 |
Chapter Fourteen: The News Media
The First Amendment gives the U.S. news media considerable freedom. The Framers granted the press this freedom in another attempt to check the power of government. The news media do act as a check on government power, making it possible for citizens to gain information on the performance of officeholders. But in reality the media and politicians are more than simple adversaries.
Politicians and reporters in the United States engage in an odd dance: each dancer tries to manipulate the other, and each has something the other needs. Politicians are motivated by reelection, while the news media are pursuing profits. Politicians attempt to trade private information for favorable coverage. The news media try to acquire and transmit the type of information desired by their audiences.
The power struggle between politicians and the press has evolved over time and across situations. In some settings, particularly the partisan press era, parties and politicians can dictate much of the content of political news. In other settings, particularly in the era of the newspaper barons, the media hold greater sway over the news. However, despite politicians' and the media's best efforts to the contrary, most of the time neither can get what it wants without at least some help from the other.
After reading this chapter, you should understand…
- how the economics of news coverage has changed over time in the United States
- why the president benefited more than did other politicians from the development of television
- why the advent of virtually unlimited news programming has not resulted in a better-informed citizenry
- how the Federal Communications Commission prevented a tragedy of the commons in the broadcast spectrum in the 1930s
- how news outlets compete for audiences, and which types of audiences tend to learn better from each news outlet
- that political news results from the interaction and competition of two independent actors, each of whom has potentially incompatible motives
- the different motivations and considerations that go into a decision to leak information to the press
- the main criteria the media seem to use in selecting news
- the strategic relations between press and reporters
- how the beat system can reinforce particular patterns of coverage
- historical changes in the relationship between political sources and reporters
- why presidential sound bites have shrunk in television coverage of politics, and the impact of this shrinkage on the behavior of politicians
- How do market forces make political news more "democratic"? Have market forces played the same role in press coverage throughout U.S. history?
- Why did newspaper editors accept party subsidies in the early Republic? What motivated these same editors to give up the subsidies later? Why didn't they give them up earlier?
- How did the rise of newspaper chains affect the political influence of the press? What ultimately eroded the political power of these chains? How and why has the influence of newspapers continued to decline today?
- Why are broadcast media outlets generally more regulated than print media? What are some examples of this regulation, and what consequences do they have for political news? How has the rising popularity of Internet, cable, and satellite news affected the rationale for more broadcast regulation?
- How do differences in factors such as carrying capacity and target audiences lead to differences in the substance and style of news in different media?
- How and why do politicians seek to manipulate the news? What strategies do they use to generate beneficial coverage?
- How does the number of politicians holding information or the number of journalists distributing it affect the ability of these actors to manipulate one other? What are examples of situations in which the power of politicians has exceeded that of journalists? When have journalists had more power?
- What resources do politicians have that might allow them to "go around" the press and communicate with the public directly? In general, how successful are these attempts?
|