informational chains with which the media bind them. As media critic Bonnie Dow notes in a different context, [Vliewers are likely to interpret television according to the dominant codes available to them as members of American society and as consumers of American media. This perspective assumes that viewers outside the white, middle-class,heterosexual “mainstream”to whom television always presumes it is speaking still understand the “rules” for preferred readings, even as they might work to deconstruct themP8 Voters, in other words, may know little about American politics, about the prevailing issues, or about the processes of campaigns. But they are very smart about what makes “good” television, and are capable of interpreting it in terms of what makes “good” politics. That voter turnout continues to decline is, at least potentially, evidence that voters are also capable of discerning the difference. They may watch so-called “trash television,” and they may vote for empty candidates, but it is at least possible that in doing so they are responding to the trivialization of politics by politicians and those who cover them, not failing to recognize that politics is, to many of them, trivial. What does not matter may as well be entertaining. This is not to deny that the media have important effects on campaigns. It is to argue that we need to be more careful about analyzing the nature of those effects. It is likely, for instance, that, as Greenfield argues, the content and nature of media coverage contribute to voter a ~ a t h y . 4The ~ reluctance of pundits to believe what candidates say, their pervasive (if entirely reasonable) cynicism, their unwillingness to attribute to political action motives that transcend the purely opportunistic, and their fascination with the “game” elements of politics strip, in Greenfield’s words, the voters of reasons to care about election outcomes. In times of stronger partisanship, voters could determine the stakes of an election through the simple referent of party identification. Lacking that now, it falls to the media to explain the actual differences among and between candidates, and the implications that those differences hold for individual voters. It is this that media singularly fail

170

Mary Stuckq

to do, focusing instead on style, on political tactics and strategy, and-to the extent that issues are covered-on issues as a reflection of that style and/or those strategies and tactics. REFLECTIONS ON CAMPAIGN 2000

Out of the myriad possibilities for analysis that stem from the most recent presidential election, two things from campaign 2000 are particularly relevant to this discussion: Ralph Nader’s campaign and its attacks on the political parties and the coverage of election night. Nader’s third party challenge to the major parties was premised on the notion that the prevailing processes of campaigning are corrupt, mostly because of the infusion of money into politics, but also because of the media that money can be used to The coverage of Nader’s campaign focused, predictably enough, on the affect it would have on the Bush and Gore campaign^;^' on the novelty of the challenge;52 and on the personalities of those inv01ved.~~ Thus, this coverage was pretty much what we would expect, emphasizing the horse race, personalizing issues, and contributing to the sense of electoral politics as trivial. Equally predictable, the coverage of the 2000 elections revealed many of the problems with media coverage of campaigns. Throughout the campaign, there were the usual charges of shallow coverage that trivialized the campaign and biased reporting that skewed voter perception^.^^ These perennial problems, however, paled in comparison to the election night fiasco. During election night, described by journalist Terence Smith as “a nightmare,”55 news anchors and commentators became increasingly confused and incoherent amid the various projections, retractions, and apologies ?6 Television news has rarely looked worse than it did that night. As Marvin Kalb noted, “Television news, like all of contemporary journalism, is supposed to cover the news fairly and accurately. It is not supposed to be the news or make the Yet that is exactly what happened. The network news predictions for the pivotal state of Florida, based on a combination of statistical machinations and exit polling,


171

proved to be considerably more accurate in terms of voter intention than in terms of voter behavior, as problems with ballots led numerous Gore supporters to vote for Pat Buchanan instead. The situation was further complicated by some bad data and misjudgments about how that data should be In essence, each network wanted to be first to call Florida and thus the election, and sacrificed accuracy for immedia~y.5~ Analyst Robert Kuttner had this to say about the media performance on election day: I don’t just mean miscalling Florida twice. The aftermath was even worse. The networks and most print analysts convinced themselves that A1 Gore had lost, that he was a sore loser, that the public was panicking, that a perilous interregnum was at hand, that court involvement would mean a constitutional crisis, and that an instant resolution was necessary for the good of the Republic. But each of those conceits was proven overheated and wrong. . . . The voters turn out to be more mature than the media. . . . Far from panicking, the voters are getting a fascinating civics lesson. Anyone who thinks this is just O.J. all over again is a vidiot, so media-besotted as to be unable to distinguish spectacle from substance.m

Perhaps only the American media can by comparison render the American voter a model of democratic virtue. No media analyst, of course, could have foreseen the legal complications that after five tortuous weeks finally dragged the election into the United States Supreme Court. There is also little chance that the coverage of the events of those five weeks affected the results in any significant way.6l But the on-air chaos did much to undermine the credibility of the national media, and will doubtless lead to reforms and changes in the processes of media coverage of national elections .62 What cannot be changed, however, is the pressure, exacerbated by the Internet, to be first with the n e ~ s . What 6 ~ will not be changed are the organizational and structural factors and incentives that cause news to be produced as it is currently produced. Looking into the future, things are likely to continue very much the same.

172

Mary Stuckey

INTO THE FUTURE In general, we can expect that the media will continue to act in ways that insure audiences, ratings, and profits. When the audience for PBS’s highly regarded NewsHour exceeds that of the Jerry Springer Show, and when viewers demand issue-laden content, political candidates will respond with that sort of information. Until then, we can expect dramatization, personalization, an emphasis on the horse race, and an overall trivialization of electoral processes. In the aftermath of 9- 11, the next election will be a difficult one in which to campaign and a difficult one to cover, as themes of patriotism appropriate to a nation at war are uneasy companions to the sorts of scandal-ridden sensationalized coverage of the horse race that characterize election news. We cannot expect either the candidates or the media to find comfortable ways of dealing with this dilemma quickly. We can, however, expect a plethora of self-referential stories detailing how these themes and issues are covered; we can also expect stories on how the media are too powerful, too determinative, and too likely to focus on all of the wrong things. Much of this coverage can be safely ignored. And, from the evidence of past elections, voters will indeed ignore most of this coverage. The media do matter. But they matter within a specific context, and without due attention to that context, the roles of the media will not be properly understood. The most important role that the media occupy is that of winnower, for they have tremendous influence on the viability of campaigns, especially early in the process. This is particularly important when one examines the tendency for the media to equate fund-raising with political success, especially in the primaries. Despite evidence (John Connally, Michael Huffington) that campaigns are not bought and that money does not guarantee success, the media’s equation of fund-raising and political viability is disturbing. The Enron scandal, however, will give particular potency to this equation, and perhaps impetus to coverage of campaign financing and the issue of campaign finance reform. The media are also important as agenda setters. The media not only exercise influence over who will survive the election, but also over which issues the election will turn. Agenda setting is a complicated


173

business, however, for the media and the candidates will focus on the issues that seem to resonate with voters. There is a reciprocity here that is often overlooked in popular discussions of media influence. That influence relies on standardization, on what is often referred to as “pack journalism,” the tendency of all members of the media to cover the same story in the same way. There is some question as to whether this standardization is threatened by the growth of the Internet, which is radically decentralized, and which, it is often thought, will be taking on increasing influence in future campaigns.@ Three things bear noting here: the first is that those who use the Internet as a source of information seem to avail themselves of electronic access to mainstream news sources. That is, instead of reading the New York Times or watching NBC, they access the Times’s web page, and log on to MSNBC. Thus, the sources of news remain substantially the same, although the means of accessing those sources are different. Second, those who use the Internet as a news source seem to be adding it to their other media. That is, they are not exchanging the New York Times for news.com; they are adding Internet sources to the New York Times. This means that those people who are already information rich, who follow politics consistently, and who are interested in and likely to participate in politics are likely to become even more aware, have more information and more up-to-the-minute news. Those who are indifferent to politics, or who are only marginally interested in and involved in political processes, are not likely to become more involved or interested simply because they have a computer in their home. To the extent that they use that computer to access the Internet, it will most likely be to find information on the things that interest them, not to become more aware of politics. Finally, there is considerable overlap between the Internet and “mainstream” news. As Matt Drudge and the tabloids have made clear, what appears first in an “illegitimate” venue will quickly be reported in the more “legitimate” news. There is no evidence that this process will work to improve the coverage of issues above symbols or of “legitimate” versus “illegitimate” or tabloid news. In sum, the future of campaigns looks very much like the past. Issue information is out there for those who seek it; the candidates

174

Mary Stuckey

will dedicate themselves to mediated campaigns, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth (especially in the mainstream media) about the debasement of our politics. There will also be considerable speculation about the effects and impact of new communication technologies. And the result of this election will be much like those in the past: fewer people will vote; they will be disproportionately middle-aged, middle-class, white, and educated; and the media will be blamed for the downward spiral of our politics as we wait to be rescued by a president or presidential candidate who can save the world h la Bill Pullman. It will be a long wait. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Much of the criticism of the media assumes that political debate was once “better” than it is now. How do these critics define “better,” and when was this golden age of political debate? 2 . Why do media scholars insist that mass-mediated argumentation is bad for democracy? 3. Are voters simply passive receivers of media messages? 4. Why is it important to understand media routines, and to understand media as a business? 5 . How would elections be different if the media were overtly partisan rather than objective? 6 . What is the relationship between media strength and the declining importance of political parties? 7. Why are polls so important to the coverage of elections? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Entman, Robert, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford, 1989). Hart, Roderick P., Seducing America: How Television Charms the American Voter (New York: Oxford, 1995). Just, Marian, et al., Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and Media in a Presidential Election (New York: Greenwood, 1991).


175

Patterson, Thomas, Out of Order (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993). Pfau, Michael, and Henry Kenski, Attack Politics: Strategy and Defense (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1990).

NOTES I would like to thank John M. Murphy, Greg M. Smith, and Mark Rozell for comments that substantially improved this chapter. Rasha I. Ramzy provided important research assistance. 1. A quick search on amazon.com revealed over 14,000 books on the media; this number of course does not include the plethora of academic and journalistic articles on the subject. 2. See,for example, Robert Entman, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay ofAmerican Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Garret J. O’Keefe, “Political Malaise and Reliance on the Media,” Journalism Quarterly (1980): 122-28. 3. I would include much of my own work in this category. 4. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). 5. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 2002); Robert Waterman McChesney, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy (New York: Seven Stars, 1997); Darrell West, The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment (New York: St. Martin’s, 2001). 6. Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1987), 244. 7. Judith Trent and Robert Friedenberg, Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1991), 91-92. 8. David Paletz, The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 2001); Martin Plissner, Control Room: How the Media Calls the Shots in Presidential Elections (New York: Free Press, 1999). 9. The quotation is from Shogan’s book, Bad News: Where the Press Goes Wrong (New York: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), as quoted in NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, August 21,2001. 10. Anthony Broh, “Polls, Pols, and Parties,” Journal of Politics 45 (1983): 7 3 2 4 .

176

Mary Stuckey

11. On agenda setting, see Shanto Iyengar, “Television News and Citizens’ Explanations of National Affairs,” American Political Science Review 81 (1987): 815-31; Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). On framing, see Robert Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43 (1993): 5 1-58; Doris Graber, “Framing Election News Broadcasts: News Context and Its Impact on the 1984 Presidential Election,” Social Science Quarterly 68 (1987): 552-68; Henry Kenski, “From Agenda Setting to Priming and Framing: Reflections on Theory and Method,” in The Theory and Practice of Political Communication Research, ed. Mary E. Stuckey (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1996), 67-83. 12. Pamela Johnston Conover and S . Feldman, “Candidate Perception in an Ambiguous World: Campaigns, Cues, and Inference Processes,” American Journal of Political Science 33 (1989): 912-40; Doris Graber, Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide (New York: Longman, 1984); Marion Just, Ann Crigler, Dean Alger, Terence Cook and Darrell West, Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and Media in a Presidential Election (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 13. R. Behr and Shanto Iyengar, “Television News, Real-World Cues, and Changes in the Public Agenda, Public Opinion Quarterly 49 (1985): 38-57; Diana Owen, Media Messages in American Political Elections (New York: Greenwood, 1991). 14. Thomas Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 36. 15. Scott Keeter, “The Illusion of Intimacy: Television and the Role of Candidate Qualities in Voter Choice,” Public Opinion Quarterly 5 1 (1987): 344-58. 16. For examples, see W. Lance Bennett and Robert M. Entman, eds., Mediated Politics: Communication and in the Future of Democracy (New York Cambridge University Press, 2000); Trudy Lieberman, Slanting the Story: The Forces That Shape the News (New York: New Press, 2000); Norman Miller, Environmental Politics: Interest Groups, the Media, and the Making ofPolicy (New York: Lewis Publishers, 2001); West, Rise and Fall. 17. Thomas Benson, “Desktop Demos: New Communication Technologies and the Future of the Rhetorical Presidency,” in Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996); David Brin, “Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society’s Benefit,” Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 15 (2000): 597-617; Dan Johnson, “Politics in Cyberspace,” Futurist 33 (1999): 14.


177

18. See, for example, Hal Berghel, “Digital Politics,” Association for Computing Machinery 39 (October 1996): 19; Dana Milbank, “Virtual Politics,” New Republic 221 (July 5 , 1999): 22-27. 19. The most glaring example of this in recent times is Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff’s relationship with Linda Tripp. Michael Isikoff, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story (New York: Crown, 1999), 58-60,168. 20. Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, Mad As Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box, 1992 (New York: Warner Books, 1993), 103. 21. On punditry in general, see Eric Alterman, Sound and Fury: The Meaning of Punditocracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Come11 University Press, 2000). 22. David Castle, “Media Coverage of Presidential Primaries,” American Politics Quarterly 19 (1991): 33-42. 23. Marvin Kalb, “The Rise of the ‘New News’: A Case Study of Two Root Causes of the Modem Scandal Coverage” (discussion paper D-24, presented at the Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy, October 1998);NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, August 21,2002. 24. Kathleen Frankovic, “Public Opinion and Polling,” in The Politics of News, The News of Politics, ed. Doris Graber, Daniel McQuail, and Pippa Norris (Washington,D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1988), 150-70. 25. Frankovic, “Public Opinion,” 156; Owen, Media Messages, 89. 26. Owen, Media Messages. 27. Frankovic ,“Public Opinion ,” 167. 28. Lori Robertson, “Polled Enough for Ya?’ American Journalism Review (JanuaryFebruary 200 1): 29-33. 29. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, November 8,2000. 30. Frankovic ,“Public Opinion ,” 167. 31. Jefhy Fishel, Pmidents and Pmmises (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quaaerly, 1985). 32. Roderick P. Hart, Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modem Voter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Roderick P. Hart, The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of American Political Speechmaking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 33. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, August 2 1,2001. 34. Mary E. Stuckey, The President as Interpreter-in-Chief (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1991). 35. Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age. 36. Jeff Greenfield, The Real Campaign: How the Media Missed the Story ofthe I980 Campaign (New York: Summit Books, 1982), 15.

178

Mary Stuckey

37. Gina M. Garramone, “Motivation and Selective Attention to Political Information Formats,” Journalism Quarterly 62 (1985): 37-44. 38. Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1991). 39. Michael Pfau and Henry Kenski, Attack Politics: Strategy and Defense (New York: Praeger, 1990). 40. Larry Sabato, Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1991), 26. 41. Hart,Seducing America. 42. Robert Entman, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age; Joshua Meyrowitz, “Visible and Invisible Candidates: A Case Study in ‘Competing Logics’ of Campaign Coverage ,” Political Communication 11 (1994): 145-64; William L. Rivers, The Other Government: Power and the Washington Media (New York: Universe, 1982); Sabato, Feeding Frenzy. 43. Sabato, Feeding Frenzy. 44. Jamieson, Dirty Politics. 45. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 789-90. 46. See, for example, Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review 6 (Fall 1939): 34-49. 47. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York: Longman, 1988). 48. Bonnie Dow, Prime-Time Femisnism: Television, Media Culture, and the Womens Movement since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 18. 49. Greenfield, Real Campaign, 27. 50. See, for example, Angie Cannon and Roger Simon, “The Making of a Political Spoiler,” U.S. News and World Report 129 (November 6, 2000): 20; John Colapinto, “Ralph Nader Is Not Sorry,” Rolling Stone 887 (September 13,2001): 64. 5 1. See, for example, Jackie Calmes, “Nader Not Likely to Reach 5% Threshold,” Wall Street Journal 236 (November 8, 2000): A17; Cannon and Simon, “Political Spoiler.” 52. See, for example, James Bradley, “Nader, Schmader,” Village Voice 45 (November 7,2000): 28.


179

53. Most of the coverage was concerned with issues of personality. See, for example, Geoffrey Leon, “Blame Ego-Politics, Not Eco-Politics,” New Statesman 130 (July 16,2001): 22; Paul Magnusson, “The Punishing Price of Nader’s Passion,” Business Week 3708 (November 20,2000): 44; Godfrey Sperling, “Mystery Men,” Christian Science Monitor 92 (November 7,2000): 9; Lenora Todaro, “Ralph Nader Lashes Back,” Village Voice 45 (December 26,2000): 29. 54. Daphne Eviatar, “Murdoch’s Fox News: They Distort, They Decide,” Nation, March 12,2001; Alicia C. Shepard, “How They Blew It,” American Journalism Review 23 (JanuaryFebruary 2001): 20-28; Sharyn Wizda, “Playing Favorites?” American Journalism Review 22 (JanuaryFebruary 2000): 34-39. 55. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, November 8,2000. 56. Robert Kuttner, “Two Bad Calls: The Faulty Ballots, the Bumbling Press,” Boston Globe, 3rd ed., November 19,2000, C7; NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, February 13,2001. 57. Marvin Kalb, “Election 2000: What Does It All Mean? A Big Loss for Network News,” Boston Globe, November 9,2000, A19. 58. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, February 13,2001. 59. Shepard, “How They Blew It.” 60. Kuttner, “Two Bad Calls.” 6 1. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, February 13,200 1. 62. Associated Press, “Voter News Service Opts to Carry On, but Revamp,” WashingtonPost, June 1,2001, A4. 63. On the continuing importance of such pressure, see remarks by news anchors that appear in NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript, February 13, 2001; and in Kathy Kellogg and Terry Frank, “Media Fixture Finds Much to Say about the Election,” Buffalo News, November 30,2000,3B. 64. Benson, “Desktop Demos.”


9 The Media and Interest Groups in the United States Ronald G. Shaiko

T h e relationship between the American news media and organized interest groups and their lobbyists in Washington is a schizophrenic one -simultaneously antagonistic and symbiotic; it is also qualitatively different from the relationships between the media and the institutions of governance in Washington discussed in earlier chapters. In the American political system, the news media and organized interests are components of civil society, serving as institutional intermediaries in the political space between the citizens and the state. While both the media and organized interest groups are regulated, to a limited extent, by the federal government, they are autonomous institutions, constitutionally protected from excessive interference by the government. As such, both the news media and interest groups may serve as institutional checks on the political system and as institutional advocates for democratic governance. Nonetheless, neither the news media nor organized interests have responsibilities for governance in the American political system. Therefore, the political accountability of the news media and of organized interest groups is less clear. In theory, interest group leaders are accountable to their members, whether employees and stockholders in corporations, union members, or citizens who join collective action groups. The news media, in the 21st century, are increasingly accountable to the corporate conglomerates that own the media outlets, and secondarily, to the readers, listeners, and viewers who consume their news products. 181

182

Ronald G. Shaiko

MEDIA CONCENTRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Two decades ago, Ben Bagdikian wrote about the “media monopoly” that was emerging in the industry. At the time, he found roughly fifty media conglomerates dominating the media market.’ In the most recent edition of The Media Monopoly, the author lowered the figure to around ten mega-media companies and another dozen conglomerates as second-tier competitors .* More recently, several major research efforts have documented the dramatic concentration of media outlets in the corporate hands of a comparatively small number of media conglomerates. Robert McChesney identifies Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, Seagram, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Sony, General Electric, and AT&T as the first-tier media conglomerates. “These media empires have been constructed largely in the 199Os, with a rate of growth in annual revenues that is staggering.” From 1988 to 1998, Disney grew from a $2.9 billion company to a $25 billion media conglomerate; during the same time frame, Time and Warner Communications saw annual revenues of $4.2 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively, jump to $28 billion in Time Warner revenues. Viacom grew exponentially from a $600 million company to a $14.5 billion media giant; other first-tier media corporations saw similar growth trends .3 The second-tier media corporations include the large newspaper-based conglomerates such as Gannett, Knight-Ridder, and the New York Times Company, along with cable conglomerates Comcast and Cox Enterprises and CBS, a broadcast corporation. These second-tier corporations, while not as comprehensive in media scope, have witnessed similar profits during the decade of the 1990s: The paradox of such financial profitability in the media sector is what Penn Kimball has labeled the “downsizing of the news .”5 With the concentration of the media in the hands of a relatively few corporate giants, the value of news gathering and dissemination is now counterbalanced by the value of corporate profitability. As a result, the major television networks as well as the large newspaper chains have cut back significantly on news reporting workforces. Kimball found that “the drastic budget cuts experienced by the three networks since being taken over by new corporate management in

The Media and Interest Groups in the United States

183

1986 have hit the Washington bureaus substantially, but less drastically than elsewhere. NBC, CBS, and ABC have all closed down or downsized most of their bureaus overseas and across the country.”6 These cutbacks, along with the proliferation of alternative information sources, via cable outlets and the Internet, have produced a qualitatively different media system for the 21st century, one that Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil identify as “the new Mixed Media Culture.” This culture has five major characteristics, each of which has consequences for the relationship between the news media and organized interests in the United States: (1) never-ending news cycles make journalism less complete; (2) sources are gaining power over journalists; (3) there are no more gatekeepers; (4) argument is overwhelming reporting; and (5) the “blockbuster” mental it^.^ Instant journalism, as practiced by the 24-hour cable networks, produces a never-ending news cycle that influences the decisions of television network executives and newspaper editors. Journalismon-the-cheap, a result of paradoxical staff cutbacks at the major networks and on newspapers in the face of huge corporate profits, has made journalists far more reliant on sources as the primary means of developing stories. Due to the proliferation of media alternative outlets, there is no longer a journalistic consensus regarding “newsworthiness ,” resulting in lowest-common-denominator reporting. Related to these changes in the media culture, the culture of argument has supplanted the culture of news gathering and verification. “The economics of these new media, indeed, demand that this product be produced as cheaply as possible. Commentary, chat, speculation, opinion, argument, controversy, and punditry cost far less than assembling a team of reporters, producers, fact checkers, and editors to cover the far-flung comers of the world.”* And, finally, the BIG story sells! MEDIA COMPETENCE AND INTEREST GROUP INFLUENCE

Each of the characteristics outlined above offers an avenue for organized interests and their representatives to influence the news media in ways that benefit the organized interests, often at the expense

184

Ronald G. Shaiko

of the collective interests of the general public. These changes in the media culture have also affected the relationship between organized interests and the news media. This love-hate relationship has developed over time and has become even more complex in recent years. In the past, one would be hard-pressed to characterize news media portrayals of interest groups and lobbyists as anything other than negative. Phrases such as “special interests,” “hired guns,” and “influence peddlers” are widely used to characterize interest groups and lobbyists. Jeffrey Birnbaum, Washington bureau chief for Fortune magazine and author of two books on lobbyists and lobbying, when asked to characterize the relationship between the news media and the lobbying profession at a meeting of the American League of Lobbyists in Washington, replied, “in general, it is an tag on is ti^."^ On one level, the antagonism is mutual. Lobbyists and leaders of interest groups, particularly those not held in high esteem by the journalistic community (e.g ., corporate representatives, conservative group leaders), feel as though the news media do not present a fair and accurate portrayal of interest groups and lobbyists in general and in their specific roles in the public policy-making process. In a 1998 membership survey conducted by the American League of Lobbyists, a national association of government relations and public affairs professionals, 76%of the respondents responded negatively to the question “Do you believe that the press generally portrays lobbying and lobbyists fairly?’ Only 19% felt that the press is fair in its coverage of lobbyists and lobbying activities. When asked which publication generally portrays the lobbying profession the most objectively, only National Journal, a weekly politics and policy magazine, garnered more than 25% of the responses. Conversely, while most respondents reported reading the Washington Post and the New York Times on a daily basis, less than 5% of the respondents selected either newspaper as the most objective portrayer of the lobbying profession.1° Journalists tend to view lobbyists as easy targets for derision. Unlike policy makers in Congress or in executive agencies, lobbyists have little recourse against attacks by journalists. Since members of Congress as well as presidents often use “special interests” as scapegoats in the policy-making process, journalists are free to follow the lead of government officials in targeting organized interests


185

and their representatives as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. No president in modern history was as inextricably linked to organized interests and their political contributions as President Bill Clinton, yet that did not stop him from lamenting the ills of special interests in Washington. So, if the president can do it, why not the press? Despite the negative characterizations often presented by the media of interest groups and lobbyists, the general public perceives that journalists are too often influenced by such groups. In a 1997 national survey conducted by the Roper CentedGannett Newseum, 63% of the respondents believed that the news media are too manipulated by special interests.” In many ways, such findings fuel the antagonism between these two institutional intermediaries. Yet, on another level, there is a growing symbiotic relationship between interest groups and the media. The events of the last decade in Washington have injected a dose of pragmatic compromise to this otherwise hostile relationship. Thomas Boggs, one of the elder statesmen of the lobbying industry, identified three important occurrences that have led to a greater willingness on the part of organized interests to engage the press in policy dialogues.12First, in the early 1990s, Congress, with the assistance of President George H. W. Bush, passed the Budget Enforcement Act, creating a pay-as-you-go mechanism in the budget process. This act, you may recall, broke the Bush “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge and likely assisted in his defeat in 1992. Its longer-term impact was to pit interest group against interest group. Advocates for Group X had to defend their existing government program from attack by Group Y, who wished to kill the Group X program and use those saved revenues to fund the Group Y program. While the battle for policy ground continued as usual within the halls of Congress, interest groups began to take their messages to the media to articulate the comparative advantages of their programs. So, after decades of giving the press the silent treatment for their negative characterizations, interest group leaders and lobbyists began to contact journalists with new information on ongoing policy issues. Second, the 1994 elections and the subsequent Republican revolution in Congress so changed the balance of power and upset the

186

Ronald G. Shaiko

internal lobbying relationships between lobbyists and policy makers that interest group leaders and lobbyists had to develop new lines of communication to members of Congress and their staffs. More than half of the current members of Congress were not in Congress in 1990; old lines of communication would not work with new occupants of the House and Senate. For lobbyists, the media served as an important new conduit through which issues could be communicated. And third, related to the first two occurrences, but more broad in scope, was the emergence of grassroots lobbying as one of the key elements in any interest group strategy. Organized interests must demonstrate to policy makers that policy proposals or changes to existing policies have demonstrably positive or at least no detrimental impact on the folks back home. To the extent that the news media can assist in delivering such a message, organized interests will engage the media to serve their ends. Rarely do contemporary interest group strategies not include a media or “outside lobbying” c ~ m p o n e n t . ’ ~ From the media perspective, the pragmatic compromise and engagement with organized interests comes out of necessity, for all of the reasons outlined above regarding increasingly limited resources and the proliferation of alternative media. Journalism-on-the-cheap requires a reportorial shorthand. Just as members of Congress and their staffs rely on interest groups for information and, more important, intelligence (information in political context), so, too, must the news media. But, as with institutions of governance and interest groups, there is a potential danger with an increased media engagement with organized interests. More than a half century ago, Jesse Unruh, the architect of the modern California legislature, reached the following conclusion regarding the relationship between organized interests and the legislature: lobbyists and interest group leaders “have influence in inverse ratio to legislative competence. It is common for a special interest to be the only source of legislative information about itself. The information that a lobbyist presents may or may not be prejudiced in favor of his client, but if it is the only information that the legislature has, no one can really be sure. A special interest monopoly of information seems to be more sinister than the


187

outright buying of votes that has been excessively imputed to lobbyists .',14 In constructing the modern legislature in California, Unruh sought to build a competent institution, one that would not be solely reliant on information generated by organized interests. As a result, the California legislature is a full-time, professionalized, fully staffed institution, capable of generating its own information or able to check the validity of information provided by organized interests. Today, the same relationship exists between the news media and organized interests -interest groups and lobbyists have influence in inverse ratio to media competence. To the degree that the news media, through both newspapers and television news reporting , are institutionally ill equipped to analyze and verify information independent of outside sources, the influence of organized interests and their representatives will grow significantly in years to come. And, in many ways, the stakes are higher for the media than they are for modern legislatures. For in the legislative setting, organized interests are far more constrained in presenting information to policy makers than they ever will be in presenting information to journalists. There is an old adage among lobbyists in Washington-you can't make the same mistake once. That is, you cannot afford to give a member of Congress, congressional staffer, White House staffer, executive official, or any other policy maker a single piece of untruthful information. The second that a member of Congress uses that information in the policy-making process and the information is found to be erroneous, the lobbyist who provided the information might as well pack his or her bags and leave town, because his or her lobbying career is over. Do lobbyists advocate for particular positions? Yes. Do they present their position in the best light possible? Yes. But, the best lobbyists present all sides of the issue, including the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and the potential positive and negative consequences for the support of a member of Congress. In the relationship between organized interests and their representatives and journalists, there are no such constraints placed on lobbyists. Lobbyists are free to spin journalists; but lobbyists spin policy makers at their peril.

188

Ronald G. Shaiko

SPIN AND NEWS MEDIA SOURCES

Spin is a word that has crept into the American political vernacular in recent years, yet the idea of spin has been around for a long time. The idea of spin was articulated by George Orwell in his classic, 1984, in the form of “newspeak.” In his totalitarian state, thought was controlled by controlling language. Today, signs of political language control are everywhere. We don’t have proabortion or antiabortion groups in the United States; we have Pro-choice and Pro-Life groups. Organizations on the Left and the Right battle for supremacy in issue framing. Sometimes the Left wins and sometimes the Right. For example, a gold star should be awarded to the person who labeled the antiunion movement in the United States the National Right to Work Committee-brilliant. Who could be against the right to work? Interest groups of all political and ideological stripes seek to control the language of political debate, to force the opposition to use their words, and to convince the media to adopt their words as well. Bill Press, in his new book, Spin This!, offers the following succinct definition: “Spin (n): something between truth and a lie.”15 Orwell, in his powerful essay “Politics and the English Language,” offers a more nuanced approach to spin, arguing that “political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”16 The final phrase is most appropriate to the contemporary political environment -spin as giving the appearance of solidity to pure wind. Under the current conditions, the news media, and the broadcast and cable outlets in particular, are increasingly susceptible to being spun by interest groups and their lobbyists seeking to promote their own organizational agendas. With comparatively limited time, brought on by never-ending news cycles, and limited resources, due to significant cutbacks in staffs, travel, and support, the news media will have an increasingly difficult task of distinguishing facts from spin. For if the news media fail in discerning the difference, they are responsible for giving substance and legitimacy to pure wind. Ultimately journalists must rely on sources to provide the substance to stories and articles. Judgments made by journalists re-


189

garding the validity of sources are based on experience, verifiability, and corroboration, according to Jack Fuller, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, in his book News Values. But, fundamentally, “the basis of news reporting is a kind of trust. It begins with trust between a journalist and his sources of information and from there builds to the trust he wants to establish with his audience. No rule of thumb can describe the complex factors that go into a judgment of trust.”17 From the relationships between lobbyists and journalists presented thus far, it is difficult, at an institutional level, to identify any systematic pattern of trust established between these two elements of civil society. Rather, it is likely that relationships have developed and will continue to develop in a piecemeal fashion, with trust relationships forming in particular policy niches (e.g., between environmental lobbyists and environmental beat reporters or between defense lobbyists and Pentagon correspondents), with marriages (perhaps trysts is a better word) of convenience developing on an episodic basis. For if only one thing is true in Washington from an interest group perspective it is this-there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. As a result, interest groups and their lobbyists are primarily, if not solely, obligated to their own political interests and will use whatever means necessary to advocate those interests, including spinning the news media when useful in their advocacy strategies. To the degree that the news media are institutionally competent, they will resist being spun and report the news in a balanced and accurate fashion. Of course, in the current media culture identified above, this is easier said than done. FIVE CASES OF ADVOCACY IN THE MEDIA

Interest group advocacy through the media in the United States appears in two basic forms. First, organized interests may simply purchase commercial airtime on televisiodradio or place advertisements in newspapers. This approach is often referred to as paid media, that is, interest groups craft the messages on their own and

190

Ronald G.Shaiko

simply buy airtime or advertising space in order to disseminate their messages to wider audiences. For the most part, the news media have no part in such activities, although news media outlets have increasingly sought to perform a watchdog role on political advertising, particularly in the context of elections. One of the best examples of recent paid media campaigns is the series of “Harry and Louise” commercials aired by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) during the debate over the Clinton Health Care Plan in 1993-1994. Expertly crafted, these “issue advocacy” television commercials cut through the clutter surrounding the complex debate and drove home a message that resonated with citizens. The enduring legacy of “Harry and Louise” led to their resurrection in 2002 in the context of the congressional debate on cloning and fetal tissue research, much to the dismay of HIAA leaders, who did not take a position in the debate. Second, interest groups and lobbyists attempt to persuade the news media that the issues that they are advocating are sufficiently newsworthy to warrant coverage in major newspapers and on network and cable news programs. This approach is referred to as earned media or free media, that is, interest groups receive news coverage and, as a result, have their messages disseminated to wider audiences at no cost to the organizations. If interest groups are really lucky, they can convert paid media into free media, as was the case with the Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential election. 1. Converting Paid Media into Free/Earned Media-Willie

Horton

For college students reading this volume, the 1988 presidential election may seem like ancient history. In this election, the elder George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in a rather lackluster race. Nonetheless, the election will take its place in history for two visual occurrences, both of which worked against Michael Dukakis. First, the Democratic candidate was captured on video and in photography donning an overly large army helmet while riding atop a tank. The rather ridiculous image did little to secure additional votes for him in the November election. A second, far more controversial, image appeared in the 1988 election-the Willie Horton ad.


