Is it possible to understand American Politics without understanding the media?
Democracy is predicated on the assumption that the public can govern itself. If the public is out of touch with events, self-governance is impossible. Fishken- with his study of “deliberative polling”- proves that the public can make competent decisions if the proper information is presented. At the other extreme, Lau, Andersen, and Redlawsk demonstrate the disturbing level of correct voting in the United States- where the media suffers from numerous maladies- proof that a disengaged or uninformed public can be led astray. Reliable and accurate public access to information emerges as the key factor between the divergent results. No less important, Della Caprini demonstrates that an informed public is motivated to engage in the auxiliary activities needed for an effective democratic process- like political activism and informed discussion. Linkage institutions, or the avenues that information reaches the public, are therefore absolutely critical toward the health of any democracy, both in enabling and abating their function. Political figures, parties, interest groups, and the media all are linkage institutions. If media emerges as the dominant linkage institution of contemporary times, then yes, it is impossible to understand American politics without understanding the media.
And media is the dominant linkage institution in America today. As Leighley notes, the incredible accessibility and availability of the media to the public has broken any stranglehold other linkage institutions may have historically had. Perhaps the biggest proof of this development is the behavior of political figures and parties; today, instead of delivering the news directly to the public, these groups have to be content with “spinning” the message media outlets deliver- a phenomenon that will be discussed at length later. Having elevated media above other linkage institutions, and established that a democracy is built on the back of these institutions, the study of the state of the media becomes a necessity. Toward that goal, this paper is organized into three parts:
A New Hope: An Introduction to the Leighley “models of media” with an analysis of each models function as a linkage institution, as well as the crucial assumptions each model makes about the media.
The Empire Strikes Back: A study of how these models fair in reality, excluding the Internet.
Return of the Jedi: The new “forces” of the Internet and Soft News and what they mean for the models.
Along the way, examples of the 2008 election campaign will illustrate the various points made about the media at large. Together, these three segments will demonstrate how effectively the media is pursing its charter as a linkage institution.
Part 1: A NEW HOPE: Jefferson, Tocqueville, and the Dream of Democracy
Leighley proposes 5 theoretical media operating models. This section will analyze which of these models is equipped to be an effective linkage institution, and name the assumptions that need to be validated for each model to function.
The Reporter of Objective Fact:
The most basic function of the news media is to communicate raw facts and data from their source to the public. Media is viewed purely as a linkage institution, with no role other then the unbiased presentation of information. The responsibility for discussion and analysis is left to the public.
Support for leaving this task up to the public comes from the famous Beirut Study; researchers demonstrated the same news report was interpreted differently by viewers with different political standpoints, meaning effective democratic discussion can still be achieved without the engagement of the media. This model assumes (1) media presentation can be unbiased, (2) accurate facts are relatively easy to come by, and (3) the media has credibility in the eyes of the public.
The Neutral Adversary:
According to this model, media must act as a balance checking government power. In a 1787 letter to Edward Carrington, Thomas Jefferson ascribed this function to the media:
The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”.
Like the model of objective reporting, this model requires the media to be unbiased (hence, the “neutral” in neutral adversary) and possess credibility among the citizenry. However, the additional responsibility of “muckraking” makes several other crucial assumptions: (1) that the media has the freedom to act as an adversary and (2) that the media has the will to act as an adversary.
The Public Advocate:
This model co-opts the publics’ obligation for public discussion and places it on the shoulders of the media. In addition to the presentation of information, the media is now expected to stimulate discussion of the topics at hand. This model was advocated by Alexis de Tocqueville:
Newspapers therefore become more necessary in proportion as men become more equal and individualism more to be feared. To suppose that they only serve to protect freedom would be to diminish their importance: they maintain civilization. I shall not deny that in democratic countries newspapers frequently lead the citizens to launch together into very ill-digested schemes; but if there were no newspapers there would be no common activity. The evil which they produce is therefore much less than that which they cure.
The effect of a newspaper is not only to suggest the same purpose to a great number of persons, but to furnish means for executing in common the designs which they may have singly conceived. The principal citizens who inhabit an aristocratic country discern each other from afar; and if they wish to unite their forces, they move towards each other, drawing a multitude of men after them. In democratic countries, on the contrary, it frequently happens that a great number of men who wish or who want to combine cannot accomplish it because as they are very insignificant and lost amid the crowd, they cannot see and do not know where to find one another. A newspaper then takes up the notion or the feeling that had occurred simultaneously, but singly, to each of them. All are then immediately guided towards this beacon; and these wandering minds, which had long sought each other in darkness, at length meet and unite. The newspaper brought them together, and the newspaper is still necessary to keep them united.
In order that an association among a democratic people should have any power, it must be a numerous body. The persons of whom it is composed are therefore scattered over a wide extent, and each of them is detained in the place of his domicile by the narrowness of his income or by the small unremitting exertions by which he earns it. Means must then be found to converse every day without seeing one another, and to take steps in common without having met. Thus hardly any democratic association can do without newspapers.”
