Press Secretaries,Journalists, and Editors: Shaping Local Congressional News Coverage

The news media plays a key role in American democracy, often serving as the primary means by which voters learn about their elected representatives. However, the news media varies in its coverage of representatives, presenting voters with more frequent and favorable information about some House members than others, which may in turn influence voters' decisions at the polls. Although many scholars have examined the determinants of congressional news coverage, few have focused on the role of the actors who perhaps exert the most direct effect on such coverage: congressional press secretaries, journalists, and editors. In this study, I explore the influence of these actors on the tone and frequency of local congressional news coverage. I rely on data from two sources: (a) a content analysis of newspaper coverage of 100 representatives during the month prior to the 2006 election and (b) in-depth interviews with 51 congressional press secretaries and 22 journalists. These sets of data illustrate the important roles of both newspaper staff and congressional press secretaries in shaping the coverage House members receive. I conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for U.S. representatives and their constituents.     

Exposure to the Newer Media in a Presidential Primary Campaign

Cable television news channels and online news sites appear to offer interested voters the ability to follow presidential election campaigns more closely than ever before. However, survey research looking at the extent to which Americans are taking advantage of these newer media is incomplete. Rarely is new media use adequately assessed in surveys, and no extant study has simultaneously examined exposure to contemporary news channels over the course of several weeks. The present study uses an aggregate-level analysis of naturally occurring news consumption behavior to determine whether public selection of broadcast news programs, cable news channels, and online news outlets follows the primary election schedule and fluctuations in voter interest in the election. The results suggest that people turn to cable news and online political content during key political events (i.e., the Super Tuesday primary period) but less so when the political stakes are much lower. In addition, the data reveal that news reading at local news sites during key events takes on a more local character than does reading at other times. In sum, the study demonstrates that aggregate-level use of the newer media is responsive to changes in the political environment. Audiences seem willing to take advantage of a growing number of options for finding information about politics.     

The Campaign Disconnect: Media Coverage of the 2000 South Carolina Presidential Primary

Campaigns are an interactive process in which candidates, outside groups, the media, and voters communicate with each other to create an information environment that allows the various participants to construct meaning and form an understanding of the candidates and the campaign. Presidential primaries add a layer of complexity to this process as candidates and the press deal with both local and national audiences. In this article, we analyze the campaign communications in the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina—including candidate ads, mailings, and phone calls; local and national newspaper coverage; and network television coverage. We find that there was a disconnect as news media often focused on events and issues that diverged from the messages of the candidates' campaigns. In addition, we find substantial differences between local and national media coverage of the primary resulting from their distinct audiences and the reporters' own understanding of the local context that created significantly different information environments for voters in the state and those out of the state. We consider the implications of these findings for how voters and journalists understand the candidates as well as the challenges presidential candidates face in simultaneously campaigning locally and nationally.     

A Matter of Context: A Comparative Study of Media Environments and News Consumption Gaps in Europe

Research has shown that individual-level characteristics such as socioeconomic status and political interest are becoming more important as predictors of news consumption in a rapidly changing media environment. Despite this general trend, this article argues that the importance of individual-level predictors of news consumption varies between national media environments. We use extensive survey data from 16 European countries and multilevel modeling in order to investigate both contextual-level and cross-level effects on news consumption. The results show that media environment characteristics have additional effects on news consumption beyond the effects of individual-level characteristics such as education and political interest, but also moderating impacts on these individual-level predictors of news consumption. More specifically, national media environments characterized by higher levels of newspaper-centrism are related to smaller gaps in newspaper reading between those with high and low levels of education and political interest. Lower degrees of newspaper-centrism are, on the other hand, related to a weaker “lower-class bias” of television news and larger gaps in news consumption between those with and without high political interest. These findings are discussed in light of previous research on news consumption, knowledge, and participation gaps as well as cross-national comparative research.     