191

Michael Dukakis, as governor of Massachusetts, had maintained a prison furlough program. Willie Horton, a black convict in the Massachusetts prison system, was furloughed under the program. On furlough, Horton stabbed a white man and raped a white woman. As a result, Willie Horton became the image representing the consequences of misguided liberal programs. Interestingly, it was not the Republican Party that uncovered the Willie Horton story. No, a Democratic candidate for president named Al Gore first raised the prison furlough issue in the 1988 Democratic primary campaign. Once Dukakis had garnered the Democratic nomination, however, an interest group allied with the Republican Party sought to capitalize on the unearthed evidence that Gore had presented earlier in the primary season. Floyd Brown, executive director of Citizens United, a conservative interest group with about 100,000 members, was also affiliated with a political action committee, National Security PAC, as political director. It was Brown who transformed the Willie Horton story into the now infamous Willie Horton commercial. With a comparatively limited production budget and an even smaller budget for buying airtime to run the commercial, Brown crafted the commercial spot for roughly $25,000. He then ran the spot on a suburban Washington, D.C., cable channel at minimal cost. To say that the commercial was controversial would be an understatement. The commercial was not without significant racial overtones. Within 24 hours of the initial airing, a news media feeding frenzy had begun. Over the next several weeks, the major networks were running the commercial as “news.” It was estimated that the commercial received the equivalent of $1 million in national airtime, all for free. From the perspective of Brown, the mission was accomplished; he had successfully transformed paid media into free media.I8 2. Interest Group AdvocacyNatural Resources Defense Council and Alar

In the year following the election of the elder George Bush, the environmental community engaged in battle against what it viewed as the continuation of Reagan policies by the Bush administration. The news media responded with a growing attentiveness to environmental

192

Ronald G. Shaiko

issues, after a degree of dormancy during the Reagan years.19 One issue in particular caught the attention of the news media-Alar. Alar was the trade name for the chemical diaminozide; it was used on between 5% and 15% of apples grown in the United States in the late 1980s to retard ripening and improve the appearance of apples?O The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) launched a comprehensive media campaign to end to use of Alar in February of 1989, despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under pressure from NRDC since 1984 on the issue, had announced the phase-out of Alar by July 3 1,1990. NRDC enlisted the services of Fenton Communications, a public relations firm, to orchestrate its attack on Alar. The group also enlisted the support of CBS and its news magazine show, “60 Minutes.” On February 26, 1989, “60 Minutes” aired a segment called “A is for Apple,” hosted by Ed Bradley. Using the services of NRDC scientists, CBS concluded that the claims made by NRDC were newsworthy. Immediately after the airing, scores of other media outlets picked up the story. Fenton Communications lined up interviews for NRDC leaders and scientists as well as for Hollywood actress Meryl Streep and her newly formed group, Mothers & Others for Pesticide Limits. A total media blitz ensued. Streep and NRDC spokespersons were on all of the daytime talk shows as well as weekend political talk shows. As a result, “apples lost their shine almost immediately.”21 The apple industry attempted to respond to what they (and many in the scientific community) believed were faulty claims and, in essence, were beside the point, as the EPA had already announced the phase-out. Their efforts, handled by the public relations giant Hill & Knowlton, fell on deaf media ears. “The Alar controversy, many later agreed, was a masterful strategy by the NRDC, although it raised questions about the group’s credibility as well as how the media handled the issue. Some observers believed the press had been duped by the environmental group through manipulation of the release of the story at news conferences and in interviews with celebrities. Others argued that the publicity brought the issue to the attention of both the public and policymakers, with the means justifying the end result.”22The end result was that the total economic damages to the apple industry approached $250 million, according


193

to the Apple Institute, a trade association for the apple industry, including the loss of tons of apples never treated with Alar, due to plummeting demand?3 Cynthia Crosson, in her book Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America, concludes: “The great Alar alarm of 1989 was a watershed in the history of sponsored research not because the research was right but because it so quickly and effectively changed people’s beliefs and behavior about one of their favorite foods: apples.Alar was banned not because of a cool and informed appraisal of the best scientific evidence but because of the coinciding interests of an advocacy group, a celebrity, a public relations company and the media.”24Paul Heyne, in an essay entitled “Economics,Ethics, and Ecology,” reaches a more damning conclusion: “The NRDC, ‘60 Minutes,’ Ed Bradley, and the others who orchestrated the national hysteria over Alar showed no concern for the apple growers who had to bear the cost of their publicity-seeking. This was inexcusably unfair behavior that was undertaken to promote the institutional interests of the NRDC and the CBS network.”25 3. Governments as AdvocatesC N N and Child Slavery in West Africa

Much like interest groups, governments also formulate advocacy campaigns and attempt to mobilize news media support for their causes. While the relationships between governing institutions and the media in the United States are presented elsewhere in this volume, in the interest group context, foreign governments and international governing bodies may be viewed as special types of organized interests. While the major television networks and major newspapers across the country are constantly barraged with story ideas, the global cable outlets such as CNN (the Cable News Network) field requests from interests around the world. And, with its instantaneous news cycle, CNN can and will accommodate a wide array of interests in order to fill its airtime. CNN International and its programming and news coverage have contributed yet another new phrase to the political vernacularthe CNN Effect, the idea that globally televised news may exert

194

Ronald G. Shaiko

an instantaneous impact on foreign policy making. Since the late 1980s, CNN has served presidential administrations as an important conduit through which political signals and overt communications between world powers may be relayed. Such conduits, however, are also susceptible to manipulation when the global agenda is crowded and is often driven by events rather than institutional policies. Regina Lawrence, in her analysis of media coverage of police brutality, refers to this phenomenon as “event-driven problem definition” as opposed to “institutionally driven problem definition.” In the former context, “news focuses on unusual, unexpected, unplanned events: terrorist attacks, ship groundings, airplane crashes, police violence, etc.” As a result, problem definition tends to be “variable and volatile, depending on the story; problem definitions may tend to favor advocates of Foreign governments, perhaps seeking the assistance of the United States government or other international assistance, will turn to the global media (e.g., CNN, BBC) with their pleas. Savvy foreign government officials are aware of what Susan Moeller has labeled “compassion fatigue ,” the limits on the collective capacities of the United States government and its citizens to address or even care about all of the global societal ills.27As a result, such governmental advocates search for or create “events” in order to facilitate news media coverage of their issue or cause. On March 30,2001, such an “event” was created in West Africa. Government officials from Benin and Gabon reported that a Nigerianregistered ship, the MVEtireno, that had left the Beninois port of Cotonou for Gabon, carrying 250 child slaves, was seeking a port of entry and was turned away in Gabon and Cameroon. UNICEF officials reported that the ship was turned away in Gabon and was headed out into the Atlantic Ocean. CNN picked up the story and provided around-the-clock coverage for more than a week. Interviews were conducted with government officials, international human rights workers, and affected citizens in Benin and throughout the region. They all spoke of the problem of child slavery in West Africa. To date, most international news coverage of child slavery had focused on East Africa, and on Sudan in particular, where human rights workers were attempting to “buy back” slaves from Sudanese warlords.


195

For more than a week, CNN provided comprehensive coverage of the child slave ship off the coast of West Africa. The problem for CNN and for its viewers was that such a ship filled with 250 child slaves did not exist! In the end, when the MV Etireno docked in Cotonou on April 17,2001, there were 40 children and teenagers on board, none of whom was unaccompanied. On April 21,2001, Jim Clancy, host of CNN’s weekly program, “Inside Africa,” opened the show with what one can only assume was a media mea culpa: “This week on ‘Inside Africa,’ the rumors of a slave ship carrying children into servitude are proved false. But an hour from the docks, villagers in Benin say child trafficking is no rumor.”28 From the perspective of the governments and human rights groups seeking to raise awareness of the issue, they could not have asked for more-no sanctions and continued reporting on the issue. Later in the CNN program, a field reporter continued with coverage “not on the rumors but the reality.”29 4. Foundation Advocacy-NPIZ,

PBS, and News Coverage

In the United States, public television (Public Broadcasting System, PBS) and public radio (National Public Radio, NPR) are often viewed as separate and distinct from commercial broadcasting. After all, they are supported by viewers and listeners like you. In part, they are unique in the media. Nonetheless, they are not “public” in the sense that they are immune to economics. For more than 30 years, public television and public radio have functioned with the limited assistance of the federal government (less than 20% of their annual budgets are derived from government support) as well as with support through contributions from citizens and corporations across the nation, revenues generated from the contracting of programming to local public television and radio stations, and, in recent years, from the support of a growing number of foundations?0 Support from the government, corporations, and from citizens comes with virtually no strings attached. But, while some foundations provide financial assistance without linking such support to specific policy concerns, a growing number of foundations are providing support to public television and radio for specific news coverage, whether it be health

196

Ronald G. Shaiko

policy, children’s issues, the media itself, or coverage of specific regions of the world. For fiscal year 2000, PBS received more than $1 million in support from each of the following foundations: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the California Wellness Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Park Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Twelve additional foundations, including the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, each gave between $500,000 and $1 million to PBS in 2000, and 26 other foundations gave between $100,000 and $500,000?’ While some of these foundations provided truly philanthropic support in the form of unrestricted grants for public television and radio (e.g., the current three-year, $10 million Ford Foundation grant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), a significant minority of foundation supporters link contributions to specific activities or coverage to be delivered by PBS. Foundation support for public radio is equally significant. In fiscal year 2000, NPR received 22.9 percent of its support from foundations; when one includes support from its own NPR Foundation, NPR received over one-third of its annual funding from foundations,more than three times the national average for foundation support of nonprofit entities. As with public television support, many NPR foundation supporters provide assistance for targeted activities?* In an analysis of NPR contributors conducted by the Foundation Center, a national clearinghouse for foundations, “National Public Radio received 36 separate foundation grants of $10,000 or more in 1998. That included $200,000 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ‘to cover stories on issues currently of interest and importance to philanthropy and the nonprofit world and particularly those related to Kellogg Foundation programming .’ (An NPR spokesperson disputed that the grant was actually used that narrowly).”33 Kellogg is not the only foundation to provide support to NPR with strings attached. The Annie E. Casey Foundation provides support only for news coverage of issues affecting children; the Pew Charitable Trusts supports arts and religion reporting; the Soros Foundation/ Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation support news cover-


197

age of central and eastern Europe; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation support health policy reporting; and Pew also supports coverage of the media. NPR devotes several pages of its news policy manual to the issue of foundation-supported journalism, including: “Restricted grants must not be so narrow in concept as to coincide with the donor’s area of economic or advocacy interest.” Even so, it is difficult to miss the agenda-setting function served by targeted foundation support to NPR.34 PBS has actually gone a step further than NPR in intermixing the agendas of foundation supporters with news reporting. According to Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute (a nonprofit journalism training entity and owner of the St. Petersburg irimes),less than three years ago, the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” “inconspicuously crossed the line: It accepted explicit foundation sponsorship of two reporting units .”35 Health reporting is no longer sponsored by viewers like you; rather Susan Dentzer and her team of health reporters are sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Similarly, media reporting by Terrence Smith and this research unit is brought to you by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Beyond the “NewsHour,” PBS maintains a strong relationship with Bill Moyers,himself a mini-media conglomerate.Not only does he produce a variety of programs aired on PBS, he also serves as president of the Schumann Foundation,mentioned earlier. A number of his programs are funded by the Schumann Foundation-characterized by former environmentalist turned conservative activist Ron Arnold, in his book Undue Influence, as “rabidly anti-~apitalist.”~~ Many foundations have clearly defined policy agendas; as such, they closely resemble interest groups. Perhaps their methods of influencing public policy are more subtle and indirect. Nonetheless, to the extent that they have infiltrated public radio and television and have significantly altered the issue agendas of the news gathering and reporting operations to reflect their internal policy priorities, rather than those of the general public, they have made public radio and public television a little less public. 5. Advocacy Journalism-Homelessness

in America

Beyond being influenced by outside interests or private foundations, the news media have their own journalistic values and issue

198

Ronald G.Shaiko

agendas. Bernard Goldberg, a former CBS reporter, in his new book Bias, provides an uneven accounting of the biases he encountered during his three decades of reporting at CBS. One of the strongest cases he presents, supported with empirical evidence, is his argument regarding advocacy journalism in the national news media. He focuses his attention on the issue of homelessness and its coverage by the major newspapers and television networks over the past two decades. Goldberg addresses the issue of the number of homeless in America and compares government and reputable think tank figures with those presented by the media. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. Census Bureau set the number of homeless in the United States at 230,000. The General Accounting Office, a support agency of the U.S. Congress, found that there were between 300,000 and 600,000 homeless persons; the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank specializing in urban public policy, estimated the number of homeless to be between 355,000 and 462,000 people nati0nwide.3~For the sake of argument, one-half million homeless persons in America would seem to be a fair estimate. The national news media arrived at very different figures. In 1989 on CNN, Candy Crowley reported that “winter is on the way and three million Americans have no place to call home.” In 1993, on NBC , “Weekend Today” anchor Jackie Nespral found that “nationally, right now, five million people are believed to be homeless.” Finally, Charles Osgood of CBS was willing to predict the future of homelessness: “It is estimated that by the year 2000, nineteen million Americans will be homeless unless something is done, and done While advocates for the homeless had a hand in skewing the numbers dramatically upward, the media willingly accepted the figures and even went a step further to advance the cause. Beyond the wild numbers presented by the media, the face of homelessness was skewed as well by the media. According to Goldberg, the network news media framed the issue of homelessness around two themes: (1) the homeless are just like us; and (2) they are homeless because of cutbacks in government programs previously in place under Democratic administrations, but cut by the Reagan administration in favor of increased defense spending. He makes a good case for both themes. Homeless advocates were less


199

comfortable with these approaches than they were with fudging the numbers of homeless. Consistently the media sought out a sanitized version of homelessness -“White was better than black. Clean was better than dirty. Attractive was better than unattractive. Sane was better than insane. And sober was better than addicted. So when the TV people went looking for just that right kind of homeless face to put on their news programs, they went to people like Robert Hayes, who ran the National Coalition for the Homeless in New York. In 1989, Hayes told the New York Times that when congressional committees and TV news producers contact him, ‘they always want white, middle-class people to inter vie^.'"^^ Robert Lichter, of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a Washington think tank focused on the media, analyzed over 100 stories on homelessness in the late 1980s aired by ABC, NBC, and CBS, as well as 26 stories written in Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Lichter concluded that the findings “provide a blueprint for advocacy journalism. . . . Only one source in twenty-five blamed homelessness on the personal problems of the homeless themselves, such as mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, or lack of skills or motivation. The other 96 percent blamed social or political conditions for their plight. The primary culprit cited was the housing market, including forces like high mortgage interest rates, high rents, downtown redevelopment, etc. Next in line was government inaction , especially the government’s failure to provide adequate public h o u ~ i n g . ” ~ The timing of such media accounts also drew the attention of Goldberg. Again, empirical evidence supports his claim that the homelessness advocacy of the media has been targeted at Republican administrations. Journalist Philip Terzian reported in a 1999 column in the Village Voice that the New York Times ran 50 stories on homelessness, including five on page one, in 1988.A decade later, in 1998, only ten stories on the homeless appeared in the newspaper, with none appearing on page one. The Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, found a similar pattern of coverage. In 1990, when George Bush was president, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN ran 71 homelessness stories on evening newscasts; by 1995, when Bill Clinton was president, the number had dropped to

200

Ronald G. Shaiko

only nine stories?l With these findings and the patterns cited earlier, Goldberg sarcastically titled the chapter dealing with advocacy journalism “How Bill Clinton Cured Homelessness.” THE MEDIA AND ADVOCACY: THE MISGUIDED INSTITUTION?

Almost a decade ago, Thomas Patterson, in his cogent analysis of the role of the media in the American electoral process, Out ofordel; concluded that the news media are a “miscast institution,” ill equipped to assist citizens in their electoral choices. “The problem of the modern presidential campaign,” he wrote, “lies in the role assigned to the press. Its traditional role is that of watchdog. . . . This vital function, however, is different from the role that was thrust on the press when the nominating system was opened wide in the early 1970s.The new role conflicts with the old one. The critical stance of the watchdog is not to be confused with the constructive task of the coalition-builder. The new role requires the press to act in constructive ways to bring candidates and voters together.”42 Outside of the electoral context, the news media are performing an even wider variety of roles: signaler, alerting the public to important political developments; common-carrier, channeling messages from policy makers to the public; watchdog, protecting the public from government and its occupants; and public representative, spokesperson for and advocate of the public. The media are increasingly susceptible to the influence of organized interests in the performance of each of these r0les.4~To the extent that the influence of organized interests in news gathering and reporting is significant, the news media in the United States will become an increasingly misguided institution. Historically, the news media have performed the first three roles outlined above fairly well. Yet, even in these instances, the influence of organized interests on news gathering and reporting raises some question as to the capacity or competence of the media to perform these tasks. Regarding the first role of signaler, the case of child slavery in West Africa certainly highlights the circumstances under which


20 1

the media might be signaling “nonevents.” In addition, the transformation of the Willie Horton ad into news was a conscious effort on the part of the news media to signal the “newsworthiness” of such an advertisement, giving credence to the controversial. Performing the common-carrier role necessitates conscious resistance to spin, both from policy makers and from organized interests likely to be brought into the news stories. In the Alar case, the Environmental Protection Agency had made its decision regarding removal of Alar from the marketplace, yet the media, spun by the NRDC to great effect, failed to perform their common-carrier role. Regarding the media’s watchdog role, the agenda-setting efforts of foundations in public radio and television bring into question the policy priorities of these media; as a result the watchdog function may be skewed toward (or away from) the policy domains funded by these outside sources of support. It should be noted that foundations have not limited their support efforts to PBS and NPR. To the contrary, foundations are providing support with strings attached to newspapers, commercial television stations, magazines, and even the Columbia Journalism Review.* Finally, the news media have taken on the role of public representative virtually on their own. Traditionally, elected officials, political parties, and the institutions of governance performed the public representative role. Vietnam and Watergate changed the political equation, at least for the news media. Since that time, journalists have viewed themselves, at least in part, as advocates for their versions of good public policy. The homelessness in America case lays bare the shortcomings of such a role being performed by the news media. Interest groups and their representatives view the news media as useful tools in their advocacy strategies. To the extent that their causes and issues will be well served by positive media or their opponents will be ill served by negative media, they will engage the necessary media outlets to serve their purposes. Spin is more than fair game for organized interests. Given the myriad of outlets from which to choose and the shrinking resources available to the news media, burning a media bridge with orchestrated spin has few negative consequences. Only an increasingly competent news media in the United States will be equal to the challenge of the ever-growing

202

Ronald G. Shaiko

barrage of organized interests seeking to use the institution for their own purposes. Without such redoubled efforts to perform the first three roles -signaler, common-carrier, and watchdog -and perhaps to jettison the fourth role of public representative, the news media will be destined to become more than a miscast institution; it will become a misguided institution. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How does the concentration of media outlets in the hands of a few media conglomerates affect the ability of organized interest groups to influence the reporting of political news? 2. Can a streamlined, downsized media remain “competent” to gauge the veracity of interest group information sources? If so, how? If not, what recourse do media outlets have in dealing with interest groups as sources? 3. How can media outlets protect themselves from “spin” by organized interest groups? 4. What should the role of the media be in covering interest groups engaged in political campaigning? 5. Should public television and public radio outlets accept foundation support for specific types of news reporting? Why? Why not? 6. How might the media prevent itself from becoming a “misguided” institution? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Baker, C. Edwin, Media, Markets, und Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Cigler, Allan J., and Burdett A. Loomis, eds. Interest Group Politics, 6th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002). Hermson, Paul S., Ronald G. Shaiko, and Clyde Wilcox, eds., The Interest Group Connection: Electioneering, Lobbying, and Policymaking in Washington, 2nd ed. (Chatham, N J.: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 2003).


203

McChesney, Robert W., Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious 7imes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). Moeller, Susan, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, War and Death (New York: Routledge, 1999). Sparrow, Bartholomew H., Uncertain Guardians: The Media as a Political Institution (Baltimore,Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

NOTES 1. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon, 1983). 2. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon, 2000). 3. Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 19-20; see also Dean Alger, Megamedia: How Giant Corporations Dominate Mass Media, Distort Competition, and Endanger Democracy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); Bartolomew H. Sparrow, Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); c. Edwin Baker, Media, Markets, and Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 4. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy, 20. 5 . Penn Kimball, Downsizing the News: Network Cutbacks in the Nation’s Capital (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). 6. Kimball, Downsizing the News, 23. 7 . Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media (New York: Century Foundation, 1999), 6-7. 8. Kovach and Rosensteil, Warp Speed, 7. 9. “Lobbying and the Media” (American League of Lobbyists Forum, Washington, D.C., 1998, C-SPAN Videotape 115402). Birnbaum’s personal antagonism toward the lobbying profession was made evident by the title of his second book on the subject-The Lobbyists: How Influence Peddlers Get Their Way in Washington. The subtitle on the softcover edition to the book was changed by the publisher after lobbyists complained that the substance of the book was not reflected in the title. Lobbyists who were subjects in the book rightly argued that, in many instances, they did not “get their way” on the issues portrayed in the book. Hence, the subtitle on the paperback version became: How Influence Peddlers Work Their Way in Washington. The lobbyists remained influence peddlers, much to

204

Ronald G. Shaika

the dissatisfaction of the lobbying community, but the change was made regarding their relative success. 10. American League of Lobbyists, 1998 Membership Survey (Alexandria, Va: American League of Lobbyists, 1998), 6-7. 11. Cited in Sparrow, Uncertain Guardians, 120. 12. “Lobbying and the Media.” 13. See William P. Brown, Groups, Interests, and US.Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 95-102; Ken Kollman, Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 27-57. 14. Cited in William K. Muir Jr., Legislature: California’s School of Politics (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1982), 136. 15. Bill Press, Spin This!All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth (New York: Pocket Books, 2001), xxiii. 16. Cited in Press, Spin This!, xvii. 17. Jack Fuller, News Values: Ideas for an Information Age (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1996), 39. 18. Ronald G. Shaiko, “Le Pac, C’est Moi: Brent Bozell and the Conservative Victory Committee,’’ in Risky Business? PAC Decisionmaking in Congressional Elections, ed. Robert Biersack, Paul Hernnson, and Clyde Wilcox (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 181-95. 19. Ronald G. Shaiko, Voices and Echoes for the Environment: Public Interest Representation in the 1990s and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 35-38. 20. Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Green Backlash: The History and Politics of Environmental Opposition in the US.(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997), 85. 21. Jonathan Adler, Environmentalism at the Crossroads: Green Activism in America (Washington, D.C.: Capital Research Center, 1993), 36-37; Switzer, Green Backlash, 85. 22. Switzer, Green Backlash, 85. 23. Adler, Environmentalism at the Crossroads, 38. 24. Cynthia Crosson, Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 58. 25. Paul Heyne, “Economics, Ethics, and Ecology,” in Taking the Environment Seriously, ed. Roger E. Mieners and Bruce Yandle (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 38-39. 26. Regina G. Lawrence, The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 174.


205

27. Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (New York: Routledge, 1999). 28. “CNN InternationalInside Africa,” April, 21,2001, at http://www.cnn. com/TRANSCRIFTS/O104/21d-if ,00btml . 29. “CNN International Inside Africa.” 30. PBS 2001 Annual Report, “Fiscal,” 2002, at http://www.pbs.org/ insidepbs/annualreport/text/fiscal.html. 31. PBS 2001 Annual Report, “Supporters,” 2002, at http://www.pbs.orgl insidepbs/annualreport/text/supporters-texthtml . 32. NPR Financials, “Financials,” 2002, at http://www.npr.org/ about/place/corpsupport/Financials.html. 33. Rick Edmonds, “Special Issue: Foundations’ Role in Journalism,” Poynter Report (Spring 2001): 14. 34. Edmonds, “Foundations’ Role in Journalism,” 24. 35. Edmonds, “Foundations’ Role in Journalism,” 18. 36. Ron Arnold, Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future (Bellevue, Wash.: Merril Press, 1999). 37. Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Washington, D .C .: Regnery, 2002), 66. 38. Quoted in Goldberg, Bias, 66-67. 39. Quoted in Goldberg, Bias, 65. 40. Quoted in Goldberg, Bias, 69. 41. Goldberg, Bias, 73. 42. Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Knopf, 1993; New York: Vintage, 1994), 51. 43. See Thomas E. Patterson, We the People: A Concise Introduction to American Politics, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 29 1-300. 44. Edmonds, “Foundations’ Role in Journalism.”


10 The Media and Public Opinion Stephen K. Medvic and David A. Dulio

Poll, poll, poll. Try reading a news story or watching one aired on TV without encountering the word.

-Christopher Hitchens, “Voting in the Passive Voice”’ There is little doubt that the media’s reliance on public opinion as a source of news has exploded in the last decade. One can hardly turn on a network news broadcast or open a newspaper without being subjected to hearing about “a recent survey” or “the latest polling data.” The near omnipresent nature of public opinion in the media’s reporting of news depends on continuous measures of public sentiment in the form of public opinion polls. In this chapter we address issues and concerns related to public opinion in the media. We examine the sources of public opinion that the media rely on for news, and the role of that information in news stories. We also critically evaluate the news media’s reporting of public opinion data in terms of information the public needs in order to be good consumers of the news. In addition, we consider the range of topics for which poll results are used, from individuals and institutions to issues and elections. We conclude with a case study of one specific measure of public opinion that caused a great deal of controversy-the exit polling conducted on election day 2000. As exit polls may be the most significant measure of public opinion the media take, the circumstances surrounding how they are conducted and reported deserve careful attention. 207

208

Stephen K. Medvic and David A. Dulio

In the year 2000, network news broadcasts (ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN) included over 230 separate stories that referenced or referred to poll andor survey results, an increase from about 150 in 1999.2 The same is true for print media outlets. For example, one estimate “reveals that public opinion polls served as an integral part of about one-third of all the cover stories” in major U.S. news magazines (i.e., Newsweek and US.News and World R e p ~ r t )The . ~ range of topics on network news programs for which poll results were used during 1999 and 2000 varied from recreational drug use, driving safety, and potential Y2K problems to racial discrimination, terrorist threats, and the elections in Israel, Chile, and the United States. Of course, the frequency with which public opinion data is reported is only heightened during an election year. The focus on polls during a campaign is more pointed than ever. The result of this, however, is that “[p]olls are not only part of the news today, they are new^."^ This raises a number of important issues with regard to the nature of the media’s use of public opinion. The first pertains to the role that the information plays in the news broadcast. As Kathleen Frankovic hints, public opinion data can either be used by the news media to report news, or it can be used to create news? The second relates to who conducts the opinion polling. In the modem context of public opinion and news coverage, there are two main sources of surveys and polls for the media to tap-the major news outlets and media organizations themselves (internal), and academic or commercial polling outfits (external). These two issues-the role of public opinion in the news and its source-are intimately intertwined. In utilizing either type of source (internal or external) the media can either simply report a newsworthy story or they can create a news story. SOURCES AND FUNCTIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE MEDIA

Increasingly, media outlets rely on their own internal abilities to construct, conduct, analyze, and report survey research on the public’s attitudes. Each of the major television networks has created a mutually beneficial partnership with a print source to sponsor and

The Media and Public Opinion

209

conduct polling that they can both use to generate news stories. These affiliations include: CBS News and the New York Emes,ABC News and the Washington Post, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, and CNN and USA Today. When major news services couple their resources they are often able to support an independent polling entity that handles all aspects of the survey research process. This is in contrast to other news outlets that rely on outside f m s to conduct their polls. For example, Fox News retains Opinion Dynamics as its survey research partner. Newsweek frequently uses the services of Princeton Survey Research Associates, and U.S. News and World Report has employed a political consulting fm-Lake, Snell, Perry and Associates- for its public opinion polling. Moreover, while CNN has created a partnership with USA Today, they employ the Gallup organization to conduct their research; they also team up with Time magazine, relying on Harris Interactive to do the polling. The difference between these relationships and the partnerships between major news networks and print sources is that the latter control the polling process from start to finish, while the former contract their polling work out to a firm. That said, those outlets that contract polling out to a separate fm still control the topics of surveys that are done, as well as the everimportant question selection. This gives the media a great deal of power in terms of what stories come out of their research. But the major partnerships created by the networks and newspapers go one step further. The dissemination of survey results that come from a networkhewspaper poll not only give a great deal of visibility to both outlets, but the networks’ print partners can lend credibility and prestige to a poll and can also keep the results in the public eye for an extended period of time.6 In the era of a 24-hour news cycle, if a network relied only on its own broadcast to report its survey findings, the story would quickly come and go. But with a newspaper also reporting the same findings, the story has more staying power and can be reported in much more detail, as the space constraints for a print outlet are less strict than the time constraints for a network news program. A media outlet that conducts or commissions its own polls can either report or create news with its survey research. Major issues and events are often the impetus behind network stories focusing on public

210


opinion. The economy, abortion, tax cuts, foreign policy, presidential nominations, and especially elections are topics often covered by media polls that are done in-house. In these cases the issue or event is already on the national agenda; here news networks add value to the story by reporting the public’s views on important issues. The networks and their print partners can also create news by reporting their own measures of public opinion. Many times this is in the context of an election, when their polling shows a change in the public’s evaluation of one or more candidates. Even the slightest change in a candidate’s standing in the polls over the course of a few days or a week, say from 57 percent support to 53 percent, is sometimes taken as a sea change in the public’s attitudes. Similarly, if the president’s job approval is shown to slip, the media may take this as an opportunity to reinvestigate the progress of an administration or how the president is performing generally. As will be discussed later, in many cases like these, the media are “making mountains out of mole hills” and may be inaccurately reporting the actual meaning of poll results. “The proliferation of polls corresponds to the proliferation of available information generally and to the ever-faster news cycle.”7 While television news programs, newspapers, and magazines all look to their own polling or their contracted polls for stories, they dispense a voluminous amount of information focusing on the public’s attitudes and beliefs that they themselves do not collect. The availability of information is supplemented by sources that are not affiliated with any news organization, but, instead, are organizations looking to gain some attention or increased visibility for their own reasons. The use of external public opinion polling by media outlets can also either simply report newsworthy information or it can create news for the benefit of both the news organization and the sponsor of the poll. The media, in fact, must rely on some outside surveys in order to fully report on influential and important events and issues. For example, an outlet like the Washington Post or CNN is not likely to devote its own resources to conduct a poll on Israeli elections or on the state of the economy in the former Soviet Union. Instead, these outlets rely on other sources for the information they report to the public in the U .S.


21 1

However, many media outlets do not stop there. Because there is fierce competition between news organizations for their audience, keeping the public’s attention is at a premium? Many news organizations rely on external sources to provide interesting survey results to their audience. The potential sources of public opinion data are literally endless. News programs and newspapers have relied on sources from the American Nurses Association (NBC News) and the American Association of Retired Persons (NBC News) to Quicken.com (NBC News) and MTV (CBS News). Academic institutions are also often cited. The information included in this type of survey result serves two purposes. First, for the sponsor of the poll, it delivers much-sought-after attention. For instance, when its survey is reported on network news, the American Association of Retired Persons not only connects with its current members but it gets media attention that may attract new members. A poll done by a corporate entity such as Quicken.com is likely done to increase sales of a product. REPORTING ON POLLING METHODOLOGY

With the use of outside and external sources comes another set of issues centering on both sponsorship and quality of the opinion polling. The partnership between a network and print media outlet adds some credibility to the results of a poll, but not all media-sponsored polls are the same. This is also true for surveys done by entities outside the media organization that is running the story. While we can be relatively confident in the procedures and practices of polls done by CBS News and the New York 7imes, for example, other media-sponsored polls may not be so credible. This is because many times the proper techniques, methods, and standards are not applied to what the media may call public opinion. While most polls done by media organizations are scientific in nature, “pseudo-polls” are becoming more prevalent? Pseudopolls are not really polls at all, but rather are “straw polls” of opinion that are gathered when a media organization invites viewers, listeners, or readers to call or write them with their opinion. In the

212


era of 24-hour news cycles and cable news channels, interest in immediate reaction to an event, such as a presidential debate or a politician’s press conference, has increased dramatically. The use of a call-in or online poll can seriously mislead news audiences as to the true opinions of their fellow citizens, since the polls are not conducted scientifically- that is, they are not random samples of the public and, therefore, are not likely to be representative of the general population. Additionally, journalists often make reference only to “the polls” when reporting a story, with no mention of any specific aspects of the survey that was conducted. A study by the Annenberg School of Communication found that in the 1988,1992, and 1996 election cycles, the generic term “polls” was cited as evidence more frequently than any specific measure of public opinion done by a news organization or an external group.l0 Clearly, not all polls reported by the media are created equal. Because the media do rely on external sources for a good portion of the polling data that they report, and because the general public is not well versed in the intricacies of statistical sampling, question wording and ordering, or data analysis, there is some basic information that must be identified before any trust or confidence is given to a poll done by a media organization or a news story that reports polling data. Fortunately, the two major professional organizations of pollsters and survey research, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP), provide a number of guidelines for both the press and the public. Both journalists and the public must take care in evaluating the quality of a survey that reports public opinion before considering the results of that survey. The general public should be aware of certain aspects of opinion polls because they are the consumers of information and are the targets of poll sponsors. Journalists, too, must be aware of some polling intricacies if they are going to accurately interpret poll results in a story. The NCPP has published a list of “20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask about Poll Results” to aid reporters and editors in deciding what poll results are worthy of being reported on television


213

or in newspapers. The NCPP guidelines are designed to help journalists weed out unscientific polls that are conducted by nonmedia sources that are simply looking to gain some visibility by reporting bogus or unreliable poll results. By asking themselves these questions, “the journalist can seek the facts to decide how to handle every poll that comes across the news desk each day”” (see table 10.1). These guidelines focus on the who, what, where, when, and why of polling and are the bare essentials of what to look for in the results of public opinion research. By paying attention to these issues, which are at the heart of quality public opinion research, journalists can ensure that the polls that do get reported are of high quality and will be of use to the general public. While the NCPP list of questions focuses on the polls that come to media outlets from external sources, the AAPOR “Standard for Table 10.1. National Council on Public Polls-20 about Poll Results 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Questions a Journalist Should Ask

Who did the poll? Who paid for the poll and why was it done? How many people were interviewed for the survey? How were those people chosen? What area (nation, state, or region) or what group (teachers, lawyers, Democratic voters, etc.) were these people chosen from? Are the results based on the answers of all the people interviewed [and not just a subgroup of those interviewed]? Who should have been interviewedand was not? When was the poll done? How were the interviews conducted? What about polls on the Internet and World Wide Web? [In other words, do not report any pseudo-polls.] What is the sampling error for the poll? Who’s on first? [Take care in reporting that one candidate is leading another in an election poll.] What other kinds of factors can skew poll results? What questions were asked? In what order were the questions asked? What about ”push polls”? What other p o l l s have been done on this topic? Do they say the same thing? If they are different, why are they different? So I’ve asked all the questions. The answers sound good. The poll is correct, right? With all these potential problems, should we ever report poll results? Is this poll worth reporting?