Tocqueville proposes the most complex function of the media so far. Instead of simply reporting on political discussions, Tocqueville insists the media must allow the political discussion to occur within its pages. The grandeur of Tocqueville plan for a “national conversation” via media makes it vulnerable to the most assumptions: like the previous models, Tocqueville needs a basic unbiased and credible news source to allow conversation to begin. In addition, a national conversation demands 5 other factors: (1) that people want to participate in this conversation (2) that politicians care about what they say (3) that people can make their voices heard via the ballot box, making the conversation matter (4) that there is equal access with regards to politicians, so all voices can be heard equally and (5) the content and message of media cannot be manipulated by outside sources. In other words, the media sets the pace of the national discussion. If any these 5 principles are violated, the magnificent conversation envisioned by Tocqueville is in danger of collapse.
There is no question that media has the potential to start a national conversation. The power of the media to shape public discussion is documented in Behr’s study “Television News, Real-World Cues, and Changes in the Public Agenda”, which reveals that stories given priority by the media are prioritized by the public as well. Hardy and Jamison demonstrate the ability of the media to influence the national consensus on certain issues, simply by reporting that something is the national consensus. Put together, these studies indicate the media can both shape the agenda and influence opinion, both prerequisites for the Public Advocacy model.
Profit Seeking model:
The media is a business with no particular moral objective. This model aims to deliver the news the public wants, often at the expense of what the public needs. Such a pattern- ostensibly- compromises the news media as an effective linkage institution. An example of this phenomenon is ably captured by Mutz in her study “Effects of ‘In Your Face’ Television Discourse on Perceptions of a Legitimate Opposition”. Mutz found that the increased level of hostility on television (good for ratings; i.e what the public wants) is inversely correlated with greater tolerance for different opinions (what the public needs). Mutz’s finding is echoed by David Frum in his criticism (right or wrong) of Maddow:
For this reason, the “profit-seeking model” is frowned upon by many commentators with a sense of moral responsibility, like Fallows. Foser cites an example of misplaced media priorities in the 2008 election. So to, that profit driven media focuses on “theater” at the expense of serious discussion is the criticism that drives John Stewart’s ambush of the hapless Tucker Carlson:
Nor does profit-driven media feel an obligation to inspire the public to political action. In fact, a separate Mutz study discovered that the incivility craved by for-profit programs actually decreased public trust in political figures, which in turn threatens public alienation from the political process. A third potential pitfall of the profit-seeking model is that profits bring with them corporations. In turn, corporations bring with them the potential for control of the news media by a handful of ideologues. However, this nightmare scenario is the subject of much contention, and will be discussed in Part Two. This model assumes the content of the media is determined by profitability. However, profit seeking does not kill all hope of the media serving as a competent linkage institution. The phenomenon of soft news is a silver lining, and will be discussed in Part Three.
Propagandist Model:
The media is dedicated to the interests of the people in power. This model is unequivocally at odds with the idea of the media serving as a linkage institution, as its does not attempt to present the public with a comprehensive picture of the world. In theory, it should not exist in a Democracy. The model assumes that (1) the media is slanted towards those in power.
CONCLUSION:
In order to execute its responsibility as the linkage institution of record, media needs to adapt one of the first three models and stay away from the fifth; the first three models are positive in a Democracy, the fourth controversial and unpredictable, and the fifth deadly. Indeed, one needs to look no further then circumstances’ surrounding the Iraq War to observe what happens when media abandons the first three models and shifts to the fourth and the fifth. The facts are clear: the media failed to discredit the George W. Bush’s claim that Iraq had WMD, a claim later proven false. Massing and Boehling detail how this occurred: the press allowed itself to report falsehoods (therefore failing to uphold being reporters of objective fact) by refusing to investigate the administrations shakier claims (casting aside its duty as a neutral advocate) and stymied dissenting voices (transgressing the commandment to encourage public discussion). It is less clear how the fourth and fifth interacted in 2003, but the presence of both is a certainty. Regardless, the failure of America’s linkage institution resulted in the subservience of democracy; the country embarked on a war informed citizenry would not have fought.
The question now becomes: are the patterns observed in 2003 evidence of the demise of the first three models? Was the media failure of 2003 an exception in an otherwise healthy media climate? Or is it a symptom of an environment that is toxic towards the first three models and friendlier to the last two? Is the optimism of Jefferson and Tocqueville a false new hope?
Part 2: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Darth Murdoch and Friends Join the Party
Determining if the failure of 2003 is the most obvious case of a less dramatic, wider ranging epidemic entails evaluating the assumptions on which each media model is based. Should they prove viable, it can be concluded that 2003 was a one-time failure. Should they not…
Reporter of Objective Fact:
(1) This model assumes that reporters can be transmitters of objectivity. Several sources call this into question. Most notably, Rhetorica describes 5 types of bias that work against a Journalist even before they begin to speak, including word choice and structure. Further, Rhetorica lists 9 types of bias that plague ideologically neutral journalists, such as narration bias and temporal Bias. Rosensteil notes another bias: fairness bias. Often, Journalists become overcautious presenting both sides of the story and up creating two sides to a story when there is only one. The dangerous things about these biases are that since they are not the product of a consciousness choice, but rather can affect the most well-intentioned reporter. The Daily Show highlights the absurdity of fairness bias in this clip:
And then there is deliberate bias. The 2008 campaign produced a great example of how different news institutions can portray the same event in radically different terms:
For the record, these figures from the 2008 campaign indicate that overall media bias is more of a function of events and not consistently directed at one party.