Speech Rights in America: The First Amendment,Democracy, and the Media,by Laura Stein Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism,by Samuel P. Nelson

In this article, we develop and test an economic theory of Supreme Court news. We hypothesize that information about the Third Branch is newsworthy when it has lower production costs and qualities attractive to the audiences and advertisers desired by news organizations. We examine Supreme Court news in elite newspapers, television news broadcasts, and online news sources during the October 2008 and 2010 terms. The results of our quantitative analyses indicate that all three types of news outlets are more likely to provide content about Supreme Court decisions with substantive importance but vary in their responses to costs and qualities appealing to the lay audience. We conclude by discussing the similarities and differences among news outlets with regard to their selection of Supreme Court information as news content.     

Values,Communication Behavior,and Political Participation

This article examines how communication patterns mediate the influences of values on political participation. We find that the positive effects of postmaterial values on participation are mediated through reading public affairs content in newspapers. In contrast, materialist values negatively affect participation through watching television entertainment. Interpersonal discussion in which disagreement occurs mediates both the positive effect of reading public affairs and the negative effect of materialism on political participation. We also provide what may be a better explanation of the influence of communication patterns on political participation by going beyond acquisition of factual political knowledge. We show that individuals' efforts to think about news and search for additional information and perspectives modify what people "get from" media. Reflecting about news and integrating information from various sources promote better understanding of the political world and may provide a stronger cognitive base for political participation than factual political knowledge.     

My Country,My Country,directed by Laura Poitras,produced by Jocelyn Glatzer and Laura Poitras Iraq in Fragments,directed by James Longley,produced by John Sinno and James Longley

A new form of “entertaining news,” accessed by most through television, has become a privileged domain of politics for the first time in countries “beyond the West” in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. What are the political consequences of this development: What is the relationship between media and politics in these regions? We answer these questions through a case study of India, the world's largest democracy, where two decades of media expansion and liberalization have yielded the largest number of commercial television news outlets in the world. We show why prevailing theories of media privatization and commercialization cannot account for the distinctive architecture of media systems in places like India. In this article, we first provide an overview of the historical and contemporary dynamics of media liberalization in India and the challenges that this poses to existing models and typologies of the media-politics relationship. We then present a new typology of media systems and a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between television news and democratic politics in India, and by extension in the global South. In the concluding section, we reflect on the broader comparative insights of the essay and discuss directions for future research. We believe that our alternative comparative framework captures more meaningfully the diversity and complexity of emerging media systems and their relationships to democratic practice in these regions.     

A Review of: “The Take”

This study uses four waves of panel data to analyze inadvertent learning—that is, learning in the absence of interest or motivation—from watching public service television channels. Previous research suggests that motivation-based gaps in political knowledge are at least partly a function of the political information opportunities provided by the major television channels in a country, which influence the likelihood of being inadvertently exposed to news and current affairs programs. The present study puts the inadvertent learning hypothesis to a thorough empirical test by analyzing individual-level growth in knowledge over time, based on panel data collected during five months leading up to the Swedish 2010 national election. Using multilevel growth curve modeling and an extensive battery of surveillance knowledge questions, the results show not only (a) that public service channel viewing was related to learning, but also (b) that knowledge growth occurred among public service viewers independently of their political motivation and news attention, and (c) that such learning was even more pronounced among viewers lacking an interest in politics. The findings are discussed in light of ongoing media environmental transformations as well as cross-national comparative media systems research.     

Corporate Ownership and News Bias Revisited: Newspaper Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Ruling

The clear financial benefits accrued to owners of television stations as a result of the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) decision opens the door to an important question: Did the degree to which media corporations benefited from the changes in campaign finance law influence their news outlets’ coverage of the Citizens United decision? In other words, is it possible to identify variation in how media outlets covered the Supreme Court decision that correlates with the degree to which those outlets’ parent companies profited from the resulting increase in campaign spending? Answering this question will provide an important and much-too-uncommon opportunity to systematically test for bias in news coverage. Replicating the method used by Gilens and Hertzman (2000) in their own test of coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, this analysis reveals that newspapers belonging to media corporations that own more television stations covered the Citizens United ruling systematically differently—and more favorably—than those with few or no television stations. This has important implications for the degree to which the news produced by increasingly conglomerated and corporatized media companies may eschew neutral or balanced coverage in favor of news frames that promote their own financial interests.     