Source: “20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask about Poll Results,” www.ncpp.org

214

Stephen K.Medvic and David A. Dulio

Minimum Disclosure” applies to what the media report from their own internal polls as well as those external polls they cover (see table 10.2).12These few criteria represent the most critical elements of public opinion research; they can verify and validate the credibility of a poll that is reported on television or in a newspaper. They are designed to help journalists “present material so that readers and viewers have the necessary information to evaluate the quality of the poll results being reported.”I3 AAPOR has even gone so far as to censure one pollster, Republican Frank Luntz, because he failed to provide thorough background information on survey research he did for the Republican Party’s “Contract with America,” which received a great deal of media attention prior to the 1994 midterm election^.'^ These guidelines can also be used by the general public as a check on how a media organization reports public opinion polls. In other words, they can help the viewer or the reader decide whether to believe what is being reported and can help the public be critical consumers of public opinion research that is reported in the media. “Just as customers in a supermarket often inspect the list of ingredients in a product, so too should consumers of public opinion question what went into a poll before accepting its result^."'^ By knowing what to look for in a news story that uses polling results, the public can beTable 10.2. American Association for Public Opinion Research, Standard for Minimal Disclosure 1. Who sponsored the survey, and who conducted it. 2. The exact wording of questions asked, including the text of any preceding instruction or explanation to the interviewer or respondents that might reasonably be expected to affect the response. 3. A definition of the population under study, and a description of the sampling frame used to identify this population. 4. A description of the sample selection procedure, giving a clear indication of the method by which the respondents were selected by the researcher, or whether the respondents were entirely self-selected. 5. Size of samples and, if applicable, completion rates and information on eligibility criteria and screening procedures. 6 . A discussion of the precision of the finding, including, if appropriate, estimates of sampling error, and a description of any weighting or estimating procedures used. 7. Which results are based on parts of the sample, rather than the entire sample. 8. Method, location, and dates of data collection. Source: The American Association for Public Opinion Research, “Code of Professional Ethics and Practices,” part 3, Standards for Minimal Disclosure, www.aapor.org.


215

come active rather than passive consumers of public opinion and make an informed judgment on the quality of a poll. “In the course of becoming better consumers of public opinion research, citizens need not become experts at drawing samples, constructing questionnaires, and analyzing data.”16Rather, individuals simply need to be aware of some of the different criteria that constitute a sound and scientific poll. The question becomes, do the media provide this type of information when they report the results of polls they have conducted themselves or that come from external sources? The short answer to this is not very well. Several studies have shown that neither newspapers nor television news programs do a very good job of reporting the criteria set forth by AAPOR.I7News outlets usually do better when they cover election polls versus nonelection polls,’* and newspapers are usually more complete in their reporting of polling intricacies than are television news program^.'^ The difference in reporting practices between television stations and newspapers is likely due in part to the fact that newspapers have less stringent time and space constraints than do television programs, allowing them to report factors such as question wording, sample size, sampling procedure, and selection criteria. Herbert Asher contends, however, that not all the blame should be placed at the feet of news organizations?O He points out that the AAPOR and the NCPP standards are aimed at the “survey organizations and pollsters who release the results rather than to the media that are covering the results.”21While national news organizations do have their own in-house polling operations, many of the polls they report still come from external sources, which may or may not provide the requisite information. Additionally, Asher argues that some of the standards are unclear and subjective?2For example, “different polling organizations might very well disagree about the meaning of ‘instruction or explanation . . . that might reasonably be expected to affect the response”’23(see table 10.2). THE CONTENT OF PUBLIC OPINION COVERAGE

While the issues raised above focus on how the media report public opinion and the care they take to make sure their audiences are

216


properly informed, another concern is what they report and whether it is an accurate representation of public opinion. If the results of a poll are taken out of context, or are presented in a misleading way, it makes no difference how well a survey is conducted or how much a newspaper or television program reveals about the details of the poll. These concerns apply to whatever the media are reporting on, whether it be an issue like abortion, a political actor or institution such as the president or Congress, or an election campaign. A full discussion of the complexities and issues of question wording in polling is beyond the scope of this ~hapter.2~ However, as both the AAPOR and NCPP standards indicate, public opinion can be misrepresented if the full wording of a question is not reported. Furthermore, public opinion can be misunderstood if the media selectively interpret findings from a poll. Very often, a survey, whether it is conducted or commissioned by a news organization, or is from an external source, asks a number of different questions about the same topic. Asking about the same issue or phenomenon multiple ways may produce multiple sets of results that can indicate different things about the public’s beliefs and attitudes. The leeway this gives the media can cause difficulties for both reporters and editors (and producers in the case of television), as they are constrained by the space and time limitations of modem journalism as well as the intense competition among news organizations today; they all worry about ratings or the number of papers they sell. As Asher points out, “Even simple description can pose a problem if time and space constraints force the media to cover only a subset of the items on a topic.”25Does the reporter write the story that is most memorable, or does he/she report each of the different sets of results? The logic of space and time constraints and competitive pressures would say that the most alluring and captivating of the results will be reported. As an example of the power and force of question wording in defining how a story is reported, one has to look no further than a 2000 Washington Post poll that asked a sample of 1,225 registered voters a number of different questions about education reform (see table 10.3). The results of the survey clearly show that the public was deeply divided over the issue of school vouchers. However,

The Media and Public Opinion Table 10.3.

217

Selections from a Washington Post Poll on Educational Reform

Provide parents of a child in a failing public school with a $1,500 federal voucher to send their child to another school. Would you favor or oppose this program? Favor Oppose Don’t know

48%

49% 3 ‘/o

Do you favor this suggestion for how the federal government might improve education: Provide parents with more alternatives such as private or charter schools if they don’t want to send their child to a traditional public school. Strongly favor Somewhat favor Somewhat oppose Strongly oppose Don’t know

3 6%

27%

12% 21% 4%

This poll was of 1,225 registered voters and was conducted by telephone between May 11 and 22,2000. The results were taken from www.washingtonpost.com, 0 2000, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission.

there was strong support for educational choice in the form of charter or alternative schools; 63% of the public supported the idea of some type of school choice. These data represent two important points. First, question wording can influence the responses to a survey item. Second, and more important for our purposes, the results from the survey can present a dilemma to the reporter or editor. If the results from the question using the term “vouchers,” a hot and divisive topic in the 2000 campaign, were to be reported, the story would have a completely different slant than if only the question asking about “alternatives” were mentioned. Moreover, a completely different story could be written if both questions were discussed. Examples of potential conflict between various interpretations of public opinion are common in the reporting of polling data. The discrepancy between President Clinton’s personal approval (consistently low ratings) and his job performance evaluation (consistently high ratings) was a recurring topic during the last two years of his presidency. As an illustrative case here, imagine the story that could have been reported if only one of these figures were mentioned. Only half the story would be covered if just Clinton’s personal approval were discussed or only his job approval ratings were mentioned. Fortunately,

218


for the most part, the media reported both sides of this story throughout Clinton’s last months in office. PUBLIC OPINION AND ELECTION COVERAGE

Finally, a similar phenomenon is witnessed during an election cycle. From nearly the beginning of any campaign until the final weekend before election day, the media report preelection polls that ask potential voters about their choice of candidates. Whether they ask a generic question (i.e., “If the election were held today, would you vote for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate?’) or a question that names specific candidates, the media seem to have a fascination with polls that try to assess who is ahead and who is behind at a certain point in a campaign. The fixation on the “horse-race” aspect of a campaign has led to a great deal of criticism of the media. Critics argue, among other things, that there is a lack of attention to issues in modern coverage of campaigns. Thomas Patterson argues that the media use a “game schema” when reporting on electionsF6 That is, the media cover elections as if they were a game, in which strategy and the score (i.e., poll results) are more important than issues and whether “candidates play the game well or poorly.”27The game schema is opposed to the “governing schema,” in which policies matter and candidates or parties are judged according to their issue positionsF8 The media’s use of the game aspect of public opinion returns us to some of the concerns mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Asher points out that this is another way in which the media can create news rather than simply reporting itF9 Again this stems from the constraints under which media outlets operate-both the space limitations and the competitive market they face. The horse-race aspect of election coverage allows any media outlet to quickly gain attention in very little space or time. In addition, the results may contain what appear to be tantalizing characteristics if new data show any change from the last poll that was done. Even the slightest shift from one candidate to another or from one party to another seems to elicit great reactions from even the most respected media outlets.


219

But this type of reporting can be suspect in that the “shift” in public opinion may not be a shift at all but merely the result of sampling error. If, for example, the margin of error in a poll is 3 percentage points and the media report a shift in support that is only 2 percentage points, there are no statistical grounds to assume that there has been a significant change in support for either candidate?O Despite the fact that preelection polls are often reported in a somewhat misleading way, the accuracy of those polls is usually quite impressive. Even in the razor-thin election of 2000, the results of the final preelection polls fell within the margin of error (see table 10.4). Of course, media polling does not stop when voting starts. Polls are also conducted in key precincts on election day. Table 10.4.

Final Poll Results from Various Media Outlets for 2000

Questiona: If the presidential election were held today, would you vote for Democrat Al Gore, Republican George W. Bush, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan, or someone else?

Washington Post! ABC Newsb {11/3-5; 1,801; +/-2.5)‘ CBS News/New York Times {11/4-6; 1,091; +/-3) CNN/USA Today/Callu p {11/5-6; 2,350; +/-2) I6 D/CSM/TIPpd 11 1/4-6; 1,292; +/-2.8) Reuters/MSNBCnogby (1 1/4-6; 1,200; +/-3} Fox Newdopinion Dynamics (1 l/l-2; 1,000; +/-3) NBC/Wall Street Journal (1 1/3-5; 1,026; +/-3.1) Averages Actual results

Bush lead

Bush

Gore

48 48

45 45

3 3

+3 +3

44

45

4

-1

48

46

4

+2

48

46

4

+2

46

48

5

-2

43

43

3

0

47

44

3

+3

46.3 47.87

45.3 48.38

3.7 2.73

+1 -0.51

Nader

a Question wording varies slightly from poll to poll. For example, some mention vice-presidential candidates, while others do not. Furthermore, some polls give the respondent an option of being “unsure,” while others only record uncertainty if it is volunteered by the respondent. b ABC News and the Washington Post shared data collection, then independently applied their own models to arrive at likely voter estimates. c Numbers in brackets represent the dates of the poll, the number of likely voters surveyed, and the margin of error. d Investor’s Business DailyKhristian Science Monitor/TlPP

220


Exit polls are self-administered questionnaires given to voters as they leave the polling place. The precincts in which exit polls are conducted are chosen based on “past voting behavior, geographic regions (within or across states), urban vs. rural counties, percent foreign stock, type of voting equipment, or poll closing times.”31Specific voters are selected at random according to a “sampling interval”; for example, every 20th person might be asked to participate?* In recent years, exit polls have been conducted for the media in every state and the District of Columbia (in addition to separate, national exit The results of exit polls are used for two purposes. First, demographic information can be coupled with vote choice to explain which groups voted for which candidates and to what extent. Questions that tap the reasons for a person’s vote choice can also help explain why an election turned out as it did. Second, the results of the election can often be determined from the results of the exit poll. When entered into a statistical model along with actual vote counts throughout the day (as well as other variables), the exit poll results make it possible to project the winner of the election. The use of exit polling on election day means that the media change course from trying to predict what will happen to explaining what did happen. Arguably, exit polls are the most important measure of public opinion the media will conduct because of the uses of that information. The failure of the media to accurately make projections based on exit polls caused a great deal of consternation on election night 2000. It should be noted, however, that while anger about exit polls might be justified with respect to election projections, the other purpose of exit polling is to help us understand the complex dynamics surrounding elections. To that end, we need careful thought about how to improve the reporting of exit poll results, not sweeping condemnation of the use of exit polls generally. ELECTION NIGHT 2000: WHAT WENT WRONG? “[Ilf we say somebody’s carried a state you can pretty much take it to the bank, book it, that that’s true.” -Dan Rather, CBS Anchor, early evening, November 7,2000


22 1

“I’m always reminded of those west Texas saloons where they had a sign that says, ‘Please don’t shoot the piano player; he’s doing the best he can. . . .’ That’s been pretty much the case here tonight over this election.” -Dan Rather, approximately 3:45 a.m., November 8, 200034 The problems with using exit polling to report on elections and their outcomes-or at least the problems with the way the media currently use exit polling- became patently obvious on election night 2000. Media “projections” that Vice President Gore had won the state of Florida, and their subsequent retractions, along with further proclamations of a Bush win in Florida (including the designation of the Texas governor as “President-Elect Bush”), and the retraction of those projections, combined to give the U.S. media the biggest collective embarrassment they have, perhaps, ever faced. Mistakes of this sort are not unprecedented. In 1936, after four stunningly correct presidential election predictions, the Literary Digest blundered by forecasting a landslide for Republican Alf Landon (who lost by over 23 percentage points to President Franklin Roosevelt) ?5 Similarly, but for different reasons, pollsters incorrectly predicted a victory for Thomas Dewey over President Harry Truman in 1948?6 Yet what makes these cases different from the 2000 election is that the media used exit polls to make the call in the latter, whereas the previous mistakes were based on preelection polls. While one might assume that exit polls are more accurate than polls taken before the election (since the former measure how people report having voted versus what they claim are their voting intentions), exit polls themselves have been wrong before. In 1989, Douglas Wilder won the Virginia gubernatorial election by less than one percentage point, though exit polls suggested a ten-point win; in 1992, exit polls indicated that Patrick Buchanan would finish just six points behind President George Bush in the New Hampshire primary, but he lost by sixteen points; and in 1996, Senator Bob Dole was projected to come in third in the Arizona primary, behind Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan, when, in fact, he finished a close second to F0rbes.3~In each case, it should be noted, the eventual winner had been correctly projected, a fact that helps erase from memory

222

Stephen K . Medvic and David A. Dulio

the mistaken margins of victory. Given the importance of the race and the magnitude of the errors, however, few will soon forget the media blunders of election night 2000. By now, the details of that night are familiar to most people. Six news organizations-CNN, Fox News, NBC, CBS, ABC, and the Associated Press-use the Voter News Service (VNS) to gather exit poll data and conduct analyses for projecting election outcomes. On election night, NBC was the first to project a Gore win in Florida, at 7:48 p.m. EST, based on the VNS “CALL GORE’ determination.38 “Call” status “is not yet an actual projection of a . . . victory by VNS, but is an alert to its clients to examine the data and to consider whether they wish to call the state.”39CNN and CBS (which used a joint “decision team” to evaluate VNS results) followed NBC minutes later, and just before 8:OO p.m. VNS moved Florida to the “WIN GORE’ category. This was clearly a significant development; most observers knew going into the election that Florida would be close and that the winner of that state would be in a commanding position to capture the White House. Of course, there were other states that would be central to a winning combination of electoral votes. Michigan and Pennsylvania were among them, and Gore was called the winner of those states at 8:OO p.m. and 8:47 p.m., respectively.@ At that point, had the Florida projection been accurate, it would have been nearly impossible for Bush to win. At 9:38 p.m., however, “VNS sent a message [to its clients] that read, ‘We are canceling the vote in Cnty 16-Duval Cnty, FL-vote is ~trange.”’~’ CNN and CBS retracted their calls for Gore in Florida at 9 5 4 p.m., and by 10: 16 p.m. VNS had retracted its decision to place Florida in the “WIN GORE” category!* Interestingly, just as VNS was reversing itself on the Florida call, it was awarding New Mexico to Gore; hours later, New Mexico would again be considered “too close to call,” only to end up in Gore’s column weeks later. Similarly, VNS projected a victory for Maria Cantwell in the Washington Senate race, when, in fact, the election was not decided until December 1 following a recount. Though some of the hasty calls made by VNS were “correct” to the extent that the eventual winner had been projected, it would be hard to say those calls were “accurate,” at least at the time they were made!3 In the end, VNS


223

exit poll results for the presidential race were incorrect in eight states, and VNS calls were wrong in three.44 For nearly four hours, the nation waited as real votes were tallied in Florida. At 2:08 a.m. on November 8, VNS determined that Bush had a 5 1,000-vote lead in Florida, with roughly 180,000 votes left to count. According to VNS calculations, Gore would need 63 percent of the remaining votes to win Florida. Fox News gave Florida-and the presidency-to Bush at 2:15 a.m., followed by NBC at 2:16 a.m., CNN and CBC at 2:17 a.m., and ABC at 2:20 a.m. Interestingly, VNS and the Associated Press never officially made the call for Bush in Fl0rida.4~ At around 3:OO a.m., Vice President Gore phoned Governor Bush to congratulate him on his victory. Yet the actual vote count was showing an incredibly close election. Apparently, Bush's supposed 5 1,000-vote lead had been based, in part, on erroneous information from Volusia County."6 By 3: 15 a.m., sources began to tell reporters that there would likely be an automatic recount of the Florida vote. Less than 45 minutes after conceding to Bush, Gore called Bush again to retract his concession. Shortly after 4:OO a.m., those networks that had made a second projection in the Florida presidential race retracted their call once agai11.4~ The big question, of course, is why did these mistakes occur? Oddly enough, the problems on election night 2000 were caused by too much and too little competition between news organizations. In many ways, the seeds for this debacle were planted in 1990,when the network news organizations, the Associated Press, and CNN formed Voter Research and Surveys (VRS). Prior to that point, the media had used a pooling arrangement called News Election Service (NES), which simply gathered actual voting results from precincts and provided those results to the member news organizations. Exit polling, which had begun in 1967, was done individually by the various news organizations at a tremendous cost. With the creation of VRS ,the media would share the costs of data gathering by producing one set of exit poll results. The analysis of those results, however, remained the responsibility of the individual news outlets. Then, in order to cut costs even further, NES and VRS were merged in 1993."8 Voter News Service, the new consortium, would continue to conduct exit polls

224


and gather data, but would also analyze exit poll responses in combination with actual vote counts to provide subscribers with projected election re~ults.4~ This monopoly on information, some argued, was bound to eventually cause a problem?O Indeed, many of the errors on election night stemmed from the fact that all of the news organizations relied on the same source for data and primary analysis. Among the specific problems at VNS, according to a report commissioned by CNN, were a serious lack of communication between VNS and the member news organizations, and poor quality control of the data, allowing multiple errors in vote counting to enter the VNS system.s1 Generally speaking, however, the problem was that only one source gathered and had primary responsibility for analyzing the data. Steven Brill, former publisher of the media watchdog magazine Brill s Content, argued, The simple fact is that the news media’s election-night fiasco happened because the press seems to have violated antitrust laws by organizing a cartel called Voter News Service that was guaranteed to eliminate competition for a quality product-and, therefore, destined one day to produce a defective product that no one could tell was defective because there would be no alternative products to compare it to?*

Ultimately, however, the news organizations themselves were responsible for making a call on the air. In fact, they all had hired their own team of analysts to double-check the conclusions made by VNS. As the authors of the CNN report note, “after ABC used its own personnel during the 1994 congressional elections to make calls, sometimes ahead of VNS and thus ahead of its competitors, the other networks created their own decision desks or decision teams to analyze data received from VNS on Election Night.”53 Thus, despite the lack of competition with respect to data gathering and primary analysis, there remains fierce competition among the networks to be first in calling an election. The result is that networks are “driven by what appears to be a compulsion, both because of competition and because of the desire to satisfy perceived audience demands, to provide an election result.”s4 As the CNN report concludes, “a news environment that cultivates the urge to a definitive


225

conclusion impelled CNN, and the other networks, in such a way as to contribute to the inaccuracy of the reporting that evening and the resulting confusion that followed the election.”55 Indeed, VNS never made a second call in Florida; the networks made that decision themselves, though admittedly it was based on what seemed like fairly solid evidence from VNS. Nevertheless, some argue that it was precisely the desire to avoid being “scooped,” or beaten to a story, that forced the networks to quickly follow Fox’s lead once it projected a Bush win?6 Exit polls are very difficult surveys to administer. Though many of the mistakes made on election night 2000 were specific to this particular evening, there are many sources of error that plague exit polls, and their use to project outcomes, generally. Sampling error, which exists in all polls and surveys, increases with exit polls because the sampling design is more complicated than the simple random sample typically used in telephone polls ?7 Nonresponse poses another problem for exit polling. Potential respondents may either refuse to participate or may simply be missed by the interviewer (because, for example, the respondent does not leave the polling place in the area where the interviewer is stationed). While some research suggests that exit poll respondents do not differ significantly from nonrespondents, the potential for bias does exist, particularly because older voters have been found to refuse more than younger voters .58 Similarly, some voters may be systematically excluded from exit polls (that is, there is coverage error) because they either voted early or by absentee ballot or because they voted during a part of the day when the exit poll was not being c ~ n d u c t e d Indeed, .~~ VNS estimated that 7.2 percent of the total 2000 Florida vote would be absentee ballots, whereas such voters actually accounted for 12 percent of the votes cast.60As more and more voters choose to vote in ways that make them physically absent at the polls on election day -in Oregon, for instance, the entire presidential election was conducted by mail -exit polls will become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to undertake. Finally, at least with respect to the administration of exit polls, measurement error-or the amount of error caused by things like question wording, format, and ordermust be considered.6l

226


Once obtained, exit poll data are used in models that project election outcomes. The development of these models requires a sophisticated understanding of both elections and statistics. Because the assumptions used to construct an election night model are based, in part, on a previous, comparable election, the choice of the comparison election is crucial to the success of the model. In 2000, VNS used the 1998 Florida gubernatorial election as the comparison election. As it turns out, according to an analysis by VNS, the 1996 presidential race in Florida or the 1998 Florida Senate election would have been a better comparison for 2000.6*In the end, we may never know exactly what went wrong in Florida. In 1996, VNS had to retract an incorrect projection for the Democratic challenger in the New Hampshire Senate race and “years later it was still trying to figure out how that happened.”63Nevertheless, recommendations for future elections are already numerous. The American Antitrust Institute has urged the Justice Department to break up the VNS Lawmakers in several states are considering implementing (or increasing) a buffer zone-of up to 1,000 feet according to a Nebraska proposalbetween a polling place and where exit pollsters may stand. Others want exit polling banned altogether. Still others would like to make it illegal to call an election before the polls cl0se.6~Finally, there is widespread interest in a uniform poll-closing time, though multiple time zones make this idea difficult to translate into practice. The First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press would likely mean that most of this legislation (with the exception of a uniform poll-closing time) would be declared unconstitutional if it became law. Even a uniform poll-closing law might face constitutional objections on federalism grounds. Thus, news organizations will be left to police themselves. But that does not mean nothing will be done. For example, CNN has promised the following policy changes? Major reforms of VNS as a condition of CNN’s involvement (including rewritten projection systems and statistical models, better estimates of absentee and early voting, and upgraded technical capabilities) A second source of exit poll data in states with the closest races No use of exit polls to project close races (i.e., those that cannot be called immediately when the polls close)


221

No calls in elections in which the vote count shows a margin of less than 1 percent No projections in a state until all the polls are closed in that state “Behind the scenes” reporting of how exit polls and the network’s decision desk operate A change in language to indicate the lack of certainty inherent in projections based on exit polls (e.g., “CNN calls Candidate A the winner in Florida” will be replaced with “Based on exit poll estimates, CNN projects that Candidate A will win Florida”) The use of more outside expertise at VNS Support for a uniform poll-closing time

In all likelihood, some version of VNS will be in place in 2004 and beyond. Whether or not two years is enough time to fix the problems that were exposed in the 2000 elections remains to be seen. Of course, it is not entirely clear that the mistakes of 2000 had any real impact on the electoral process. Republicans claim that the call for Gore in Florida, before all the polls had closed there, may have depressed turnout in the panhandle. Furthermore, some wonder whether the early calls for Gore in Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had a negative effect on turnout in other states where voting had not yet ended. On the other hand, Democrats argue that the second call in Florida-making George W. Bush the president-elect-gave Bush an unfair advantage during the recount phase by establishing him as the presumptive winner. Regardless of whether these consequences can be demonstrated, it has become clear that every effort must be made to preserve the right of the voters-and only the voters- to determine the outcome of elections. Furthermore, the media’s use of public opinion in the form of exit polls on election day should fulfill their obligation to report the news rather than create news. CONCLUSION

This chapter has examined the media’s role in measuring, reporting, and interpreting public opinion. We have argued that the media no longer simply report the news; they can also create it. They do so, by and large, by conducting public opinion polls, the results of

228


which become news in and of themselves; the media also rely on external sources for public opinion data that may or may not be newsworthy. Yet, reporting on poll results often falls short of the ideal set by professional polling associations. Critical consumers of the news should be able to determine the credibility of a poll or survey based on basic information provided by the media (e.g., the sample size, the dates a poll was conducted, the question wording, the margin of error, etc.). When it comes to covering elections, the media have come to rely extensively on public opinion. Polls are ubiquitous in election reporting, and horse-race coverage now predominates over policy considerations. Indeed, polling continues into election day in the form of exit polls. But exit polls are subject to various forms of error, and in close elections those errors can lead to mistaken projections of the winner. That is precisely what happened in the historic election of 2000. Though we may never know exactly what went wrong, we can reform the election day reporting process so as to never face a disaster like that again. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What sources of polling data are more reliable, valid, and/or credible-external polls or internal media polls? Why? 2. What are “pseudo-polls” and how useful are they in gauging public opinion on a given topic? Why do you think the media relies on them so much? 3. Scan today’s newspaper or television news for stories that cite public opinion data. How were poll results used (e.g., was it the focus of the story or did it support a conclusion)? How much information about the methodology was reported? Did you have enough information to evaluate the credibility of the poll? 4. Thomas Patterson says the media uses a “game schema” for election coverage. What is the “game schema” and in what ways is such coverage problematic? 5 . What lessons should the media have learned from what transpired on election night 2000?


229

6. Ultimately, does a heavy reliance on public opinion polling (and the media’s reporting of it) enrich our democracy or damage it? Explain. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Lavrakas, Paul J., and Michael W. Traugott, eds., Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy (New York: Chatham House/Seven Bridges Press, 2000). Mann, Thomas E., and Gary R. Orren, eds., Media Polls in American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1992). National Council on Public Polls, www.ncpp.org. “Polls and the News Media: A Symposium,” Public Opinion Quarterly 44,no. 4 (Winter 1980). Robinson, Matthew, Mobocracy: How the Media’s Obsession with Polling Twists the News, Alters Elections, and Undermines Democracy (Roseville, Calif .: Forum/Prima, 2002).

1. Chistopher Hitchens, For the Sake ofArgument (London: Verso, 1993). 2. The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is the source of information on news story topics discussed in this paragraph. 3. Herbert Asher, Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1998), 3. 4. Kathleen A. Frankovic, “Public Opinion and Polling,” in The Politics o f N m s , ed. Doris Graber, Denis McQuail, and Pippa Norris (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1998), 150. 5 . Frankovic, “Public Opinion and Polling .” 6. Frankovic, “Public Opinion and Polling.” 7. Frankovic, “Public Opinion and Polling ,”163. 8. Frankovic, “Public Opinion and Polling.” 9. Barry Orton, “Phony Polls: The Pollster’s Nemesis,” Public Opinion 5 (JuneIJuly 1982): 56-60; Asher, Polling and the Public. 10. Annenberg School of Communication, “Using the Annenberg Presidential Campaign Discourse Archive,” Version 1.O (Annenberg School for Communication, Annenberg Public Policy Center, Philadelphia, 1997).

230


11. National Council on Public Polls, “20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask about Poll Results,” 2001, at www.ncpp.org/qajsa.htm. 12. American Association for Public Opinion Research, “Code of Professional Ethics and Practices,” 1986 at www.aapor.org/ethics/code/html. 13. Michael W. Traugott and Elizabeth C. Powers, “Did Public Opinion Support the Contract with America?” in Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy, ed. Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 101. 14. Richard Morin, “A Pollster’s Peers Cry Foul,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, April 28, 1997, 35; see also Traugott and Powers, “Contract with America.” 15. Asher, Polling and the Public, 15. 16. Asher, Polling and the Public, 15. 17. M. Mark Miller and Robert Hurd, “Conformity to AAPOR Standards in Newspaper Reporting of Public Opinion Polls,” Public Opinion Quarterly 46 (1982): 243-49; Michael B. Salwen, “The Reporting of Public Opinion Polls during Presidential Years, 1968-1985 ,,’ Journalism Quarterly 62 (1985): 272-77; David L. Paletz, Jonathan Y. Short, Helen Baker, Barbara Cookman Campbell, Richard J. Cooper, and Rochelle M. Oeslander, “Polls in the Media: Content, Credibility, and Consequences,” Public Opinion Quarterly 44 (1980): 495-614. 18. Miller and Hurd, “Conformity to AAPOR Standards.” 19. Paletz et al., “Polls in the Media.” 20. Asher, Polling and the Public. 21. Asher, Polling and the Public, 90. 22. Asher, Polling and the Public. 23. Asher, Polling and the Public, 9 1. 24. See Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 9th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000); Earl Babbie, Survey Research Methods, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990); Asher, Polling and the Public; Pamela L. Alreck and Robert B. Settle, The Survey Research Handbook, 2nd ed. (Burr Ridge, Ill.: Irwin, 1995); Floyd J. Fowler, Survey Research Methods, 2nd ed. (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1993). 25. Asher, Polling and the Public, 97. 26. Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Vintage, 1994). 27. Patterson, Out of Order, 57. 28. Patterson, Out of Order, 59. 29. Asher, Polling and the Public. 30. As election day approaches, most media outlets conduct tracking polls. Such polls are conducted daily with 250 to 500 people. The re-


23 1

sponses of those 250 to 500 individuals are then added to those from the previous two days. In other words, tracking polls are rolling polls that drop one-third of the respondents every day but add another third to the total. Thus, a two percentage-point change in each of three consecutive days would, in fact, signal a significant change in opinion. 3 1. Mark R. Levy, “The Methodology and Performance of Election Day Polls,” Public Opinion Quarterly 47 (1983): 56; see also Daniel M. Merkle and Murray Edelman, “A Review of the 1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls from a Total Survey Error Perspective,” in Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy, ed. Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott (New York: Chatham House, 2000). 32. Levy, “Methodology and Performance of Election Day Polls,” 59; Merkle and Edelman, “1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls,” 69. 33. Merkle and Edelman, “1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls,” 69. 34. Rather quotes are found in Seth Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,” Brill’s Content (February 2001), 98, 152. 35. For an examination of the problems in the 1936 Literary Digest poll, see Peverill Squire, “Why the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Failed,” Public Opinion Quarterly 52 (1988): 125-33. Incidentally, the Literary Digest, once a very popular magazine, went out of business the year following its election poll mistake. Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 70. 36. See Robert S . Erikson and Kent L. Tedin, American Public Opinion, 5th ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995), 31. 37. Asher, Polling and the Public, 118. The Wilder mistake stems from the willingness of white respondents to say they voted for Wilder, a black candidate, when in fact they did not. Michael W. Traugott and Vincent Price, “Exit Polls in the 1989 Virginia Gubernatorial Race: Where Did They Go Wrong?’ Public Opinion Quarterly 56 (1992): 245-53. In the Republican primary cases, it appears that Buchanan voters were more willing to participate in exit polls than Bush or Dole supporters. Asher, Polling and the Public, 118. 38. Though most of the polling places in Florida closed at 7:OO p.m. EST, those in the Florida panhandle, which are in the central time zone, did not close until 8:OO p.m. EST. Many felt that the premature call for Gore may have discouraged turnout in the panhandle, which is solidly Republican. That charge seems dubious given that the call was only twelve minutes before the polls closed. Nevertheless, the networks say they do not call an election before the polls close in a state and this was a clear violation of

232


that policy. In the weeks following the election, the panhandle dispute would fuel much of the Bush supporters’ anger about the Gore call. 39. Joan Konner, James Risser, and Ben Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance on Election Night 2000: A Report for CNN,” 2001, at http:// a388 .g.akamai.net/f/388/2 l/ld/www.cnn.com/200 l/ALLPOLITICS/ stories/02/02/cnn .report/cnn .pdf, 11. 40. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” appendix 4, i. 41. Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,” 150. 42. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 13. 43. Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,” 150-51. 44. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance ,” appendix 3, ii; Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,” 15 1. 45. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 16; Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,” 151. 46. There were, in fact, even more inaccuracies. Nearly 400,000 votes, not 180,000, remained to be counted at the time of the Fox News call for Bush. Furthermore, Brevard County was showing a vote total that undercounted the Gore vote by 4,000. Thus, what had appeared to be a 5 1,000 Bush lead was actually a 27,000-vote lead, with 400,000 votes to be counted, including many in the heavily Democratic counties of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 15. 47. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 16-17. 48. Fox News joined the VNS arrangement in 1996. 49. Steven Brill, “Fixing Election Night,” Brill’s Content (February 2001), 26. 50. To be fair, the news organizations still used their own analysts to evaluate the information coming from VNS. Under most circumstances, however, the pressure to “call” a state before the competition led these analysts to essentially defer to VNS’s judgment. The Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg report for CNN illustrates that conclusion. 5 1. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,’’ 18. 52. Brill, “Fixing Election Night,” 26. 53. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,’’ 19. 54. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 19. 55. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,’’ 19. 56. Adding yet another bizarre twist to the story, John Ellis, the head of Fox’s decision desk and a cousin of George W. Bush, was responsible for Fox’s call for Bush. Needless to say, that fact angered Gore supporters, even


233

though decision makers at other networks vehemently deny simply jumping on Fox’s bandwagon. See Mnookin, “It Happened One Night,” 152. 57. Merkle and Edelman, “1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls,” 72. 58. Merkle and Edelman, “1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls,” 74. 59. Merkle and Edelman, “1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls,” 80. 60. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 20. 61. Merkle and Edelman, “1996 Voter News Service Exit Polls,” 87. 62. Konner, Risser, and Wattenberg, “Television’s Performance,” 20. 63. Leo Bogart, “Politics, Polls, and Poltergeists: A Critical View of the 1996 Election ,” in Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy, ed. Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 305; see also Mike Mokrzycki, “Exit Pollsters Investigate Blown Call in Senate Race in New Hampshire,’’Associated Press, 6 November 1996. 64. Brill, “Fixing Election Night,” 28. 65. “Weighing Election Turmoil, States Target Media,” 15 February 2001, at CNN.com. 66. “Statement of CNN Regarding Future Election Coverage,” 2 February 2001, at CNN.com.


