SUMMER 2020

POL 101: Session 15 (NHA)

ROLE OF THE MEDIA Summer

IN POLITICS 2020
How does Mass Media influence
2
politics?
The mass media is a powerful guardian of
proper political behavior because audiences
tend to trust the press, who they believe
should inform them about government
wrongdoing and provide proper suggestions.
All mass media is politically important
because of its potential to reach large
audiences.
 The Mass Media and Politics 3

•Mass media is a recognized component of politics worldwide.

•Modern campaigns depend on television so much that critics
complain that candidates no longer run for office on issues; instead
sell them like products.
•Scholars have long recognized the dependence of politics on
communication.
•The more communication, the more modernization (which does
not prove which causes which).
•The political system and the communication system parallel one
another; it is doubtful that one could exist without the other.
The Mass Media and Politics 4

•All political action is a reaction to communication. There are

different levels and types of communication.
•Face-to-face communication is the most basic and effective for
altering or reinforcing political opinions because it allows for
dialogue whereas mass media cannot. Until the early 1930s,
face-to-face communication was the main method of political
campaigning.
•The rise of television has largely bypassed grassroots stumping,
except as a means of getting free media coverage or for local
office where a candidate can reach a relatively large share of the
electorate in person.
The Mass Media and Politics 5

• The mass media reach an infinitely larger audience and therefore yield a
greater voter or public-opinion return than face-to-face communication.
• A speech at even the largest rally is heard by only a few thousand, but the
mass media are one-way communication. Viewers cannot immediately tell
the president they disagree with his or her TV message.
• Mass media generally reinforce existing political opinions but rarely
convert anyone.
• Radio and television do have stronger persuasive power than the
printed word because they mimic face-to-face communication, but
their impact still depends partly on chats with friends afterward.
The Mass Media and Politics 6

•The various modern media appeal to different audiences

distinguished by education, income, and age.
•The more educated individuals are, the more media they
consume.
•College graduates and better-off people tend to read
newspapers, magazines, and books as well as follow radio and
television.
•Those with less education mostly use television, and largely for
entertainment; few are regular magazine and book readers.
The Mass Media and Politics 7

•Age also affects mass-media usage.

•Older people pay far more attention to the editorial and news content
of newspapers and magazines than do teenagers and young adults,
who tend to use newspapers to follow sports, rock stars, and feature
articles rather than hard news.
•Young people also love social media.
•The college student who keeps up on the news and editorial opinion
is rare.
Modern Mass Media
8
NEWSPAPERS
• In 1910, the United States had more than 2,600 daily newspapers, and most
American cities had two or more competing papers. Today, only about half
that number remain, and few U.S. cities have two papers.
• Big corporations, seeking profits and not controversy, own some 75
percent of U.S. newspapers, giving them a status-quo orientation. Few
newspapers present the news in an obviously partisan manner, for both
practical and idealistic reasons.
• Most newspaper revenue comes from advertising, and ad rates depend on
the papers’ circulation, which usually leads to a middle-of-the-road news
policy that does not antagonize but makes news coverage bland.
Modern Mass Media
9
NEWSPAPERS
• In the 1960s, some 80 percent of Americans read a daily paper; now fewer
than 30 percent do.
• Newspapers come in third, behind television and the Internet, as
people’s main source of news.
• Young people have largely abandoned newspapers in favor of the
Internet and social media.
MODERN MASS MEDIA
10
RADIO
• Like newspapers, radio too has declined. Now three companies own half of
America’s radio stations.
• Clear Channel Communications alone controls more than 1,200 stations. It
is programmed from its headquarters with homogenized news and no
local content, not even tornado warnings.
• Between the two world wars, however, radio was popular, and its news,
comments, and political addresses—such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
famous “fireside chats,” which served as models for both Jimmy Carter
and Ronald Reagan—were quite influential.
• Since the rise of television in the 1950s, radio became less important.
MODERN MASS MEDIA
11
THE NEWS SERVICES
• Most hard news in newspapers and on radio, and even a good deal of
television’s news, is not produced in-house but comes from a printer
hooked up to the New York offices of The Associated Press (AP), hence
the old-fashioned name wire service.
• The elite newspapers disdain wire-service copy, as it is a matter of pride to
have their own reporters cover the story.
• But many papers in the United States are little more than local outlets for
the AP, which provides them with photos, sports coverage, even recipes, as
well as news.
MODERN MASS MEDIA
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THE NEWS SERVICES
• The AP is a publishers’ cooperative, with members paying thousands of
dollars a week in assessments based on their circulation.
• They also contribute local stories to the AP, which may rewrite them for
national and even world transmission.
• The AP is one of the few news services not owned, subsidized, controlled,
or supervised by a government. It is free of government influence and
proud of it, but it too is in financial difficulty.
• No government controls the AP, but other problems limit its quality
and influence.
MODERN MASS MEDIA
13
THE NEWS SERVICES
•First, it moves fast; every minute is a deadline. This means it
does little digging; its stories are often superficial.
•Second, until recently the wire services’ definition of news has
been something from an official source.
•Most of its stories are carefully attributed to police, the White
House, the State Department or Pentagon, and so on.
•The unstated motto was: If it’s not official, it’s not news, and
if it is official, it must be true.
DEMOCRACY
THE TENDENCY TO MEDIA 14
OLIGOPOLY
• If many competing media voices are good, America has some concerns, for media
ownership has moved toward oligopoly. Some twenty corporations control most of what
Americans read, hear, and view, as they own newspapers and radio and television
stations. The five biggest:
• News Corp—owned by Australian-born press baron Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox TV,
HarperCollins (books), the Weekly Standard (influential neocon magazine), The Wall Street
Journal, New York Post, London Times, and DirecTV.
• General Electric—owns NBC and Universal-Vivendi, itself a major conglomerate.
• Time-Warner—was the merger of a big magazine publisher and major studio that now
includes CNN and AOL.
• Disney—owns ABC and ESPN.
• Comcast, the biggest cable company, has tried to take over Disney.
• Clear Channel—owns a large fraction of U.S. radio stations and programs them centrally,
eliminating local content.
MODERN MASS MEDIA
15
THE ELITE MEDIA
• The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and
Financial Times are read by a small fraction of the U.S. population, but
they carry by far the most clout.
• Decision makers in Washington read them and take both their news stories
and editorials seriously. Leading thinkers fight battles on their “op-ed”
pages (opposite the editorial page).
• That is why these papers have influence out of all proportion to their
circulation. They are the elite media because the people who read them
are generally wealthier and better educated and have much more
influence than readers of hometown papers.
• Many are opinion leaders, who transmit their views to other citizens.
SOCIAL MEDIA 16