Local Television and Newspaper Coverage of Political Advertising

How often do the news media cover the advertising of political candidates? And how do the characteristics of the news outlet, the media market, the race, and the advertisements themselves influence the extent to which this ad amplification takes place? Examining Senate and gubernatorial campaign coverage by several newspapers and local television stations in five midwestern states in 2006, we find that coverage of advertising is quite extensive, most of it is low quality, and its volume depends both on the size of the market and the tone of the spots aired. Surprisingly, however, television stations were not more likely than newspapers to cover advertising, though television does appear to be more sensitive to negative advertising, consistent with our theory.     

Going Public as Political Strategy: The Bush Administration,an Echoing Press,and Passage of the Patriot Act

Research suggests that political elites excel at controlling political and media information environments, particularly in times of national crisis, such as the events and aftermath of September 11. This study examines the creation and passage of the Patriot Act, which was proposed by the Bush administration following the terrorist attacks and quickly passed with strong support by the U.S. Congress. We argue that (a) the public communications of the Bush administration, particularly those by George W. Bush and John Ashcroft, and (b) news coverage about the legislation were instrumental in this outcome. Public communications by Bush and Ashcroft and news coverage about the Act were content analyzed to identify the timing of the messages and the themes and perspectives emphasized, and congressional debates and activities were examined for insight into their relation with administration and press discourse. Findings suggest that Bush and Ashcroft's communications, in combination with a press that largely echoed the administration's messages, created an environment in which Congress faced significant pressure to pass the legislation with remarkable speed.     

Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Coverage

Building on the notion of "gendered mediation," we argue that conventional news frames construct politics in stereotypically masculine terms, and we examine the implications of these news frames for the coverage of female party leaders. Content analysis of reported speech in television news coverage of the 1993 and 1997 Canadian elections, combined with the results of an experiment, reveals that the speech of the three women leaders was subject to more interpretation by the media and was reported in more negative and aggressive language. The study concludes that gendered mediation may hinder women's chances of electoral success.     

Presidential Agenda-Setting of Traditional and Nontraditional News Media

The president’s ability to influence the news agenda is central to the study of American politics. Although there is a large literature that examines presidential agenda-setting vis-à-vis traditional news sources, such as newspapers or broadcast television networks, there is little research that explores the effects of presidential agenda leadership of nontraditional media whether online or cable television. This study remedies this state of affairs by examining the relationship between the president’s daily agenda and traditional and nontraditional daily news agendas. I argue that although the president should find similar space on all news for topics he raises in his speeches, nontraditional sources are more likely to cover other stories that reference the president. Analysis of 748 stories on the presidency for 63 days in early 2012 from 7 traditional, cable, and online news sources provides support for my argument, with cable news providing the most presidential news coverage. I conclude with some implications about what my findings mean for presidential leadership of nontraditional media.     

Agenda-Setting and Priming in Prime Time Television: Crime Dramas as Political Cues

The effects of agenda-setting and priming are well established in regard to the news media. Considerably less attention has been paid to these phenomena in entertainment media, in spite of the fact that entertainment media enjoy larger audiences than do news media and often address political topics. This article argues that the psychological mechanism hypothesized to lead to agenda-setting and priming effectsthat is, changes in construct accessibilityapplies as equally to entertainment media as it does to news media. Moreover, we contend that the frequency, consistency, and duration of entertainment media treatments of political issues encourage chronic accessibility of those issues. We test these hypotheses looking at television crime dramas as a source of political information. Using data from two controlled laboratory experiments and the 1995 National Election Study Pilot Study, we demonstrate that viewing crime dramas significantly increases concerns about crime and that these concerns significantly affect viewers' opinions of the president. The NES Pilot Study data suggest that these effects are restricted to frequent viewers of crime dramas, supporting a chronic accessibility model of agenda-setting and priming. These findings extend our growing understanding of how non-news sources of political information contribute to the construction of political attitudes.     