I1 Global Media and Foreign Policy Maryann Cusimano Love

Do the media affect foreign policy in a positive or negative direction,

or not at all? Under what specific circumstances are the media more or less likely to impact foreign policy, and how? The debates are not new. The press in the U.S. colonies actively fostered the Revolutionary War against Britain, while the French press did not advocate for democracy during the French Revolution; some argue this was key to both outcomes. Yet the speed, reach, and intensity of media coverage of foreign policy are relatively new. News is instant and global, as fast and accessible as text and digital photos downloaded on the Internet, and satellite-uplinked coverage broadcast in real time. The cheapness and wide dispersion of information technology means that a wider audience can access media products more quickly. Broadcasts and print reports are no longer national, and national governments have decreased control with fewer state-owned media. THE POSITIVE VIEW THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

During the Cold War, when Germany was divided, approximately 90% of East German households tuned into free television and radio broadcasts from the democratic West. The people watched Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev enact his perestroika and glasnost reforms of greater openness, while their ruler in East Germany, Erich 235

236


Honecker, steadfastly resisted any reforms to the failing communist system. In 1989, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would no longer use force to prevent democratic transitions in its satellite states, while pro-democracy groups in Poland and Hungary negotiated transfers of power away from the communists, and Hungary removed the barbed wire and guard towers that separated it from noncommunist Austria. East Germans followed these events closely through the Western media, and over the summer thousands traveled to Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and to West German diplomatic posts, attempting to flee to the West. When these states announced they would no longer stop East Germans from leaving, more than 100,000 East Germans emigrated to the West. When Gorbachev arrived in East Berlin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of East Germany on October 6-7, he warned Honecker to change with the times, but Honecker resisted. Thousands of protesters took to the streets, and their cries of “Gorby, save us” could even be heard on state-controlled East German television, which was unable to filter out the sound on their broadcasts. This emboldened the resistance, and over the next few weeks over a million East Germans protested in the streets. The communists tried to respond to the crisis. During a televised nightly news briefing at 7 p.m. on November 9, 1989, Politburo member Guenter Schabowski made an offhand announcement that reforms would soon allow East Germans to travel freely to the West. The news spread instantly, and huge crowds gathered at the wall demanding their right to leave. Caught unaware, the guards initially resisted, but as the numbers swelled the Politburo did not want a bloody battle. The Berlin Wall fell, and shortly thereafter, so did East Germany and the Soviet Union. Did the global media cause the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union’s control over other countries? Some argue yes. British scholar Anthony Giddens believes that “[tlhe ideological and cultural control upon which communist political authority was based could not survive in an era of global media. The Soviet and the East European regimes were unable to prevent the reception of Western radio and television broadcasts. Television played a direct role in the 1989 revolutions, which have rightly been called the first

Global Media and Foreign Policy

237

‘television revolutions.’ Street protests taking place in one country were watched by television audiences in others, large numbers of whom then took to the streets themselves.”’ According to this argument, real-time media broadcasts directly affected public opinion and public action. Cheap and easy access to technologies such as radio, television, and the Internet make possible access to information that is not censored or controlled by governments. The information revolution, which the media facilitate, is empowering individuals, and making it harder for oppressive regimes to manipulate information and perceptions, and thereby to control their citizens. “The information revolution is thus profoundly threatening to the power structures of the world, and with good reason. In Prague in 1988 the first protesters in the streets looked into CNN cameras and chanted at the riot police, ‘The world sees you.’ And it did. It was an anomaly of history that other Eastern Europeans watched the revolution on CNN relayed by a Russian satellite and mustered the courage to rebel against their own sovereigns.”2 Following this logic, the spread of a free and independent press is important to secure the democratic transitions now taking place around the globe. Since established democracies tend not to go to war with one another? the spread of free media not only helps to depose autocratic regimes but may also increase the chances for peace, as the world witnesses a rise in the number of democratic states. Independent media may help the growth of civil society, an important component of democratization. Globalization is marked by an increase in the number and power of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), some of which are devoted to furthering the spread of independent media, such as the National Press Institute, which focuses on assisting the development of independent media in the former Soviet Union. Finally, media coverage may help states to publicly debate and assess foreign policy, the very hallmark of democratic process. The idea is that foreign policy is improved by congressional scrutiny and public debate: Many military leaders, such as President Reagan’s secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, and his then-assistant, Colin Powell, felt strongly that these were some of the clearest lessons learned from the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. In articulating the

238


WeinbergerPowell Doctrine, now taught at all U.S. military academies, they advised that there be strong public and congressional support (among other preconditions) before committing U.S. troops abroad. Thus media coverage can be an important component of conducting a successful, publicly supported, military intervention. THE NEGATIVE VIEW: THE MEDIA AND A LOSS OF FOREIGN POLICY CONTROL

Others disagree with this argument that free, independent media may encourage positive foreign policy developments. These skeptics point out that the media can influence foreign policy in a negative way, by hijacking the foreign policy agenda around whatever issues are in the media’s spotlight, by forcing policy makers into illadvised foreign policies that the media favors, by decreasing the secrecy needed for delicate foreign policy initiatives, and (in statecontrolled media) by being a tool of carrying out war or genocide. According to this argument, the media shape public opinion in ways that decrease public support for key foreign policy objectives. This makes the conduct of foreign policy by experienced foreign policy experts more difficult. Many members of the U.S. military used this reasoning and blamed the media for the U.S. public’s declining support of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. According to this view, the media were not patriotic and presented distorted images of U.S. casualties, losses, and war atrocities in order to deliberately end the US.presence in Vietnam or at least to increase their own ratings. Reporter Morley Safer broke a story about the U.S. marines burning civilian villages in Vietnam in an attempt to flush out supporters of the communist Viet Cong guerrilla group. Safer was criticized by then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk for supposedly inventing the story and bribing marines to lie on camera, and for insufficient patriotism, since he was a Canadian citizen. According to Safer, Rusk’s untrue criticism is an example of blaming the messenger for telling unpleasant truths about failed foreign policies? The U.S. was not able to prevail in a violent, internal war in Vietnam at a cost that was acceptable


239

to the American Congress and public, as the French had failed before. The media did not create this situation; they merely reported it. But what about when media coverage creates the conditions for failure, specifically, when media coverage erodes the secrecy needed for delicate foreign policy negotiations? During the Iranian Revolution in 1979,the U.S. Embassy compound was taken over by student extremists loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and 66 U.S. citizens were taken hostage. U.S. diplomat Ramsey Clark headed to Iran for secret negotiations through back channels to come up with a face-saving release for the hostages. NBC broke the news of the supposed-to-besecret negotiation mission, and in the glare of the television cameras the Iranians broke off the talks. Would Ramsey Clark have been able to broker a deal to release the U.S. hostages if the press had not exposed the behind-the-scenes negotiations? While some hostages were released or escaped, 52 hostages were held for 444 days, a story the press covered nonstop using their newly acquired satellite technologies. The three major television networks devoted about one-third of their weeknight news programs to the hostage story. Every night ABC ran a --minute program on the situation, The Crisis in Iran: Americu Held Hostage, which launched the career of Ted Koppel and was renamed as the Nightline program. The intensity and volume of media coverage made government efforts to release the hostages difficult. Generally, terrorists commit actions in order to gain publicity for their causes. While the media were giving the hostage takers ample free publicity for their concerns,what incentive did they have to release the hostages? After the exposure of the Ramsey Clark mission, the Carter administration believed it could not expect secrecy for its foreign policy initiatives. It wanted to conduct a military rescue operation, but fear of media exposure led it to cancel any practice training and rehearsal exercises for the military operation. The military rescue effort failed, and eight U.S. servicemen died in the Iranian desert. Did the media coverage contribute to these failed U.S. foreign policy efforts? In countries where the media are state controlled, the media may bear particular responsibility for foreign policies of war or genocide. In Rwanda, radio was skillfully used as an integral part of carrying out the genocide. Radio broadcasts not only incited people to violence generally, but also announced specific lists of people to be

240


killed and instructions for doing so. Shutting down the hate media can be an important step in stemming conflict. In Western, privately owned media, the media’s role in causing foreign policy failures has been of particular concern since the end of the Cold War. Without the Cold War conflict as a guiding star to foreign policy, it is argued, the media have an increased ability to set the foreign policy agenda through their coverage of international affairs. The concern is that extensive media coverage forces quick and poor foreign policy decisions, dubbed “the CNN e f f e ~ t . ” ~ Since the world watched the Gulf War live on the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1991, the rise of CNN and other 24-hour news networks (and Internet sites) has intensified debates over the media’s effect on foreign policy. People and policy makers sense CNN and the new real-time media are important, but they are not sure exactly how important. Different definitions also complicate the debate. Some define “CNN effect” as public diplomacy. For example, during the Gulf War, presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater used CNN to speak directly to both Saddam Hussein and coalition allies in real time, using the television broadcasts to try to influence their positions. Others use “CNN effect” to denote the smaller time window for government reaction forced by the real-time reporting of an event. Some, such as former assistant secretary of state Rozanne Ridgway, speak of “a ‘CNN curve,’ which she describes as CNN’s ability to prompt popular demands for action by displaying images of starvation or other tragedy, only to reverse this sentiment when Americans are killed while trying to help.”8 This is similar to another use of the term by veteran U.S. diplomat George Kennan, suggesting “a loss of policy control on the part of government officials supposedly charged with making that policy,” in which control is wrested from the government by the media or likewise by the public? THE SKEPTICAL V I E W MEDIA EFFECTS WHEN FOREIGN POLICY I S ILL DEFINED O R CONTESTED

A third view critiques both previous arguments on the power of the media to affect foreign policy, either positively or negatively. The skeptics


24 1

point out that these events are overdetermined; many other factors brought about the end of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Vietnam War. In Russia, free media tended to follow, not lead, the democratic transition; conflict continues today in Russia over media independence.1°In the late 1960s, press coverage of the Vietnam War followed congressional and public opinion; it did not lead it.” Only after Congress and the public became more skeptical about and outspoken against the war in Vietnam did the media cover these viewpoints and actions, but the press coverage followed, and therefore did not cause, the change.I2A scant 2% of television coverage showed actual bloodshed, so media pictures were not predominantly bloody, and thus graphic pictures could not have caused the decline in public and congressional resolve to fight the war.13 And as for the so-called CNN effect, studies suggest these media effects in foreign policy are over~tated.’~ Most publics abroad don’t have access to television (let alone CNN), therefore they do not see or understand the English-language broadcasts. Further, media coverage tends to follow, not precede troop deployments. Media coverage does not guarantee a policy response. For example, despite media coverage of the genocide in Rwanda, none of the major Western powers intervened. The media showed Bosnian atrocities on television for years with no U.S. re~p0nse.l~ The studies suggest that when the government has a clear policy in place, the media can not force an easy policy reversal or loss of government control over the policy, and instead the government may be able to use the media to gain free “advertising time” to sell its policies to the U.S. public. IJ howevel; a policy vacuum exists (as is often the case when crises arise in lesspowerful and less-important countries in the developing world in the post-Cold War period), then the media can exert an influence to raise an issue to the foreign policy agenda or to frame the issue, in the absence of another position.16 According to this argument, any media effects during the Vietnam War were caused by the Johnson administration’s failure to explain to the American public and Congress why U.S. troops were fighting in Vietnam, and to clearly convince them of what was at stake. In the vacuum created by an administration’s failure to set and explain its policy, the media may be able to affect the foreign policy agenda. The media cover the viewpoints of

242

Maryann Cusimano Lave

government foreign policy elites; news coverage is heavily indexed to official conflict. If officials agree about foreign policy, the media cover that unity, and public opinion tends to agree with that official consensus. If officials are in conflict about foreign policy, the media cover that conflict among foreign policy elites, and public opinion becomes more split over foreign policy options. Thus the media can communicate and amplify the existing unity or disunity, creating openings for foreign policy shifts or closing ranks around existing policy. Media effects may be shown in specific cases to influence public opinion, agenda setting, and the framing of an issue,17but media coverage alone does not guarantee a particular effect on foreign policy. Effects vary with the content and context of the coverage. However, regardless of how or whether the media affect mass public opinion, the media may exert a direct effect on policy-making elites both at home and abroad.18Thus media coverage can influence foreign policy independent of whether the public is mobilized on particular foreign policy issues. For example, President George H. W. Bush was affected by media coverage of the famine in Somalia. After reading a New York Times story on the humanitarian crisis there, he wrote in the margins of the article, “This is terrible. Isn’t there something WE CAN DO?’ and passed this note along to the State Department. For months electoral concerns prevented President Bush from acting. But after losing the 1992 presidential election to Bill Clinton, Bush intervened, sending 20,000 U.S. troops into Somalia in his last days in office. There was no loud outcry of public or congressional concern over Somalia. Foreign policy was barely a factor in the 1992 election, and Congress was on recess when the president initiated the troop deployment. But Bush admits that the media coverage of Somalia alerted him to the problems there and mobilized his action.19 Further, many of the arguments concerning media effects are inconsistent and self-serving. Reporters who claim credit for bringing about democratic transitions abroad claim to have little effect on the foreign policy process at home. The media minimize their own effect, claiming that they merely report on the foreign policy process; they do not affect it. Policy makers, in contrast, tend to exaggerate media effects, blaming the media for foreign policy failures (the Vietnam War, the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt). But government officials do


243

not credit the media for rallying public support around successful foreign policies, for instance when the media played a role in rallying allied, congressional, and public opinion behind the Gulf War. Further, while U.S. policy makers decry irresponsible media coverage of government policy here, they suggest that foreign governments should open themselves up to greater media scrutiny abroad. Media effects can be difficult to prove empirically, since correlation is not causation. Showing that media coverage occurred before a foreign policy action does not mean the media coverage caused the foreign policy action (just as your brushing your teeth this morning may not have caused the events that followed in your day). General laws are difficult to posit, since media effects vary depending on the type of coverage and the context created by other intervening variables, such as elite consensus. Thus all three views continue to provide arguments, while scholars sort out the mixed evidence for and against the various claims (although more scholars hold to the skeptical view, of limited effects in specific circumstances). PERCEPTIONS MATTER

While scholars debate under which specific circumstances the media may exert particular influences, leaders believe that the media aflect foreign policy and act accordingly to try to influence media coverage of international affairs. Whether or not the media affect the content or conduct of foreign policy, they can affect the image and perception of foreign policy. Governments, NGOs, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and corporations believe that media coverage of international affairs matters, and thus devote significant resources to media management strategies. Why? With global media, images spread far and quickly, and perceptions matter. Sixty percent of the world’s countries are now ruled by democratic governments, meaning that perceptions of the ruling regime’s efficacy can now influence whether the rulers will remain in office. More of the world’s economies are now marketoriented, capitalist systems than ever before. This means that private investors and individual consumers decide where to put their money, and their perceptions of international affairs affect those investment

244

Maryann Cusimuno Love

decisions. As the Asian financial flu has shown since 1997, investors may pull their monies out of sound and weak economies alike, if they perceive their investments to be at risk. Advances in information and communications technologies allow the media to broadcast information instantly around the globe. Thus images can be passed to a wide audience quickly and cheaply. As democracy has spread around the globe, greater freedom of the press has spread also, while government ownership and censorship of the media declines. The spread of capitalism also brings more private ownership of the media. Together these trends -of more open societies, economies, and technologies-mean that governments no longer have a monopoly on information about foreign policy, while media images move quickly and globally. Even nondemocratic states are now more concerned about international perceptions and are more vulnerable to Western media reports, given the increased importance of international investors in a globalized economy and the fluidity of global financial markets, which allow investors to easily pull their capital out of a country. Thus, while Chinese leaders may not be interested in their own public’s opinions, they are interested in courting foreign investors, and thus are more attentive to Western media reports and public relations than they were when their economy was not linked to the global economy. Besides economic investing, military policy can be affected by media-generated perceptions. For example, the media proclaimed the Patriot missile defense system a success in the Persian Gulf lending momentum to the push in Congress to spend more money on missile defense systems and to scuttle the ABM treaty?l The fact is that not a single attacking Iraqi Scud missile was intercepted by the Patriot system**-but the media perception still stands. As Lieutenant General William Odom noted, A key debate emerging from the Gulf War [and in the military generally] is the familiar one over the possibility of “victory through air power” alone. . . . The image of the war conveyed by the media has left this [pro-air power/pro-surgical bombing] impression in the public mind, but appearances do not square with realities . . . the number of tanks, artillery, and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed as the war progressed from the air phase to the


245

land-air phase in Kuwait . . . were not very high until the ground component of the war began . . . clearly ground forces destroyed the majority . . . the issues are complex, and the television images from the war can be mi~leading.2~ MEDIA COVERAGE OF FOREIGN POLICY

Leaders believe media coverage matters and act accordingly. But how does the media cover foreign affairs? There are nearly two hundred countries in the world. Each day events occur in all countries that affect their relations with other states and nonstate actors, and vice versa. Clearly, limitations on broadcast time and print space mean that not all events that happen internationally each day receive media coverage. Despite its motto, the New York Emes does not publish “all the news that’s fit to print,” but rather, all the news that fits. How do reporters and media organizations select which events receive coverage and construct “stories” from the barrage of data, and how do these decisions, patterns, or “biases” of media coverage affect foreign policy? Two parameters influence media coverage of foreign policy. One is that reporters are professionals. What and how they report on foreign policy is influenced by their professional training and the “industry standard” practices of their peers. We never see all the news on foreign affairs.We see all that reporters believe is newsworthy, based on their judgments as influenced by what they were taught in journalism school or learned from their peers (as well as by their cultural and personal knowledge base). The second parameter is that media organizations are businesses. They do not exist to discover and disseminate “truths”; they exist to turn a profit. If news organizations cannot earn enough money by selling their product and selling advertising space to sponsors, they close their doors. Therefore news coverage is influenced by what editors believe will sell, by what reporters believe their readers and viewers want to know, and even by what the owners of media organizations believe should and should not be broadcast. Reporters learn basic definitions of what is news in journalism school. One popular definition contends that news events impact many people or prominent people, the events are proximate to the broadcast

246


area, bizarre, timely (especially occurring within the last news cycle), or at least are currently being talked about. Reporters learn to follow the inverted pyramid concept that the “leads” or beginnings of their stories should contain answers to the basic questions of “who, what, when, and where?’ The “why and how” information, as well as further elaboration of a story, follow, and may be cut due to space constraints. Since reporters do not know how much space or broadcast time their editors will grant them, following this basic formula allows a standard way to construct news stories and makes editing easier (as the most vital information will be in the first sentences). Given these standard practices, how do reporters tend to cover foreign affairs? Who is covered? Government sources top press coverage. Heads of state are covered automatically, with the U.S. president receiving round-the-clock coverage by the U.S . media. The French media tend to cover the heads of major parties, whereas the U.S. media tend to focus coverage on the “Golden Triangle,” sources from the White House, Pentagon, and State De~artment.2~ Each country covers the activities of government officials in its own state, neighboring states, and states of key allies or adversaries. Former imperial states cover events in their former colonies, and vice versa. In developed countries, the activities and statements by the heads of the richest G-8 countries receive more media coverage than events in poorer and less powerful states. Following heads of states, most coverage goes to other government officials and known actors, including former government officials and the heads of the United Nations and other important IGOs, to whom reporters have the easiest access. Herbert Cans, in his studies of who gets media coverage, found stories about “known” actors such as government officials to outnumber stories about “unknown” people 4 to 1F5 People not in government or powerful positions, poor people, women, and nonwhites tend not to be covered. People in poor countries generally only receive coverage in the media of rich countries when there is war, famine, or disaster to report in their states. In practice these trends also translate to gender and racial biases. Nine out of ten experts quoted on ABC,NBC,and CBS are men. Nine out of ten experts quoted are also white. More than twothirds of experts quoted are “baby boomers,” although the 1945-1960 generation makes up less than one-third of the U.S. population?6 Only


241

17% of news stories feature women at all, while women make up the majority of the world’s population. The stories that do cover women are more likely to be arts and entertainment or celebrity news features; women rarely appear as news subjects in stories on politics (12%), international crises (11%), or national defense (6%)?7 What gets covered? In general, the media cover what they think their audiences will be interested in and buy. The media cover dramatic actions. War, conflict, disasters, and things that go boom receive media coverage, the foreign policy equivalents of car chases and Arnold Schwarzenegger films. Not all wars or terrorist actions are covered due to space and broadcast time limitations, creating a dynamic in which conflicts and terrorist attacks compete against each other for coverage. In the U.S., conflicts that involve U.S. troop deployments, key allies, or neighbors receive more coverage than conflicts in poor and distant countries (especially African states). Terrorist actions that affect U.S. citizens receive steady coverage. Middle Eastern terrorism is more likely to be covered than other terrorist acts.28Colombia, Greece, and India have the highest numbers of terrorist incidents (in 1999, over 100 incidents per country), far more than the Middle East, but terrorism in those three countries receives little c0verage.2~Because most conflicts since the end of the Cold War have been civil wars, and since most poor countries receive little media attention except when there is conflict or disaster, the media presents a false impression that all poor countries are marked by unending war and natural disasters. Peace and reconciliation are underreported in the media. Unexpected events and events that provide dramatic pictures receive media coverage, whereas expected events that do not lend themselves to photos do not get covered (which is why we don’t read headlines such as “International Law Is Obeyed”). Western media show pictures of volcanic explosions in Sicily and of children with their limbs hacked off in Sierra Leone, but do not show pictures of advancements against AIDS in Brazil, or of improvements in the Italian legal system. This leads to an underreporting of “good news” in international affairs, and a persistent media bias toward cynicism. Events that reporters have access to cover, that can be simplified to clear “good guy versus bad guy” story lines, and that affect the

248


media outlet’s target audience receive top billing.3O This can lead to nationalism and ethnocentrism in news reporting. As Associated Press reporter Mort Rosenblum explains, “The closer news is to home, the greater its import. A British press lord once tacked up a memo in his Fleet Street newsroom: ‘One Englishman is a story. Ten Frenchmen is a story. One hundred Germans is a story. And nothing ever happens in Chile.’ The old Brooklyn Eagle had it: ‘A dogfight in Brooklyn is bigger than a revolution in China.”’31Globalization has changed some of these trends; China and Chile receive more news coverage than earlier this century, now that they are key Western trading partners. But the underlying dynamic would remain true if you were to substitute an African state in the statement. For example, when the U.S. embassy complexes in East Africa were bombed in August 1998, U.S. media coverage focused more on the 12 dead U.S. citizens than the 289 African fatalities and over 5,000 African casualties from the explosions. Primarily, the media cover what is easy to cover and what they have always covered, which leads to a status quo bias in media coverage, and a repeat of similar stories. This is very economical and conservative, the argument being that if the public bought these news products before, they will buy them again. However, it can lead to familiar scripts that present distorted images of the world. For example, when the U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed on April 19, 1995, the media immediately reported that Middle Eastern terrorists were likely to blame. CBS featured a terrorism “expert” who speculated that the bombing bore all the earmarks of Middle Eastern terrorism. The New York Emes, hypothesizing about why terrorists would have struck in Oklahoma City, noted that the city is home to three mosques?2 The bombers turned out to be entirely homegrown. Timothy McVeigh was U.S. born and bred, and had served in the U.S. military. Distorted press coverage concerning the Middle East and Muslims can add friction to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. For example, after the September 11,2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., media coverage focused on “Islamic fundamentalists” as the culprits. However, fundamentalist Muslims, like fundamentalist Christians or Orthodox Jews, hold to a more conservative or literal interpretation of their faith. They do not drink alcohol


249

or behave promiscuously, and they do not endorse violence. In contrast, many of the men who conducted the attacks frequented strip bars. They may cite religious reasons for combating the U.S. (U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia defile Islamic holy lands), but the media is incorrect in categorizing the terrorists as fundamentalists; they are radicals or extremists. What may seem like a semantic point to Western ears is an important distinction elsewhere in the world. Many Middle Eastern and Muslim states are important Western allies (Egypt), or control strategic oil reserves (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait), and Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world. Overplayed and flawed, but familiar, media scripts can make media innovation difficult and can strain diplomacy. With regard to the “when” question, the increasing speed and number of global media outlets, including the Internet, means that reporters face a shrinking time horizon for coverage of foreign affairs. Reporters have always reported on events they could cover by their deadlines. Generally, stories tend to focus on events that happened within the last news cycle (since the last broadcast, or the last newspaper or magazine edition). But the Internet and CNN are further shrinking the news from the typical 24-hour news cycle, giving reporters even shorter deadlines. This leads to an underreporting of long-term trends, events that happen gradually, and a lack of historical perspective in foreign policy news stories, such as immigration trends or global warming. Current anniversaries of past historical events are one way reporters compensate for the media’s bias toward the present tense. Where do the media cover? Concerns for keeping costs down have led to more stories’ being filed from the capital cities, which thus intensifies the focus on heads of government and stories featuring government sources, decreasing reporting from other areas. For example, most reporters filing stories on the conflict in Northern Ireland are based in London, a fact that may affect the way they cover the story and their access to information. The Irish Times has one reporter charged with covering all of North America. He is based in Washington, D.C., which affects his coverage of events outside of Washington, especially in Mexico and Canada. Generally, the “where” in foreign affairs coverage is affected by where

250


reporters can access, which increasingly means where their editors and bosses will allow them to go, based on how much it will cost. Cost consciousness has led to a decrease in the number of foreignbased reporters, an increase in reliance on wire service reports, and an increase in “parachute journalism,” stories filed by reporters flown in to cover a particular story, who may have little feel for, knowledge of, or contacts in a country.33This leads to more stories written in hotel compounds frequented by other reporters, or based on conversations with cab drivers or other reporters, on people who can speak English, rather than stories benefiting from a reporter’s more in-depth knowledge of a place and its language. The media are also constrained by where it is safe for them to operate, and where governments will allow outside reporters. Coverage of events in Sudan has suffered for these reasons. The “why” and “how” questions are the most difficult ones for the media to answer, and require the most expertise, knowledge, experience, and time to construct. Reporters’ time is in especially short supply in the Internet age. For these reasons, and reasons of cost and space, they are the most frequently cut components of news coverage?4 Why and how may also be given less emphasis because of reporters’ fears that answering these questions borders on offering their own opinions and analysis, rather than merely describing empirical data. Answering the how and why questions is harder to do, and the media usually focus on covering what’s easy. So why and how perspective stories are generally done in feature stories or news series, but are often cut from the regular news stories, significantly watered down, or reduced to familiar, but flawed, scripts. For example, explaining why and how genocide broke out in Rwanda in April 1994 required an explanation of the political, economic, and historical distinctions between the Tutsi and Hutu groups, the dynamics of “divide and conquer” practiced during French colonization, and the ramifications of those divisions in Rwandan society today. Instead, most why and how explanation was omitted from media coverage of the dramatic bloodletting. When U.S. media outlets did offer an explanation it was an erroneous, ethnic script. “‘Pure tribal enmity’ (4/18/94) was Erne magazine’s explanation for the ‘tribal carnage’ (4/25/94).”35This explanation was false (the divisions between Hutus and Tutsis are not


25 1

tribal or ethnic in nature). The media have erroneously applied the same flawed script to describe conflict in Bosnia and Somalia. Yet even in countries where conflict correlates to ethnic or racial identities, those identities are constructed and manipulated by leaders to bring about conflict. Past civil conflict does not make future violence inevitable?6 Especially in coverage of foreign policy, which by its very nature is often less familiar to audiences, cutting the why and how questions damages the public’s ability to glean meaning from the rush of daily description. Perspective and context for the dizzying list of daily actions is often lost, leaving the public not only wondering why certain foreign policy actions were taken, but also why the story is important, and why they should care. This can lead to a vicious circle in U.S.reporting on foreign policy. Poor or spotty media coverage of foreign policy, which focuses on the same “bad news” stories and presents the world as a hostile and hopeless place, may make the public less likely to tune in to foreign news reporting. Did the news stories cause the public apathy, or is public apathy the reason why many editors and media owners are unwilling to devote greater resources to media coverage of foreign policy? This “which came first: the chicken or the egg” question vexes citizens and journalists interested in understanding and improving media coverage of foreign affairs. WHO MANIPULATES WHOM? STRATEGIES TO MANAGE MEDIA COVERAGE AND SELL FOREIGN POLICY

Feeling that media images matter, and knowing how the media typically cover foreign policy, governments, NGOs, IGOs, and corporate leaders try to influence media coverage of international affairs to sell their foreign policy preferences. The media, in turn, try to use government, NGO, IGO, and corporate news briefings and press releases for their own purposes: to produce and sell their product. Picture blank newspaper pages, or empty broadcast time, with each party jockeying over how to fill that space. While often presented as conflictual, the relationship between the media and governments, NGOs, IGOs, and corporations is also symbiotic. The media could not exist without information. The more media budgets are cut and owners scrutinize the

252


bottom line, the more the media rely on actors’ press releases and briefings for their stories. Governments, NGOs, IGOs, and corporations need to disseminate information in order to generate support for their activities. Governments, NGOs, IGOs, and corporations provide information to the media, but try to do so in a way that privileges their interests and sells their foreign policy viewpoints.Who prevails in this tug of war for releasing and shaping information varies by situation and issue. In general, for any topic over which one party has a monopoly or can control the information flow, that party will have the advantage in how information is released or presented to the public. For any situation in which the media has independent access to information or can easily and cheaply access reliable information from many separate sources, the media will have greater choice and control over what, when, and how information is presented. For example, the U.S. government exhibited great skill in shaping media coverage during the Gulf War. It used several means to do so. Reporters were restricted to the pool system. The government chose which reporters and news organizations had any access to battlefield coverage. The government escorted the media to sites of the government’s choosing, and even then the media had to submit their reports to government censorship. Most of the media spent most of the Gulf War in hotel rooms in Dharhan, Saudi Arabia, reporting on government press briefings, and rebroadcasting the Pentagon’s footage of perfect bombing runs and surgical air strikes. The media had little independent ability to confirm or deny these rosy pictures and reports, and no ability to track down stories that the government did not want shown, such as stories about Iraqi and civilian casualties, missed bombs, or failures to strike Saddam Hussein. Not surprisingly, the media complained loudly about the pool system restrictions. Yet the major media organizations all volunteered to abide by these restrictions. Why? Because from a media organization’s viewpoint, the only thing worse than restricted access to an important story is no access at all. The media feared that if they did not voluntarily agree to the restricted access of the pool system, the government would shut them out of the news flow entirely, as the Reagan and Bush administrations did in Grenada and Panama. The media also agreed to the pool system in the Gulf War


253

because they had been led to believe they would have greater autonomy and access to information than actually turned out to be the case. Objections to the Bush administration’s use of the pool system to deny reporters access during the key first three days of the U.S. invasion of Panama had been met with a series of negotiations between the media and the Pentagon. The media said they had been given assurances of reforms to the system that did not materialize in the Gulf War. Pentagon officials argued that in wartime national security concerns lead them to release information as they believe it advisable. They believed they offered a great deal of information and access to the media, and that security concerns overrode any public right to know information other than what the government chose to release. Reporters who chose not to abide by the pool system risked arrest by the U.S. military, or the Saudi or Iraqi government. Clearly, this was an example in which the U.S. government controlled the battle space and therefore could control the information flowing from that space. If the media wanted to cover the story cheaply and reliably, they had to play by the U.S. government’s rules. Since war sells, market dynamics made the media vulnerable to elite manipulations and framing of the story. In contrast, when the media is in place before conflict breaks out, they are less dependent on the government for access to the story. Also, when elite opinion is divided, the media will cover the conflict among officials, limiting the government’s ability to manage the news.37For example, the conflict in Vietnam broke out in successive stages over decades. Reporters were in Vietnam before U.S. troops were. Since the battle space was broad, changing, never sealed off or controlled by only one party; because the conflict was never officially declared a war and occurred over a longer time span; and because U.S . government officials were themselves divided over the war, the government was not able to manage media reports, as it was during the Gulf War. In wartime governments have greater control over information if the conflict is confined in time and space, if one side controls the battle space, and if official debate is limited. Then independent access to the battlefield may be too expensive or risky, or simply unavailable to the media, and they may therefore have to content

254


themselves with weaving their news products from unified official press briefings and government-supplied film footage. When the conflict takes place over time or in a wide swath of space over which no one side has total control, and when official opinion is divided, the media are more able to present information that differs from government reports. As the ease and cheapness of accessing information on a story independent of government briefings increase, governments will have less ability to control the flow of information. Thus, generally, during peacetime, government news briefings face greater competition from information from other sources. Similarly, democratic governments face more competition in shaping the news on foreign policy than nondemocratic governments. The media are generally state owned or state controlled in nondemocratic states, and even private media from democratic states may have dificulty garnering information to verify or contrast nondemocratic governments’ releases of information. For example, in democracies, the media have access to at least the opposition party’s critique of any government foreign policy or economic report. The media may often have easy access to several critical voices and sources of alternative information on events. But when autocratic China reports a healthy 7% economic growth rate, who can the media consult to check this story? It can be dangerous, expensive, or impossible to contact opposition sources of information within China. The media may raise skepticism about the government figures by noting that economic growth has been stagnant or declining over the last decade in neighboring Japan and Russia, and that the rest of Asia has experienced difficult economic circumstances since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. But the Chinese government figures could be true, as China has a vast and growing domestic market and increasing rates of foreign direct investment into China, which could be buoying the Chinese economy whilst all around them stumble. It is more difficult for reporters to access information challenging the Chinese government’s economic forecasting than it is for them to compare and contrast the economic figures released by open, democratic states. There are two exceptions to this generalization concerning the media in democracies. One is that emerging democracies fall in between this continuum of more and less government control. Emerg-