• A generation raised on social media, however, supposes that they bring

everything to light. They do not; someone—preferably an experienced
reporter— still has to go out and dig up news that many prefer to keep
quiet. Without the original input of news, social media are largely
gossip.
• Conventional media— especially print media—point out that only they
practice “quality journalism” by professionals who know their areas and
check their facts.
• They cover the basic news of government, courts, wars, and natural
disasters. This is expensive, and the Internet simply puts out the stories as
news digests without paying for them, under the slogan, “Information
wants to be free.”
SOCIAL MEDIA 17

•Digital media can undermine undemocratic regimes.

•Iranians mobilized by computer and cell phones against rigged 2009
elections. Young Tunisians, Egyptians, and Syrians used their cell
phones to mobilize against dictatorial regimes.
•Digital media’s unique feature that can support democratic
participation is that it involves a two-way flow of ideas.
•Newspapers (except for letters to the editor), television, and even
many websites convey information in one direction—from
journalists to the public. Social media are more like conversations.
THE GIANT: TELEVISION 18

• When most people say “the media,” they mean television, for television
still has the greatest impact.
• Some two-thirds of Americans still get their news from television—down
from 90 percent a few decades earlier—and most accord it higher
credibility than newspapers.
• Young people, however, now get more of their news from the Internet
and social media than from television.
• Post World War II, television touched and changed almost everything in
politics.
• Election campaigns now revolve around the acquisition of television
time; winners are usually those who raise the most money to hire the
TELEVISION NEWS 19

• Television, by definition, favors the visual. “Talking heads” provide no more

news than radio, although they do provide a sense of personality and hence
credibility, an imitation face-to-face communication.
• News producers pay more attention to a news story with “good visuals” than
without.
• Abstract, deeper topics go by with little coverage, but dramatic action—if there
was a camera crew on hand to catch it—gets played up.
• Television camera crews are expensive to maintain in the field, especially
overseas, so they usually arrive where the action is only after having read it on
the AP wire or online.
• Television needs to know in advance what’s going to happen; then it can schedule
a camera crew.
TELEVISION AND POLITICS
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TELEVISION AND APATHY
• Observers have long suspected that television induces passivity and apathy.
• Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam, reviewing the decline of
“civic engagement” in the United States, found that people born before
World War II, are more trusting and more inclined to join groups and
participate in politics.
• His reason: They were raised before the television age began in the
1950s. Younger people, raised on television, lack these qualities.
• Says Putnam: “Each hour spent viewing television is associated with
less social trust and less group membership, while each hour reading a
newspaper is associated with more.”
TELEVISION AND POLITICS
TELEVISION OWNERSHIP AND 21
CONTROL
• The U.S. government exercises the least control of communications of any
industrialized country. Since the invention of the telegraph, Washington has stood
back and let private industry operate communications for profit.
• In Europe, in contrast, telegraphy was soon taken over by the postal service, as
were telephones.
• The U.S. government— partly because of First Amendment guarantees of free
speech and partly because of the U.S. ethos of free enterprise—simply does not
like to butt in.
• For European nations, with traditions of centralized power and government
paternalism, national control of electronic communications is as normal as state
ownership of the railroads.
• Now European TV is partly state-run and partly private, and both of them face
continual charges of politically partisan coverage.
THE FRAMING OF NEWS 22

• Framing does not necessarily mean conscious slanting; rather, it is a

necessary narrowing that allows reporters, editors, and readers to make
sense of the news.
• Politically, framing gives great power. Whoever frames a problem guides
public discourse.
• The Bush administration framed the Iraq War in terms of weapons of mass
destruction and terrorism and won the media’s initial support. Later, when
the media learned they had been misled, they reframed the Iraq story as
one of civil war and chaos. The White House hated that. The Iraq War was
a high-stakes framing contest between the White House and the media.
THE FRAMING OF NEWS 23

• What can you do to protect yourself from sometimes misleading

frames?
• First, use multiple news sources; blogs may be among the first to question
the standard frame.
• Second, be aware that several sides are trying to frame stories for their own
political or financial ends to guide policy, win elections, or promote the
flow of money.
• Third, note the sources used in news stories: Do they have a stake in the
issue?
• Finally, treat all news stories with skepticism and patience; be prepared to
wait a week or two to gain a balanced perspective.
REFERENCE 24

• Roskin, M. G., Cord, R. L., Medeiros, J. A., & Jones, W. S. (2014). Political
Science: An Introduction (14th Edition). Upper Saddle River: Pearson. (Chapter
8).