(2) A second complication in reporting objective facts is the lack of objective sources. Political campaigns and figures employ a number of tricks- known collectively as “Spin”- in an effort to cast themselves in a favorable light. Spin will be discussed at length later, but suffice to say objective reporting is difficult when many millions are being spent in the hope reporters fail to actually report objective fact. Gershkoff’s study on the Bush Administration’s construction of a link between Iraq and Terrorism provides a valuable example of objective reporting’s susceptibility to manipulation. In that case, had the media taken the word of the president as objective fact, they would have been objectively wrong. James and Jamieson provide additional examples of the thin line between fact and fiction, ranging from the non-scientific studies cited by Cold-Eze to the difficulty of pinning down a single statistic like the number of homeless in the U.S. In today world of spin, reporters need to question everything. The 2008 campaign produced a wonderful example: try figuring out if Senator Obama was the most liberal U.S Senator. Go ahead. Try it. Even a fact as "objective" as this is diffcult to pin down. Descartes is having a field day. Reporters of the Objective Fact are not.
Polls are a special category of “subjective fact” in and of themselves. Woodly notes that the mainstream media often polls as true measures of public opinion. However, Public Agenda lists over 20 ways these “facts” can be manipulated. Page echoes many of these criticisms, demonstrating how misleading questions can skew poll results. In the 2008 campaign, there was a particular concern that silent rascism was skewing the polls. Making matters worse, Schwartz notes how polls are often treated as fact by the media, leading to erroneous conclusions:
This leads us to the second huge problem with polls: Different polls taken at the same time often produce remarkably different results. Fifteen percent discrepancies between polls are not all that rare. If a group of polls use just slightly different samples (all of them reasonably accurate), slightly different questions (all reasonable in themselves), and slightly different analytic procedures (all also reasonable), the range of results can be substantial indeed. If, in addition, they call at different times of the day or on different days of the week, the differences can grow even larger. And if they use different definitions of "likely voters," as they almost surely will, the discrepancies can be enormous.In the end, at least for the 2008 campaign, polls did prove reliably accurate.
To see how such a cascade of decisions really screws up our ability to rely on polls, consider the now famous "bounce" that Bush got from the Republican Convention. The media, using selected opinion polls, conveyed the impression that Bush surged from a "statistical tie" to a double-digit lead. Many of my friends -- Kerry supporters all -- felt the election was lost. (Some of them would certainly have fallen from the ranks of Gallup's "likely voters"). Things got so bad that Michael Moore sent a letter to all the Kerry supporters he could reach, telling them to stop being crybabies and get back to work.
(3) Objective reporting assumes the public trusts the media. If there is no credibility, what is the use of being objective? Why be objective if the public perception of the product is subjective anyway? The 2008 campaign found that a staggering 51% saw the media biased against the Republican Ticket. The media’s objective credibility with the public is no longer a given.
The forecast for objective reporting is bleak. Even if it is assumed reporters are free of intentional bias, bias is impossible for them to avoid. So to, this model makes sense if the “facts” are unbiased themselves. In today’s world of spin, that is a leap of faith no longer possible without being a neutral adversary. Finally, the public faith in the media is on even shakier footing. Objective reporting may well be an anachronism.
The Neutral Adversary:
(1) This model assumes the media has the capability to engage in investigative reporting. The truth of this proposition is the most controversial issue dealt with in this paper. McChesney (115) argues that corporate control of the media has lent to right wing bias. McChesney implies this accounts for the disparities in reporting on issues like the draft deferment between President Bush and President Clinton. However, McChesney argument lacks the overall cohesive numbers to make this case. Conservative’s would shoot right back with such examples as the U.S weekly covers of Obama and Palin. And they are equally wrong in citing one example as proof of an overarching trend. Without numbers that span the scope of all reporting done by all journalists, and a mechanism to estimate what a neutral media would have reported, singular examples will not cut it to prove media bias. The same criticism is leveled at Outfoxed in this blog post; no matter how many clips are shown of Fox News endorsing conservatives, nothing is proven until it is demonstrated they do not do the same for liberals.
In a far more balanced piece, Page leaves this question open, citing the lack of studies that address the question of corporate influence on the media:
To my great surprise, I have found few systematic efforts to investigate possible mechanisms of owner or manager control of media's political stands. (A striking recent exception is D. Chomsky (1996), who has uncovered remarkable evidence of how the owners of the New York Times have influenced the content of news stories.) This topic seems to deserve high priority for future research. To be sure, it would be difficult or impossible to gather a random sample of influence attempts and observe their results. The subtle nature of processes like selective recruitment and internalized expectations, together with the highly confidential nature of overt interventions, affects what research designs are feasible. The use of memoirs, participant-observation, and interviews can be helpful, but most promising is archival research into the confidential memos or diaries of media owners and managers (e.g., Chomsky 1996). A complementary, outside strategy is to analyze patterns in which news and editorial stands may vary according to ownership characteristics, e.g., industrial sectors (Devereux 1993).Page also refuses to decide if the “liberal” reporter corps (this was the subject of another dubious McChesney argument- that there is no “liberal bias” among reporters because Journalism school is expensive and therefore only the wealthy can afford to be reporters… try saying that at 5:05 on Monday in Furst 317 and see what happens… probably the same thing that happened to this Blog Post) offsets the “conservative” nature of corporate owners. This topic, and thus the health of the neutral adversary model, remains a question.
