The Media as a Political Institution: Why Does It Matter? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the importance of a free press both in the United States and abroad. Describe how the media acts as a watchdog and give examples. Understand and define how political information is mediated. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. —The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution The press is the only profession explicitly protected in the United States Constitution. Many attribute this protection to James Madison and his writings in the Federalist Papers , but the idea of a free press stretches back to well before Madison wrote out his ideas on what constitutes a perfect democracy. The origins of the free press in the United States can be traced back to Cato’s letters , a collection of essays written in the 1720s by two British writers, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon . Using the pseudonym Cato, they published their articles in the British press, criticizing the British monarchy for its corruption and tyrannical practices. Decades later, American colonists felt the effects of these letters during their own struggles against the Crown, Ronald Hamowy, “Cato’s Letters, John Locke, and the Republican Paradigm,” History of Political Thought 11, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 273–294,-94. Accessed May 18, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26213860. and in 1776, Virginia became the first state to formally adopt a constitutional provision to protect press freedom. David S. Bogen, “The Origins of Freedom of Speech and Press,” Maryland Law Review 42, no. 3 (1983): 429, https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2503&context=mlr. Why is the idea of protecting the press so embedded in the United States’ concept of government, and why is this concept so important? Do other nations protect the media to the same extent, or even more? The next section will examine these questions. The Fourth Estate and Freedom of the Press The importance of a free press can be boiled down to a sentence from esteemed University of Illinois at Chicago lecturer Doris Graber ’s seminal work Mass Media and American Politics : “The mass media . . . serve as powerful guardians of political norms because the American people believe that a free press should keep them informed about the wrongdoings of government.” Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics , 6th ed. (Washington, DC (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2002), 2. Another common way of defining the media’s role is to say that it acts as the fourth estate , or the unofficial fourth branch of government that checks the others. The term fourth estate is credited to Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle , who wrote, “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.” Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as a Man of Letters: Johnson, Rousseau, Burns,” in On Heroes, and Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, Regent Street, 1841), 265 (italics in original). In other words, people look to the media—the fourth estate—to keep the government in check. The role of the media must be protected if it is to carry out that task. Throughout US history, the media has fulfilled this role as intended. In the late 1960s, Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg provided classified documents to the New York Times and the Washington Post proving that the government was concealing protracted military involvement in the Vietnam War. The New York Times withstood government pressure and a Supreme Court case to go on to publish a series of articles now known as the Pentagon Papers , which revealed the extent to which the American public had been lied to about the country’s progress in that war. The Watergate scandal is perhaps the most famous example of press freedom and the role of the press as watchdog (another term for the fourth estate ). In this instance, a government informant known as Deep Throat fed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein confidential information about then president Richard Nixon’s corrupt campaign practices. An ensuing series of investigative pieces by the two journalists revealed multiple abuses of power in Nixon’s reelection campaign, and their reporting ultimately led to the indictment of multiple presidential aides and the eventual resignation of the president himself. Watergate In this video clip, investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, editor Barry Sussman, and former executive editor Ben Bradlee recall how, when they worked for the Washington Post in 1972, they broke the story of the Watergate scandal, a story that started with an investigation of a break-in at a Washington, DC, hotel and led to a constitutional crisis, the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and almost 50 criminal convictions. In the case of the Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the president’s argument—that prior restraint Legal suppression of material prior to its being published or broadcast on the grounds that it is libelous or harmful was necessary in order to protect national security—was not enough “to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment ,” New York Times Company v. United States, 403 US 713 (1971), https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/1873. and this is the most important First Amendment case because it addresses the sweeping right of the press and press protections in the 20th century. Watergate showed how a protected press is free to serve one of its main purposes, which is to reveal government misconduct. New Yorker staff writer Richard Harris wrote at the time that, “The press was potentially Mr. Nixon’s enemy—far more than the courts or Congress, because only the press could dig out and tell the story (whatever help reporters might get from the courts or Congress) in a way that would arouse the people to demand an accounting.” Richard Harris, “The Presidency and the Press,” New Yorker , September 24, 1973, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/10/01/the-presidency-and-the-press. Watchdogs do not have to be journalistic behemoths like the New York Times or the Washington Post. In the United Kingdom, a small, independent newspaper called the Rochdale Alternative Paper revealed decades-long abuse allegations against Liberal Party MP Member of Parliament, equivalent to a congressperson in the United States Cyril Smith . The exposé in the paper, which had a circulation of 8,000 at its highest, Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse, “The 1979 Rochdale Alternative Paper Articles,” in Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale: Investigation Report (London: Crown, 2018), 25, https://www.iicsa.org.uk/publications/investigation/cambridge-house-knowl-view-rochdale/part-b-cambridge-house/1979-rochdale-alternative-paper-articles. eventually led to both a police and an independent government investigation into a child abuse ring that involved several high-level government officials, including MP Peter Morrison, the private secretary to then prime minister Margaret Thatcher . Elizabeth Howcroft, “British Politicians Covered Up Child Sex Abuse for Decades, Inquiry Finds,” Reuters, February 25, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-abuse/british-politicians-covered-up-child-sex-abuse-for-decades-inquiry-finds-idUSKBN20J1VL. Another way to understand the watchdog function of the press is through the term muckraker , referring to reform-minded investigative journalists during the Progressive Era in the United States (late 1800s to early 1900s) who exposed the wrongdoings of industry leaders. One famous example of a muckraker was Upton Sinclair , who wrote the novel The Jungle based on the corrupt and inhumane practices in American meatpacking companies at the turn of the 20th century. The publication of The Jungle led to governmental action on food safety. In his 1919 work The Brass Check , Sinclair exposed the journalism industry’s penchant for yellow journalism , or journalism that relies on catchy titles and human interest stories to drive sales over well-researched articles or pieces on civic affairs. Sinclair was not afraid to take on media titans such as William Randolph Hearst , who owned the nation’s largest chain of newspapers at the time. Muckraker Upton Sinclair exposed unethical and unsanitary practice in the US meatpacking industry in The Jungle . (credit: Modification of “ Upton Sinclair, portrait bust, studio at 56 Fifth Ave., N.Y. ” by Bain News Service/Library of Congress) Watchdogs and muckrakers act as a check on government action and corruption. They play an important part in exercising the role of a free press as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy. As Yale University professor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations Timothy Snyder writes, “If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.” Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017), 65. The media allows the public to understand what is happening in government in order to hold elected officials accountable. Or, perhaps more simply put, “A free press is important because it is the freedom upon which all of our other freedoms are contingent.” James Kirchick, “On World Press Freedom Day, Brookings Experts Reflect on the Importance of a Free Press,” Brookings, Brookings Institution, May 3, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/05/02/on-world-press-freedom-day-brookings-experts-reflect-on-the-importance-of-a-free-press/. How free is the press? The answer is not black and white, as evidenced by the 2021 World Press Freedom Index . Published every year by Reporters Without Borders , the Freedom Index measures freedom in 180 countries “based on an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists in each country and region.” “The World Press Freedom Index,” Reporters Without Borders, accessed May 18, 2021, https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index. The map in below shows that the press is freer in some countries (in pink and purple on the map) than in others (in blue and green). According to Reporters Without Borders, the free press faces a difficult or very serious situation in nearly half of all countries around the world. (source: Reporters Without Borders; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) According to the index and as reflected in the map, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have the freest presses in the world. Notably, Norway tries to discourage media concentration in order to ensure a variety of outlets, something that will be discussed in later parts of this chapter. The 2021 index ranked the United States 44th, after South Africa (32nd), Botswana (38th), and South Korea (42nd). George Mason University professor Sam Lebovic explains that two main factors, the rise of concentration in ownership and increased state secrecy, are responsible for the inadequacy of press freedom in the United States, which is an ongoing and serious problem. Sam Lebovic, “The Inadequacy of American Press Freedom,” American Historian , August 2018, https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2018/august/the-inadequacy-of-american-press-freedom/. The modern US media faces unprecedented struggles against declining viewership and revenues, which work to limit the number of outlets and decrease the number of working journalists. At the same time, legislation such as the Patriot Act , passed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has made it more difficult for the press to verify state information because of increasing pressure on sources not to cooperate and prosecution of journalists who do ascertain information. In addition, the Trump administration further hampered press freedoms through the prosecution of news sources, public statements that discredited journalists, and encouragement of foreign leaders to take steps to restrict their own media. “The Trump Administration and the Media,” Committee to Protect Journalists, April 16, 2020, https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibility-leaks/. The future of press freedom in America, while still unstable due to media concentration and surveillance laws such as the Patriot Act, may show some signs of improvement; in a speech on Press Freedom Day in 2021, President Joe Biden decried the imprisonment of 274 reporters worldwide, criticized the lack of local media outlets, and said that the United States “recognize[s] the integral role a free press plays in building prosperous, resilient, and free societies.” Darragh RocheRoch, “Joe Biden Warns Truth Is ‘Under Attack’ in World Press Freedom Day Message,” Newsweek, May 3, 2021, https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-warns-truth-under-attack-world-press-freedom-day-message-1588209. Despite these laudatory comments about a free press, however, it is clear the United States faces challenges in protecting journalists’ ability to fulfill their roles. A study of the United States and Latin America provides an example of how this idea of the importance of a free press is shared across cultures. In the study, journalists representing both cultures shared a common definition of a free press as one that functions without government pressure and to promote social and economic development. Michael B. Salwen and Bruce Garrison, “Press Freedom and Development: US and Latin American Views,” Journalism Quarterly 66, no. 1 (March 1989): 87–92, https://doi.org/:10.1177/107769908906600111. This study considered whether or not a free press is related to increased economic development, a question that to date has not been conclusively answered. While the notion that political freedoms (such as freedom of the press) should naturally encourage economic growth and increased standards of living is a common one, current research has not found conclusive evidence either supporting or refuting the claim. Manuel Vega-Gordillo and José L. Álvarez-Arce, “Economic Growth and Freedom: A Causality Study,” Cato Journal 23, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 199–-215; Abdullah Alam and Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah, “The Role of Press Freedom in Economic Development: A Global Perspective,” Journal of Media Economics 26, no. 1 (2013): 4–20. There is more of a consensus on the benefits of a free press when it comes to preventing corruption. Studies of press freedom around the world, conducted by scholars in England, Argentina, and Australia, confirm this theory. Timothy Besley and Robin Burgess, “The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, no. 4 (November 2002): 1415–1451; Sebastian Freille, M. Emranul Haque, and Richard Kneller, “A Contribution to the Empirics of Press Freedom and Corruption,” European Journal of Political Economy 23, no. 4 (December 2007): 838–862; Shyamal K. Chowdhury, “The Effect of Democracy and Press Freedom on Corruption: An Empirical Test,” Economics Letters 85, no. 1 (October 2004): 93–101. In this way, the watchdog role that the press plays is based on democratic ideals and has real-world effects for the public. The Mediated Nature of Political Information The political information most people receive is mediated information . What does this mean? Unless they work directly in government, most citizen’s understanding of politics comes completely from the media, whether via television news, podcasts, or social media feeds. The media may be a gatekeeper, but it is also a storyteller. As such, it is important to realize that what people see in the media is actually a manufactured view of the political world. Journalists and others who create the news follow routines and are influenced by institutional values that manifest themselves in media content. As Columbia University professor Herbert Gans writes in his study of the American media, “The news does not limit itself to reality judgments; it also contains values, or preference statements. This in turn makes it possible to suggest that there is, underlying the news, a picture of nation and society as it ought to be.” Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (New York: Vintage Books, 19801979), 39. Gans acknowledges that professional journalists try to be objective, yet the news does in fact make judgments and value statements. For example, crime news alerts viewers to the idea that there are undesirable actors within society and that criminals should be punished. Judgments and value statements such as these are different from political bias; while some news outlets are overtly liberal or conservative, Gans’s study shows that the media produces stories with cultural values that people may not detect because they are so used to seeing stories presented this way. For example, according to Gans, ethnocentrism and altruistic democracy are two of the key enduring values in the news. Ethnocentrism in the news refers to the idea that the American media values the United States above all other nations. This manifests most obviously in war coverage, where the press rarely questions American involvement—and to do so would be unpatriotic. In a similar vein, Gans explains that the American news media emphasize an altruistic democracy , the ideal held up by the media that politics should be based on public service and for the public interest. Ibid., 43. In these ways, the news makes statements about what is right and what is wrong and presents political news through these lenses. Journalists also share other professional values as to what makes a “good” news story, such as proximity, negativity, scope (how big is the story?), timeliness, and unexpectedness (novelty). Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple, The Discourse of News Values: How News Organizations Create Newsworthiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 3. Because journalists share these professional values, there is a certain homogeneous quality to the news, otherwise known as pack journalism . This means that people receive the same type of news story repeatedly, though this has been changing since the advent of online news, a topic that will be discussed later in the chapter. Journalists’ common ideas about what should be in the news and why color their coverage and presentation of the news—and, as a result, the public’s perception of politics. Members of the international press corps vie for the same story. (credit: “Members of the International Press Corps at the White House” by Ben Solomon/US Department of State/GPA Photo Archive/Flickr, Public Domain) It is important here to note that the concept of news values differs across countries—what is newsworthy in the United States may not be in other nations—and the role of the media differs as well. A study on the news in Japan found that strong cultural forces and local needs drive how news is produced and delivered. Lisbeth Clausen, Global News Production (Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2003). Other scholars have found that Western news organizations highlight human interest stories, while Arabic news focuses more on social responsibility and Islamic values. Cristina Archetti, “Comparing International Coverage of 9/11: Towards an Interdisciplinary Explanation of the Constructionof News,” Journalism 11, no. 5 (October 2010): 567–-588. University of Leicester Professor Vincent Campbell echoes the sentiment that news organizations in different countries are fueled by different values and that this influences what stories their audiences see. In authoritarian countries, journalists focus less on performing the watchdog role and more on promoting state activities. Vincent Campbell, Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context (London: Arnold, 2004), 123. This is the case in countries such as North Korea and China, where the state government runs the media. Related to the idea that the media in large part decides what is a good news story is the concept of the media’s gatekeeping role and its agenda-setting powers. In other words, according to agenda-setting theory , the media decides both what to ignore or filter out and what to show the public. As University of Texas professor Maxwell McCombs and University of North Carolina professor Donald Shaw write, “In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position.” Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 176, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2747787. Whether it is a producer who selects the topics for the evening news or an algorithm that creates a social media news feed, people know what is “news” by what is fed to them, they know what is important based on how often it gets airtime, and they understand that there are lead stories and stories that don’t matter very much. The public doesn’t make these decisions; professionals within the news industry make them for the public. (Later parts of this chapter will discuss how this power dynamic has changed thanks to social media and how, in many ways, it is no longer media professionals who select what the public sees.) If the media decides which stories to present, it also has a hand in deciding how stories are presented. According to framing theory , the way the media frames political information can affect people’s understanding of it. University of Illinois professor David Tewksbury and University of Wisconsin professor Dietram A. Scheufele explain: “Artists know that the frame placed around a painting can affect how viewers interpret and react to the painting itself. . . . Journalists—often subconsciously—engage in essentially the same process when they decide how to describe the political world. They choose images and words that have the power to influence how audiences interpret and evaluate issues and policies.” David Tewksbury and Dietram A. Scheufele, “News Framing Theory and Research,” in Media Effects, Advances in Theory and Research , edited by Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, and Jennings Bryant, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2020), 51. For example, a study on gubernatorial races found that female candidates were more likely to be framed in terms of personal characteristics than their male counterparts, who were more likely to be framed in terms of their positions on policy issues. James Devitt, “Framing Gender on the Campaign Trail: Female Gubernatorial Candidates and the Press,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 79, no. 2 (June 2002): 445–463 . In a separate study, researchers found that one common way the Dutch national media framed news on the European Union (EU) was in terms of assigning responsibility for social problems to the government. This study suggests that the Dutch media’s presentation of political news reflects the public expectation that the government will provide social welfare programs. Claes H. De Vreese, Jochen Peter, and Holli A. Semetko, “Framing Politics at the Launch of the Euro: A Cross-National Comparative Study of Frames in the News,” Political Communication 18, no. 2 (2001): 107–122, https://doi.org/10.1080/105846001750322934. By highlighting certain aspects of a story and ignoring others, frames can affect people’s judgments and opinions on policy issues, and just as with agenda setting, elected officials fight to make sure they are framed in the correct light. The public, and individual viewers, should know that while the media is a critical tool that aids people’s political decision-making, it is guided by professional values that dictate the content. Individuals’ views on politics can sometimes be out of their control, but they can work to assemble a better picture of the world by turning to a variety of media outlets and becoming aware of what goes into story selection. While internal pressures (such as professional norms) or external forces (such as authoritarian governments) can influence how the media portrays information, ownership can also affect what the public sees. The next section will examine the different types of media—and, perhaps more importantly, who owns them and how this affects their role in the political world. The mass media serve as powerful guardians of political norms because the free press should keep the public informed about the wrongdoings of government. Another common way of defining the media’s role is to say that it acts as the fourth estate, or the unofficial fourth branch of government that checks the others. Another term for this role is watchdog. In order for the press to fulfill this important role, however, countries must protect the freedom of the press—and some countries do a better job than others. Protecting the press is also important because it serves as an information conduit between the government and the people. The vast majority of people cannot acquire information on governmental affairs themselves and rely on the press to act as a mediator. However, the media report stories based on their own journalistic values and practices, and this can affect what makes the news agenda and how pieces are framed. agenda-setting theory the theory that the media’s power rests in its ability to decide which topics the public will see and which ones they won’t altruistic democracy the ideal held up by the media that politics should be based on public service and serve the public interest Cato’s letters a collection of essays written in the 1720s by British writers John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon under the pseudonym Cato in order to criticize the British monarchy for its corruption and tyrannical practices ethnocentrism in the context of the news, the idea that the media of a country values that country above all other nations fourth estate a term for the media that casts it as an unofficial fourth branch of government that checks the other branches of government framing theory the theory that the way the media frames political information can affect people’s understanding of it gatekeeping the process by which information and topics are filtered and selected by the media mediated information information that is not received directly from the source, such as the government, but comes via a third party, such as the media pack journalism the idea that journalists sharing professional values can lead to the homogeneous nature of news content watchdog the role of the press to act as a check on the government to make sure that it is appropriately serving its purpose

Social Sciences


Types of Media and the Changing Media Landscape Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Discuss the types of media and their history. Explain how ownership affects both media content and consumers and why it is relevant in the study of politics. Compare and contrast state versus privately owned media. The oldest known printed book in the world is the Diamond Sutra , a Buddhist text that was printed using fixed wooden blocks in 868 CE. Jason Daley, “Five Things to Know about the Diamond Sutra, the World’s Oldest Dated Printed Book,” Smithsonian , May 11, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/Five-things-to-know-about-diamond-sutra-worlds-oldest-dated-printed-book-180959052/. In the 11th century, roughly a thousand years later, Chinese inventor Bi Sheng developed movable type , “Printing & Movable Type,” China in 1000 CE: The Most Advanced Society in the World, Asia for Educators, Columbia University, accessed November 2, 2021, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/songdynasty-module/tech-printing.html. a system of movable letters that could be reused to repeatedly print text. Movable type changed the course of human knowledge and history because it allowed for faster dissemination of information, cheaper printing, and the shareability of printed material. This newfound ability for people to share knowledge challenged traditional authority, and in the 16th century, Pope Alexander VI prohibited unlicensed printing in an attempt to suppress publications that promoted ideas or threatened the orthodox faith. Cyndia Susan Clegg, “Tudor Literary Censorship,” Oxford Handbooks Online, Oxford University Press, October 2014, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013.9; Md Nurus Safa et al., “Blog as a Medium of Freedom of Expression,” International Journal of Innovation and Scientific Research 3, no. 1 (June 2014), 1–-9, http://www.ijisr.issr-journals.org/issue.php?issue=5. The Chinese Invention of Printing and Movable Type The Chinese invented paper, printing, and movable type. This video shows how Chinese movable type was developed and how it works. The pope’s actions show that, as English writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” That is, the ability to spread information freely was an existential threat to traditional power structures. The mass availability of printed material reflects the democratization of knowledge, as education and books were no longer exclusive artifacts of the elite. The media landscape today is very different from when Bi Sheng first created movable type. This section examines the different types of media that exist today as well as recent significant changes in the media environment—and how these changes affect the media’s ability to play the role of gatekeeper and information provider. Types of Media and Their History The media can be categorized into four broad groups: print, radio, television, and the Internet. Print media includes newspapers, magazines, and books. This section will briefly discuss the history and current state of each medium as well as how ownership of these industries affects the political world. Newspapers continue to thrive in parts of the