255

ing democracies with longer traditions of independent media and with media with greater access to financial backing have stronger media outlets less subject to government control (Poland, Hungary), than transition states with no history of independent media and where the media have less-secure financial standing (Russia). The second exception is reporting on terrorist incidents. The laws in democratic states vary widely over how much the media are censored in their coverage of terrorist incidents. Britain has very strong censorship laws that severely limit the media’s coverage of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Until the Good Friday Peace Accords mellowed the conflict, British media were not allowed to broadcast the voices of Irish Republican Army leaders or even the leaders of the political party Sinn Fein, affiliated with the IRA. Viewers of U.S. media broadcasts could listen to the voice of Gerry Adams, while British viewers listened to the voices of actors or media anchors, giving voice-overs to the words of the Sinn Fein leader. In some countries, such as Japan and Israel, self-censorship and cultural and market considerations may constrain media coverage of terrorist acts more than legal restrictions. Governments are not the only actors trying to influence media coverage of foreign policy. NGOs, IGOs, and corporations also devote considerable time, money, and attention to media management strategies. Just as governments in certain wartime situations may have a greater ability to control the flow of information from the battle space, there are rare situations in which NGOs, IGOs, or corporations may be able to control the information space. For example, on February 16,1995, the British government approved Shell Oil’s plans to dump the Brent Spar floating oil storage platform in the North Sea. The plan was greeted with opposition from neighboring states and environmental groups, including the environmental NGO Greenpeace. Their members boarded the Brent Spar platform, and organized an all-out media campaign against Shell and the dumping of the Brent Spar platform. Shell responded in the courts, trying to obtain a legal injunction against the group for trespassing. Greenpeace used sophisticated satellite-to-digital video feeds to provide the media with pictures of their story. In addition, “independent journalists covering the incident at sea were ‘forced’ to report from the

256


Greenpeace ship, as it was the only available point of access. Shell never offered to supply journalists with either ships or aircraft.”38 Opposition to Shell and Britain’s plan grew throughout Europe, and Shell products were boycotted. Shell and Britain abandoned the plan to dump the Brent Spar at sea, and neighboring countries enacted a ban on sea disposal of decommissioned oil installations throughout the North Atlantic and the North Sea. In this incident Greenpeace had considerable control over the broadcast space (in part because Shell did not pursue an effective media strategy) and was able to prevail to change foreign policy. NGOs often rely on attracting media coverage to help in their private fund-raising efforts, as well as in their struggle to mobilize government res0urces.3~In practice, media access may be difficult for NGOs to leverage into influence because the NGO community is diverse and pluralistic; since there is often no NGO “consensus” on an issue, the media finds diverging viewpoints and information within the NGO community. Of course, the same may be true of government, IGO, or corporate viewpoints, depending on the issue. Since the media cover conflict, internecine disputes are likely to attract media attention, thus fracturing an actor’s ability to bring attention to its cause. Corporate control of media outlets has led many to question whether media reporting on foreign affairs can be unbiased, or whether corporate interests will always shape media coverage of foreign policy, due to the bottom-line business concerns for media outlets to sell their products. This concern is nothing new. In the early days of television news, Camel cigarettes sponsored the CBS evening news. Edward R. Murrow had to have a Camel cigarette burning at all times during the news broadcast, and intersperse coverage of the Korean War with announcements that Camel was supporting U.S. troops abroad by giving them cartons of free cigarettes (the broadcasts never noted that these “contributions” were creating lifetime customers by addicting soldiers to nicotine). Reporters had to ask permission of the tobacco company for showing film footage of Winston Churchill,who habitually smoked a cigar, not cigarettes.What is new today is the concentration of corporate control in a very few hands, due to mergers and acquisitions. While the advent of new technologies (cable and satellite television, the Internet) appears to have


251

opened up new media venues, in fact many of these various stations and publications are owned by the same companies and carry the same news products. For example, in 1945,80% of American newspapers were independently owned. By 1982,50 corporations owned almost all of the major media outlets in the United States, including 1,787 daily newspapers, 11 ,O00 magazines, 9 ,OOO radio stations, 1,OOO television stations, 2,500 book publishers, and seven major movie studios. Today, nine corporations own it alLa How might corporate ownership patterns affect foreign policy coverage, and influence foreign policy? Corporate concern for profits has cut the number of foreign correspondents, and made news organizations rely more heavily on news services and stringers. This creates more repetition of fewer views. All the major U.S. television networks are owned by multinational corporations that benefit from globalization and institutions such as the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and other free trade regimes. Simultaneously,their coverage of globalization has tended to be positive, and coverage of antiglobalization protestors has been negative.4l When two out of the three networks (NBC and CBS) are owned by major defense contractors, can the media be unbiased in their coverage of national missile defense plans, which would funnel billions of dollars their wayY2Corporations that do not own media outlets can also exert influence, by threatening to pull advertising dollars from programs or news products they find objectionable. While governments try to control the information flow to shape media coverage of foreign policy, and NGOs and IGOs try to tempt the media with attractive stories, corporations can get the media where it counts: in their pocketbooks. In general, governments, NGOs, IGOs, and corporations practice similar strategies in trying to control or manage media coverage of foreign affairs. If the actor can control the information space and the media cannot independently access the story or information, the actor can have greater control in shaping the media coverage. If the actor can provide the media with compelling pictures and emotional stories that the media judges will sell news products, the media will be more likely to air the actors’ images. The media are more likely to air the views or information provided by government officials (those in power and key opposition leaders), celebrities, powerful or

258


monied organizations or individuals (generally men), and groups located in the capital city or who make media access easy. If courted, local media may ask less difficult questions and be more likely to run favorable coverage than national media outlets, but local media outlets devote less coverage overall to foreign affairs than to local news. Actors’ abilities to get their message across externally are compromised by divisions internally. If the actor cannot “speak with one voice,” media coverage will focus on the internal conflicts and muddy the external message the actor seeks to project. Timing is crucial. The media have broadcast and print space to fill each day, but only a finite amount. Thus on “slow” news days, actors will have an easier time placing stories with the media than on “heavy” news days (during crises, wars, elections). Actors savvy about and responsive to what the media wants and tends to cover are more successful in using the media to disseminate their views and information. Actors who do not make themselves accessible to the media or do not understand how to make their information “fit” media parameters are more likely to find their views and information on the cutting room floor. Who manipulates whom in coverage of foreign policy in the post-Cold War world? On the one hand, the globalization of the media means that stories travel farther and are rebroadcast more widely than when there were fewer media outlets and more state-controlled media. This makes a more complex target for government media management strategies. Additionally, the greater importance of economic, environmental, and humanitarian foreign policy stories, and the decrease in international wars, means that the issues over which governments have more opportunities for censorship or control (wartime coverage), are not the most salient foreign policy issues today. The rise in nonstate actors offers competing views, information, and foreign policies to government views, information, and foreign policy. These trends may undermine states’ ability to influence media coverage of foreign policy. On the other hand, even in military affairs, the change from the larger draft army of the World War 11, Korea, and Vietnam eras to today’s smaller, all-volunteer U.S. force means fewer U.S. reporters have military experience than in previous decades. The same is true


259

internationally, as an era of downsized militaries and democratic peace means fewer reporters with military experience. Reporters with less military experience may have less ability to critique government information on military affairs, and may thus be more subject to government manipulation. Some of the strongest critics during the Gulf War were reporters with military experience, whereas in some cases the most malleable reporters were those without it. Ironically, due to global market dynamics, more media outlets does not mean more news, and fewer state-controlled media means more market-controlled media. More centralized media ownership patterns, fewer foreign reporters, more reliance on pooled news service reports, and an overall smaller news “hole” (meaning more time for entertainment, sports, lifestyle, business coverage, and advertising), may translate into greater media reliance on press releases, and more opportunities for savvy actors to influence media coverage of foreign policy. Actors attempt to use the media to sell their foreign policies, while the media attempt to use foreign policy to sell their products. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How does media coverage affect international politics? Summarize the positive, negative, and skeptical views. Which do you agree with and why? 2. Who, what, and where tends to receive the most coverage in the international news media? Who, what, and where tends to receive the least coverage? How does this affect the public’s perception of global politics? 3. Why are the “why” and “how” dimensions often left out of news stories? What effects do these oversights have? 4. When do policy actors have more control over what is reported? When does the media have more control? 5 . The news media have been criticized for broadcasting tapes from a1 Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Should such broadcasts be allowed or should the U.S. media have restrictions similar to the British media?

260


6. How might corporate ownership patterns affect foreign policy coverage, and influence foreign policy? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Bagdikian, Benjamin H., The Media Monopoly, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). Giddens, Anthony, Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives (New York: Routledge, 2000). Leeden, Michael A., “Secrets,” in The Media and Foreign Policy, Simon Serfaty, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991). Neuman, Johanna, Lights, Camera, War: Is Media Technology Driving International Politics? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). Rosenblum, Mort, Who Stole the News? Why We Can’t Keep Up with What Happens in the World, and What We Can Do about It (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993). Strobel, Warren, Lute Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Influence on Peace Operations (Washington, D.C.: The United States Institute of Peace, 1997).

NOTES 1. Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives (New York: Routledge, 2000), 32-33. 2. Walter B. Wristen, “Bits, Bytes, and Diplomacy,” Foreign Agairs (September/October 1997): 175-76. 3. Michael Brown, Sean Lynn Jones, and Steve Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, Mass .: MIT Press, 1996). 4. Benjamin Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1992). 5. Morley Safer interview, “From Newsreels to Nightly News: A History,” part 4,the History Channel, 1997. 6. Raphael F. Perl, “Terrorism, the Media, and the Government: Perspectives, Trends, and Options for Policy Makers” (Washington, D.C .: Congressional Research Service, October 22, 1997); Michael A. Leeden, “Secrets,” in The Media and Foreign Policy, ed. Simon Serfaty (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 121-23; John P. Wallach, “Leakers, Terrorists,


26 1

Policy Makers, and the Press,” in The Media and Foreign Policy, 81-93; Robert B. Oakley, “Terrorism, Media Coverage, and Government Response,” in The Media and Foreign Policy, 95-107. 7. Larry Minear, Colin Scott, and Thomas Weiss, The News Media, Civil War;and Humanitarian Action (Boulder, Colo .: Lynne Rienner, 1996). 8. Warren Strobel, Late Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Influence on Peace Operations (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1997), 4. 9. Strobel, Lute Breaking Foreign Policy, 4. 10. Robert Karl Manoff, “Testimony on the Russian Media Crisis before the House Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee” (Washington, D.C., March 4, 1999); David Hoffman, “Russian Media Fight to Live,” Washington Post, June 28,2000, A16; Sharon LaFraniere, “Russian Media Fear for Their Independence: Under Putin, Journalists Feel Increasingly Misused, Mistreated,” Washington Post, February 21,2000, A19. 1 1 . John E. Mueller, Wac Presidents, and Public Opinion (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1985), 107; Strobel, Lute Breaking Foreign Policy, 30-37. 12. Jonathan Mermin, Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of U.S. Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era (Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 13. James F. Hoge Jr., “Media Pervasiveness,” Foreign Afairs (July 1994): 141; Strobel, Lute Breaking Foreign Policy, 30. 14. Johanna Neuman, Lights, Camera, War: Is Media Technology Driving International Politics? (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996); Strobel, Late Breaking Foreign Policy; Nik Gowing, “Real Time TV Coverage from War: Does It Make or Break Government Policy?” in Bosnia by Television, ed. James Gow, Richard Paterson, and Alison Preston (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1996), 81-91. 15. Gow, Paterson, and Preston, eds., Bosnia by Television. 16. Strobel, Lute Breaking Foreign Policy; Ted Koppel, “The Global Information Revolution and TV News” (address to the U.S. Institute of Peace, Managing Global Chaos Conference, Washington,D .C.,December 1,1994). 17. Shanto Iyengar and Adam Simon, “News Coverage of the Gulf Crisis and Public Opinion: A Study of Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing,” in Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf Wac ed. W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

262


18. Michael Dobbs, “The Amanpour Factor: How Television Fills the Leadership Vacuum on Bosnia,” Washington Post, July 23,1995, C2. 19. Maryann Cusimano Love, “Operation Restore Hope: The Bush Administration’s Decision to Intervene in Somalia” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, 1995). 20. Serfaty, ed., The Media and Foreign Policy; John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 21. John D. Steinbruner, “Unrealized Promise, Avoidable Trouble,” Brookings Review (Fall 1995): 8-13; Lawrence J. Korb, “Who’s in Charge Here? National Security and the Contract with America,” Brookings Review (Fall 1995): 4-7. 22. Steinbruner, “Unrealized Promise, Avoidable Trouble,” 8-1 3; MacArthur, Second Front. 23. Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, America’s Military Revolution: Strategy and Structure after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1993), 56-57. 24. Timothy E. Cook, “Domesticating a Crisis: Washington Newsbeats and Network News after the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait,” in Taken by Storm. 25. Herbert Gans, Deciding What’s News (New York: Vintage, 1980), 8-10. 26. Andrew Tyndall, Who Speaks for America? Sex, Age and Race on the Network News (Washington, D.C.: 10th Annual Women, Men and Media Study, conducted by ADT Research in conjunction with the Freedom Forum, October 20,1998). 27. George Spears, Kasia Seydegart, and Margaret Gallagher, Who Makes the News? The Global Media Monitoring Project 2000 (London: World Association for Christian Communication, 2000). 28. One study of U.S. media coverage of suspected terrorism in the month before the millennium found a bias toward focusing on foreigninspired terrorism over domestic terrorism. [The study] compared the coverage of three different news stories: 1. The recent arrest of an Algerian man who allegedly tried to smuggle bomb-making materials into the United States. 2. The arrest this month of two suspected militia members accused of plotting to blow up a California propane plant. (Officials say the resulting firestorm could have killed as many as half the people within a five-mile radius of the plant and was intended to spark an uprising against the government.) 3. The arrest on Tuesday of an American Airlines mechanic who was charged with possessing bomb-making material after potential explosives and assault rifles were found in his home. White


263

supremacist and anti-government publications were also found. In the case of the Algerian suspect, a search of Lexis-Nexis and Dow Jones Interactive databases produced 129 (113 print, 16 broadcast) stories on the day of and the day following the announcement of the man’s arrest. Twenty-one stones ran on page one. The California propane plant case search produced 5 1 (5 1 print, 0 broadcast) stories on the day of the arrest and the following day. Only one of the stories ran on page one. Many of the stories ran as news briefs. A similar search of stories related to the American Airlines mechanic produced a total of 10 articles.The New York Zimes ran the story on page 20. The Wmhington Post ran it on page eight. None of the propane plant or American Airlines stories highlighted the alleged perpetrators’ race or religion.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington, D.C., December 29,1999. Similarly, a survey of national media outlets by the Muslim Internet news service iViews.com, found that linkage of Islam and Muslims with terrorism in national news stories increased 51% in December of 1999. 29. The Middle East ranks in the middle or bottom of regions whether measured by number of terrorist attacks, casualties from terrorist attacks, or anti-U.S. terrorist attacks. Department of State, Global Patterns of Terrorism I999 (Washington, D.C., May 2000). 30. Carlin Romano, “The Grisley Truth about Bare Facts,” in Reading the News, ed. Robert Karl Manoff and Michael Schudson (New York: Pantheon, 1986). 31. Mort Rosenblum, Who Stole the News? Why We Can’t Keep Up with What Happens in the World, and What We Can Do about It (New York: Wiley, 1993), 9. 32. Melinda Henneberger, “Muslims Continue to Feel Apprehensive,” N a o York Ewes, April 24, 1995,A9; Mathieu Deflem, “The Globalization of Heartland Terror: The Oklahoma City Bombing” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, Toronto, June 1995). 33. Daniel C. Hallin, “Where? Cartography, Community, and the Cold War,”in Reading the News; Rosenblum, Who Stole the News? 34. James W. Carey, “Why and How? The Dark Continent of American Journalism,” in Reading the News. 35. Jane Hunter, “As Rwanda Bled, Media Sat on Their Hands,” Extra! (July/August 1994). 36. Maryann K. Cusimano, ed. Beyond Sovereignty: Issues for a Global Agenda (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000). 37. W. Lance Bennett, “The News about Foreign Policy,” and John Zaller, “Elite Leadership of Mass Opinion: New Evidence from the Gulf War,” in Taken by Storm.

264


38. Samuel Passow, “Sunk Costs: The Plan to Dump the Brent Spar,” Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government Case Program, Case Number CR1-974369.0, 1997,9. Later disclosures indicate that Greenpeace scientists miscalculated the environmental danger from dumping the Brent Spar, and Shell scientists were closer to the mark in estimating the environmental impact. 39. Minear, Scott, and Weiss, The News Media. 40. Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Eric Barnouw and Todd Gitlin, Conglomerates and the Media (New York: New Press, 1998); Benjamin H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly: With a New Preface on the Internet and Telecommunications Cartels, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon, 2000). 41. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, “Media Distortion of World BanWIMF Protests Starts Early,” April 11,2000. Corporate bias is not the only explanation for proglobalization media coverage. Unity among official sources in favor of globalization policies limits media coverage of opposition viewpoints, since the media tend to cover government sources and intragovernment conflicts. 42. Michelle Ciarrocca, “Holes in the Coverage: What’s Left Out of Reporting on Missile Defense,” Extra! (November/December 2000); Mark Crispin Miller, “Free the Media,” in We the Media: A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy, ed. Don Hazen and Julie Winokur (New York: New Press, 1997).

12 Media Impact Louis Klarevas

T h e mass media serve the American political sector in a significant capacity. So important, in fact, is the role of the news media that they are often referred to as the “fourth estate” of government. This chapter provides an overview of the various ways the news media impact the American political process. In particular, the first part of this chapter reviews the various functions the media play in the policy process. The second part of this chapter then highlights some of the more prominent media effects in the political sector. Because the news media play a variety of roles in the decision-making arena and because they affect the policy deliberations of both the general public and government elites, the “fourth estate” has a notable impact on politics.’ MEDIA FUNCTIONS

The news media play at least seven roles in American politics: providing political and policy information to society; providing raw intelligence to policy makers; conveying public opinion; serving as a forum for debating policy alternatives; serving as a channel of intragovernmental and intergovernmental communication; checking government in a watchdog capacity; and being used as a pawn or scapegoat in political showdowns. 265

266

Louis Klarevas

Providing News

One of the three major television networks in the United States claims that more Americans get their news from it than from any other source. While it is unlikely that this network is the leading source of news, what is not debatable is the fact that most Americans get their political and policy-related information from the news media. For years, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (formerly known as the Times-Mirror Center for the People and the Press) has been conducting biannual Media Consumption Surveys. These surveys are regular checks on how the public uses and perceives the news media. What the Pew Center has found is that most Americans get their news from television sources. In fact, 75% of those surveyed indicated that they watch television news programs regularly. By comparison, 63% read daily newspapers regularly and only 46% listen to the news on the radio regularly. Another important finding of the Pew survey is that Americans are more likely to turn to local television news programs for news on a regular basis than any other medium. This correlates with a closer following of local news than either national or international news. One important change in recent years is that more Americans turn to online sources for their news, with 61% of the respondents surfing the net for news at least once a week-a twofold increase since 1995, when the question was initially asked. Still, in a crunch involving a major, breaking, political news story, two-thirds indicated that they would turn to television for information-with 22% of all respondents specifically identifying CNN as their preference for late-breaking political news? As the Pew survey shows, in the past decade, these trends have begun to change thanks to the advent of cable television and the Internet. Increasingly, Americans are turning to 24-hour cable news networks and the Internet for news. At present, there are five cable news channels broadcasting around the clock in the United state^.^ Every major American news outlet now also maintains a website that provides the latest news (and in some cases video streams to accompany news text).

Media Impact

267

A quarter century ago, the only way to get regular, up-to-theminute news updates was to listen to news radio stations. Otherwise, Americans got regular news updates only three times a day: in the morning when the newspapers were delivered, in the early evening when local and national television network news programs were broadcast, and in the late evening when the local television stations broadcast an update of their early evening stories. Today, the news wires post their stories on the Internet at roughly the same time they are sent to subscribing news media outlets. Most major news websites are updated at least once every 30 minutes (some even update them once every ten minutes). In other words, Americans who “surf the web” are able to monitor news stories as they are breaking. Moreover, given their extensive networks of coverage and their satellite links, 24-hour news channels are able to report a news story from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world within an hour of its development-usually with televised images accompanying the reporting. Perhaps the most interesting consequence of these technological changes is that Americans who “surf the web” or watch cable news channels often learn of political news before even relevant policy makers learn of it. Regardless, in the 21st century, not only does the news media continue to be the largest source of information for the American public and society at large, but the extent of news available to Americans is now larger than ever: both in terms of news topics and news sources. Providing Raw Intelligence

When we speak of raw intelligence, we often assume that it is gathered and disseminated to policy makers by government intelligence agencies. Part of this assumption stems from another assumption: the intelligence community’s reach is unlimited due to technological innovations , particularly in communication and satellite technology. Often, however, some of the most important raw information comes from the news media. This is because journalists are at times in places that government representatives ,including members

268

Louis Klarevas

of the intelligence community, are unable to access. Three examples from the post-Cold War era should help illustrate the point. One of the clearest examples comes from early in the Clinton administration. On June 26, 1993, President Clinton ordered a missile strike against Iraq for its alleged involvement in a conspiracy to kill former president George H. W. Bush while he was visiting Kuwait. The president was scheduled to address the nation on the use of force that evening at 7:OO p.m. and needed to know the results of the attacks so that he could report them to the country. The president and his closest advisers sat in the White House, unable to get confirmation on whether the strikes had been successful. Despite a frustrated Clinton's demanding a report from intelligence sources, highlevel policy advisers were unable to confirm the outcome. As George Stephanopoulos observes, at the last minute, the news media stepped up and filled the role: Although our intelligence sources wouldn't confirm the attack, the news was starting to break all around the world. CNN went live from Baghdad. . . . In a case study of preemptive punditry, CNN's Capital Gang assessed the political impact of Clinton's military strike before we even knew where the missiles had landed. But that was somehow appropriate, because CNN served as the president's intelligence agency that night: David Gergen got word from CNN's president, Tom Johnson, that several missiles had hit the target. . . . The president delivered his speech, and his first military attack was a qualified success."

In the spring of 1994, extremist Hutu citizens of Rwanda engaged in organized genocidal massacres. In six weeks, approximately SO0,OOO Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in the Great Lakes region of Africa. While American intelligence agencies were certainly aware of what was occurring in Rwanda, a good deal of information was disseminated back to the United States by reporters and stringers in Africa (many of whom were there covering the South African elections)? In fact, as a result of their ability to broadcast televised images via satellite back to the United States, American policy makers at the highest levels were able to get a visual understanding of exactly how widespread and horrific the civil strife was?

Media Impact

269

Most recently, the United States has been plagued by the AlQaeda terrorist network, which is led by Osama bin Laden. Since launching a war on terrorism in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American armed forces have been engaged in a manhunt for bin Laden. With the U.S. military chasing him from cave to cave in Afghanistan, some of the best intelligence on bin Laden (including his whereabouts and his role in the September 1 1 attacks) has come from media clips aired by the Arabic television station AlJa~eera.~ In the past decade, government officials have come to the realization that global news networks like CNN are an important resource for up-to-the-minute information. As a result, crisis centers like the Army’s Operations Center in the Pentagon usually keep at least one television tuned in to CNN at all times. As one former chief of the “Ops Center” put it: This is one of the few places in the Army where people watch television as part of their duties. CNN does get its information sometimes before we do. . . . We get a lot of information from our own intelligence assets . . . but we don’t get the same feel for what’s going on as we do when we listen to [CNN correspondent] Christiane Amanpour or somebody like that. That helps us predict what our next requirement will be?

In fact, the intelligence community has established its own global television network to broadcast top-secret intelligence updates to various military facilities. As one high-ranking Pentagon official urged, “We’ve got to do to intelligence what CNN has done to news.”9The stimulus for the Defense Intelligence Network (DIN) is that “U.S. intelligence agencies have been finding their printed reports going unread by policymakers who have already watched events unfold on CNN.” Therefore, in addition to improving the quality and dissemination of intelligence, the DIN has the objective of “sometimes even scooping CNN.”’O As all of these examples show, in difficult times and in complex conditions, the news media is one of the government’s best sources of raw intelligence.

270

Louis Klarevas

Reflecting Public Opinion

Measuring and expressing public opinion is another important political function of the news media. In a democracy, public opinion serves a variety of important functions. Traditionally, the news media have been at the forefront of measuring and reporting the “pulse” of the American people. The most prominent way the news media cover public opinion is through the use of polls. The news media are substantial sponsors of public opinion surveys in the United States. These surveys, which are usually representative samples of American households, provide policy makers with an awareness of the general mood of the country as well as with an understanding of how they might wish to proceed in handling a certain policy matter. Such surveys are also useful in informing members of the mass public of the sentiments of their fellow citizens. Another common, albeit subtle, way that the media convey public sentiments is through regular news stories. A great number of newspaper articles, radio reports, and television news stories draw on the opinions of different people to help frame their narratives. Often, the people quoted are experts on a particular region or issue. Occasionally, though, the news media run “man on the street” reports that reflect the opinions of small, random samples of citizens on certain matters. Public opinion is also expressed through editorials and opiniodcommentary pieces. Every major newspaper has an editorial page that reflects the views of the editorial staff. In addition, both news radio stations and television news channels have commentators who are charged with airing critical opinions on politically relevant topics. Media outlets also solicit the opinions and comments of outside experts. Theoretically, the press is an objective voice that is representative of its respective community. By printing or broadcasting a variety of informed opinions, the media familiarize the public with the intricacies of policy issues while at the same time acquainting politicians with public attitudes and views. The press outlets furthermore provide their respective communities with an added public opinion service: during election periods, newspapers often endorse a particular political candidate that the editors believe will serve the polity best .I2

Media Impact

27 1

The news media also frequently provide forums for public discussions of newsworthy issues. The print media largely do this through their letters to the editor pages and through topic-based chat rooms on their web pages. Radio media usually engage the public in discussion through call-in talk shows. Recently, television news channels have begun drawing on the successes of their print and radio colleagues-creating shows that combine telephone calls, instudio audience participation, and e-mail. A good example of such a multimedia forum is CN”s Talk Back Live. By sponsoring polls, running opinion-based news stories, publishing and broadcasting editorials and commentaries, and providing discussion forums, the news media provide a vital democratic service: measuring and conveying public opinion.

Debating Policy Options Related to reflecting public opinion, the news media provide forums for debating competing policy alternatives. In the print press, policy options are debated in the form of opposing opinion pieces. USA Today’s “Pro” and “Con” pieces, which are positioned across from each other, are good examples of this. In broadcast media, experts and officials are usually invited to discuss their differing viewpoints on radio and television news programs. These news programs have become something of a cottage industry recently in the television news sector. The plethora of shows being produced at present includes oneperson interview shows like Nightline and Hardball, two-person cross-examination programs like Hannity & Colmes and Crossfire, roundtables like the McLaughZin Group and Capital Gang, and Sunday morning news forums like Meet the Press and This Week.I3 By publishing op-eds and appearing on news programs, experts and advocates are able to debate the advantages and disadvantages of rival policy alternatives in hopes that the general public and the politicians that represent them will make informed policy decisions.

Channeling Governmental Communications When time is of the essence, utilizing the news media is the most effective way for key decision makers to communicate with the rest

272

Louis Klarevas

of government. For example, millions of Americans work for the United States government. There is simply no easy way for the leaders of government to address everyone in the bureaucracy directly. Occasionally, however, the need to convey a timely message to government employees arises. The most efficient manner in which to contact the federal workforce is to employ the media as a channel of communication. Such a situation, requiring frequent notification from the leadership in Washington, arose in the winter of 1995-1996 when a showdown between President Clinton and the Congress over the budget resulted in an emergency shutdown of the federal government. The leadership utilized the media to keep government employees informed of their work status on a daily basis. While the leadership could have used other means to communicate with the federal workforce, the media was obviously the most efficient (and effective) means. As a result of recent advances in information and telecommunication technologies, the media have broadened their role from intragovernmental channels of communication to intergovernmental channels. This new process of using the media to send signals and messages indirectly to foreign audiences and governments is known as virtual diplomacy. Traditional diplomacy, which involves the use of official diplomatic channels to transmit messages to foreign governments, is often extremely slow, given the numerous layers of bureaucracy involved. Moreover, in some crises, the leaders of government are not able to communicate directly with foreign leaders because of the absence of formal diplomatic ties. Rather than going through a cumbersome bureaucracy and using third parties to communicate with unrecognized governments, the leadership can make televised statements that, because of satellite technology, will be received by the message targets. As former State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns described: I sometimes read carefully calibrated statements to communicate with those governments with which we have no diplomatic relations-Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea. . . . Given the concentration of journalists in Washington and our position in the world, the U.S. is uniquely situated to use television to our best advantage, with our friends as well as our ad~ersaries.'~

Media Impact

273

The most prominent example of such virtual diplomacy was the use of CNN by George H. W. Bush and Saddam Hussein to communicate with each other during the Gulf War.I5 Given their abilities to reach almost any audience, domestic or foreign, instantaneously, the news media have become one of the most efficient and effective channels of governmental communication in the 21st century. Investigating Government

For a large part of this country’s history, the news media was affiliated with particular political parties. In the 20th century, the media became increasingly independent. However, it was not until the late 1960s that the news media emerged as a serious check on government. With the number of American journalists witnessing events in Vietnam firsthand, it started becoming clear that what was actually occurring in the field was largely different from what government sources back in the United States were describing. The disconnect between the story government officials were portraying and the real story that war correspondents were experiencing marked the rise of investigative journa1ism.l6 In the 1970s, the press publicized two major stories pertaining to the Vietnam War: the My Lai massacre and the Pentagon Papers.” Both stories exposed a side of the war to the American people that had, until then, been largely undisclosed. It was also in the 1970s that arguably the most notable case of investigative journalism occurred. Two metro reporters for the Washington Post aggressively pursued the background to what seemed at the time like a low-level break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex. What the two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, uncovered was a scandal of corruption and deception that reached to the highest level of government: President Nixon.” Because of investigative reporting of these incidents, illegal abuses of authority were publicized. This led to some of the most significant reforms in government in the mid-1970s. In the past quarter century, the media has continued its role as government watchdog, helping uncover such scandals as Iran-Contra,

274

Louis Klarevas

Whitewater, Travelgate, and the Lewinsky affair. Because the media play the important role of holding government accountable to the law and to the public, they are also known as the fourth estate.