(2) Assuming reporters are allowed to investigate free of corporate interference, do they have the will to carry out the neutral adversary mandate? The evidence on this is mixed. On the one hand, as documented in the film All the Presidents Men, the U.S has a long history of investigate reporting. On the other, several pieces of evidence indicate investigative reporting faces numerous challenges. Most important, as noted by Page, reporters rely on sources in government for the bulk of their political news. This creates an obvious conflict of interest when it comes to investigating those same sources. Woodly calls this “elite bias”. There is also the fear of retaliation. Bennet claims that the Bush Administration took this idea to a new level, actively punishing dissenting voices like Richard Clarke. Both of these factors make investigative reporting difficult. Mussing and Boehling illustrate how the convergence of these factors contributed to the media failure to be an effective watchdog in the days preceding the Iraq War.
A second, less explored function of the neutral adversary involves the questioning at formal events. Clayman concludes that reporters take a middle-of-the-road approach at these conferences:
As for broader circumstantial factors that bear on aggressive questioning, it is useful to consider these results against the backdrop of the watchdog model of journalism and its alternatives. White House reporters are plainly discriminating in their conduct toward presidents, avoiding the extremes of both total passivity and relentless aggression. Moreover, at least some of the ways in which they discriminate are not inconsistent with an elaborated version of the watchdog model. This is perhaps most clear with respect to the relative impact of opinion polls versus economic factors.Stephan Colbert begs to differ:
Nor does the Press Corps covering the new administration offer much hope.
The health of the neutral adversary model is a matter of much debate. Elements like the Bush administration’s treatment of the media indicate one way, while observations like those of Clayman lead to far less absolute conclusions. There are no clear indications that this is a dead model, although the Iraq War fiasco shows it is far from healthy.
The Public Advocate
(1) In order for the public advocate model to work, the public must be ready and willing to engage in a discussion about politics. Unfortunately, there exist several lines of evidence that indicate this is not the case. Louis Menand’s quotes research indicates that the U.S voting public pays little attention too and cares little about whom they are voting for:
Lau’s study on the rate of correct voting supports Menand’s figures. Instead of researching candidates, the public uses shortcuts called “heuristics”- such as a candidate’s party affiliation- to make decisions. Equally troublesome, Spencer records the public’s indifference to the actual winner of the 2000 election. Once the election was over, the public moved on. Hardly the hallmark of a country engaged in an intense national conversation.
Findings about the influence of the weather on voter behavior are among the many surveys and studies that confirm Converse’s sense of the inattention of the American electorate. In election years from 1952 to 2000, when people were asked whether they cared who won the Presidential election, between twenty-two and forty-four per cent answered “don’t care” or “don’t know.” In 2000, eighteen per cent said that they decided which Presidential candidate to vote for only in the last two weeks of the campaign; five per cent, enough to swing most elections, decided the day they voted.
Seventy per cent of Americans cannot name their senators or their congressman. Forty-nine per cent believe that the President has the power to suspend the Constitution. Only about thirty per cent name an issue when they explain why they voted the way they did, and only a fifth hold consistent opinions on issues over time. Rephrasing poll questions reveals that many people don’t understand the issues that they have just offered an opinion on. According to polls conducted in 1987 and 1989, for example, between twenty and twenty-five per cent of the public thinks that too little is being spent on welfare, and between sixty-three and sixty-five per cent feels that too little is being spent on assistance to the poor. And voters apparently do punish politicians for acts of God. In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that “2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet” as a consequence of that year’s weather patterns. Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election.
All political systems make their claim to legitimacy by some theory, whether it’s the divine right of kings or the iron law of history. Divine rights and iron laws are not subject to empirical confirmation, which is one reason that democracy’s claims have always seemed superior. What polls and surveys suggest, though, is that the belief that elections express the true preferences of the people may be nearly as imaginary. When you move downward through what Converse called the public’s “belief strata,” candidates are quickly separated from ideology and issues, and they become attached, in voters’ minds, to idiosyncratic clusters of ideas and attitudes. The most widely known fact about George H. W. Bush in the 1992 election was that he hated broccoli. Eighty-six per cent of likely voters in that election knew that the Bushes’ dog’s name was Millie; only fifteen per cent knew that Bush and Clinton both favored the death penalty. It’s not that people know nothing. It’s just that politics is not what they know.
Even when the public is willing to engage in a conversation, chances for a national conversation are minimal. Partisans stick to like-minded new-sources, as demonstrated by Journalism.org:
Who Is WatchingFox News is generally perceived as conservative, and MSNBC liberal, a fact John Stewart makes clear:
Survey data have shown that there are some clear partisan differences among those tuning into the three cable news channels. According to data from the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, CNN and MSNBC had more Democrats tuning in, while Fox News’ audience leaned Republican. Looking at party affiliation, CNN and MSNBC had nearly identical viewer demographics. Almost half of both of their audience members were Democrats – 48% for MSNBC and 45% for CNN. Independents made up about a quarter (26%) of viewers, while Republicans took up the smallest share – 22% for CNN, and only 19% for MSNBC.On Fox News, the trend was somewhat reversed. The largest share of its audience – 38% -- were Republicans, followed by Democrats (31%) and independents (22%).9
These figures are in line with the idea that partisans flock to ideologically friendly media. Prior’s study confirms these results. Trends like these do not bode well for the public advocate model; the prospect of a national conversation is difficult when media is speaking to a fractured public.