developing world. (credit: “Day 15: The Press” by Lindsey Turner/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) According to Cornell University professor Theodore Lowi , Johns Hopkins University professor Benjamin Ginsberg , and Harvard University professors Kenneth Shepsle and Stephen Ansolabehere , print media is important for three primary reasons. First, other media—including television, radio, and now online news aggregators and podcasts—rely on print media to set the news agenda with original coverage. Second, print media provides more context and details than other forms of media. Finally, print media (and its online iterations, such as online versions of newspapers) are the prime information source for the elite . Theodore J. Lowi et al., American Government:, Power and Purpose , 15th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018). While some have proclaimed that “print is dead,” there is plenty of evidence to the contrary: though newspaper circulation has declined, unique visitors to news websites have increased. “Newspapers Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center , June 29, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/. What has emerged is a symbiosis of print and online media, where traditional flagship news sources such as the New York Times and various magazines move online to recapture waning audiences, while some previously online-only sources launch physical magazines. In December 2020, Forbes ran an aptly named article titled “Stop Saying Print Journalism Is Dead. 60 Magazines Launched during This Crazy Year,” Andy Meek, “Stop Saying Print Journalism Is Dead. 60 Magazines Launched during This Crazy Year,” Forbes , December 30, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2021/12/30/stop-saying-print-journalism-is-dead-60-magazines-launched-during-this-crazy-year/. pointing out that people still like print, and, as University of Texas professor Iris Chyi explains, the reason for this is biological; tangible material leaves a deeper footprint in the brain. H. Iris Chyi, Trial and Error: US Newspapers’ Digital Struggle toward Inferiority , (Pamplona: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2013), 80, https://dadun.unav.edu/handle/10171/42076. A study of democratic European countries confirmed the same phenomenon: print media is still resilient in the face of an expanding online environment. Hillel Nossek, Hanna Adoni, and Galit Nimrod, “Is Print Really Dying? The State of Print Media Use in Europe,” International Journal of Communication 9 (2015): 365–385, https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3549/1306. Commercial Observer reporter Chava Gourarie explains the phenomenon this way: “It seems print and digital can co-exist after all. The new won’t replace the old. The new will hammer the old, deform it, reform it, reconceive, reconfigure, but the old won’t disappear.” Chava Gourarie, “Print Isis the New ‘New Media,’” Columbia Journalism Review, December 7, 2015, https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/back_in_print.php. Later parts of this chapter will further investigate the impact of the Internet on traditional media. Print media has not suffered as much in other parts of the world, particularly in developing countries. A 2011 Pew Research Center study found that “print newspapers are thriving . . . in countries with untapped and emerging population segments. In some parts of the world, such as India, reading a print newspaper is a prestigious activity, in much the same way that it was for immigrants a century ago in the United States,” Laura Houston Santhanam and Tom Rosenstiel, Why US Newspapers Suffer More Than Others (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, March 2011), 3, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2011/03/19/why-u-s-newspapers-suffer-more-than-others/. and increased literacy in developing countries also contributes to this trend. Ibid., 13. Newspaper circulation increased by double-digits in South America, Asia, and Africa between 2004 and 2009. Erin Conway-Smith, “Read Allall about It: Newspapers Are Thriving!,” The World, PRX, October 20, 2012, https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-10-20/read-all-about-it-newspapers-are-thriving. In the first half of the 20th century, before the rise of television, radio was a prominent source of news and entertainment in the United States. (credit: “Vintage Zenith Bakelite AM/FM Table Radio, 7 Tubes, Model H72372, circa 1951” by Joe Haupt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The first commercial radio station was born in the United States on November 2, 1920, when Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company transmitted the first scheduled broadcast, announcing live returns of the presidential election contest between Warren G. Harding and James Cox . Westinghouse obtained the first US commercial broadcasting station license in the same year, and seven years later, the Radio Act of 1927 created the Federal Radio Commission to oversee radio broadcasting, replacing the Department of Commerce in its oversight duties. “History of Commercial Radio,” Federal Communications Commission, last modified April 12, 2021, https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/history-of-commercial-radio. This marked the beginning of what has come to be known as the golden age of radio, from the late 1920s until the early 1950s, when radio broadcasts were millions of Americans’ primary source of news and entertainment. “The Development of Radio,” American Experience, WGBH Educational Foundation, last modified September 23, 2019, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rescue-development-radio/. Television would soon overtake radio as the primary form of entertainment in the home, but as of 2019, radio programming still reached more Americans than any other media platform. Audio Today 2019: How America Listens (New York: Nielsen, June 2019), https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/audio-today-2019.pdf. While the United States is considered the largest and most important radio market, other developed countries constitute important markets for radio broadcasters. The United Nations continues to celebrate the radio on World Radio Day , hailing the humble technology as a “vector of freedom” because radio supplies low-cost information and remains a widely used technology around the globe. “World Radio Day Marks Evolution, Innovation and Connection of ‘Vector of Freedom,” UN News, United Nations, February 13, 2021, https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1084652. The United States represents more than half of all annual global radio revenue. (sources: Ofcom, Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, Statista; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) The first black-and-white television was introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair, Seth Berkman, “A Brief History of Television, by Decade,” Newsweek, July 12, 2021, https://www.newsweek.com/brief-history-television-decade-1608854. and in 1941, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) , the US government commission that currently oversees radio, television, wire, and now the Internet, authorized commercial broadcasting in the United States. “History of Commercial Radio.” The introduction of color television quickly followed in the early 1950s, and by the 1980s, around 90 percent of American households had a television. Rita Gunther McGrath, “The Pace of Technology Adoption Is Speeding Up,” Harvard Business Review , November 25, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up. This era is what Queensland University of Technology professor Amanda D. Lotz terms “the network era,” when three major television networks had a fixed schedule and provided the majority of media content. During this era, most homes had one television, and television was a means of “bring[ing] the outside world into the home.” Amanda D. Lotz, “What Is US Television Now?,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 625 (September 2009): 51, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40375904. Coaxial cable television was first developed in the 1930s to provide television to rural areas that could not receive broadcast signals. Cable television became more widespread starting in the 1950s and culminating in the 1970s with the introduction of Home Box Office (HBO) , which fought with the FCC to be allowed to provide for-fee television content through a cable network. “History: Cable Television,” Make ’Em‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, Educational Broadcasting Corporation, December 1, 2008, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/makeemlaugh/featured/history-cable-television/33/. Steady growth of the industry peaked in the early 2000s, and by 2010, more than 105 million Americans—or about 90 percent of homes—paid for cable television services. Brad Adgate, “The Rise and Fall of Cable Television,” Forbes , November 2, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/11/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-cable-television/. Yet the number of Americans who said they watched television via cable or satellite plunged from 76 percent in 2015 to 56 percent in 2021, Lee Rainie, “Cable and Satellite TV Use Has Dropped Dramatically in the US since 2015,” Pew Research Center, March 17, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/03/17/cable-and-satellite-tv-use-has-dropped-dramatically-in-the-u-s-since-2015/. while a recent Deloitte consulting study found that 82 percent of respondents subscribed to a streaming service. Kevin Westcott et al., “Digital Media Trends, 15th Edition: Courting the Consumer in a World of Choice,” Deloitte Insights , April 16, 2021, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/digital-media-trends-consumption-habits-survey/summary.html. The