Problems of the press in Latin America

This article examines whether the inauguration of peace between countries has a significant effect on how the news media cover the other side. It is argued that, due to the nature of news, leaders will generally find it easier to mobilize the media for conflict than for peace. However, the actual role the media will play in such attempts can be understood by looking at the political and media environments in which journalists construct news about peace. A joint project was conducted involving both Israeli and Jordanian researchers. The methodology included in-depth interviews with journalists from both countries and a content analysis of newspaper articles published during three different historical periods. The findings demonstrate that although there was a temporary improvement in the media image of the other side, there was little evidence that peace had a significant and lasting influence on coverage. There were, however, some important changes in the prominence of certain news slots. The interviews with the journalists provided valuable insights about some of the political and professional reasons for these findings.     

Circling the Wagons: Soft News and Isolationism in American Public Opinion

This study investigates the differences in coverage of foreign policy by the soft and hard news media, and the implications of such differences for public attitudes regarding the appropriate U.S. role in the world. I find that, relative to traditional news outlets, the soft news media place greater emphasis on dramatic, human-interest themes and episodic frames and less emphasis on knowledgeable information sources or thematic frames, while also having a greater propensity to emphasize the potential for bad outcomes. I then develop a conceptual framework in order to determine the implications of these differences. I argue that the style of coverage of soft news outlets tends to induce suspicion and distrust of a proactive or internationalist approach to U.S. foreign policy, particularly among the least politically attentive segments of the public. I test this and several related hypotheses through multiple statistical investigations into the effects of soft news coverage on attitudes toward isolationism in general, and U.S. policy regarding the Bosnian Civil War in particular. I find that among the least politically attentive members of the public, but not their more-attentive counterparts, soft news exposure—but not exposure to traditional news sources—is indeed associated with greater isolationism in general, and opposition to a proactive U.S. policy toward Bosnia in particular.     

The interconnections of political power,psychotherapy, and world community

This study of the main evening television news programs in four European countries focuses on the framing of news surrounding a major European event, the January 1, 1999, introduction of the common European currency, the euro. We investigated the visibility of political and economic news in general and of the launch of the euro in particular. We found variations across countries in the emphasis on political and economic news, with the proportion of the newscast normally devoted to these subjects ranging from 45% to 60%. Journalists in all countries were more likely to emphasize conflict (rather than economic consequences) in framing general political and economic news. In the coverage of the launch of the euro, there was a greater emphasis on framing the news in terms of economic consequences. The findings are discussed in terms of influences on framing practices internal and external to journalism and the value of the cross-national comparative approach.     

Scary Pictures: How Terrorism Imagery Affects Voter Evaluations

Journalists, candidates, and scholars believe that images, particularly images of war, affect the way that the public evaluates political leaders and foreign policy itself, but there is little direct evidence on the circumstances under which political elites can use imagery to enhance their electoral chances. Using National Election Studies (NES) panel data as well as two experiments, this article shows that, contrary to concerns about the manipulative power of imagery, the effect of evocative imagery can enhance candidate evaluations across partisan lines when they originate from the news but are more limited when they are used for persuasive purposes. By looking over time, the three data sets demonstrate different circumstances in which terrorism images have different effects on candidate evaluations—crisis versus non-crisis times and through news exposure versus direct use by a candidate. The NES data reveal that exposure to watching the World Trade Center fall on television increased positive evaluations of George W. Bush and the Republican party across partisan boundaries in 2002 and 2004. The news experiment that exposed subjects to graphic terrorism news in a lab in 2005/2006 increased approval of Bush’s handling of terrorism among Democrats. Lastly, an experiment where hypothetical candidates utilized terrorism images in campaign communication in 2008 demonstrates that both parties’ candidates can improve evaluations of their foreign policy statements by linking those statements to evocative imagery, but it is more effective among their own party members.     

Privacy,the news media,and the courts

Abstract

This article is concerned with the conflict between the news media's position that the public has a ‘'right to know'’ under the free press provision of the First Amendment and the right to privacy under the tort law. The constitutional issue is raised whenever the media print or broadcast accurate, but often embarrassing, facts about a person, or whenever personal information is publicized which an individual prefers not to share with the general public.

In unwanted publicity and public disclosure cases, the courts have accorded greater weight to the defendant defenses of consent, news‐worthiness, and media privilege than to the plaintiff's invasion of privacy claim. To remedy this inequity, a two‐tier judicial model is proposed that would have courts balance the two competing interests in such a manner as to enhance individual privacy without diminishing the informational function of the news media.