(2) The public advocate model runs into more trouble at the other end of the conversation. Aside from a public not interested in talking, the political leaders at the other end of the dialogue are often not interested in listening. Instead of shaping policies out of public input, Jacobs and Shapiro (critiqued by Hochschild) claim that politicians craft their messages to convince the public “that their own policy proposal is what citizens really want.” Joshua Green observes this pattern in President George W. Bush:
This is typical of how the Bush administration uses polls: Policies are chosen beforehand, polls used to spin them. Because many of Bush's policies aren't necessarily popular with a majority of voters, Steeper and van Lohuizen's job essentially consists of finding words to sell them to the public. Take, for instance, the Bush energy plan. When administration officials unveiled it last May, they repeatedly described it as "balanced" and "comprehensive," and stressed Bush's "leadership" and use of "modern" methods to prevent environmental damage. As Time magazine's Jay Carney and John Dickerson revealed, van Lohuizen had poll-tested pitch phrases for weeks before arriving at these as the most likely to conciliate a skeptical public. (Again, independent polls showed weak voter support for the Bush plan.) And the "education recession" Bush trumpeted throughout the campaign? Another triumph of opinion research. Same with "school choice," the "death tax," and the "wealth-generating private accounts" you'll soon hear more about when the Social Security debate heats up. Even the much-lauded national service initiative Bush proposed in his State of the Union address was the product of focus grouping. Though publicly Bush prides himself on never looking in the mirror (that's "leadership"), privately, he's not quite so secure. His pollsters have even conducted favorability ratings on Ari Fleischer and Karen Hughes.A final example is supplied by Gershkoff and Kushner; they demonstrate how the Iraq War was packaged with the War in Terror, allowing it to be sold to the American public. This is a classic example of policy being taken to the public, instead of taken from the public, as Tocqueville’s grand conversation requires.
(3) A third assumption made by the Public advocate model is that a national conversation is worth having, because the public can have an impact. Recent electoral debacles put a damper on this proposition as well. Neimi records the extraordinary amount of variety and complexity in the methods U.S election are conducted. Neimi concludes that even the most competent of voters can lose themselves in the jungle of the U.S electoral system. The most infamous example of a mangled election occurred in Florida in 2000, and is ably dramatized in HBO’s Recount. Further inconsistencies have been reported in the Minnesota Senate Recount of 2008, which also highlights the absurd turns the U.S election system takes. No matter how loud and intense the national conversation gets, it is useless if it get drowned out by an incompetent election process.
(4) In order for the national conversation to take place, citizens need to have equal access to their elected representatives. La Raja points out that despite the best efforts of McCain-Feingold, the campaign finance system is still broken. Money buys access, meaning that some Americans have their voices heard louder then others. The idea of the media inspiring a national conversation on policy seems futile if the voices of the public do not carry equal weight.
(5) The final criteria necessary for an informed national conversation is a responsible media that can stimulate discussion. If the media’s dialogue can be manipulated by political figures, then idea of media being a forum for national discussion does not get off the ground. Unfortunately for the public advocate model, media has proven porous to the torrent of manipulation unleashed by the modern political campaign.
Media manipulation begins with political ads. Political ads are by definition partisan and as a rule deceptive. James and Jamison highlight several less the kosher (come on, that word is so part of the modern lexicon) methods utilized in political ads, ranging from “the glittering generality” to the “dangling comparative. This blog post has an excellent selection of examples.
Effective political ads are not created simply for their immediate message, but in a hope their message is adopted by the larger media. Framing, priming and the creation of a narrative are three examples of ad’s influencing the media’s coverage of political campaigns. It should be noted that political ads are not the only way candidates achieve these objectives, (a press release also works), only the most common.
Modern political campaign create themes favorable to their candidate, and then attempt to cast subsequent events in light of that narrative. The goal of political campaigns is to tap into the media’s penchant for the “Narrative Bias” described in Rhetororica. Cook details how the Bush 2004 campaign achieved victory by creating and pursuing a devastatingly effective narrative about John Kerry.
Adherence to a narrative was arguably the difference between the 2008 campaigns of Senators McCain and Obama. A senior aid to Barack Obama credited the power of the narrative with that campaign success in 2008. The adherence to narrative is apparent in these two speeches delivered by Obama; although one is delivered early in the primary campaign. and one is his victory speech, the similarities are striking. The Obama campaign decided early on what images of the candidates it wanted to create, and pursued them with relish; in other words, they decided on a narrative about the candidates and stuck with it.
Meanwhile, there are many examples of the McCain team not applying this tactic. Cranky Doc cites this ad as an example, Palin's speech as another, and faults this ad for not differentiating between McCain and Obama (and therefore not contributing to McCain's narrative).
Spin does not stop with the creation of narratives. Candidates also attempt to control the national discussion with “framing” and “priming”. Kinder defines framing as the ability to place current events in a chosen context. Priming is explained by Kinder to consist of elevating a particular issue to central importance by devoting it disproportionate attention. West cites President Bush’s emphasizing trust in the 2004 election as an example of priming. Bush chose to raise the profile of that issue, perceived as a strength for his candidacy and a weakness of Kerry’s. In the 2008 campaign, the Obama team primed the age issue with ads like this one:
Making matter worse, the media devotes a disproportionate amount of time analyzing the ads. Negative ads, who had a significant and sometimes total share of the 2008 ad buys, also poisons the well from which national conversation needs to be drawn.