Getting Played If one were to ask ajournalist to name the different functions that the media play in the American political system, serving as a pawn and scapegoat in governmental politics might not be offered as an answer. However, the media are undeniably players in the game of politics. Not only are journalists placed in an adversarial role, at times, against government -as the previous section on investigative reporting made clear-the media are also used by politicians for political gain. An obvious example is the strategic dissemination of previously unknown political information. Journalists are quick to run with a leak because it gives them a scoop over their competitors. However, leaks are often selective, allowing politicians either to build support for their particular policy positions or, at least, to undermine competing policy alternatives. Returning to the Pentagon Papers example, these were leaked to the press by officials who had become wary of the Vietnam War. By leaking the documents, they knew they would probably undermine support for the Nixon administration’s policies in Vietnam. Ultimately, this is exactly what happened. The other major way in which journalists are used in politics is as scapegoats. Again, this stems from the often adversarial relationship that exists between government officials and the media. Arguably, one of the masters of shifting the focus of criticism was President Bill Clinton. During the campaign of 1992 as well as during his eight years of rule, President Clinton was continuously under fire from the media for his political and personal actions. On numerous occasions, rather than recognize the criticisms (or at least rebut them), Clinton and his advisers instead tried to “spin” them to his political advantage by laying the blame on a hawkish and biased media. For instance, during his first campaign for the presidency, Clinton was hounded by accusations of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. Through focus groups, the Clinton team discovered that “people quickly came to dislike what the media people were doing

Media Impact

275

to the candidate.” When Clinton-“not backing down a bit’,blamed the media, the public became more favorably responsive to his campaign.I9 The lesson of the 1992 campaign was one that the Clinton team seemed never to forget. By making the media the scapegoat, the Clinton administration was able to shift public perceptions of the president from guilty culprit of poor behavior to innocent victim of a biased media. In other words, by playing the media to its advantage, the Clinton administration was often able to score political gains despite engaging in problematic behaviors. It is exactly because the media is involved in the processes of politics and governance that one of its functions in American society is to be a tool in the game of governmental politics. MEDIA EFFECTS

Generally, when we speak of media effects, the emphasis is on how mass media psychologically influence members of society into perceiving things a certain way. In American society, media effects are most pronounced and most prevalent in consumer-oriented advertising. A classic example is the use of underlying sexual themes to sell products. The ultimate goal is to use subtle media influences to produce a desired behavior or effect. While the mass media play an enormous role in the commercial sector, news outlets also sway the views and actions of the public and the political leadership. In particular, there are four kinds of general media effects that impact, in differing degrees, the American political process: agenda setting, priming, framing, and policy driving. Agenda Setting

Writing in 1963,Bernard Cohen observed that the “press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.’720 The business of reporting involves tough decisions and tradeoffs. On any given day, there are thousands of interesting news stories that can be reported. But most half-hour television news

276

Louis Klarevas

broadcasts-which are usually divided into 21 minutes of news reporting and 9 minutes of commercials-can only cover between 15 and 30 news stories. Choosing which stories get covered has a tremendous impact on what issues and problems concern the public and the political leadership the most. Agenda setting is the effect whereby the news media establish what are the most salient policy matters facing a polity. In particular, there are two types of media agenda effects: indirect public agenda setting and direct policy agenda setting. While both involve influencing the policy agenda, the former does so by first influencing the views of the public at large and then having the public press politicians and policy makers into addressing journalists’ top concerns. The latter refers to those situations in which the media incline leaders to address issues that journalists feel deserve attention. In terms of news media effects, the agenda-setting effect is the most researched and documented.2’ One of the most prominent studies in this area was the examination of media coverage and public priorities conducted by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. The two scholars found a strong correlation between the five issues most reported in news media coverage relating to the 1968 presidential campaign and the five issues considered to be the most important to voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This led the authors to conclude that the media have a strong impact on setting the public agenda?2 Another important finding is that stories appearing in the first segment of television newscasts or on the front page of newspapers (i.e., the most salient issues) are those often considered by the public to be most important.23A sampling of single-issue areas which have made the public’s agenda as a result of intense media coverage include AIDS, global warming, civil rights, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War, drug control, and crime contr01.2~ The media also directly influence the policy agenda. By focusing on certain issues in their news stories, reporters force the government to address those issues as top priorities. Many analysts with public service experience have advanced this argument. Take, for instance, former diplomat and former magazine editor Charles William Maynes, who maintains: “It has become clear to anyone

Media Impact

211

who cares to notice that in Washington the real agenda-setters for foreign policy sit not in the White House but in editorial rooms and press cubicles.” In the past decade, because of the active role of the United States in highly publicized international humanitarian crises, commentators have been quick to credit the media with setting the foreign policy agenda. In the words of Jessica Matthews, “The process by which a particular human tragedy becomes a crisis demanding a response is less the result of a rational weighing of need or what is remediable than it is of what gets on the nightly news s h o w ~ . Or, ”~~ as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft confessed, “We focus on humanitarian crises where the press is. . . . [I]n Sudan, Angola, Burundi, Sierra Leone . . . the press wasn’t at any of those places and therefore there was no pressure to do something.”26 Despite such proclamations, a great deal of research shows that decision makers play a larger role in setting the media’s policy agenda than do the media in setting the decision makers’ policy agendaF7As Steve Livingston and Todd Eachus have asserted, “of the findings of the last 20 years of media and foreign affairs research, the most important . . . is that officials, not media, set and maintain the news agenda.”28Still, there are instances in which and ways that the media influence the policy docket. Reporter Warren Strobel’s detailed account of the press briefing process pertaining to American foreign policy captures this agenda-setting phenomenon: The daily press briefing at the State Department illustrates how the news media for decades have helped set the agenda and force foreign policy decisions. Throughout the morning hours of almost every working day, public affairs representatives . . .develop “press guidance,” approved statements of policy to be used by the spokesperson at the briefing, based on anticipated questions from reporters. These policy statements often are drafted in response to events worldwide. But just as often they are reactions to stories in the morning newspapers or the network newscasts the night before. Thus, agenda and actions are influenced,and sometimes policy is made in the process. . , .The process works in the negative too: if reporters pepper the spokesperson with questions that he or she is not prepared for, that issue rapidly makes it onto the department’s agendaF9

278

Louis Klarevas

This description of the give and take between reporters and policy makers is a great example of how the media can help set the policy agenda. Priming

Related to agenda setting, the media also “prime” the criteria that are to be used in judging and evaluating political leaders’ performances. Again, the relationship is a function of media attention. The more salient an issue is in media news coverage, the more likely that that issue will serve as a chief criterion by which citizens judge their government officials. The idea behind priming is filtering. With regard to political matters -which are often multifaceted and complex- individuals simplify their understandings so that they can make snap judgments. Researchers speculate that people make these judgments by drawing on relevant information that is on top of their minds-usually put there by recent media coverage.30 In a series of experiments, Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder showed different groups of subjects television news stories. The news broadcasts were different, with each one emphasizing -priminga specific issue. Iyengar and Kinder found that the subjects placed significant weight on the issue to which they had been primed in evaluating the performance of the president. For instance, those who had seen news stories that emphasized inflation were most likely to judge the president on how well they felt he was handling the economy. Iyengar and Kinder’s strong findings led them to conclude that media priming plays a vital role in determining the criteria by which the American people judge politicians at any given moment?l Jon Krosnick and his colleagues have also found that the issues most heavily covered by the news media are usually the same issues by which the American public judges the overall performance of the president (measured through opinion surveys in terms of overall approval ratings). Three examples uncovered by Krosnick are particularly illuminating. In 1990,prior to the Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush had an approval rating of around 55%. By 1991, following the heavy and favorable news coverage of the Gulf War, his

Media Impact

219

approval rating had skyrocketed to nearly 90%. Similarly, despite his at one time having such a high approval rating, when media attention shifted to a heavy emphasis on negative economic conditions in the United States prior to the 1992 presidential election, the president’s approval rating fell dramatically -preventing him from being reelected. Finally, Krosnick has shown how once-popular Ronald Reagan fell from an approval rating of approximately 70% to one of approximately 40% following a period of intense media coverage focusing on the negative consequences of the Iran-Contra scandal. All three of these cases document how the media, by focusing on particular issues, prime them in the minds of the American people?2 The public, then, recalls the information on these few salient matters to help it reach judgments regarding leaders. Research into priming effects makes a compelling case that the media have a powerful affect on the political judgments reached by the American people. Framing

Another important effect that, in part, is evident in priming research relates to framing. How the media frames a particular political issue or incident affects the way the public reacts to it. As Robert Entman explains, “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, andor treatment recommendation for the item described.”33Entman points to foreign affairs coverage during the Cold War as an example. Numerous stories on civil wars that were reported by American journalists during the Cold War era were largely couched in terms of communist forces-regardless of whether or not communism was a major force behind the ~trife.3~ Experimental research conducted by Shanto Iyengar has also found strong evidence of framing effects. Iyengar has found that the news media often frame stories in “episodic” or “thematic” terms. The former refers to storytelling in terms of a specific individual event. In other words, not much context or background is reported, just the bare facts, often accompanied by images. The latter involves

280

Louis Klarevas

more abstract or general coverage, often providing some sort of historical or societal b a ~ k g r o u n d ?Shanto ~ Iyengar and Adam Simon argue that episodic coverage dominates television news broadcasts: Given the nature of television news -a twenty-one minute “headline service” operating under powerful commercial dictates-it is to be expected that networks rely extensively on episodic framing to report on public issues. Episodic framing is visually appealing and consists of “on-the-scene” live coverage. Thematic coverage, which requires interpretive analyses, would simply crowd out other news items. In fact, television news coverage of political issues is heavily episodic.36 Iyengar has found that episodic framing tends to be common in stories on war, poverty, and, in particular, ~ r i m e . 3 ~ How a news story is framed directly impacts how the public assigns responsibility for a given political problem. When a story is couched in thematic terms, as is often the case with stories on unemployment, people have a tendency to blame the economy and governmental policies for the problem. When an item is presented in an episodic manner, as is often the case with crime, people usually blame the specific individual(s) involved -rather than societal factors -for the problem. The policy implications are noteworthy: Confronted with news coverage describing particular instances of complex issues, people reason accordingly: poverty and crime are caused not by deep-seated economic conditions, but by dysfunctional behavior. The appropriate remedy for crime is not improved job training programs and economic opportunity, but harsh and unconditional punishment .38 Therefore, just as priming affects the salience of an issue and the criteria by which leaders are judged, framing affects the presentation of a story and the policy response that is advocated. Policy Driving

As discussed so far, the media play a powerful and important role in the American political process. Some commentators have gone so far as to argue that the news media are so powerful that they actu-

Media Impact

28 1

ally drive policy. In the words of Jessica Mathews, “televised events that stir emotions have an unprecedented ability to manipulate policy” in certain situations?9 There seems to be a perception, especially amongst pundits and some policy elites, that news stories -particularly image-based television news stories -often drive the policy process and determine political outcomes, especially in the realm of foreign affairs. Once upon a time, this ability of the press to drive pollicy was called “yellow journalism.” Today, while the idea remains similar, it is more euphemistically referred to as the “CNN effect.” CNN Effect

In 1898, the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer ran series of emotionally charged articles describing the abuse of Cuban people at the hands of the Spanish. Portraying the Spanish as oppressive patrons and the Cubans as heroic victims, the “yellow journalists” were able to muster support among Americans for an interventionist foreign policy. When the U.S.S. Maine, docked in Havana, mysteriously exploded, the cry of the papers became: “Remember the Maine and to hell with Spain!” Sensing the media frenzy, President William McKinley took Hearst up on his advice and asked Congress for a declaration of war. And he got it.40 The “yellow journalism” behind the Spanish-American War is often considered the classic example of the media’s driving policy. No doubt, Hearst came to believe in the omnipotent powers of the press following the Maine incident. As he wrote: The force of the newspaper is the greatest force in civilization. Under republican government, newspapers form and express public opinion. They suggest and control legislation. They declare wars1:

Today, the media are no longer limited to newspapers, but their impact is often thought to be similar-with one major excepti0n.A~ Nik Gowing observes: The lens of a single television camera-the “one eyed man”-has often provided images that leave enduring impressions which no diplomatic

282

Louis Klarevas

cable or military signal can ever convey. The television image frequently speaks where words or government telegrams and reporting do not P2

It is this newfound power of moving images and televised footage that makes the CNN effect the more potent evolution from “yellow journalism.” The modern-day exemplar of such image-based policy driving is President Bush’s decision to intervene militarily in Somalia in 1992. The day after American troops landed in Mogadishu, Somalia, as part of a military operation aimed at securing the delivery of relief supplies to famine-stricken Somalis, George Kennan, one of America’s Cold War “wisemen,” made the following entry in his diary: There can be no question that the reason for this acceptance lies primarily with the exposure of the Somalia situation by the American media, above all, television. The reaction would have been unthinkable without this exposure. The reaction was an emotional one, occasioned by the sight of the suffering of the starving people in questi0n.4~

Others concurred. For instance, the New York Newsday editorial staff wrote: Beware of the power of CNN to drive foreign policy. The stark images of starving children and refugees driven out of their villages by civil war, transmitted day after day by the Cable News Network (and later by other news media that flocked to cover the famine in the Horn of Africa), were among the most potent factors in President Bush’s decision to intervene.&

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer not only blamed the media for policy in Somalia-“We went into Somalia because of pictures”-he also insisted that the decision to threaten air strikes against Serbs in Bosnia “was made on the basis of TV images. What changed American policy was coverage of the massacre at the [Sarajevo] market” on February 5 , 1994.45 If this phenomenon of journalists’ driving policy is truly at work, its implications are powerful. As Kennan further noted in his diary:

Media Impact

283

If American policy, particularly policy involving the uses of our armed forces abroad, is to be controlled by popular emotional impulses, and particularly ones provoked by the commercial television industry, then there is no place-not only for myself, but for what have traditionally been regarded as the responsible deliberative organs of our government, in both the executive and legislative branches!6

Kennan’s comment begs the questions: Does the media drive policy? Is there a CNN effect actually at work in the policy process? The answers are not quite as simple and straightforward as Kennan and others imply. The bottom line is that sometimes the news media drives policy; other times it does not. In the past decade, several scholars have systematically researched the CNN effect-focusing on the case that is supposedly the strongest evidence of such an effect: the 1992 Somalia intervention. Three independent studies all found that claims of a CNN effect in the Somalia case were grossly exaggeratedP7 On the contrary, these scholars find support for the counter-thesis of Jonathan Alter, who, within a week of the arrival of U.S. troops in Somalia, argued: For starters, the intervention in Somalia was not dictated by pictures. The painful images of starving children began to appear several months ago on “60 Minutes,” the cover of Time magazine and elsewhere, but didn’t have much direct effect. These pictures generated sympathy-and some contributions-but no groundswell for military intervention!* Because these data-intense analyses argued that the cameras followed the officials and soldiers, not the other way around, the CNN effect in Somalia has been recently discounted in a~ademia.4~ But before the CNN effect can be rejected, it is important to note that there is a key piece of evidence that these studies cannot effectively dismiss: President Bush himself. The former president is on record as saying that his decision to order a military intervention in late 1992 was driven by televised images of “those starving kids . . . in quest of a little pitiful cup of rice.” In fact, President Bush recalls telling his top Pentagon officials at the time, “I-we-can’t watch this anymore. You’ve got to do something.”50

284

Louis Klarevas

There are other incidents that also advise against dismissing the CNN effect-at least in the area of foreign policy. Somalia 1993 The case of Somalia provides another, less disputable, instance of a major CNN effect. As made famous in the movie Black Hawk Down,on October 3, 1993, American soldiers trying to capture a Somali warlord were caught in an urban gunfight in downtown Mogadishu. The outcome was 18 American servicemen killed and 78 injured. But what seems to be most memorable about this firefight was the footage of the naked corpse of a dead American serviceman being dragged through the street by Somalis. On October 5, dozens of congressmen took to the floor of Congress to protest the continued U.S . military presence in Somalia and to call for an immediate withdrawal. On October 7, just three days after the images had aired on American television, President Clinton met with several congressional leaders. Later that day, he announced that the United States would withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994.51 This case indicates that when a most sensitive national security matter, such as the incursion of fatalities by American soldiers, is broadcast on television, its impact can be somewhat powerful. In this case, television coverage definitely put withdrawal from Somalia on the Clinton administration’s immediate agenda. Arguably more important, however, it led to a significant strategic policy change: a sudden end to the nation-building mission. But what if these images were not caught on film? While there is not enough information to provide a concrete answer to this question, the evidence seems to indicate that casualties incurred by American soldiers are not as influential in setting agendas and altering policies when they are not broadcast. For instance, two months before the October 3 incident, four U.S. soldiers were killed when a bomb destroyed their vehicle. That evening Somalis allegedly displayed a piece of flesh they claimed belonged to one of the dead servicemen. Journalist Michael Maren of the Village Voice videotaped the incident, but his video was never shown in the United States. It is left to one’s imagination as to what would have happened had this tape been shown on American television. Furthermore, on September 25, Somalis shot down a U.S. helicopter,

Media Impact

285

killing three American soldiers and injuring two others seriously. Toronto Star journalist Paul Watson, who was in Mogadishu’s main market later that day, saw what were evidently body parts of the dead soldiers on display. These images were not videotaped and, therefore, like the August carnage, never broadcast in the United States. As a result, it might be argued that the impact of the media in determining policies is significantly more pronounced when their stories are accompanied by graphic images ?* Haiti 1994 On September 19, 1994, United States troops arrived in Haiti as part of a peace operation to oversee the transition of power from the authoritarian military regime of General Raoul CCdras to the democratically elected regime of President JeanBertrand Aristide. Two separate incidents related to this peacebuilding endeavor in Haiti offer insights into how televised images can directly put issues on the agenda and lead to policy adjustments. On September 20, just one day after U.S. troops landed in Haiti, Haitian police were videotaped viciously beating Aristide supporters, killing one person. American soldiers were also captured on film-standing close by, looking on, but doing nothing to stop the beatings. That night, network evening news broadcasts ran the footage. Within 24 hours, the White House announced that U.S. military police officers were being sent to Haiti and that the rules of engagement would be changed so as to allow American soldiers to intervene with authorization from a senior commander, as long as such an intervention did not imperil the safety of U.S. tr00ps.5~ On September 30, paramilitary forces known as attaches attacked crowds of Haitians participating in a pro-democracy march, killing at least eight protestors and injuring several others. Again, footage of this incident was broadcast in the United States. Three days later, on October 3, U.S. forces raided the headquarters of the main attache organization in an arms search and seizure 0peration.5~ What these two examples from Haiti suggest is that-when no clear standard or policy is in place (i.e., when the elements of a policy are in flux)-there is a vacuum that the media can exploit. By televising graphic images that imply a policy change is needed, the media are able to drive such adjustments. In Haiti, this is exactly what happened: tactics changed.

286

Louis Klarevas

Bosnia 1992-1994 As the case of Haiti showed, television newscasts certainly have the power to change elements of policy. The conflict in Bosnia, which waged for several years, offers plenty of such examples as well. The sudden NATO ultimatum to launch air strikes against Serb forces following the mortar attack on the Sarajevo marketplace in February 1994 is an obvious e ~ a m p l e . 5 ~ But the Bosnia case is replete with examples of policy driving media effects-examples that show that the power of the CNN effect is not limited to the United States. For instance, United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) officials and officers of a British regiment in Bosnia have detailed how a story by BBC correspondent Kate Adie on the miserable conditions in a mental hospital in Tarcin, which aired in the fall of 1992, led them “to drop everything” and do something to provide humanitarian assistance to the patients of the hospital. Similarly, on November 15, 1993, senior United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) officers saw a BBC report on the situation in Mostar. The officers were so moved by the images that within a week they led a small team into Mostar “at great risk,” ultimately securing the arrival of a mobile field hospital donated by South Africa to aid the people of M o ~ t a r . ~ ~ UN peacekeepers were, in fact, aware of the power of the camera and exploited it. For example, when Croat forces seized the 400vehicle “Convoy of Joy” near Novi Travnik in the summer of 1993, British UNPROFOR troops trying to secure its release brought along a camera crew, which filmed Croats shooting and torturing convoy personnel. After the images aired, the Croat leadership, embarrassed by the televised events, ordered the convoy relea~ed.5~ One of the most well-known examples of a media-driven policy response occurred in 1993. That summer, the BBC reported on a five-year-old girl named Irma Hadzimuratovic who had been seriously injured by a mortar attack in Sarajevo. What followed was a barrage of phone calls to 10 Downing Street calling on the British government to help Irma. British Prime Minister John Major, who reportedly saw the televised newscasts, immediately responded by organizing a military airlift for Irma and 40 others. Moreover, as a result of the Irma case, many Western governments began offering

Media Impact

287

hospital beds to those injured in Bosnia. In light of the minor policy adjustments brought on by the little girl’s plight, “IRMA” has become an acronym among the British press: Instant Reaction to Media Attention?8 One theme that runs through all of the examples mentioned so far in support of the CNN effect thesis is foreign policy. That is because the CNN effect is most pronounced in foreign affairs. But do CNN effects occur in domestic politics? This is a misleading question because leaders are almost always forced to deal with a domestic crisis, whereas they have the option of not responding to international events. Moreover, it is rare that a major domestic crisis (or its aftermath) is not caught on film. As a result, domestic problems do not lend themselves to the same kind of analysis that foreign crises do. Still, there is evidence that the emphasis of domestic problems through television images does promote policy responses. A prominent example is crime. Shanto Iyengar has shown that crime is one of the most prevalent news stories covered by the television news media. Because local television news programs are Americans’ biggest sources of news, the mass public receives a large dose of crime-related news. Moreover, as most of these stories are framed episodically, they leave most people feeling that crime is a dysfunctional behavior that demands harsher punishments and stronger deterrents against social deviants. The policy driving effect materializes when politicians push such agendas. And there is evidence that they do: The perennial newsworthiness of crime has forced all candidates for elective office-no matter their political leanings- to address this issue. Given the state of public opinion (with large majorities favoring a “tough” approach to crime), it is no coincidence that increasing numbers of public officials advocate the death penalty and stringent law enf0rcement.5~

It is this kind of evidence that permits the conclusion that televised images also drive domestic policy. All of the examples above offer proof that television plays an important role in the policy process. To the extent that there is a

288

Louis Klarevas

CNN effect, the media, particularly the television media: (1) readily drive changes in policy tactics; and (2) on certain occasionsthrough televised images of issues most sensitive and controversial (e.g., troop fatalities) -force changes in overall strategic policy. Reverse CNN Effect

When most analysts speak of the policy driving power of the media, they are referring to the ability of news organizations to force certain political actions. But sometimes media reports have the opposite effect: they cause policy inaction. This phenomenon can be thought of as the reverse CNN effect. To date, there has been little systematic inquiry into this effect. There is, however, some anecdotal evidence to support the existence of the reverse CNN effect. In the early 1990s, American television screens were bombarded with images of Yugoslavia’s violent disintegration. Yet, military engagement to stop the war in the Balkans was looked upon with disfavor by both the public and the political leadership in the United States. Even graphic images of Bosnians held in concentration camps -memorable as they were-only managed at most to get the issue of ethnic cleansing onto the Bush administration’s foreign policy agenda. The images were not powerful enough to dictate a different overall policy. On the contrary, the images often served to support assumptions that ethnic conflict is a way of life in the Balkans-always has been, always will be. Against such a backdrop, intervention on anything short of a massive scale seemed futile. Observations from former Bush administration officials seem to support this argument. According to former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft , “there was a real consensus -and I think probably an unshakable consensus -[that] to make a real difference . . . would require an American or a NATO intervention that we did not see j u ~ t i f i e d . ”Warren ~~ Zimmerman, a former ambassador to Yugoslavia, concurs: “It wouldn’t have mattered if television was going twenty-four hours around the clock with Serb atrocities [encouraging a U.S. response]. Bush wasn’t going to go in.”61

Media Impact

289

Commenting on this inaction in the face of heavy media coverage, Warren Strobel has written: Graphic images of the worst human rights abuses in Europe in forty years did not have the power to move governments in directions in which they were determined not to be moved?* But the Bosnia case begs the question: Did the images-counter to their intention-have the effect of promoting policy inaction? There is another case from that time period that arguably sheds better light on this question. In the spring of 1994, genocide occurred in Rwanda. A massive slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutus was undertaken, resulting in over 800,000 murders. Much of this tragedy was captured on film and broadcast by the US.television networks, at a rate much heavier than the Somalia crisis prior to the December 1992 depl0yment.6~Yet, despite all of this footage, Americans remained wary of intervening to help stop the genocide. Public opinion polls taken at the time found that most Americans were opposed to military action.64In the words of Warren Strobel, “the images from Rwanda of ethnic warfare and its grisly results held no power to move the U S . administration to intervene or to In other words, there move the public to demand that it do was no CNN effect in this case. But could there have been a reverse CNN effect? Could Americans subjected to the heavy coverage of the fighting have simply been turned off to the conflict? There is perhaps an argument to be made that the horrific images of violence- women being chopped up with machetes, children left to starve on the side of the road, corpses floating down rivers-simply led Americans to conclude that there was little that could be done to help this war-torn country-at least little that could be done without Americans bearing intolerable costs. In other words, oversaturation of negative media images leads to feelings of helplessness and pessimism. In such a media induced context, the favored action becomes inaction. And this seems to be what happened in 1994, This is exactly the kind of sentiment expressed by a U.S.Army officer who served in the subsequent humanitarian operation in Goma, Zaire (after the fighting had largely subsided): “It’s

290

Louis Klarevas

disheartening. It’s really disheartening. But I know the military can’t solve that civil war. And I know the American people wouldn’t want us to solve that civil war. Is that selfish? No.”66 Warren Strobe1 offers a similar perspective: Policymakers probably read the public mood correctly. Julia Taft, president of InterAction [a coalition of nongovernmental organizations] . . . said that when pictures were shown of Rwandans being hacked to death, private relief groups “got virtually no money whatsoever” from the viewing p~blic.6~ This led Strobe1 to conclude, “In this environment, the news media themselves were an additional factor in keeping the United States out of Rwanda in anything more than a highly circumscribed way.”68 While it is still speculative at this stage, whether or not media coverage drives policy action or inaction seems to be related to whether or not important issues or vital interests are at stake. When the media raises the most significant concerns, CNN effects become possible. When issues of lesser concern or interests less than vital are the focus of the media, CNN effects become possible if the perceived costs (as suggested by the images and reporting) are minimal, whereas reverse CNN effects become more likely if the costs are seen as potentially equaling or outweighing the benefits. Again, this thesis is based largely on anecdotal evidence, but it is certainly worthy of further investigation. CONCLUSION

What this chapter makes clear is that the media’s impact on politics is multifaceted. Whether they inform the public of newsworthy events, provide breaking intelligence, or keep government officials in line, the media are an integral part of the policy sector. The media also impact governance by affecting the way Americans perceive events and issues. In some cases, especially those involving graphic images of the most important political problems, the media are even able to drive policy. The media are, in short, a powerful and pervasive force in American society.

Media impact

29 1

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 . How has the advent of new news sources changed the way Americans get their news? What are some effects of these changes? 2. Summarize the seven main roles the news media plays in the American political process. 3. What are the four ways in which media affects the American political process? Are any of these more prevalent than others? 4. What is the “CNN effect?” Does it exist? If not, why not? If so, how does real-time footage affect politics? 5. Does the media reflect public opinion or shape it? Why? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Cohen, Bernard, The Press and Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1963). Halberstam, David, The Powers That Be (New York: Knopf, 1979). Hallin, Daniel C., The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Iyengar, Shanto, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Iyengar, Shanto, and Donald R. Kinder, News That Mutters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Iyengar, Shanto, and Richard Reeves, eds., Do the Media Govern? (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1997). Strobel, Warren P., Late-Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Znj7uence on Peace Operations (Washington,D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997).

NOTES 1. While the news media are part of the much larger mass media, hereinafter, references to the media will be references to the news media unless otherwise indicated. 2. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Media Consumption Survey 2000,” available at www.people-press.org/mediaOOque.htm.

292

Louis Klarevas

3. The five major 24-hour cable news channels are Cable News Network (CNN), CNN International, CNN Headline News, MSNBC, and Fox News. 4. George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education (New York: Little, Brown, 1999), 164-65. 5. Many reporters happened to be in Africa at the time covering the election in South Africa. See Steve Livingston and Todd Eachus, “Rwanda: U.S. Policy and Television Coverage,” in The Path o f a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisisffom Uganda to Zaire, ed. Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997). 6. Warren P. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Influence on Peace Operations (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 14346. 7. See, for example, Michael Dobbs, “Qatar TV Station a Clear Channel to Middle East,” Washington Post, October 9,2001, C1. See also Walter Pincus, “New Videotape Features Pale Bin Laden,” Washington Post, December 27,20Ol,A16; and Walter Pincus, “Bin Laden Fatalistic, Gaunt in New Tape,” Washington Post, December 28,2001, A1 . 8. Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Anderson, quoted in Steve Vogel, “Army ‘Fire Department’ Keeps Watch on World,” Washington Post, August 25, 1995, A21. 9. Quoted in George Lardner Jr. and Walter Pincus, “On This Network, All the News Is Top Secret,” Washington Post, March 3, 1992, A1 . 10. Lardner and Pincus, “Top Secret” 11. See, for example, Carroll J. Glynn, Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O’Keefe, and Robert Y. Shapiro, Public Opinion (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999). 12. See, for example, Robert S. Erikson, “The Influence of Newspaper Endorsements in Presidential Elections: The Case of 1964,” American Journal of Political Science 20, no. 2 (May 1976): 207-33; and Michael Bruce MacKuen and Steven Lane Coombs, More Than News: Media Power in Public AfSairs (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981). 13. Journalists are also the primary moderators and questioners in debates between candidates for public office. 14. Nicholas Burns, “Talking to the World about American Foreign Policy,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 1, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 10-14. 15. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 82-85. Strobel uses the term “tele-diplomacy” in lieu of “virtual diplomacy.” 16. See, in particular, David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (New York: Knopf, 1979); and Daniel C. Hallin The “Uncensored War”: The Me-

Media Impact

293

dia and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). For other overviews of media coverage relating to the Vietnam War, see Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and TelevisionReported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1977); Kathleen J. Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War: Vietnam and the Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); and William Prochnau, Once upon a Distant War (New York: Times, 1995). 17. See, respectively, Seymour M. Hersh, M y Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its A f e m t h (New York: Random House, 1970); and Martin M. Shapiro, ed.,The Pentagon Papers and the Courts: A Study in Foreign Policy-Making and Freedom of the Press (San Francisco: Chandler, 1972). 18. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974). 19. David Halberstam, War in a 7ime of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 200 1), 118-20. 20. Bernard Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 13, 21. For overviews, see Everett M. Rogers, “The Anatomy of AgendaSetting Research,” Journal of Communication 43, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 68-84; Gerald M. Kosicki, “Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research,” Journal of Communication43, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 100-27; and Everett M. Rogers, William B. Hart, and James W. Dearing, “A Paradigmatic History of Agenda-Setting Research,” in Do the Media Govern? ed. Shanto Iyengar and Richard Reeves (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1997), 225-36. 22. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 176-85. 23. Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). See also Lutz Erbring, Edie N. Goldenberg, and Arthur H. Miller, “Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media,” American Journal of Political Science 24, no. 1 (February 1980): 16-49. 24. For overviews, see Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters; and Iyengar and Reeves, eds., Do the Media Govern? 25. Jessica Mathews, “Policy vs. TV,” Washington Post, March 8, 1994,A19. 26. Quoted in John Riley Jr., Defining a Crisis: A Case Study of the US.Foreign Policy-Making Process during a Humanitarian Emergencies (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 2001).

294

Louis Klarevas

27. Piers Robinson, “The CNN Effect: Can the News Media Drive Foreign Policy?’ Review of International Studies 25, no. 2 (April 1999): 30 1-309. 28. Steven Livingston and Todd Eachus, “Humanitarian Crises and U.S. Foreign Policy: Somalia and the CNN Effect Reconsidered,” Political Communication 12, no. 4 (October 1995): 415. 29. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 62. 30. Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters; John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Maxwell McCombs and George Estrada, “The News Media and the Pictures in Our Heads,” in Do the Media Govern? ed. Iyengar and Reeves, 23747. 3 1. Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters. 32. These studies are reviewed in Joanne M. Miller and Jon A. Krosnick, “Anatomy of News Media Priming,” in Do the Media Govern? ed. Iyengar and Reeves, 258-75. 33. Robert M. Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (Autumn 1993): 52; emphasis in original. 34. Entman, “Framing.” 35. Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 36. Shanto Iyengar and Adam Simon, “News Coverage of the Gulf Crisis and Public Opinion,” in Do the Media Govern? ed. Iyengar and Reeves, 25 1. 37. Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? 38. Shanto Iyengar, “‘Media Effects’ Paradigms for the Analysis of Local Television News” (paper prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation Planning Meeting, 17-1 8 September 1998). 39. Mathews, “Policy vs. TV,” A19. 40. Douglas V. Johnson 11, The Impact of the Media on National Security Policy Decision-Making (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 1994), 1-7. 41. Quoted in Johnson, National Security Policy, 1. 42. Nik Gowing, Real-Erne Television Coverage of Armed Conflicts and Diplomatic Crises: Does It Pressure or Distort Foreign Policy Decisions? Working Paper 94- 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Harvard University, 1994). 43. George F. Kennan, “Somalia, through a Glass Darkly,” New York Emes, September 30,1993, A25.

Media Impact

295

44. “A Lesson of Somalia: Don’t Let TV Drive Policy,” Newsday, March 28,1994, A24. 45. Charles Krauthammer, “Intervention Lite: Foreign Policy by CNN,” Washington Post, February 18,1994, A25. 46. Kennan, “Somalia, through a Glass Darkly,” A25. 47. Livingston and Eachus, “Humanitarian Crises”; Strobel, LateBreaking Foreign Policy; and Jonathan Mennin, Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of U.S.Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). 48. Jonathan Alter, “Did the Press Push Us into Somalia?’ Newsweek, December 21,1992,33. 49. This academic literature is reviewed in Robinson, “The CNN Effect.” 50. Quoted in Cragg Hines, “Pity, Not US. Security, Motivated Use of GIs in Somalia, Bush Says,” Houston Chronicle, October 24, 1999,A1 1. 51. See Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 166-84; and Louis J. Klarevas, Ell Death Do U.S.Part? American Public Opinion toward the Use of Force in the Post-Cold War Era (forthcoming book manuscript). 52. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 175; and Klarevas, Ell Death Do U.S. Part? Similarly, in Haiti, on January 12, 1995, an American soldier was gunned to death and another seriously wounded at a checkpoint near GonaYves. Again, as there were no cameras around to videotape the incident, there was no impacting footage and therefore no policy alteration. See Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 193-94; and Klarevas, Ell Death Do U.S.Part? 53. See Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 190-91. 54. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 191. 55. See Krauthammer, “Intervention Lite,” A25. For a contrary view relating to the mortar attack on Sarajevo, see Nik Gowing, “Inside Story: Instant Pictures, Instant Policy; Is Television Driving Foreign Policy?’ (London) Independent, July 3,1994,14. 56. Gowing, Real-Eme. 57. Gowing, Real-Erne. 58. Gowing, Real-Time. 59. Iyengar, “‘Media Effects’ Paradigms.” 60. Quoted in Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 14748. 61. Quoted in Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 148. 62. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 153. 63. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 144. 64. Klarevas, Till Death Do US.Part? 65. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 144.

296

Louis Klarevas

66. Quoted in Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy. 67. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy. 68. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 146; emphasis in original. Another factor that probably promoted inaction was the disastrous outcome of the Somalia peace operation.

13 The New Media Jeremy D. Mayer and Michael Cornfield

[I]t is clear that the feast or famine mentality dominates popular conceptions of the Internet-either there is a giddy elation which causes people to overlook obvious problems, or there is an obsessive focus on the obvious problems which causes people to magnify potential dangers out of all proportion.’