trend of moving from traditional television to streaming or mobile services can be seen elsewhere in the world, though it is progressing at a slower pace. In India in 2018, 197 million households had televisions, while only a fraction of that number (60 million) utilized the country’s most popular on-demand media programming. Suneera Tandon, “What Netflix? Indians Are Still Glued to the Idiot Box,” Quartz India, July 28, 2018, https://qz.com/india/1341882/tv-viewership-rising-in-india-despite-netflix-hotstar/. At the beginning of the 21st century, only about 3% of the population of Peru had Internet access. The Internet has spread rapidly, and while about 43% of the population of Peru still did not have regular Internet access in 2019, Internet cafés like this one have sprung up in Peru and around the world, connecting people and places like never before. (credit: “Café Internet” by Daniel Lobo/Flickr, Public domain) The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) , which was established through the US Department of Defense in the early 1960s, built on research conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to fund and administer one of the first iterations of the Internet . Barry M. Leiner et al., Brief History of the Internet (Reston, VA: Internet Society), 1997, https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/. By 1969, ARPANET mainly connected research universities to one another, but at the urging of the telecommunication and computer industry, the government was persuaded to open up the network for public use. In 1993, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) put the technology into the public domain “The Birth of the Web,” CERN, Accessed August 17, 2021, https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web. thanks to the research of MIT professor Tim Berners-Lee , who created the framework for the World Wide Web and the use of links and hyperlinks. The Internet has of course altered the way people interact with every communication medium. Never have people been able to access so much information at once from one place, be it with a laptop or a smartphone. As of 2021, 97 percent of all adults owned a cell phone, and 87 percent owned a smartphone; over 95 percent of Americans ages 18 to 49 reported using a smartphone. “Mobile Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, April 7, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/. A 2018 survey found that, worldwide, a median of 76 percent of the populations of 18 advanced economies had smartphones compared to just 45 percent in emerging economies, with South Korea reporting the highest smartphone adoption rate at 95 percent. Kyle Taylor and Laura Silver, Smartphone Ownership Is Growing Rapidly Around the World , but Not Always Equally (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2019), 3, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/02/05/smartphone-ownership-is-growing-rapidly-around-the-world-but-not-always-equally/. In 2020, more than 80 percent of Americans got their news from a smartphone, while only 10 percent got news from a printed newspaper. Elisa Shearer, “More Than Eight- in-Ten Americans Get News from Digital Devices,” Pew Research Center, January 12, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/12/more-than-eight-in-ten-americans-get-news-from-digital-devices/. Of those using online news, more than half of Americans said they get their news from social media “at least sometimes,” and a third of Americans stated that they regularly get news from Facebook . Elisa Shearer and Amy Mitchell, News Use across Social Media Platforms in 2020 (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, January 2021), 4–5, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-in-2020/. Later parts of this chapter will investigate the role of social media in more depth. Ownership of the Media Between print media, radio, television, and streaming services, it feels like people have a lot of choice when it comes to media. However, the United States and Europe have what is called media concentration , where a few firms own the majority of channels and content. In fact, five companies own and produce 90 percent of what Americans watch today. Nickie Louise, “These 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media Outlets in America. The Illusion of Choice and Objectivity,” Tech Startups, September 18, 2020, https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/. (Viacom and CBS completed a merger in December 2019.) Another word to describe this type of media ownership pattern, in which a small number of corporations dominate the market, is an oligopoly . Five major multinational corporations control about 90 percent of US media markets. A similar oligopoly exists in Europe . (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Is media concentration a cause for concern? Columbia Business School professor Eli Noam argues that larger corporations have the money to invest in good journalists and foster reader loyalty. Eli M. Noam, Media Ownership and Concentration in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17. Since being acquired by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos , the Washington Post has increased hiring and has shown profitability, unlike many other newspapers. Brad Tuttle, “It Takes Jeff Bezos 26 Seconds to Make What One of His Washington Post Employees Earns in a Year,” Money , August 15, 2018, https://money.com/jeff-bezos-net-worth-washington-post/. However, because these companies are privately owned, it is not irrational to assume that they are profit-seeking businesses that look to maximize earnings over other, perhaps loftier, goals. As such, these companies may choose easy-to-sell programming over content with high information value. Providence College professor Matt Guardino writes, “When control over the media is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, owners may be able to use their corporations’ powerful platforms to amplify propaganda driven by their own political views or business interests.” Matt Guardino, “How Corporate Media Mergers Weaken News Coverage,” Scholars Strategy Network , October 22, 2019, https://scholars.org/contribution/how-corporate-media-mergers-weaken-news-coverage. In addition, profit maximization can lead to budgetary constraints such as reduced foreign news coverage or other staffing cutbacks, which can affect the content of the news and, by extension, what information citizens and voters can access. A 2018 study found that “ownership chains” had “a homogenizing effect on the content of newspapers’ coverage of foreign policy, resulting in coverage across co-owned papers that is more similar in scope (what they cover), focus (how much ‘hard’ relative to ‘soft’ news they offer), and diversity (the breadth of topics they include in their coverage of a given issue) relative to . . . papers that are not co-owned.” Matthew A. Baum and Yuri M. Zhukov, “Media Ownership and News Coverage of International Conflict,” Political Communication 36, no. 1 (2019): 36, https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2018.1483606. As Senior Research and Teaching Associate at University of Zurich Edda Humprecht notes, “Large media corporations are assumed to offer superficial or scandalizing news content in order to attract large audiences,” Edda Humprecht, “Ownership of News Media,” in The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies , edited by Tim P. Vos et al. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 3–4, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0066. and this idea has been backed by various empirical studies that point to the reduction of more serious news in favor of content with what is perceived to be higher entertainment value. Stanford researcher Mark Cooper iterates this point: “Concentration of ownership may foster entertainment variety, but it undermines diversity of information and journalistic enterprise.” Mark Cooper, Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age: Promoting Diversity with First Amendment Principles and Market Structure Analysis (Stanford, CA: Center for Internet & Society, Stanford Law School), 18, http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/attachments/mediabooke.pdf. He also notes that “concentration of media ownership reduces the diversity of local reporting and gives dominant firms in local markets an immense amount of power to influence critical decisions. Consolidation in national chains squeezes out the local point of view.” Ibid., 6. A study of the Sinclair Broadcasting Group , which provides news to more than 70 percent of American households, found that news outlets under concentrated ownership focused on national news over local interest, produced slightly more politically conservative content, and resulted in a small downward shift in viewership. Gregory J. Martin and Joshua McCrain, “Local News and National Politics,” American Political Science Review 113, no. 2 (May 2019): 372–384, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000965. This is troubling when considered alongside research that finds that smaller station groups produce higher-quality newscasts than stations owned by larger companies—by a significant margin. “Does Ownership Matter in Local Television News?,” Pew Research Center, April 29, 2003, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2003/04/29/does-ownership-matter-in-local-television-news/. It is not difficult to see how ownership affects not just what people see but also what they consider important—and how that can affect the public’s view of politics. The picture of media ownership in Europe is similar to that in the United States in that six corporations also own the majority of media content across Europe, prompting the European Union to commission the 2020 report Monitoring Media Pluralism in the Digital Era Elda Brogi et al., Monitoring Media Pluralism in the Digital Era: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor in the European Union, Albania and Turkey in the Years 2018–2019 (Fiesole, Italy: European University Institute, 2020), https://cmpf.eui.eu/mpm2020-results/. and to issue a warning about the threat that media concentration poses to pluralism and diversity of views. The European Federation of Journalists echoes this concern: “Many politicians, particularly those in the European Parliament, have repeatedly expressed concerns over the growth of huge media companies that are exercising unprecedented levels of political and commercial influence. In the process they threaten diversity and pluralism in society.” European Federation of Journalists, Media Power in Europe: The Big Picture of Ownership (Brussels: International Federation of Journalists, 2005), 4, https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/reports/detail/media-power-in-europe-the-big-picture-of-ownership/category/human-rights.html. Private ownership is not the only media model. In many countries outside of the United States, the media are either partially or wholly owned by the state with positive effects. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the world’s first public broadcaster, Sue Gardner, Public Broadcasting: Its Past and Its Future (Miami: Knight Foundation, 2017), 3, https://knightfoundation.org/public-media-white-paper-2017-gardner/. draws its funding via the government in the form of a user fee while not having any direct government intervention when it comes to programming or editing. Many hail the BBC as a model for public ownership because of its high-quality news, content, and accessibility. Countries that have strong public broadcasters such as the BBC have been shown to “have higher levels of social trust, and the people who live in them are less likely to hold extremist political views.” Ibid., 6–7. Public news media continue to play a particularly prominent role in western Europe, where public news stations, including the BBC in the UK, Sveriges Television (SVT) and Sveriges Radio (SR) in Sweden, and ARD in Germany, continue to be top sources for news. Katerina Eva Matsa, “Across Western Europe, Public News Media Are Widely Used and Trusted Sources of News,” Pew Research Center, June 8, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/08/western-europe-public-news-media-widely-used-and-trusted/. However, in poorer, autocratic nations, state ownership of the media has been shown to undermine political and economic rights and freedoms. Simeon Djankov et al., “Who Owns the Media?,” Journal of Law & Economics 46, no. 2 (October 2003): 341–382, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/377116. In the United States, the two highest-profile public news outlets, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), rank far lower than private news outlets in terms of listeners and viewership. Jeffrey Gottfried, Michael Barthel, and Amy Mitchell, Trump, Clinton Voters Divided in Their Main Source for Election News (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, January 2017), https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2017/01/18/trump-clinton-voters-divided-in-their-main-source-for-election-news/. The media can be categorized into four distinct groups: print, radio, television, and the Internet. Each group has its own place in history, and its influence over the audience has ebbed and flowed over time. The majority of the media in the United States and much of Europe is owned by six major firms, and this type of oligopoly can have effects on people’s political lives. Concentration of ownership has resulted in homogeneous content, a move away from both local and international news to more entertainment and national news, and (in some instances) a movement toward more conservative political news content. Though private ownership of the media has resulted in an oligopoly, there are other models of ownership across the globe. Countries such as Britain and Japan have well-respected and widely used state-sponsored media channels, although such state-sponsored media are relatively unpopular in the United States. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the US government commission that currently oversees radio, television, wire, and Internet media concentration the idea that ownership of the media rests in the hands of the few, taking the form of an oligopoly movable type a system of movable letters that can be reused to repeatedly print text oligopoly ownership by a few individuals or entities

Social Sciences


How Do Media and Elections Interact? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe why the media are needed to cover elections and how they do it. Explain the importance of the media for candidates running for election. Detail the pros and cons of advertising in elections. The Scream That Doomed Howard Dean Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign had been building momentum until this now-infamous speech doomed his campaign. Most Americans know about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but do you know about Howard Dean ’s “I Have a Scream” speech? During the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean led many polls for the Democratic presidential nomination. The press seemed to adore the progressive, anti-war candidate, though he placed third in the Iowa caucus behind Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and North Carolina Senator John Edwards . In order to rally his supporters, Dean gave a speech at Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines, Iowa. Perhaps trying to project an image of optimism and future victory, Dean promised that his campaign was “going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan.” He then assured the crowd that he would ultimately go “to Washington, DC, to take back the White House” Howard Dean, “Howard Dean’s Remarks to His Supporters,” New York Times , January 19, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/19/politics/campaigns/howard-deans-remarks-to-his-supporters.html. —before releasing a long, shrill scream into his microphone. That scream and that moment, now referred to as Dean’s “I Have a Scream” speech, were played 633 times by national networks in the ensuing days, Jack Holmes, “The Dean Scream: An Oral History,” Esquire , January 29, 2016, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a41615/the-dean-scream-oral-history/. with CNN eventually issuing a formal apology for playing it too many times. Joshua Gunn, “On Speech and Public Release,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 13, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 1–41, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41940491. Some refer to this event as the first viral political event, and many consider it the moment when the Dean campaign died. What it illustrates is the sometimes adversarial, sometimes symbiotic relationship between elected officials and the media. Media Coverage of Elections and Elected Officials As Stanford University professor Shanto Iyengar writes, “For most Americans, the media are their only contact with the world of public affairs.” Shanto Iyengar, Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide , 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), 2. Iyengar explains that one of the media’s critical functions is to provide a forum for candidates and parties to discuss their platforms and qualifications. Earlier parts of this chapter have detailed the media’s roles as watchdog and storyteller; when it comes to elections, they also act as information provider. Without the media, it would be very difficult for voters to assess which candidates to vote for and whether or not to keep incumbent legislators in office. This means, however, that elected officials can try to manipulate the media to make themselves seem more appealing, and the media also must be careful in how they portray candidates and the electoral process—all topics that will be covered in more detail in the following sections. One of the most significant powers of the media is determined by both its reach and how it acts as an agenda setter, alerting people to important issues. By constantly putting political issues and elections in their news cycle, the media reinforce the idea that participating in democracy is important. However, while Americans feel informed by coverage of campaigns, they have “lukewarm” feelings about the breadth of coverage, noting a lack of attention to substantial issues. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans Feel Informed about the Presidential Election—but Are Lukewarm on Media Coverage,” Knight Foundation, October 28, 2020, https://knightfoundation.org/articles/americans-feel-informed-about-presidential-election-but-are-lukewarm-on-media-coverage/. This is a common refrain from scholars as well. Decades of academic research have shown that the news media engage too often in the horse-race coverage aspect of elections, reporting on who is ahead and who is behind rather than on substantial issues or policy stances. Harvard professor Thomas Patterson writes that the press is “obsessed with the horse race” of elections, and this, coupled with the unique and prolonged length of the US primaries and general election, makes the coverage seem even more endless in nature. Thomas E. Patterson, “News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Primaries: Horse Race Reporting Has Consequences,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, July 11, 2016, https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential-primaries/. For example, in the 2020 election, the earliest caucus was February 3, and the earliest primary was February 11—nine months before the general election. “2020 State Primary Election Dates,” National Conference of State Legislatures, accessed August 17, 2021, https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/2020-state-primary-election-dates.aspx. However, this does not take into account what is called the “invisible primary,” when potential candidates begin to raise money for their campaigns, often months before the actual campaign season starts. The US campaign season feels interminable, especially when compared to countries such as Singapore, where general elections must take place in the span of three months once Parliament is dissolved. “Parliamentary Elections,” Elections Department Singapore, Government of Singapore, last updated February 16, 2021, https://www.eld.gov.sg/elections_parliamentary.html. Horse-race coverage has been linked to greater levels of distrust of both candidates and the media themselves. It gives an advantage to novel candidates (think former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura , who ran for and won the office of Minnesota governor in 1998) and ignores third-party candidates (such as Gary Johnson , who ran for president in 2020 as the Libertarian Party candidate.) Denise-Marie Ordway, “The Consequences of ‘Horse Race’ Reporting: What the Research Says,” The Journalist’s Resource, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, September 10, 2019, https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/horse-race-reporting-election/. This problem is not unique to the United States; a study of 27 European countries found that horse-race coverage was prominent in party systems with close electoral competitions and in countries with large media markets, Susan Banducci and Chris Hanretty, “Comparative Determinants of Horse-Race Coverage,” European Political Science Review 6, no. 4 (November 2014): 621–640. and another study found similar criticisms of Australian election coverage. Joel Meares, “Jay Rosen in Oz: Horse-Race Journalism an ‘International Phenom,’” Columbia Journalism Review , August 18, 2010, https://archives.cjr.org/campaign_desk/jay_rosen_in_oz_horserace_jour.php. Horse-race journalism is not an equally severe problem in all democratic nations; one study of the media in Sweden found that compared to the United States, the Swedish press did a better job with issue-oriented reporting and the production of interpretive news during their elections. Jesper Strömbäck and Daniela V. Dimitrova, “Political and Media Systems Matter: A Comparison of Election News Coverage in Sweden and the United States,” International Journal of Press/Politics 11, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 131–147. Horse-race coverage is problematic not just because it turns off viewers—it also ignores topics in which voters might be interested in favor of coverage of who is winning and who is losing. This undermines the importance of the media as an information provider and watchdog when it comes to the electoral process. The horse-race approach is not the only problem with media election coverage. A trend since the 1980s, the media’s tendency toward negative, critical coverage of candidates remains problematic. As Thomas Patterson writes, this “incessant stream of criticism has a corrosive effect. It needlessly erodes trust in political leaders and institutions and undermines confidence in government and policy,” which “can mislead voters about the choices they face.” Thomas E. Patterson, “News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, December 7, 2016, https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/. A study of Canadian elections found that negative media portrayals of candidates and elections can depress a voter’s intention to cast a ballot. Agnieszka Dobrzynska, André Blais, and Richard Nadeau, “Do the Media Have a Direct Impact on the Vote? The Case of the 1997 Canadian Election,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 15, no. 1 (March 2003): 27–43. When it comes to media and elections, some countries, including democratic countries, face a bigger problem: the lack of press freedom. In 2016, three of Japan’s most outspoken news anchors were dismissed from their positions due to governmental pressure in reaction to their criticisms of then prime minister Shinzo Abe . Shortly after their firing, a United Nations representative expressed alarm at the country’s declining support for press freedom, while the Paris-based media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders lowered Japan’s ranking of world press freedom to 72nd out of 180 nations, between Tanzania and Lesotho. Martin Fackler, “The Silencing of Japan’s Free Press,” Foreign Policy , May 27, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/27/the-silencing-of-japans-free-press-shinzo-abe-media/. In Mexico, despite promises to regulate the use of government funds for public relations, former president Enrique Peña Nieto spent nearly $2 billion of government money on media advertising in five years during his tenure with the expectation that he would receive positive news coverage in return. Azam Ahmed, “Using Billions in Government Cash, Mexico Controls News Media,” New York Times , December 25, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/25/world/americas/mexico-press-government-advertising.html. The examples of Japan and Mexico are a reminder of how crucial a free press is in the political process. The media has the capability to quickly reach wide audiences, including elites and the broader public. It can help generate collective action, it provides information that is needed to make political decisions, and it helps candidates reach potential voters. Robert Yoon CNN Director of Political Research, 1999–2017 Election Analyst, Edison Research, 2018–present Please explain what you do for your organization. At CNN, I was responsible for knowing pretty much anything about a candidate or public official that might be relevant for our news coverage. I collected information about their fundraising and their personal finances and their policy positions and whatever notable things they might have said in interviews or on the campaign trail. I’ve covered politics on a lot of different levels, including the US Senate and House and the Supreme Court and governors and to some extent local races, but my main focus has always been presidential campaigns. Even though presidential elections happen only every four years, someone somewhere is always either running for president or thinking about it. So I had to follow a lot of these micro-developments when most people weren’t paying much attention to it. The hardest and most interesting part of my job probably was preparing moderators for presidential debates. I’ve done more than 30 presidential debates, most recently a 2020 debate for CBS News. My other big responsibility was analyzing election night vote results. Can you tell me a little about how you got involved in your position? I was always interested in politics and current events. As a kid, I would always watch the State of the Union and try to name cabinet secretaries as they entered the House chamber. Watching election night coverage was like watching the Super Bowl or the World Series. So when I saw a posting for a job at CNN to help cover presidential elections, I jumped at the chance. What advice would you give students who want to go into your line of work? An important thing for any journalist is to consume as much information as you can as regularly as possible, even if it isn’t directly related to your main interests. Journalists cover real life, so the more you know and understand the ways of the world, the better. Having a wide range of experiences and being exposed to a wide variety of perspectives makes you a better reporter. How Do Candidates Use the Media? When Donald Trump addressed supporters after finishing in the top three in the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2016, audience members captured his speech on their smartphones. (credit: “Trump Caucus” by Max Goldberg/GPA Photo Archive/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The media is an important tool for voters, one that allows them to learn more about candidates and the election process. For candidates, the media also serves as a tool to reach those very same voters, and this section will discuss how candidates use the media in the hopes of winning elections. There are two avenues for candidates to use the media: free media and paid media . Free media is when a candidate gets press coverage, while paid media refers to media that the candidate and campaign pay for in the form of political ads. (Paid media will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter.) When former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto spent nearly $2 billion of government money on media advertising, his actions were particularly nefarious because he used government funds to purchase paid media in order to influence free media coverage. Ibid.. In the United States, for example, presidents can only use money raised through separate campaign entities to fund paid media. Using government funds would be considered not only corrupt but also illegal. In Peña Nieto’s case, his flagrant abuse of power was met with defeat at the polls. In the United States and many other countries, successful campaigns are “increasingly contingent upon candidates’ media strategies and media treatment of political events.” Stephen Ansolabehere, Roy Behr, and Shanto Iyengar, “Mass Media and Elections: An Overview,” American Politics Quarterly 19, no. 1 (January 1991): 109. Savvy candidates understand that they should not simply let the media decide how to cover them and that they need to present themselves in a certain light to potential voters. Candidates aim to control the media narrative and spend significant time and money trying to do so—and this struggle is international. In a study of 97 candidates in 43 elections around the world, scholars found that candidates who employed nastier rhetoric that included