Spin creates a tremendous background noise that makes an educated conversation about candidates difficult if not impossible. Combined with a hesitant public, deaf politicians, an unpredictable election system, and broken campaign finance system, the idea of media generating a national conversation seems more distant now then ever.
The Profit-Seeking model
(1) The general consensus of media observers today is that the media operates according to this model. Most of the debate among scholars is if this prevents the media from adapting other roles (for example, the debate between Page and McChesney about corporate influence in the media).
The evidence of the existence of a profit driven media is abundant: McChesney writes of the corporate takeover of news media that has landed the vast majority of media outlets into the hands of 5 media corporations. The goal of these corporations is to make money. McChesney and Popkin cite various events as being responsible for the unprecedented rule of the profit seeking media: including the 1996 Telecommunications Act (“The Magna Carta of Media CEO’s”), the introduction of a 24/7 news cycle, and the demise of the FCC content regulatory function:
Before 1984, there were government constraints on just how low or cheap network news could go. This was largely because the FCC required networks to demonstrate public service programming in order to get their licenses lavishly on overseas bureaus, reporters, and Washington coverage in order to justify their licenses. They also went out of their way not to profit from the news shows. After 1984, Mark Fowler, President Reagan’s FCC chief, dropped the public service requirement for license renewal, leaving the networks free to concentrate on news that sold instead of news that pleased the FCC—and freer to compete with the growing number of cable networks… (From Popkin)Of course such a change had to happen in 1984...
The Propaganda Model
Unlike the other media models, there is some debate about what constitutes this model. Leighley has a very narrow definition, that the media exists to “support and advance the interests of those in power,” and a wider one, that the media caters to the dominant classes. Anup Shaw does not attempt to create a media model, but offers a different take on propaganda that further expands the breadth of this category.
Is there any evidence the media favors incumbents? La Raja presents evidence that incumbents are heavily favored in congressional elections. But is the media responsible? Indirectly. The immense gap in fundraising ability discovered by La Raja is only an issue because the staples of modern political advertising like ads come at tremendous cost. However, this is more of an offshoot of the profit-seeking mode of media then of the propaganda mode. Leighley takes note of this overlap.
The notion that the media caters to the dominant classes is energetically put forth by McChensey, Edelman, and Chomsky. Much of the debate on this particular proposition hinges on how much corporate control of media effects content, as well the ideological makeup of the Journalist corps. These subjects were addressed earlier, in the section dealing with the Neutral Adversary model.
Finally, Shah discusses propaganda of an entirely different nature; the use of media to promote a particular image or policy. This propaganda does not necessarily have to promote the interests of those in power; as this Blog post records, both the conduct of the American Media before and Al Jazaree during the Iraq War can be labeled propaganda. The first case was indeed a case of supporting those in power, but the second was not.
CONCLUSION:
Nearly 6000 words in, it is time to take stock. How is the media faring as a linkage institution? At this point, the data is alarming. All three of the models identified as contributing to this goal are in dire straits. Objective reporting appears impossible; the Neutral Adversary in danger, and the mechanisms needed for the Public Advocate model are broken. Meanwhile, commentators agree the profit-seeking model has moved in to stay. Evidence of propaganda has also been uncovered. As propaganda is clearly at odds with the idea of a responsible media, all eyes turn to the profit-seeking model. Is there a redeeming social value to profitable media? Or is the media system beyond repair? And what about a force left untouched until now, the Internet? Does that offer hope for any of the positive media models? Or has the Empire made a irreconcilable strike back?
Part Three: RETURN OF THE JEDI: Can the Forces of the Internet and Soft News Save the Media?
SOFT NEWS
The negatives of for profit media are well known: the media negates content valued by the three socially responsible media models, in favor of content viewers will watch. Hamilton chronicles the aftermath:
Both the regulatory environment and cable competition affected the mix of stories on the nightly news. When the Reagan FCC dropped the public service requirement for license renewal, there were indeed changes in coverage, but cable competition led to bigger changes.
In the 1990s, network news covered less legislation than in the 1970s. Whereas two-thirds of the critical Congressional Quarterly votes were covered in the seventies, only about half were covered in the nineties. Whereas the nightly news once covered half of the votes on interest-group scorecards, in the nineties they covered only one-third. Coverage of the Supreme Court, however, held steady, at about 40 percent of the important cases.
Celebrity coverage has also increased. Network news has doubled the time devoted to People's most intriguing people of the year. This is not entirely a move away from politics, though. People's list includes political personalities, and political celebrities like John McCain or Colin Powell get some of the attention no longer given to legislative insiders.
The big shifts in coverage, however, have been away from legislation and foreign reporting and into what is derisively known as “soft news.” While there has been some increase in the coverage of celebrities, both political and non-political, most of the shift has been to the “soft” categories of “news you can use”—consumer-oriented information on health, business, and technology.