Today, while television remains the most influential medium in American politics, in terms of number of consumers and campaign dollars spent, it is clear that television has a challenger on the scene: the Internet. By the end of 2001,200 million Americans were using the Internet? A study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found a precipitous fall in the number of Americans who followed politics through broadcast news, and a rapid rise in the use of the Internet for that purpose? Candidate websites proliferate, and many politicians are even receiving the “mother’s milk” of politics, money, through online donations. As a political medium, the Internet has risen faster than any previous method of communication, from introduction to the public to mass utilization in a decade. The arrival of the Internet challenges us to reimagine media politics. What can be done through e-mail, the Web, wireless messaging, and modes of networked-computer communication yet to come to improve the ways in which we get news, form opinions, campaign for causes and candidates, cast votes, and comprehend our public rights and responsibilities? What, in short, is our wish list for 297

298

Jeremy D. Mayer and Michael Cornfield

public life in the digital age? Some of the items on our wish list come preloaded, like software packages bundled into a new computer. For those of us devoted to ideals of political communication associated with “democracy,” “the republic ,” and “freedom,” the God terms of the American civic religion, a Net-inspired reimagination of media politics involves adapting the new medium to cherished ideas, institutions, and processes. This chapter explores what cyberpolitics has already done specifically to change American media and public life, and looks at where the medium is heading. Before we discuss the effects of the Internet as a medium on American politics, it will be useful to be clear about what we mean by “Internet.” As with interstate highways, 19th-century railroads and canals, and modem airports, government played a key role in the creation of the modem “information superhighway.” In the late 1960s, scientists working for the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) created the very first connection between computers that could exchange packets of information: As more and more defense and university computers joined the network, it became a national, decentralized method of exchanging data. The widespread availability of personal computers forever changed the Internet, as more and more individuals began to access and use the burgeoning network. In this chapter, when we refer to “Internet” we intend to include both the “World Wide Web” of graphic sites, some with downloadable content, as well as e-mail and file exchange programs like Napster? The Internet, however, is extraordinarily dynamic, and is evolving even as these words are read. Consumers are not only finding new uses for it, but the Internet may be on the verge of absorbing other media or at least merging with significant aspects of them. For example, although the telecommunications industry has suffered spectacular setbacks, the percentage of American homes with broadband connections to the Internet quadrupled between 2000 and 2002.6 One-fifth of U.S. home Internet users (24 million Americans) switched to the higherpriced connection so that they could move at higher speeds, see more multimedia messages, and remain online without having to tie up their telephone lines. The advent of online radio, downloadable videos, and audio file exchanges only hints at what may be coming

The New Media

299

next. The ramifications of the ongoing expansion in the scope of the Internet will be dealt with at the close of the chapter. THE PROMISE OF THE INTERNET: INTERACTIVITY, INDEPENDENCE, AND DEPTH

Each method of communication has properties that confer advantages on its users. The rise of the Internet as a major force in the American media offers three promising changes in politics: interactivity, independence, and depth.

lnteractivity When television broadcast news is the main source of political information, and when Americans learn about politicians and their stances through televised presidential debates and campaign ads, there is little opportunity for individual citizens to feel involved in the process. As anticipated by critical theorist Walter Benjamin, the viewers of video discourse are removed from the immediacy of politics, and their attitudes towards politics are also changed. As with art and religion, politics experienced through the chilly refraction of a camera eye will never be the same as politics live? The New England town hall democracy and the classic democracy of the Greek city-states allowed for more interactivity between governed and governors. The citizens could guide the discussion towards matters of concern through questions and speeches. Television does not directly allow for any interactivity between the viewers and the viewed, the citizens and their leaders. This empowers the gatekeepers of the media, who are given the power to set the nation’s agenda by what they cover, and perhaps more importantly, what they do not cover. Now, two-and-a-half millennia after Pericles, some feel that technology will allow us to have an interactive exchange with our leaders. While reading a story on the Internet, or watching a streaming video of an interview with a journalist or a politician, a citizen can shoot an e-mail off to a federal agency, or make a

300


contribution directly to the politician. Newspapers and broadcast stations conduct online political polls at their websites, and report the unscientific results. Media companies like online polls even though they are of dubious accuracy, because they are amazingly cheap. Interactivity between journalists and consumers becomes far easier. Consider the ease and immediacy of shooting an e-mail off to Bill O’Reilly at Fox News versus writing a letter to Walter Cronkite in 1974. Media companies even monitor from day to day which pages of their websites are looked at, and by how many people. The consumers of online journalism vote with every mouse click and download about what issues they want the media to cover. While newspapers and television stations conducted market research and polling before the Internet, these did not approach the amount of information given by online monitoring of media consumption. The Internet may also bring about higher levels of interactivity between citizens and the government itself. Arizona and other states are exploring voting online. Enthusiasm for computer voting went even higher after the debacle in Florida during the election of 2000, in which 19th-century voting technology was exposed as deeply flawed and widely utilized. All 50 state governments and many localities distribute information on the Web, and every month more government services are available online, from paying parking tickets to applying for government contracts. A website and e-mail network made it possible for presidential candidate and maverick Republican John McCain to raise and spend more than $6 million in hard money donations in the early months of 2002, enabling him to stay in the race for the Republican nomination a few extra weeks? Interest groups, new and old, have rushed to exploit the possibilities of the Internet. In the classic model of pluralism, power in America is distributed unequally, with groups that are able to organize more effectively wielding disproportionate power. The ability to organize was previously highly correlated with income, education, and political efficacy (the sense that your views mattered). The Internet allows farflung individuals with little political experience to coalesce around a cause with remarkably little financial outlay. For example, in 1998, a husband-and-wife team formed moveon.org , a political action com-

The New Media

30 1

mittee that capitalized on citizen outrage with both President Clinton's dissembling about his affair with Monica Lewinsky and those House Republicans who tried to impeach him for the offense. Moveon.org exists solely online, yet it attracted hundreds of thousands of members, who signed petitions and spent millions of dollars to defeat Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee? The interactivity offered by the Internet will, in the view of some, ameliorate one of the chronic problems in American politics during this century: low levels of citizen participation, particularly in voting. By making information more readily available, by lowering barriers to citizen input and interaction, and by making voting and donating easier, cyberpolitics may enhance citizen interest, influence, and participation. Independence

The Internet may also weaken the media's control over what citizens learn about politics. Citizens are more independent of the power of media gatekeepers in the age of the Internet. Compare a daily newspaper to a 30-minute evening news broadcast to a CNN website. The 100,000 words of text available in the newspaper represent the editors' view of what an educated citizen should know about current events that day. There is some degree of independence; for example, a committed Republican could choose not to read any reports about Bush's stock dealings in the oil business. By contrast, in watching an anchor deliver the few thousand words of a typical news program, the viewer is passive; he cannot dart ahead, or jump back in the newscast to follow his interest.1° But the Internet consumer of news is in control. She may click only on the stories that interest her, and can even arrange a website to show her only stories on topics of concern. Independence also applies to the number of media outlets available today. Throughout this century, concern among political scientists and media analysts has grown about the concentration of media power in fewer and fewer hands." By some estimates, ten multinational corporations control the most influential media outlets in the country. The Internet may well change that. While the most popular sites on the Web are often those affiliated with major

302


media corporations (CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo, AOL, etc.), some of the most influential websites, such as the Drudge Report, are run by individuals. Anyone with a computer and Internet access can set up a website with his or her own political views. “Blogs” or “weblogs” are sites set up by individuals to publicize their experiences and their opinions. They are often vulgar, unsourced, and by definition nonauthoritative. However, one of the leading public intellectuals of the day, Andrew Sullivan, has set up his own website, where his thoughts and essays are available to readers without the filter of editors or the delay of publishing.12 As Dan Gilmour, a newspaper editor, sees it, some day news coverage itself will be shaped by the reaction of thousands of “bloggers”: I think we’ve moved profoundly from the older period in which news was a lecture. Now the job is that we tell you what we have learned, you tell us if you think we are correct, then we all discuss it.13

The Internet may also contribute to nonconformist thought in politics. During the height of television’s media dominance, some feared that the media were contributing to a “spiral of silence.” Because those with minority views would see no support for their opinions in the media, which emphasized conformist and majoritarian views, they would keep silent for fear of social o s t r a ~ i s m .To’~ day, thanks to the Internet, almost no opinion (or fetish or preference, for that matter) is so isolated that it cannot find at least one kindred spirit somewhere on the Web. The Internet exceeds the connective power of any other medium, because strangers who share political ideas can use it to find and contact each other. The Internet fosters independence by providing more points of access to political information, both to consumers and producers. The network is practically limitless in its capacity to send, store, and grant access to information. In October 2001, for example, the search engine Google fielded 130 million inquiries a day across its indexed portion of the Internet, which encompassed three billion documents.I5 An online document, it is important to note, can be text, image, sound, data, or any combination thereof. On the day this paragraph was composed, Google’s reach extended over two

The New Media

303

billion Web pages, 330 million images, and 700 million messages posted in discussion forums. And Google underestimates the breadth of the Internet, since it does not index e-mail, a medium that has been widely used for political purposes. Thus, the Internet allows more people to engage in journalism, campaigning, and less-public modes of politics (such as leaking, lobbying, and administrating). In the mass media era, publicly available messages about, say, the United States Senate essentially came from the Senate offices, registered lobbyists, and journalists with permission to enter the Senate Press Gallery. Today, if you, the online citizen, have something to tell the world about the U.S. Senate, you can express yourself in any number of Net forums. Your declaration will not be amplified by the New York Times, in all likelihood. But it could well be indexed by Google, especially if you are wise to the ways of online publicity. Clearly, the Internet has expanded the boundaries of the playing fields of politics. That is not the same as leveling the field: wealthy and official voices still hold advantages. But marginal presence on the new field confers an extra shot at influence previously unimaginable for many aspiring players. Depth

Political scientist Lance Bennett identifies fragmentation and personalization as two of the key defects in modem political coverage.16 Journalists present issues episodically, without context, and often in a simplistic manner that ignores historical and institutional forces. This is particularly true of televised news. Bennett believes these institutional biases in the way information is presented are a threat to the health of our democracy. The Internet, however, has the potential to redress at least certain aspects of these ills. For example, even if the streaming videos available on the Web reproduce the fragmented and personalized coverage of televised journalism, the Internet adds depth in two ways: access and context. First, voters can now determine the shallowness (or substance) of a 30-second radio or television spot much more easily because the Internet archives those spots. Second, sustained examinations of the

304


history of many issues and candidates referenced in “drive-by” ads are now only a click away on many news and even some campaign websites. These websites, along with such civic nonpartisan websites as www.vote-smart.org (Project Vote Smart) and www.dnet.org (Democracy Net), often contain thousands of words on issues, transcripts of debates, and links to legislation. Thus, consumers of politics on the Web may be initially presented with a fragmented and incomplete picture of an event or a candidate, but they are given the tools to put the issue into a deeper context. Whether they choose to do so or not is their decision. Of course, one might note the same about an article in Erne magazine or a story on the CBS news. It was never impossible for a consumer of the news, intrigued by a particular issue, to become educated on it, through a trip to the library if nothing else. What the Internet changes is the ease with which depth is available. Context is just a click away. THE DEFECTS OF THE INTERNET FOR MEDIA POLITICS: ACCESS, OVERLOAD, FILTERLESSNESS, AND COCOONING

Each of the positive changes wrought by the introduction of the Internet can be subjected to cross-examination. Not only may the Internet fail to rectify existing problems in American media politics, it may create new ones. Access

The digital divide is real, and it limits the Internet’s effects and leads to greater inequality in our society. The term became fashionable during the mid-1990s to describe the unequal access to the Internet that was emerging. From its birth until this moment, the Internet has been a medium far more often used by the wealthy, the educated, the male, and the white citizens of this country than by others. The skew in usage on each of those factors has lessened since 1996, but has not vanished. Similarly, the first schools to get wired were the wealthier ones, and this remains true today. One could complacently observe that similar patterns were evident at the dawn of radio and television, and those “electronic di-

The New Media

305

vides” rapidly disappeared. The digital divide is certainly getting smaller. According to a Pew Center poll, home computer ownership went from 36% to 59% and venturing online at least occasionally went from 21% to 54% in just the four years from 1996 to 2000.17 Unequal access may also not be as large a problem, or at least as new a problem, as some see it. Even newspapers in the colonial era were not equally distributed, with many in the lower classes lacking either the literacy to appreciate papers or money t o buy them. As compared to the early days of the Republic, when the government did not even attempt to teach the poor how to read, the government is taking steps to address the digital divide. State and federal programs are in place to make computers more available to public school children. However, there is reason to think that this divide will be more resilient than previous ones. First, many of the educated and wealthy who frequently use the Web do so from their workplaces. It is unlikely that autoworkers, butchers, bus drivers, and plumbers will soon be granted worksite access to the Internet. (And persons accessing the Internet for politics from the workplace must consider the possibility that their movements, words, and activities will be monitored by their employers, if not the government. This could deter workplace use of the Internet for politics.) Second, the cost of access is continually changing, and while basic access (cost of a computer plus cost of an Internet service provider) may have declined in price, the cost for DSL or broadband access is much greater. Many features on the Internet are increasingly geared towards those who can download large amounts of data quickly. The divide in access to that quality of service is very great. In terms of access, the Internet is more akin to cable television than to broadcast television, and even today, millions of Americans cannot afford or choose not to pay a monthly fee for television. Third, even with more Americans learning how to use computers with each passing moment, there remains a generational gap in Internet usage. A 65-year-old in 1960 had little difficulty plugging in a television and watching the Kennedy-Nixon debates. But many senior citizens today still find computers daunting and confusing. For these reasons, if the Internet becomes the most important form of political discourse,

306


it will be a conversation that leaves millions of Americans out of earshot for years to come.

Overload The media are commonly referred to in government textbooks as a “mediating institution” between the governed and the governors. Among the many functions the media performed in this role were informing citizens of government actions, and informing elites of the public’s reactions and desires. The media told citizens what was important in the political world, and told elites what the public felt was important. If the “gatekeeping” or “agenda-setting” power of the media has been reduced, this may actually serve to lessen citizen influence on elites. When there were only three television news networks, and only a few leading nationally influential newspapers, the major media outlets had tremendous power to focus the attention of citizens and elites on a given topic. Today, with so many diverse outlets, there may be far less of a sense of a unified national agenda to which politicians have to react and the public has to pay attention. The citizen, presented with the chaotic, shifting, and massive amount of political information available on the Web, may simply retreat from the overload of data. The overload of data also comes at Americans at an increasingly dizzying pace, making politics rapid and dynamic. Because the Internet conveys information almost without discernible delay, there are, in hotly competitive political, media, and medidpolitical situations, more cycles of action-reaction communication. This affects political elites as well as ordinary citizens. To illustrate: On September 17,2000, the Bush and Gore campaigns for president strafed the reporters on their press e-mail lists (consisting of 2,000 and 1,200 names, respectively) with 56 e-mails. Most of these concerned a 16-page “Blueprint for the Middle Class” issued by the Republican nominee. The Democrat’s pre-buttal (for it was released prior to the Bush document) was 24 pages long. The 56 e-mails spun, re-spun, and meta-spun (if that is a word adequate to describe commenting with intent to persuade on another’s efforts at commenting with intent to persuade) around the topic of which candidate had the better economic plan for America.’*

The New Media

307

Many refer to this phenomenon as the “24-hour news cycle,” but that is something of a misnomer. While an action-mediation-reaction cycle can occur at any hour of the day, not just during working hours in one time zone, the phrase can also be interpreted as implying that it takes 24 hours for reactions to an action to register in public. That was in the old days. “Real time” is a much better phrase at conveying the current compression of the interval between action and reaction. Not all politics and mediation occurs in real time, nor is that likely to develop. But thanks to the Internet, more segments of the mediated politics world can speed up to occur in real time for a while. The Internet permits two candidates for city council to blitz local reporters over an accusation that one is in the pocket of a real estate magnate. It allows two interest groups to urge supporters to show up on the steps of the Supreme Court for competing demonstrations, each group issuing e-mails warning about the size of the turnout expected from the other side. When real-time political moments crystallize in the digital age, the increase of cycles comes with more players, more messages, and also, note well, less time for any single person to digest all that is being said, and shown, and perhaps substantiated. No wonder, as Maltese writes, the White House has expanded its communication operations to cope with real-time politics. As caretakers of the reputation of the politician whose daily activity automatically makes news for more people than anyone else on earth, the communications staff must try to keep pace. Indeed, they must try to get ahead of the pace, and anticipate reactions. While government’s response to the news cycle’s expansion has been to accelerate, the response of the citizen to this rapid overload of competing claims may well be exhaustion and even alienation. The overload may also expose interactivity with government officials as a sham and a false hope. See what ensues when you send an e-mail to a public official you’ve watched at C-SPAN.org, for instance. (Hint: not much.) Perhaps in 1992, when Ross Perot advocated an “electronic town hall” in which all of America would debate and then vote on the issues of the day, Americans might have imagined that technology could take us back to New England town hall democracy. But the overload problem with regard to interactivity is even greater than it is with regard to information; there are too many of us for government to process our inputs on issues beyond

308


the shallowest up or down opinions. The dream of a restoration of a direct democracy is not new in American public life; pollster George Gallup imagined in 1939 that public opinion polling would lead to a responsive and participatory democracy, and that certainly has not o c ~ u r r e d .Cyberpolitics ’~ has not magically erased the classic problem of the “one and the many”; the overloaded circuits of the Internet may have actually exacerbated it. FiI terlessness

If the Internet grants us independence from the centralized power of the mass media, this independence is inextricably tied to the problem of filterlessness. Political, civic, and media institutions use filters to improve the quality of the information they depend on and release to the public. They check facts, revise sentences, rearrange photos, and so forth. The Internet’s virtue of no authoritative control permits dissidents and eccentrics to promulgate their views to the world, but this quality is also a significant weakness. A book that was released by a reputable academic press could be expected to have undergone lengthy peer review by knowledgeable experts. A story printed in the New York Times underwent careful and redundant fact checking. As the anecdote has it, a reporter should not print a story about how much his mother loves him unless he can verify it with two independent sources. The rapid pace of the media in the era of cyberpolitics has removed much of the filtering process; rumor, falsehood, and innuendo quickly move into public discourse. Matters about the private sex lives of public officials that would never have been printed in previous eras are now fodder for Web gossips like Matt Drudge. One can point to examples of the media’s abusing its gatekeeping authority in the past, such as its refusal to inform the nation of philandering presidents whose preoccupation with illicit sex arguably raised questions about national security and judgmentF0 However, the loss of gatekeeping power by the mass media has made politics a less appetizing field of endeavor, both for citizens and politicians. The first story on the Monica Lewinsky affair appeared on the Drudge Report, because an “old-media” editor at Newsweek refused to run it. Similarly, during the ensuing impeachment proceedings,

The New Media

309

the Drudge Report ran a controversial account of an alleged rape committed by Clinton decades ago, an account that no mainstream media outlets would cover because they did not believe it had been fully sourced. Pressured by the coverage on websites and in chat rooms, the mainstream media eventually ran both stories. It should be noted, however, that the gatekeepers of the mass media do retain some filtering power. A lurid and false rumor about Clinton fathering an interracial child with a prostitute circulated on the Web for years, but never broke into mainstream media sources, and remained unknown to most Americans. The permeability and universality of the Internet raises questions about the nature of truth itself, in a way that postmodernists may welcome, but that poses challenges to more traditional researchers. Who is an authority, and how do we know? Professors across the country lament that students conducting research for term papers often mistake cranks and kooks for reputable scholars, based on the professional presentation of their thoughts on a website. A colleague of one of the authors received a paper that cited the website of a Holocaust denier as a source on Nazism and its goals. Of course, fringe groups who deny the Holocaust or assert anti-Semitic canards as fact have been publishing books and magazines for centuries. However, librarians had acted as a filter to most of these materials, separating out legitimate challengers to conventional wisdom from irrational ideologues. The Internet puts the laughable claims of the Nation of Islam or the Aryan Nations only a click away from any college student, a student who may lack the intellectual training and critical tools to assess and reject many of these groups' counterfactual assertions. Cocooning We live in self-imposed exile from communal conversation and action. The public square is naked. American politics has lost its soul. The republic has become procedural, and we have become unencumbered selves. Individualism has become cancerous. We live in an age of narcissism and pursue loneliness..21 -Philosopher Albert Borgman

310


Although Borgman wrote these words while the Internet was in its infancy, they capture many of the most far-reaching problems some see inherent in the new medium. The growth of technology’s role in American life may contribute to a sense of hyper-individualism, as we all cocoon ourselves away from not only politics but real-world human connections. While champions of the Internet’s possibility rave about the potential for spacially separated individuals to form interest groups through the Web, perhaps such groups fail to provide community, solidarity, and other group benefits that are necessary to civil society. Consider the difference between a union hall gathering of workers in 1950 and an Internet chat room on politics today. The union hall meeting requires physical presence, and interactions beyond the level of typing and reading. Those present see each other as complete beings, who have left their private domains to enter into public discourse. The patterns of listening and speaking, of debate and discussion, probably would not be unfamiliar to a colonial Virginian or an ancient Greek. By contrast, the denizens of a chat room or the readers of a bulletin board may hide behind pseudonyms; they may misrepresent their true selves or opinions with careless abandon. Most importantly, they may not feel the same sense of connection to each other as do people who meet in the fleshF2 Thinkers as diverse as T o q ~ e v i l l ein~the ~ 19th century and political scientist Robert Putnam in the late 20th century have emphasized that America’s civil society rests on the health of voluntary associations among citizens. Civic activities that build up “social capital” have been declining rapidly in the last forty years, and this troubles many scholars, politicians, and citizens. One of Putnam’s more intriguing findings in his influential 2001 book, Bowling Alone, was that for every hour of newspaper reading, civic engagement increased, while for every hour of television watching, it de~reased.2~ While comparable data are not yet available for Internet usage, it seems plausible that local “real” activities decline as Internet usage expands. Thus, it becomes important to find out whether the “communal” activities on the Web can produce the same connectedness that characterized traditional groups. As one recent article asked: “When it comes to . . . building community, is the Internet more like a Girl Scout troop or a television set?” Unfortunately, given current

The New Media

311

patterns of usage, it seems that the Internet is far more similar to the dreaded idiot box than to a meeting with other citizens.25 Thus, “cocooning” may represent the most subtle and insidious danger in cyberpolitics. Even before the Internet, many worried that Americans were increasingly unconnected to each other. More and more of the upper classes live in gated communities, send their children to private schools, and fail to interact in any meaningful way with less wealthy Americans. Demonstrations and marches and rallies declined in effectiveness, as Americans ceased congregating in public spaces, replacing downtowns with privately owned malls. With the dawn of Internet shopping, telecommuting, and Web-based entertainment, leaving home becomes almost superfluous. Perhaps the new media possibilities of the Web will provide Americans with access to new and unfiltered information about politics. But if we do not have a sense of community, of shared obligation and values, will we care about political news from home or abroad? Instead of “Thinking globally and acting locally” will we now “Entertain individually and disappear locally”? In this sense, the Internet may be the apotheosis of what America’s first great media critic, Walter Lippmann, described as “pseudo-reality.”26In Lippmann’s original conception, the media provided the citizen with a useful simplification of the complex real world. The citizen’s reaction to that pseudo-reality would eventually have real-world implications. However, the Internet may create a “virtual reality” all its own, in which behaviors and interactions that never leave cyberspace become an end in themselves. Cocooning will surely be more of a threat tomorrow than it is today. The trend in the Internet is towards more and more integration, both of content and of methods of transmission. Broadband technology offers the potential for a grand unification of all media into a single giant data stream. The future American home may have one connection to the outside world, and through that broadband cable will stream news, movies, telephone, e-mail, websites, votes, political donations, shopping orders, bills, banking, and everything necessary for life save water, food, and air (and our orders for all those things may be encoded in the pipeline as well). The effects that this will have on America’s political culture are incalculable at present.

312

Jeremy D. Mayer and Michael Comjeld

Perhaps the unified media will be more subject to centralized control. Perhaps the Web will retain the virtue of independence, and Americans will take advantage of greater choices in sources of political information. Whatever happens in this brave new world of unified media, the incentives to leave home will become fewer, and the tendency to cocoon in one’s own space more comm0n.2~ CONCLUSION: THE INEVITABLE INTERNET VS. THE RESILIENT STATUS QUO?

There is no way to unring the bell of technological change. The Internet expanded by leaps and bounds during the last ten years because it filled needs that Americans had, even if they did not know they had them: interactivity, faster news, easier contacts, greater independence. It has changed the way Americans learn about politics, and it has begun to change the way they participate in The ordinary citizen can now readily correct for media biases of many varieties in being able to see politics more fully than before the Internet arrived. But the improved capacity for political vision is not the same as an improved capacity for political action. Protesters, dissenters, opponents can get their message out, and the sympathetic can find it. But there’s quite a psychological road to travel between perception and action: the viewers must believe they have a chance at victory before they will organize to act, and the Internet, through encouraging cocooning, may act as a barrier to political action. Furthermore, the Internet also has sinister implications for government and corporate surveillance of our actions and thoughts. Allied with video cameras, the Internet can be used to monitor citizens in public spaces. “Cookies” can track where viewers have browsed. Post 9-1 1 legislation gave the government new powers to read e-mails at home and abroad. So we are left where we began: Will the Internet be a source for positive political change, or will it exacerbate existing ills in American media politics, as well as adding its own? A third possibility suggests itself; perhaps the Internet will not alter American politics all that much. The status quo has a resiliency that should not be un-

The New Media

313

derestimated. Television affected many aspects of American politics, but few would argue that politics and journalism changed beyond recognition. Such potentially isolating forces as cocooning do not alter the constitutional structure. So long as we remain in a winner-take-all system, a winner must get at least a plurality, and usually more, and this impels campaigners for office and for legislation to reach out via the Net and other media to form coalitions. Similarly, those who speak of “the information revolution” happening as a result of the Internet are not looking carefully enough at the political situation into which the new media has been piped. For example, a fallacy in the information overload concept is that it is not automatic with the new technology, but set off by the need to absorb a lot of disorganized information in a short time. By one measure, there has been no information revolution because “revolution” denotes a swift redistribution of power, and the Internet has not done that yet, not even in the technical sense of power. While the Internet provides more information and computing/processing power, those are not automatically convertible into political power, as steam is into electricity and so on. Information is only convertible into political power or its cousins-intellectual, artistic, and scientific power-when it answers a question in such a way as to put the questioners under the influence of the answerer. Again, this is not automatic, but situational. There is much for the online politics media analyst to study, and much data yet to be examined before we even know that the Internet has altered the fundamental nature of American media politics. Once we know for sure that the Internet has produced broad systemic changes, we will be closer to judging the longterm implications of those changes. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Compare a town hall meeting that would take place in person to a meeting that would take place over the Internet. Do we lose something if we shift to “virtual” meetings to resolve local political issues? Do we gain anything?

314

Jeremy D. Mayer and Michael Comjeld

2. Should we worry about the “digital divide” or the fact that most Internet users today are wealthier and better educated than nonusers? If the Internet becomes the most important form of political discourse while the cost of access remains high, will this be a problem for our democracy? 3. It costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to produce and broadcast a single national television ad. It costs almost nothing to set up a basic Web page, if you have access to a computer and an Internet service provider. Does the Internet empower political dissidents, nonconformists, and those without access to vast sums of money? 4. By one estimate, more than 80 percent of the American public begins a Web search through one of three portals: AOL, MSN, or Yahoo. Compare and contrast the gatekeeping functions of an Internet portal with a television network and a local newspaper. How does a portal, a network, and a newspaper shape what a citizen can see of the public world? How well can the average person assess the credibility and authority of a Web page? Again, compare and contrast that capacity to check and rely on a Web news source with an individual’s capacity to check and rely on a television network and a local newspaper. Select one or more of the political institutions discussed in other chapters of this volume, and evaluate how well the institution has incorporated the Internet into its operations in terms of the following proposition: “The more an official in a political institution needs the support of public opinion, the better that official’s Web site.” SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Davis, Steve, Larry Ellin, and Grant Reeder, Click on Democracy: The Znternet s Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2002). Ebo, Bosah, ed., Cyberghetto or Cybertopia?: Race, Class, and Gender on the Internet (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998). Everard, Jerry, virtual States: The Internet and the Boundaries of the NationState (New York: Routledge, 2000).

The New Media

315

Lessig, Lawrence, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic, 2000). Saco, Diana, Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). Wilhelm, Anthony G., Democracy in the Digital Age (New York: Routledge, 2000). www.ipdi.org, the website of the George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet.

NOTES 1. Chris Toulouse, “Designing Cyberspace: Voluntarism, Commercialism, Academia, and the Future of the World Wide Web,” working paper, Hofstra University, 1997, at http://gramercy.ios .corn/-urbsoc/Cyberspace/Design.html. 2. The UCLA Internet Report 2001, www.ccp.ucla.edu. 3. Pew Research Center, “Internet Sapping Broadcast News Audience,” June 11,2000, at www. People-press.org/mediaOOrpt.htm. 4. The Internet Society, “A Brief History of the Internet,” 2000, at http://www.isoc .org/Internet/history. 5. The definition of the Internet remained so troubling that, in 1995, the Federal Networking Council passed a resolution attempting to settle the question. They concluded: “Internet” refers to the global information system that: (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons;(ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses, or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high-level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein. “A Brief History of the Internet” (Version 3.31), 2000, by Bany M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff. 6. Pew Internet & American Life Project, “The Broadband Difference,” June 23,2002, at www.pewinternet.org. 7. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” trans. Harry Zohn, in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 612-34. 8. Michael Cornfield, Politics Moves Online: Campaigning and the Internet (New York: Century Foundation, 2003; forthcoming).

316


9. Cornfield, Politics Moves Online. 10. At least he cannot without using a VCR or a TIVO machine. And of course, with the ubiquitous remote control, he can now surf to another news channel quite easily. And cable has changed television as well, since a conservative can watch Fox News, while a liberal can stick with PBS. 11. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon, 2000). 12. www.andrewsullivan.com. Sullivan is a particularly interesting case of a “blogger” because, unlike the vast majority of online writers, Sullivan has had an illustrious and influential career in the traditional media, both print and, more recently, television. Sullivan is also quite an iconoclastic figure, as a gay Catholic conservative Brit writing on American politics. Sullivan’s blog got him in trouble with a traditional publication; when he criticized the New York Emes Magazine one time too many online, they decided not to carry his pieces anymore. If Sullivan remains influential despite this, it will signify a true lessening of centralized media power. 13. Ben Hammersley, “Time to Blog On,” Guardian (UK), May 20,2002. 14. E. Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984). 15. SearchEngineWatch.com. 16. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics ofZllusion, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 200 1). 17. Pew Research Center, “Internet Sapping Broadcast News Audience,” June 11,2000, at www. People-press.org/mediaOOrpt.htm. 18. Bob Davis and Jeanne Cummings, “Hot Buttons: A Barrage of EMail Helps Candidates Hit Media Fast and Often,” Wall Street Journal, September 21 , 2000. 19. George Gallup, “Polling the Public,” in Public Opinion in a Democracy, ed. Charles William Smith (New York: Prentice Hall, 1939). 20. Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John E Kennedy (Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 1992). 21. Albert Borgman, Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3. 22. It should be noted that at least one analyst worries that the Internet may actually provide a sense of connection to extremists and terrorists. In his 2001 book Republic.com (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press) Cass Sunstein argued that the Internet could be used by terrorists to connect a far-flung conspiracy. Sunstein’s warnings today look prophetic, now that it is known that the men who plotted the tragic attacks of 9-1 1 used the Internet to stay in touch. Had the terrorists been forced to meet in person, or use more traditional forms of communication, it is possible that American intelligence would have detected their conspiracy.

The New Media

317

23. Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America (1840; reprint, New York: Signet, 2001). 24. Robert h t n a m , Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival ofAmerican Community (New York: Touchstone, 2001). 25. Margie K. Shields, Susan E. Linn, and Stephen Doheny-Farina, “Connected Kids,” The American Prospect Online, December 26,2000. 26. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922; reprint, New York: Free Press, 1997). 27. Cocooning can be exaggerated as a threat. The Internet can be a medium for civic connection, in which two or more people come to see the world from each other’s perspective, and so mature, as classic liberal Enlightenment theory would have it. Online communities can promote dialogue between citizens of differing views. Additionally, they can knit families and other necessary social groupings closer together. A Harris poll found that 48% of U.S. Net users said they communicate more often with family and friends than before. Michael J. Weiss, “Online America,” American Demographics (March 200 1). 28. The Internet has also changed the way scholarship is conducted. The two authors of this piece, in addition to using the Internet extensively for research, have never met in person, and exchanged drafts online. All of us can collaborate with colleagues and anchor our imaginations in the work of others far more readily and expansively, if not more competently, than before the medium arrived.


14 Media Ethics and Political Communication Dan Stout

I t is difficult to study the political process without attention to mass media. From televised debates to campaign advertising on the Internet, the present age is characterized by new information technologies, which can both enhance and frustrate political activity. On the one hand, it is through the media that people become informed citizens and voters, a requisite for a thriving democracy. On the other hand, when one candidate has more money for advertising than another, or when news media ignore important issues of the day, media criticism ensues. These situations make necessary the study of media ethics, a field within moral philosophy and social science concerned with whether media are used optimally in terms of social equity, responsibility, and morality. This chapter introduces the field of media ethics and identifies a number of situations in which such analysis can be applied in political contexts. Nightly newscasts often raise controversies about media and their role in politics. Should television reporters pry so much into the personal lives of candidates? Is it fair when only two presidential candidates are included in a televised debate when six have declared for office? According to media ethicists, such questions deserve deeper and more thorough analysis than the emotional, anecdotal, and often knee-jerk responses that characterize many living room conversations. Media ethics is a field grounded in classical moral philosophy 319

Dan Stout

320

and encourages systematic and principle-based moral reasoning rather than casual and inconsistent modes of decision making. In this chapter, we define ethics and identify political dilemmas related to media. How new technologies are creating future ethical concerns will also be addressed. Perhaps the most salient element of the chapter, however, is the identification of foundational principles, the keys to more cogent and coherent ethical analysis. Three case studies are provided in order to practice the application of various ethical concepts and principles. THE MEDIA-POLITICS INTERFACE

As we begin a new century, political communication is becoming more broad based and complex. For example, during the 2000 presidential campaign, Democratic and Republican candidates reached voters in specific demographic groups through prerecorded phone messages from automated direct-marketing databases. Citizens are also downloading political information from Internet websites. Today’s voters are reached in ways that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. The contemporary field of media ethics can only be understood within the context of the informution society, an era in which mediated information plays a vital role in politics and culture.’ In an information society, information is often sold as a commodity, and multiple communication technologies are used routinely in everyday life. The information society gives rise to a number of ethical dilemmas as well. News Reporting of Politics

Media coverage of political polls, debates, and conventions are areas of considerable controversy. While political information is vital to an informed citizenry, we might ask whether media cover politics ethically; this goes to the core question about whether media are impacting political processes in optimal or prosocial ways. With this in mind, ethicists explore media’s agenda-setting function and its effects on society when some issues get media attention and others are ignored. These journalistic choices can have significant impact

Media Ethics and Political Communication

321

if, say, newspaper space that could have summarized a governmental study on automobile tire safety is used for a story on whether a political candidate wears boxers or briefs. Ethicists raise questions about the factors influencing decisions to cover certain stories and examine the social, economic, and moral roots of such decisions. The idea is that political systems function best when the electorate is informed on a wide range of issues. News coverage of politics is also tied to economics and the need to attract large audiences. Ethicists raise concerns when the entertainment dimension of political news is overemphasized, leading to sensational or incomplete stories. Reporting of exit poll results and projecting election winners while people are still voting, for example, may reflect the desire to achieve high TV ratings and not necessarily be in the public interest.* Political Advertising and Propaganda

Political propaganda is also an important focus of media ethicists. The use of advertising by candidates, for example, raises a number of ethical questions ranging from exaggerated claims to excessive levels of campaign spending. In fact, references to an opponent’s inaccurate television commercials are frequent in political speeches today. Propaganda techniques used in World War I and World War I1 helped create the belief that public opinion could be manipulated by mass media. In 1917 George M. Cohan wrote the popular patriotic tune “Over There” to drum up support for the war effort; such songs contributed to the evolving development of political advertising, which combines helpful information with persuasive techniques such as music and short, catchy slogans that appeal to complex emotions? A group of scholars, therefore, is concerned with the ethics of persuasion; they seek to define more closely the nature of responsibility when it comes to truth and deception in mass media.“ Which specific issues do these ethicists deal with? The focus is on the controversial nature of propaganda itself. First, are such campaign ads accurate? In the 1980s, for example, Michael Dukakis complained that George H. W. Bush’s television commercial depicting criminals convicted of major crimes exiting prison through a

322

Dan Stout

continually revolving door was an exaggeration and distortion of the facts. In a more recent presidential election, George W. Bush claimed that Bill Clinton’s commercials about his education record as Texas governor were mostly false. The question of whether political advertising relies too heavily on images that create emotional appeal is worthy of future study. That is, political advertising doesn’t just “give the facts.” Instead, it uses symbols and language that are only indirectly related to the issue being communicated. A classic example is Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 television commercial depicting his opponent, Barry Goldwater, as a military “hawk” bent on getting the country into nuclear war. The spot shows a little girl innocently picking flowers in a field when a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion suddenly erupts. A forerunner to the highly dramatized commercials of today, this commercial raises the question of how far politicians should go in using images whose effects on psychological emotions are not fully understood. Impact of Media Ownership on Political Process

How owners of media companies influence or bias the content of political coverage is also an ethical issue of profound importance. Does the fact that a newspaper owner is a liberal or conservative affect the type of political information that is disseminated and ultimately used in voting decisions? If the CEO of a television network stresses profits over social responsibility, will the political discourse be directed more toward the sensational and away from other important, although less exciting problems? Media ethicists raise questions about the moral implications of media ownership and whether the filters of political information are equitable and balanced. In the U.S., for example, 23 corporations own and control 50% of the business interest of all media companies? The point of view coming out of such corporations, media scholars argue, is a key area for ethical analysis. FUTURE ETHICAL CONCERNS

While news coverage, political advertising, and media ownership are key areas of ethical study, additional concerns are emerging.