personal attacks and appealed to people’s fears received wider media attention—media attention that candidates want during an election, especially as the study found that media coverage of personal attacks was correlated with electoral success. Jacques Gerstlé and Alessandro Nai, “Negativity, Emotionality and Populist Rhetoric in Election Campaigns Worldwide, and Their Effects on Media Attention and Electoral Success,” European Journal of Communication 34, no. 4 (August 2019): 431, https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119861875. Along the same lines, scholars in the UK found that critical, unbalanced media coverage of the EU that focused on the perceived threats of immigrants contributed to Brexit (the British exit from the European Union). Neil T. Gavin, “Media Definitely Do Matter: Brexit, Immigration, Climate Change and Beyond,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20, no. 4 (November 2018): 827–845, https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118799260. Members of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) sought this type of media coverage in order to influence the outcome of the ballot initiative for UK independence. The Cambridge Analytica scandal highlights the worst of paid media campaigns, as British consultants from Cambridge Analytica scraped Facebook data from users without their knowledge. This questionably—and, in many countries, illegally—obtained data was used to create microtargeted ads (ads tailored to specific users) for the Donald Trump presidential campaign, the Ted Cruz senatorial campaign, and the Brexit campaign. It was also alleged that Russian oil company Lukoil, which has strong ties to the Putin -led Russian government, was involved in funding Cambridge Analytica to influence the outcome of the US presidential election. Nicholas Confessore, “Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: The Scandal and the Fallout So Far,” New York Times, April 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html. Cambridge Analytica illustrates just how far candidates will go to use media (in this case, social media, which will be discussed in more detail in later parts of this chapter) to win at all costs. In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign bought $2.1 million in Facebook ads alone, James Walker, “Trump Almost Doubles Biden's Facebook Spending after Signing Social Media Order,” Newsweek, July 2, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-almost-doubles-biden-facebook-spending-1515037. though this number pales in comparison to the amount the campaigns spent on television ads. Joe Biden spent more than $600 million on television ads, while Trump spent $400 million, the bulk of it in six battleground states: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Domenico Montanaro, “Presidential Campaign TV Ad Spending Crosses $1 Billion Mark in Key States,” NPR, October 13, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/10/13/923427969/presidential-campaign-tv-ad-spending-crosses-1-billion-mark-in-key-states. These massive campaign advertising expenditures are not common in all countries. For example, in 2008, the US presidential election cost candidates $5.3 billion, with a large portion of that going toward media buys. In comparison, thanks in part to a complete ban on political advertising on television, the 2007 Danish election cost only $8 million, including public financing, and had a turnout rate that was 25 percentage points higher than the turnout rate in the US. R. Spencer Oliver, “The Danish Way of Elections,” Hill , September 16, 2011, https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/presidential-campaign/182021-the-danish-way-of-elections. Germany also bans political advertisements and has a tradition of using political posters as a practical way of influencing voters. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, “In German Election, Campaign Posters Are More Important Than TV Ads,” Parallels, NPR, September 23, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/09/23/552583400/in-german-election-campaign-posters-are-more-important-than-tv-ads. This photo shows a roadside political poster for the reelection of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (credit: “Election Poster of Angela Merkel in Hamburg” by TeaMeister/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) As described earlier in this chapter, media coverage of campaigns that is negative and focuses on the horse-race aspect of elections rather than on issues can have detrimental effects. The same can be said for paid media . A problematic form of paid media is the negative attack ad, the numbers of which have only continued to rise. Campaign finance scholar Fred Wertheimer writes, “Because television appeals to our emotions and magnifies and intensifies what it communicates, the impact of the negative message is much more powerful and damaging on television than if the same message were being communicated through print.” Fred Wertheimer, “TV Ad Wars: How to Cut Advertising Costs in Political Campaigns,” in Points of View: Readings in American Government and Politics , edited by Robert E. DiClerico and Allan S. Hammock, 11th ed. (Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2009), 90. Negative advertising is problematic for obvious reasons. It can lead voters to distrust their own decisions, and it breeds contempt for the election process. Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar, Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate (New York: Free Press, 1997), 112. The percentage of negative ads in US political campaigns has grown steadily since 2000. (source: Wesleyan Media Project; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) The effects of negative ads are still debated, as a number of studies say that they do not necessarily affect turnout because legitimate criticism of candidates can actually drive voter turnout. Kim Fridkin Kahn and Patrick J. Kenney, “Do Negative Campaigns Mobilize or Suppress Turnout? Clarifying the Relationship between Negativity and Participation,” American Political Science Review 93, no. 4 (December 1999): 877–889, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2586118. Another reason why negative ads may have little to no effect is that they are only salient to voters who already have low levels of trust in government to begin with; in other words, the ads preach to the choir and have little effect on the overall voting body. Michael D. Martinez and Tad Delegal, “The Irrelevance of Negative Campaigns to Political Trust: Experimental and Survey Results,” Political Communication 7, no.1 (1990): 25–40. Multiple studies Richard R. Lau, Lee Sigelman, and Ivy Brown Rovner, “The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 4 (November 2007): 1176–1209, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00618.x; Robert A. Jackson, Jeffery J. Mondak, and Robert Huckfeldt, “Examining the Possible Corrosive Impact of Negative Advertising on Citizens’ Attitudes toward Politics,” Political Research Quarterly 62, no. 1 (March 2009): 55–69, https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912908317031; Richard R. Lau and Ivy Brown Rovner, “Negative Campaigning,” Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009): 285–306, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.071905.101448. have also shown that negative ads may work in the opposite direction, Gina M. Garramone, “Voter Responses to Negative Political Ads,” Journalism Quarterly 61, no. 2 (June 1984): 250–259; Neal J. Roese and Gerald N. Sande, “Backlash Effects in Attack Politics,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 23, no. 8 (1993): 632–653. which is to say that the attacker comes away looking worse. Effectiveness aside, negative or otherwise, the First Amendment protects political advertising as a form of speech separate from commercial speech specifically because it is speech that is political in nature. Political advertisements on television are a vital tool for candidates because they can reach voters quickly, and these ads allow candidates to package and present themselves on their own terms. Gene R. Laczniak and Clarke L. Caywood, “The Case for and against Televised Political Advertising: Implications for Research and Public Policy,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 6 (1987): 16–32, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30000152. Given the strong First Amendment protections in the United States, political ads are here to stay. The media often focuses coverage on the horse-race aspect of elections, ignoring substantive policy discussion. However, the electorate depends on the media as a source of information that can help them make informed decisions. Countries with fewer democratic freedoms and authoritarian regimes severely hamper the press’s ability to cover elections fairly. Candidates, on the other hand, understand that controlling press coverage is important in terms of electoral success, and they spend substantial time and money to make sure the public hears their version of the story. Most political speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, and American political candidates spend large sums of money on ads and other attempts to control the media narrative. Many countries around the globe strictly limit not only how much candidates can spend on elections but also how much political advertising they can buy. This notwithstanding, political ads play an important role for candidates as an easy way to reach voters. free media media coverage that political candidates do not pay for, such as news coverage by local reporters horse-race coverage media coverage of political campaigns that focuses on winners and losers rather than policy issues paid media media that political candidates pay for, such as campaign ads on television or the Internet

Social Sciences