Is there any social redeeming factor in this shift in coverage? Baum argues that there is, that so called “soft news”, or news that is reported with profitability,- and not necessary social responsibility- in mind has the potential to engage otherwise uninterested viewers:
Through cheap framing, the soft news media have successfully piggybacked information about foreign crises (and other highly accessible issues, such as the Lewinsky scandal) to entertainment-oriented information. Soft news consumers thereby gain information about such issues as an incidental by-product of seeking entertainment. My statistical investigations demonstrated that individuals do learn about these types of issues-but not other, less accessible or dramatic issues-from the soft news media, without necessarily tuning in with the intention of doing so.
The phenomenon of soft news is the lesser of two evils. What it lacks in responsible programming, it makes up by increasing viewer interest in the topics covered. Unfortunately, the benefits of soft news have a clear limit: Hart’s study (conducted in 1996, well within the era of soft news) shows that viewing political television decreases actual political activism, implying that even if soft news increases interest, it does not increase activism.
There is a second vehicle created by profit-seeking media where the same phenomenon has been reported: the emergence of “fake news” shows, like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. These are commercial productions that parody newscasts. Since they are designed as "for profit" enterprises, they have the same advantage that soft news; they are created so people will want to watch them. And as the National Annenberg Election Survey reports shows, they also do not ignore media’s social responsibility to educate; “Daily Show” Viewers are in fact more knowledgeable then the average American viewers. Further, the “Daily Show” has as much news content as a normal broadcast.
It is important to note that Annenberg finding is limited to Satire. Peterson divides political comedy into two groups: Satire and Pseudo-Satire, and claims the difference between them is that “while the genuine satire and pseudo-satirist are both joking, only one of them is kidding.” Apparently, this difference translates to a difference in content; while the Annenberg finding found “Daily Show” viewers to be more knowledgeable, it did not find a substantial difference viewers of Letterman and Leno, both pseudo-satire outfits.
A second important development associated with platforms like the “Daily Show” is they manage to correct one of the main casualties of contemporary media, trust. As reported in the section on the Objective Reporting model, media credibility is low. This is why the findings of the Project for Excellence in Journalism are especially relevant:
When Americans last year were asked to name the journalist they most admired, a comedian showed up at No. 4 on the list. Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central and former master of ceremonies at Academy Award shows, tied in the rankings with anchormen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and cable host Anderson Cooper. [1] [1]The implication seems to be that the comedic nature of his program engenders viewers to Stewart, giving him the credibility people associate with Journalists. Considering that John Stewart- at least- does not consider himself a Journalist, this is quite an accomplishment, and raises interesting possibilities for the future of Journalism.
The 2008 campaign was a major success for soft news. Because of her uncanny resemblance to Sarah Palin, Tina Fey's SNL skits became national news stories. Soft News was valued by the McCain campaign to the point where his last national appearance occurred on SNL.
Much is made of profit-seeking media delinquencies. However, the detractors of for profit news fail to take account of where for-profit media succeeds. The phenomenon of soft news has the potential to interest otherwise ignorant Americans in politics. This is no small development. An involved public is the first step in solving the problems keeping the media from performing its role as a public advocate. A knowledgeable public knows when its leaders are not listening, knows when it is being lied too, ect. Soft news is a step in the right direction.
THE INTERNET
In the parlance of the 2008 campaign, the Internet has the status of game changer. There is no question the 2008 campaign saw the importance of the Internet taken to new heights. The hope of the internet comes in many forms: blogging allows the average American an unprecedented bully pulpit. Campaign fundraising has been revolutionized. What do these developments mean for the media models?
Blogging has so far shied away from being a “for profit” venture, although there have been some notable exceptions, like the Huffington Post. Blogging is also a grassroots phenomenon and highly decentralized, and therefore unlikely to be used for propaganda. This leaves the other three media models suited for Bloggers. Combining the studies of Zimmerman, Samson, Sunstein and Woodly this post concludes that Bloggers are best suited to the role of public advocacy. However, this post only addressed one area where the public advocate model ran into trouble, the actual content of media. Blogging is an antidote to media manipulation. What about the other 4 areas- can the solution be found on the Internet as well?
Bloggers have the ability to solve another problem; the much maligned voting system in this country. Despite Blogger’s infancy in breaking news, they have proven adept in agenda setting, by shouting and screaming until their desired issue is brought to the fore, as was the case with Brennan. It is hard to imagine the results of the 2000 election being released in the age of Blogs and going unnoticed (see Spencer above).
However, it is another area of the Internet that threatens to knock off the issues of disproportionate access and deaf politicians: Internet fundraising. Internet fundraising has proven to be a tremendous vehicle of political upset. McKibben provides one example:
In its account of the political possibilities of the Internet, Crashing the Gate seems to me the most ambitious, interesting, and hopeful venture in progressive politics in decades. It's not a model that will win overnight. Kos picked a dozen Democratic challengers, most in quixotic races against heavy favorites like Tom DeLay, to raise money for in 2004, and all of them lost. But as he points out, it took patient work for the Republican right to build up its strength after the Goldwater debacle of 1964. And indeed, in the eighteen months since Kerry's defeat, Web activists have tested the new approaches in special elections with some successes. One example came during last August's election for a seat in Ohio's 2nd District, a Republican stronghold since 1974, which Bush carried in 2004 with 64 percent of the vote. Normally the Democrats would barely have bothered contesting the seat, but Paul Hackett, a political novice recently returned from a tour as a Marine Corps major in Iraq, launched just the kind of antiwar campaign the on-line activists had been urging: he was, the authors write, "boldly outspoken, unafraid of taking the battle to Republicans." Asked about gay marriage, he said: "Gay marriage—who the hell cares? If you're gay, you're gay—more power to you. What you want is to be treated fairly by the law and any American who doesn't think that should be the case is, frankly, un-American." The Internet activists raised $500,000 of the campaign's total $850,000 budget—nine thousand people giving an average of a little more than $50 apiece. On election day, the word went out at 10:30 in the morning that Hackett needed $60,000 for get-out-the-vote expenses, and six hours later $60,000 had poured in. The on-line activists had to tell people to stop giving.The financial power of the Internet is not something politicians can ignore. In one fell swoop, politicians are now that much more vulnerable. They can no longer afford to be deaf.