323

One issue that will be explored later in the chapter is that of information haves and have-nots. Healthy democracies occur when all citizens have necessary information to make informed decisions. But what happens when some can’t afford cable TV or the Internet? The concept of information equity has ethical dimensions that must be addressed as the U.S. cultural fabric becomes increasingly diverse. Latino, Asian, and Middle Eastern communities have expanded, for example, but because these subcultures differ in terms of information access, analysts must consider the ethics of policies that do not provide for equal distribution of political information. Another issue for the future is that of privacy. The increasing use of databases and websites to collect and store personal information about voters raises new concerns, as does the perceived encroachment by journalists into politicians’ private lives. Beyond the issue of intrusion on private time, the ethics of how personal information will be used in the future has created considerable anxiety among citizens. There are also fears about whether such information will be sold to businesses for advertising purposes: Defining Ethics: Foundations and Terminology for Moral Reasoning

Ethics refers to moral principles regarding right and wrong; it is a term associated with standards or norms of moral conduct. Derived from the Greek ethos, meaning character, the word has come to be associated with codes of conduct and the inner conscience. Ethics is also a branch of moral philosophy and was addressed in seminal ways by ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Ethics is tied to the activity of moral reasoning, which is a thoughtful, systematic, and analytical approach to moral issues. It shouldn’t be confused with moralizing, which is a more casual and offhanded approach? With moralizing, assumptions about right and wrong are made without coherent or consistent rationale. Classical moral philosophy, however, is based on the idea that the most defensible ethical decisions come out of dialectical reasoning that stretches the intellect, rather than the more superficial and anecdotal analyses that we all fall victim to at one time or another. The purpose of this section, then, is to lay out some of the foundational

324

Dan Stout

terms and principles necessary in making the leap from moralizing to moral reasoning. Types of Ethics

Within the field of moral philosophy, a number of distinctions are helpful in thinking about the multifaceted nature of ethics. Normative ethics is that branch of moral reasoning anchored in the expectations and norms of society. Grasping the distinction between theoretical and applied ethics is also useful, the former consisting of the use of analytical concepts to explain ethical behavior and the latter concerning itself with applying theory to practice. The two main categories of ethics to be discussed in this chapter, however, are deontological and teleological. Deontological approaches assume a “universal right” in all situations. This type of ethics recognizes an inherent good in a moral action or intention; the consequences of the action are less important. With teleology, on the other hand, it is the consequence of the action that is vital in the ethical decision. The key is how the decision ultimately affects society, not the intention of the actor. EthicaI Principles

In addition to types of ethics, there are also ethical principles, or well-reasoned frameworks or guides in making moral decisions. Such principles are the result of thorough analysis and study. Some of these include Aristotle’s golden mean, Kant’s categorical imperative, Mill’s utilitarianism, and Durkheim’s cultural ethical relativism. Aristotle’s Golden Mean Based on the idea that ethical behavior is found in the moderation between two extremes, Aristotle posited the concept of a golden mean. Ethical problems, including those concerning political communication, should be solved by finding a “just-right point between excess and defect.”* Although recognizing that a mean position isn’t always possible, Aristotle believed that good should be the goal of all behavior, and that virtue is an important element of what is good. In media ethics, this principle is helpful in considering balanced approaches to news cover-


325

age. Parents of a juvenile accused of robbing a convenience store, for example, may ask a newspaper editor not to publish the story in order to protect the teen’s privacy and future opportunities. In locating a middle position, the editor may choose to run the story, but withhold the name of the youth. Kant’s Categorical Imperative The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant grounded his ideas on ethics in what he termed the categorical imperative. “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of n a t ~ r e . ” ~ In other words, never behave in a manner that could not be universally applied. This principle is relevant in media ethics with respect to the phenomenon of campaign TV commercials. If a candidate feels such ads should be universally truthful, she or he must also be held to this standard of truth and not make an exception. Mill’s Utilitarianism As a social reformer, John Stuart Mill made an indelible impact on the politics of mid-19th-century England. His contributions to moral philosophy revolve around his meditations and writings on utilitarianism. Greatly simplified here, this approach states that moral decisions are those which create the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The consequences of an act, he argued, outweigh the intention motivating the act.1° Reporters embrace this form of utilitarianism when they go undercover to obtain corporate or government documents, claiming that the publication of such is a greater benefit than obeying the law in a particular case. Durkheim ’s Cultural Ethical Relativism Emile Durkheim was a pioneering contributor to the field of sociology as well as a significant contributor to the study of ethics.” According to his view, ethical behavior can only be understood within the context of the larger society, which creates normative ethical standards. As societies evolve, so do their ethical standards; such standards also differ from society to society. This view has come to be known as cultural ethical relativism. When John F. Kennedy was president, for example, reporters considered it unethical to disclose details of his private life such as extramarital affairs. Today, however, most reporters consider it unethical not to cover such stories, as in the case of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

326

Dan Stout

The Difference between Ethics and law

Despite considerable confusion on the subject, there are important distinctions between ethics and law. The role of government in the study of politics makes this distinction particularly relevant to our discussion. That is, does the statement “I’m not breaking any campaign laws so therefore I’m ethical’’ capture the full essence of what it means to be moral in the political environment? As Rushworth Kidder puts it, “Obeying the law . . . is not enough to earn the ‘ethical’ label.”I2 Ethics is grounded in moral reasoning and cannot be achieved only by adhering to rules, codes, or institutional expectations; it stresses the beneficial activity of working through moral dilemmas in analytical ways, placing emphasis on the intellectual capacities. According to Kidder, ethics should concern itself with finding the “golden mean” between regulation and free will and thus achieve a deeper understanding of their complex inter~1ay.l~ Applying Ethical Reasoning to Political Communication

To this point, we have identified a number of ethical problems in mass communication; several relevant terms have also been defined. The study of media ethics, however, also examines the ways moral reasoning is actually applied in everyday situations. One thing our students express time after time is that while examples of ethical problems in media abound, specific strategies for dealing with such situations are rarely discussed in the classroom. This is partly due to the highly personal nature of ethical approaches. Strategies, however, are not necessarily final decisions, but frameworks or sets of questions that simply help organize thoughts and weigh options according to relevant principles and concepts. One such strategy is that of Ralph PotterI4 of the Harvard Divinity School, who suggests four basic steps in analyzing ethical dilemmas:

1. Clearly define the situation in which the dilemma emerges. 2. Identify the competing values in the ethical decision. 3. Use principles in analyzing the ethical problem. 4. Assess where loyalties lie and the conflicts these raise.


321

Using Potter’s strategy, we now turn to three prevalent categories of ethical issues in political communication: (1) Access, or decisions about who receives information and who does not, ( 2 ) Advocacy, which has to do with bias and the moral implications of how political issues are framed by media, and ( 3 )Accuracy, or the extent to which media content is truthful, deceptive, or exaggerated. To illustrate these categories of ethical problems, a brief case study is provided for each. Access

“Access,” or infomuztion equity, as it is commonly referred to, promises to be one of the most important media issues of the new century. Information is the sine qua non of a functioning society, whether it be in families, corporafions, or political parties. To have information is to have power, and in a democracy, it is vital that information be available to all citizens. Note the following case study: CASE ONE

Members of the Board of Directors of a major network affiliate TV station in Southern California are discussing a proposal signed by 3,000 viewers requesting a political talk show in Spanish. The population of the city is over 30%Latino and proponents argue such a program is necessary, especially since it is an election year and 15% of the population speak little or no English. Several members of the board, however, are concerned about low ratings and fear that a single show in Spanish will confuse English viewers; the national Spanish cable channels already cover politics for Spanish-speaking citizens, they argue. The proposal is defeated by majority vote.

The Sitrcation Applying Potter’s framework, an ethicist begins by analyzing the situation. What are the main facts of the case? Who are the key players? How committed are they to their position? What do we know regarding the strength of the arguments? Do we need to know more? If we were to interview those involved, what would we ask them? Deep and thorough analysis of ethical situations must begin by digging out the details and getting a sense that the assumptions made are indeed based in fact. The question of

328

Dan Stout

whether the new show would lower ratings, for example, might be conjecture rather than a sound prediction. In analyzing the situation, the ethicist accepts nothing at face value; she or he must verify details and validate claims on both sides of the issue. Competing Values After thoroughly reviewing the facts of the situation, the ethicist is ready to identify competing values. In this case, the values of equal opportunity and financial security compete. Like all social values, both are positive and valuable things to pursue. It is the job of the ethicist, however, to dig deeper and weigh the consequences of emphasizing one value over another in a particular situation. In this case, which value represents the greatest good for the most people? Does one value have greater consequences in terms of long-term effects than the other? Here, the ethicist must consider how the decision not to air the show might contribute to “marginalized voices”15 of a large segment of the population and whether possible loss of advertising revenue would have a social impact of comparable magnitude. Application of Principles Only after the competing values are identified and discussed can the ethicist apply some of the principles discussed earlier in the definitions section. Aristotle’s golden mean might be useful in thinking about a middle position or compromise, for example. Perhaps the Spanish program could be aired but not as frequently, or possibly closed-captions could be used to translate the program into Spanish. Choosing Loyalties Lastly, an examination of loyalties is necessary to better understand the biases of decision makers and how personal interests cloud clear judgments. Some would say that in this case, loyalties are split between community and business. Do you agree? This part of the analysis gets at the issue of power and how it can dominate and undermine fairness in ethical decision making. Advocacy

When editors and journalists show favoritism and partisanship, the issue of advocacy arises. There is a place for advocacy in media (e.g., editorials, news documentaries, letters to the editor, etc.), but in terms of general news content, there is some expectation of neu-


329

trality, balance, and fairness. Ethical issues emerge when main news is used not just to inform, but to indoctrinate. CASE TWO The Tribune is the only daily newspaper in a northern Michigan city of 75,000. Handi-Mart, a discount department store, is the largest advertiser, spending over $350,000 a year with the paper. A bill before the state legislature, however, would require the company to provide health benefits to part-time employees, which would put Handi-Mart out of business, according to the company president. Sensing a threat to its bottom line as well, the CEO of the Tribune publishes an endorsement of a gubernatorial candidate who opposes the bill. In addition, she makes a $100,000 donation to the candidate’s campaign on behalf of the Tribune. Although reporters for the paper have not been told how to cover the story, some complain and express anxiety about working for a paper that has taken a public stand on a political issue.

The Situation When a media ethicist examines a situation involving advocacy, a particular set of questions are asked. Do reporters seem pressured in ways that might impede objectivity? If so, what is the nature of those pressures? In the above case, the situation must be examined in terms of the validity and strength of the forces that threaten the writer’s ability to be expository and nondoctrinaire. According to the case, reporters feel a degree of “anxiety” about the company’s endorsement of a candidate. Are there valid reasons for such anxiety? Competing Values How would you analyze this case in terms of competing values? On the surface, it seems to be a classic case of journalistic fairness versus profits, but are these adequate descriptors of the complexity of the situation? At first glance, it appears that lost revenue is the CEO’s only concern. Some might argue, however, that both the management and reporters are ultimately interested in the same thing, which is preserving an editorial voice into the future. That is, the CEO might argue that if the paper goes out of business due to the loss of Handi-Mart as an advertiser, all newspaper coverage will be lost. First Amendment absolutists might disagree, though, insisting that this is the quintessential example of the inevitable incompatibility of press

330

Dan Stout

freedom and free markets. According to this view, the values of business are never as essential as those of free speech. Application of Principles Which ethical principles could you apply to this case? Kant’s categorical imperative seems applicable in terms of whether the CEO’s behavior would be universally accepted at all newspapers. Or, perhaps this is a case in which teleological ethics are more relevant. Does the potential consequence of the newspaper going out of business justify the actions of management? Choosing Loyalties Who will ultimately benefit from the actions of the reporters and the CEO? The CEO might claim that her actions are in the best interest of citizens because the newspaper cannot continue as a public service without a healthy bottom line. Ethicists might probe further in terms of this claim, however. Perhaps the CEO’s loyalty to political candidates and parties is also an important variable. How would you choose loyalties in this case? Accuracy

The final issue for analysis is accuracy, which has a number of ethical dimensions in both political news and advertising. Journalists are expected to get the story right through well-researched description and properly attributed quotes; political advertising should also be accurate in its claims. In the case below, some of the complexities of the ethics of accuracy are teased out. CASE THREE The two candidates for one of the US. Senate seats in Utah are engaged in an intense and sometimes bitter campaign. Given that the state is very conservative politically, the Republican refers to his opponent, the Democrat, as “just another tax-and-spend liberal” in his TV appearances and commercials. Noticing that the Democrat reduced taxes while mayor of Salt Lake City and took conservativepositions on most issues, a news reporter asks the Republican’s campaign staff to clarify and substantiate the use of liberal. At a press conference, the campaign manager is somewhat defensive and defends the label based on the fact that the Democratic Party is the more liberal of the two, and by direct affiliation, it is a defensible


331

claim. He argues that “we are entitled to our own view on what it means to be a liberal.” The commercials continue throughout the campaign and the Republican is victorious.

The Situation Ethical situations relating to accuracy and falsity are often difficult to analyze, and Case Three is no exception. First, it must be determined whether there is outright deception (e.g., when a political candidate falsely claims to have fought in Vietnam or when a news reporter mistakenly identifies a candidate as a convicted felon) or puflery,l6 which is an exaggerated claim that cannot be proven either way. Case Three is clearly puffery because what is meant by liberal is a matter of interpretation, or so the participants claim. Puffery situations require more complex analysis than the more straightforward deception cases, which are cut and dried. To the reporter, a liberal is something defined by concrete behavior like a voting record, but to the Republican candidate, it can be determined by other criteria such as political party affiliation. Competing Values With the situation more clearly defined, the values of the reporter and those of the candidate can be more precisely distinguished. An accurately informed voter is what the reporter is after, but the response of the candidate’s staff focuses more on the right to express opinions than past behavior. This is a common value-conflict in puffery cases. The problem some ethicists have with the “we are entitled to our own view” argument is that voters are simply unaware that this is the basis for the claim; they often make the same assumption as the reporter, that what defines a liberal is the candidate’s past behavior and views expressed. Application of Principles A number of ethical principles could be applied here, but Mill’s principle of utility seems particularly relevant. What are the possible consequences of labeling the opponent a liberal versus not doing so? Which action does the most good for the greatest number of people? Choosing Loyalties How are audiences affected by the loyalties chosen in this case? Who is more loyal to the voters, the reporter or the Republican candidate? The Republican expresses strong party loyalty. How important should this type of loyalty be in a case like this?

332

Dan Stout

CONCLUSION: THE PRAGMATICS OF MEDIA ETHICS

With regard to media ethics of political communication, every decade brings new challenges and prospects. From accuracy in news reporting to information equity for all citizens, the ability to engage in cogent moral reasoning can be of great value in the future. Whether it be a deontological approach or one based in teleology, a knowledge of media ethics can enhance our experience as citizens, voters, politicians, and media professionals. Perhaps the most salient part of this chapter is that which deals with principles and strategies for analysis; they help break down complex ethical problems into conceptual frameworks that organize our thinking. Besides principles and strategies, there is one more aspect of media ethics that is worthy of note. This is the area of pragmatics, or the specific ways ethical analysis actually impacts or benefits society. At the level of families, a knowledge of ethical principles encourages more sophisticated media criticism and interpretation. In other words, the study of ethics contributes to media literacy, which is the ability to use media optimally in everyday life. Many children, for example, benefit from basic discussions of the ethical dimensions of political advertising and how to better understand its persuasive techniques. For those pursuing careers in politics and the public sector, ethical study can be of prime importance. The years ahead will bring even greater dependence on media to disseminate political information. Strategies for using media are not only matters of political success, however, but can have social impacts on society. As media become more dominant in political fields, so will the need for those with a deeper understanding of media ethics. In concluding this chapter on media ethics and politics, the reader is left to ponder a few final questions. What is the relationship between the study of ethics and a person’s actual behavior in political life? Which ethical principles are the most useful in this digital age of media convergence? Will the information society require new frameworks of ethical analysis? Not only is there a need to address such questions, but also a need to take them more seriously.


333

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Summarize the four ethical principles outlined in this chapter. How does each relate to media ethics? 2. What is information equity? What are some problems that can arise without information equity? 3. What are the three prevalent categories of ethical issues in political communication discussed in this chapter? Give an example of an ethical dilemma in each category (besides the one discussed in the chapter). 4. Analyze the following case study using the four basic steps described in the chapter: A prominent newspaper, The World Times, is owned by the defense contractor WAR-Co. While a World Times reporter is working Oil a story about a new missile technology, the publisher of the paper mentions to the reporter that WAR-Co is developing that technology and without a government contract will go out of business. When the story is printed, it clearly emphasizes the importance and possibilities of the new technology but does not mention that the missiles have failed to achieve their objectives in testing. Shortly thereafter, a government contract is awarded to WAR-Co to develop and produce the missiles.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Baker, Sherry, “Five Baselines for Justification in Persuasion,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 14, no. 2 ( 1999). Christians, Clifford G . , Kim B. Rotzoll, and Mark Fackler, Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1991). Kidder, Rusworth M., How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living (New York: William Morrow, 1995). Leslie, Larry Z., Mass Communication Ethics: Decision Making in Postmodern Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). Preston, Ivan L., The Tangled Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity, and Advertisers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).

334

Dan Stout

Schement, J. and T. Curtis, Tendencies and Tensions of the Znformation Society (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995). Stout, Daniel A., “Advertising,” in Media Now: Communications Media in the Information Age, ed. J. Straubhaar and R. LaRose (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000).

NOTES 1. For an in-depth discussion of the information society, see J. Schement and T. Curtis, Tendencies and Tensions of the Information Society (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995). 2. For a detailed discussion of how journalists report results of polls, see Kenneth Harwood, “Reporting the Polls,” Media Ethics 12, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 10,28. 3. A short history of advertising and its roots in war propaganda can be found in Daniel A. Stout, “Advertising,” in Media Now: Communications Media in the Information Age, by J. Straubhaar and R. LaRose (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000), 346-81. 4. A framework of ethical justification for professional persuasive communications can be found in Sherry Baker, “Five Baselines for Justification in Persuasion,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 14, no. 2 (1999): 69-8 1. 5. These and other statistics on media ownership can be found in Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (companion book to the film), ed. Mark Achbar (Montreal: Necessary Illusions, 1994), 62. 6. For a thorough discussion of citizen concerns about privacy and fear about storage of personal data, see S. Ashley Grainger, “Privacy: A Big Problem with a Simple Solution,” Integrated Marketing Communications Research Journal 4, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 26-32. 7. According to Black, Barney, and Deaver, moralizing is the antithesis of moral reasoning. See their discussion in “Media Ethics and Issues” (unpublished manuscript, Brigham Young University, Provo, 1996). 8. Abraham Edel, Aristotle and His Philosophy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 270. 9. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:421/89, as quoted in Mass Communication Ethics: Decision Making in Postmodern Culture, Larry Z . Leslie (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 76. 10. For a more detailed discussion of Mill’s utilitarianism and media ethics, see Maria B. Marron, “Mass Communication Ethics: The Central


335

Issue in Decision-Making,” in Mass Communication in the Znfomuztion Age, ed. D. Sloan et al. (Northport,Ala.: Vision, 1996). 11. See Emile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civil Morals, trans. C. Brooktield (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958).Also see Larry 2. Leslie, Mass Communication Ethics: Decision Making in Postmodem Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). 12. Rushworth M. Kidder, How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living (New York: Morrow, 1995),73. 13. Kidder, Good People, 69. 14. Potter’s model for ethical decision making can be found in Ralph B. Potter, “The Structure of Certain American Christian Responses to the Nuclear Dilemma” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1965). It has been adapted and presented visually in four circular quadrants as “The Potter BOX”in many articles and books. An excellent application of this model to media ethics can be found in Clifford G. Christians, Kim B. Rotzoll, and Mark Fackler, Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1991). 15. The term marginalized voices is considered one of the “tensions” of the information society in Jorge Schement and Hester Stephenson, “Religion and the Information Society,” in Religion and Mass Media: Audiences and Adzptations, ed. Daniel A. Stout and Judith M. Buddenbaum (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), 261-89. 16. For a thorough discussion of “puffery” in advertising, see Ivan J. Preston, The Tangle2 Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity, and Advertisers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).


Index

Abraham, Spencer, 145 Acton, James, 86 advocacy, 153,189-200,328-30 Alter, Jonathan, 283 American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), 212-13,215-16 Ames, Aldrich, 110 Amundson, Daniel R., 31 Appel, Kevin, 28,33 Aristide, Jean Bertrand, 285 Aristotle, 324 Asher, Herbert, 27,31,215-16 Aukofer, Frank, 56 Bagdikian, Ben, 131,135, 182 Barbour, Haley, 148-49 Barnum, David G., 50 Barr, Mike, 27 Barrett, Paul, 89 Bartlett, Dan, 3 4 Begala, Paul, 163 Benjamin, Walter, 299 Bennett, Lance, 303 Berkowitz, Dan, 126 Berkson, Larry, 46 Bernstein, Carl, 273

Biden, Joseph, 64,164 bin Laden, Osama, 5,269 Birnbaum, Jeffrey, 184 Biskupic, Joan, 80-82,84,87 Black, Hugo, 92 Blackmun, Harry, 52,85 Blumenthal, Sidney, 9, 18 Borger, Gloria, 29,32 Borgman, Albert, 309-10 Bork, Robert, 53 Bowles, Erskine, 7 Bradley, Ed, 192-93 Brennan, William, 49-50,52-53,82, 85 Breyer, Stephen, 64,86 Brill, Stephen, 224 Broder, David, 10,30 Buchanan, Pat, 164, 171,221 Budget Enforcement Act, 185 bureaucracy, 97, 101, 103-6, 108, 110-1 1 1. See also media Burger, William, 49,64 Bush, George H. W., 10-14,185,191, 221,242,252,268,273,278, 282-83 Bush, George W., 2-8, 14-19, 119, 1 4 6 4 9 , 164-65, 170,221-27 337

338

Index

Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN), 34-36,39,80-81,87, 90,161 Carelli, Richard, 63 Carswell, G. Harrold, 47 Carter, Jerome, 63 Carter, Jimmy, 164,168,239 Casey, William, 101 Cedras, Raoul, 285 Cheney, Dick, 4,14 Churchill, Winston, 256 Clark, Ramsey, 239 Cleveland, Grover, 168 Clinton, Bill, 6-9, 11-19, 109, 143-46,163-67,268-75,284, 301,309 Clinton, Hillary, 9, 17 CNN effect, 281-90 Coalition Information Center, 4, 17, 19 Cohen, Bernard, 275 Cohen, Richard, 88 Compton, Ann, 9-10 Congress, 26-27,32,36-39. See also media Connally, John, 172 Cook, Brim, 99-100 Cossack, Roger, 54,81,91 Crosson, Cynthia, 193 Crowley, Candy, 198 Cruz, Rolando, 127-28 David, Richard, 32,90 Denniston, Lyle, 54,59-60 Denton, Robert, 32 Dole, Bob, 143,221 Dole, Elizabeth, 164-65 Douglas, William O . ,49,53,92 Dow, Bonnie, 169 Drudge, Matt, 92,173,208 “The Drudge Report,” 92,301,309 Dugan, Brian, 127 Dukakis, Michael, 19691,321

Durkheim, Emile, 325 Dye, Thomas, 29,3 1 editorials, 103-6, 112-13 Elders, Jocelyn, 109 elections, 159-74,221-23 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 1034,192 Erikson, Robert S., 51 Espy, Mike, 109-10 Fallows, James, 60,83 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 98 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 98 Fitzwater, Marlin, 11,240 Fleischer, Ari, 5, 15 Food and Drug Administration, 108 Fordice, Kirk, 112, 128-29 Fortas, Abe, 49,79 Franklin, Charles, 45,48 Frankovic,Kathleen, 165,208 Fulbright, J. William, 34 Gearan, Mark, 12-13 Gergen, David, 7,12-13 Gideon, Clarence Earl, 79 Gingrich, Newt, 145-46 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 83 Goldberg, Bernard, 198,200 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 235-36 Gore, Al, 170,191,221-25,227 Gormley, William, 120,122 Graber, Doris, 49,59-60,90-91, 120, 122,126 Graham, Fred, 49,60 Greenfield, Jeff, 17,166-69 Greenhouse, Linda, 56,58,80,82,84, 86 Hearst, William Randolph, 281 Hernandez, Alejandro, 127-28

Index

Hess, Stephen, 30,101 Hollings, Fritz, 1 4 3 4 Honecker, Erich, 235-26 Horton, Willie, 190-91,201 House, Toni, 55,61-63 Hughes, Karen, 3 4 , 7 , 1 5 information equity, 323,327-28 Inglis, Bob, 141, 144 interest groups, 57,181-202 intergovernmental organizations (IGOS),243,251-52,255-57 Internet, 36-38,150,163,266-67, 297-3 13. See also New Media Iyengar, Shanto, 278-80,287 Jackson, Robert, 78-79 Jacobs, Jesse DeWayne, 88-89 Johnson, Lyndon, 322 journalism, 164,173,197-200; investigative, 126-27,273 Kant, Immanuel, 325 Kennan, George, 240,282-83 Kennedy, Anthony, 46,83 Koppel, Ted, 239 Kosaki, Liane, 45,48 Krauthammer, Charles, 84,282 Krosnick, Jon, 278-79 Kurtz, Howard, 12-13,32 Lewinsky, Monica, 6, 17-18, 14, 144 167,301,308 Lichter, Robert, 31, 199 Littlewood, Tom, 120 lobbyists, 184,187, 189 Major, John, 286-87 Marshall, Thurgood, 53 Mason Dixon Polling Organization, 130 Matalin, Mary, 4-5 Mathews,Jessica, 277,281

339

Mauro, Tony, 5 1,54 Maynes,Charles William, 276 McCain, John, 300 McCombs, Maxwell E., 25,276 McLarty, Mack, 12-13 media, 237,241; biases of, 136, 150-51; and bureaucracy, 97-101, 102-13; and civil liberties, 75-80, 82-87,88-93; coverage, 60,120, 122,245-53; and economics, 130, 1 3 2 , 2 4 3 4 ; and elections, 159-63, 164-74; and ethics, 319-24,325-32; and foreign policy, 23541,242-250,25 1-59; and interest groups, 181-190, 191-202; and local politics, 119-24,125-29,130-37; and political parties, 14147, 148-54; and the presidency, 1-10,ll-19; and public opinion, 207-16, 2 17-28,270-7 1; roles of, 200-201,265-90; and state politics, 119-24,125-37. See also Congress, Supreme Court Mill, John Stuart, 325 Myers, Dee Dee,8,10,12-14 narrowcasting,9 , l l National Council on Public Polls (NCPP), 212-13,215-16 New Media, 9, 17, 19,26-28, 297-305,306-3 13. See also Internet New York Emes, 80-8 1,83,85-86, 89,92,152,184 News Election Service (NEB), 223 newspapers, 133,266 Nixon, Richard, 2,8-9 nongovernmental organizations (NGOS),237,243,251-52, 255-57 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 27,257

340

Index

O’Brien, Tim, 49,54-55,64 O’Connor, Sandra Day, 46,39,81,83, 85 Old Media, 9, 11, 17, 19 Ornstein, Norman, 28-29 Panetta, Leon, 7, 13 parties, political, 1 4 1 4 3 , 147-48, 150,152, 162. See also media Patterson, Thomas E., 151, 162,200, 218 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 266,297,305 polls, 130,165,207-10,219,270; and elections, 2 18,220-2 1,225-27; methodology, 2 11-15 popular culture, 75-80 Potter, Ralph, 3 2 6 2 7 Powell, Colin, 164,237 press information officers (PIOs), 102 propaganda, 321-22 Public Information Office, 56,62 Pulitzer, Joseph, 28 I radio, 239,266; public, 196 Raspberry, William, 83 Reagan, Ronald, 4, 16,19, 113, 167, 252,279 Rehnquist, William, 50,52,75,81, 83,86 reporting, 126,132. See also Supreme Court, journalism reverse CNN effect, 288-90 Robinson, Michael, 28,33 Roosevelt, Franklin, 2, 221 Rosenstiel, Tom, 9-10, 183 Ryan, James, 127-28 Safire, William, 30 Scalia, Antonin, 49,5 1,83,85,87

Schabowski, Guenter, 236 Scheuer, Steven, 78 Scowcroft, Brent, 277, 288 Segal, Jennifer, 6 1 , 9 0 Seligman, Lester, 1 Shaw, Donald L., 25,276 Souter, David, 46,5 1,53,64 Specter, Arlen, 64 spin, 187-88 Stephanopoulos, George, 7-8, 10-12, 164,268 Stem, Carl, 56-57,59,64 Stevens, John Paul, 53,88 Strobel, Warren, 277,289-90 Supreme Court, 45-5 1,52-59,60-66, 87-88,90 surveys. See polls Taylor, Stuart, 5 1 television, 76, 121, 133, 1 6 8 4 9 , 196, 255,266,287-88; cable, 163, 26667 Terzian, Philip, 199 Thomas, Clarence, 53, 81-84 Tidmarch, Charles, 28 Totenberg, Nina, 54 Truman, Harry, 22 1 Turner, Ed, 9 1 Unruh, Jesse, 186-87 Van Susteren, Greta, 8 1,91 Vietnam War, 237-39,273-74 Voter News Service (VNS), 222-24, 22627 Voter Research and Surveys (VRS), 223 Warren, Earl, 47-49,79 Washington Post, 80-89,92, 184 Watson, Paul, 285

Index

Weinberger, Caspar, 237 White House Office of Communications, 2-3,6,8-9 Wilder, Douglas, 22 1 Wilkinson, James, 4-5 Will, George, 83 wire services, 58-59, 121, 132

Wood, B. Dan, 50, 100 Woodward, Bob, 13,273 Woodward, Gary, 32,124 Zeigler, Harmon, 29,31 Zimmerman, Warren, 288 Zorn, Eric, 127-28

34 1


Media Power, Media Politics

Media, Wars and Politics

Latin Politics, Global Media

New Media and Politics

Contesting media power: alternative media in a networked world

Media and Memory (Media Topics)

New Media Handbook (Media Practice)

Power, Politics and Identity in South African Media

HTML5 Media

Media Vida

Media Virus!

Porous media

Media Psychology

Media Psychology

Media Sociology

Media Discourses

Disordered Media

Media Aritmetica Media Geometrica Y Otras Medias

Media and Power (Communication and Society)

The Place of Media Power (Comedia)

Media and Ethnic Minorities (Media Topics)

Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction (Media Topics)

Democracy and New Media (Media in Transition)

The Politics of New Media Theatre

Media scandals

Media Spectacle

Mass Media

HTML5 Media

Understanding media

Whitewash: Racialized Politics and the Media

Media Power, Media Politics

Media, Wars and Politics

Latin Politics, Global Media

New Media and Politics

Contesting media power: alternative media in a networked world

Media and Memory (Media Topics)

New Media Handbook (Media Practice)

Power, Politics and Identity in South African Media

HTML5 Media

Media Vida

Media Virus!

Porous media

Media Psychology

Media Psychology

Media Sociology

Media Discourses

Disordered Media

Media Aritmetica Media Geometrica Y Otras Medias

Media and Power (Communication and Society)

The Place of Media Power (Comedia)

Media and Ethnic Minorities (Media Topics)

Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction (Media Topics)

Democracy and New Media (Media in Transition)

The Politics of New Media Theatre

Media scandals

Media Spectacle

Mass Media

HTML5 Media

Understanding media

Whitewash: Racialized Politics and the Media

Recommend Documents