Hindman draws the most prominent example of the Internet aiding politicians from the Howard Dean campaign. Dean is the perfect example of a politician who let the policy of his constituents come to him, in contrast to the mold described by Jacobs and Shapiro. Dean rode a groundswell of popular sentiment by opposing the Iraq War, and was handsomely rewarded on the Internet:
I have so far offered a causal explanation for Howard Dean's initial rise as the Democratic party front-runner. In social science, causal questions are ultimately about counterfactuals. Thus, it is worth putting these observations together to ask: but for the Internet, how should we have expected Dean's campaign to unfold? While such analysis is never an exact science, the strong body of established research on political participation, fund-raising, and primary politics makes Dean's counterfactual case study easier than most.This is not to say that the Internet promises complete freedom from the traditional methods of fundraising. As The Center For Public Integrity reports, even the 2008 campaign, with Barack Obama's record Internet fundraising machine, relied on Bundlers.
In the 2004 primary field, Dean had several potential advantages over his competitors that would have been important with or without the Internet. Many Dean supporters opposed the war in Iraq, and there was no other staunch antiwar candidate. As both governor and medical doctor, Dean presented a compelling personal narrative. His energetic presence on the stump (and the fervor of his attacks against the president) made him stand out. For the dark horse candidate, being ignored is the biggest danger; Dean was consistently quotable.
A completely offline Dean campaign, then, would still have had important strengths. But one thing it would not have done is raise more than a fraction of the $52 million that Dean ultimately received. Dean's campaign defied the example of every previous primary candidate, the Republicans' longstanding advantage in small donations, and every political science model of how much candidates raise and from whom. It is not just the grand sums of money raised that point to the influence of the Internet—though that was important enough—but also the balance between large and small donations. The only other recent primary campaigns to raise a substantial percentage of their funding from small donors—specifically Clark and Dennis Kucinich—were themselves heavily invested in the Web. Not only that, once Senator John Kerry had the nomination, his sudden success in online fund-raising dramatically increased the proportion of funding he received from smaller donors: whereas at the end of January, 58 percent of his giving had come from those giving $2,000 each, by the end of June those who gave the maximum accounted for only 34 percent of Kerry's total war chest. 18
To get a sense of Dean's expected fund-raising without the Internet, let us make two assumptions for the sake of argument: first, that Dean's online success did not scare off more large donors than it attracted; second, that without the Internet, large donors would have provided roughly the same proportion of Dean's funding that they did for previous primary candidates, or for those of Dean's competitors who failed to run strong Web campaigns. Dean attracted 2,851 donors who gave the $2,000 maximum. Let us conjecture that these donors would otherwise have accounted for 50 percent of Dean's funds—still less than the percentage that they accounted for in the early fund-raising for George W. Bush, John Kerry, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman. In that case, Dean would have raised no more than $11 million in campaign funds, 21 percent of his actual total—placing him behind all of the above candidates in the fund-raising race.
The 2008 victory of Barack Obama has also aided the access issue. Although in a country of 300 million people and 536 elected Federal officials, access will always be a problem, Change.Gov offers an interesting take to the access question.
The Internet has been shown to solve four of the issues raised about the Public advocate model: deaf politicians, voting irregularities, access, and media manipulation. One obstacle to a full second coming of the Public Advocate model on the Internet are the findings of Reeher, whose study shows that internet use actually decreases political activism. If so, the first problem with the public advocacy model still remains an issue. The good news is that Cranky Doc has found research indicating the opposite. A second, debatable issue, is if the Internet makes the public more partisan or less. Prior’s study- conducted within the Internet era- is not an encouraging sign, considering the more information on the Internet is no guarantee for decreased partisanship. This blog discusses the issue further.
One major assumption made by those who expect the Internet to revolutionize politics is the immunity of the Internet to government manipulation. This proposition turns out to be controversial. Glen Reynolds takes in Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu in this correspondence. Gillmor also begins addressing these questions. If governments do indeed have control over the Internet, the rebirth of the public advocacy model is dead on arrival. Meanwhile, corporate control is only slightly less threatening.
CONCLUSION: What does the Future Hold (Hopefully no more Prequels)?
There is little debate that the non-internet media is primarily profit driven. There is also no question the environment is tough to toxic for the three “responsible” models. And profit driven economics are- likely- not going anywhere any time soon. However, there is hope that media in the 21st Century still fulfill its obligation as a responsible linkage institution. Soft News shows promise in at least involving otherwise distant individuals in the political process. The Internet has nearly solved the many issues with the public advocacy model, arguably the most noble of all media models. My suspicion is that these trends have a healthy future in front of them, and with them the media.
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