Importance of Media in the New American Democracy • Representative democracy • Citizens need to know • Events Media  • Tree falling in the forest • News shapes public opinion • Need to “make news” shapes government’s activities • Inevitable concern about Bias and Accountability Bias in Historical Context • Party • Federalists, Gazette of the United State • Jeffersonians, National Gazette • Funded by government contracts • Print information party elites want citizens to hear Penny Press

• Emergence of independent press • “News is information about public life that sells.” • Muckraking, • Increase in corporate ownership TV, Radio & Internet

• 99% of houses have TV • 65% cable • 75% have internet • 61% get news from internet Primary of News

• Newspapers only 10% • TV and newspapers 22% • TV only 55%

• Evening News audience declined 30% since 1980s • But 50 million in audience each night

Most Credible Source of News

• Radio 5% • Magazines 5% • Newspapers 19% • Television 58%

3 Potential Sources of Bias

• Ideological bias of reporters/editors • Professional/selection bias of reporters • Profit bias of corporate owners Liberal Liberal Media Bias Hypothesis

• ' views are to the left of the public, • Elite Journalists are out of touch with mainstream American values (Bernard Goldberg- "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News” ) • "How many members of the Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch belong to the American Legion or the Kiwanis or go to prayer breakfasts?”

• Journalists frame news content in a way that accentuates these left perspectives. • AIDS Victim- white housewife w/bad blood transfusion 89

43 Public 37 DC Media

19

7 2

Clinton Bush Perot % vote for President

Are journalists' political behavior to the left of the public? On __ issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?

64 57

Social Issues 30 Economic Issues

19

11 9 5 5

Left Center Right Other

Are journalists' political views to the left of the public? “Liberal Media”?

92 77 65 64 66 57 59 56 43 42 39 Media 32 35 Public

8 Negative Pro power Impact or good) or Nafta had a positive Nafta Corp have much too Corp Protect SS/Medicare Protect Reduc $ Entitlements Reduc Universal Health Care Health Universal 98 State of Econ is Exc is Econ of 98 State Are DC Media Elitists?

Household Income, % in each category Median US income $40,037 in 1992

27

21

16 17 14

5

Under $50-75k $75-100k $100-150k $150-200k $200k+ $50k I Report, You Decide Who is the “Ultra-Conservative”? Who is the “Moderate”?

• Gary Bauer • Pro-life • Anti SS privatization & free trade, Pro minimum wage • Christie Todd Whitman • Pro-choice • Pro SS privatization & free trade, Anti minimum wage Lots of trees fall in the forest, relatively few make news

2 stories, both true Florist who refused to sell flowers for gay couple's wedding is sued • Disappointed customers: Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed, the plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit filed on Thursday, were longtime customers of Ms Stutzman's flower shop Gay Pride March in NYC George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin Professional/selection bias of reporters

• Professional Criteria for Newsworthiness • Drama, color, simplicity Long Island News Experiment

• How to tell an “unemployment is increasing” story? • Framing • Causal

Iyengar and Kinder, Experimental demonstrations of the “not-so-minimal” consequences of television news programs, American Political Science Review, 1982 Systemic Explanations

• National trend in increasing unemployment Individual Explanations

• unemployed auto worker in Ohio Framing (cont)

• What is the most important cause of poverty • Systemic Framing viewers • 78% say (the recession) or government and society (references to Reagan’s policies) • Individual Framing viewers • 62% say motivation (laziness) or skills Implications of Framing

• Individual frames encourage people to hold individual responsible for the situation they are in • Systemic frames encourage people to hold the public officials responsible. Berkeley Officials Outspent but Optimistic in Battle Over Soda Tax

• At issue is a 1-cent tax per ounce on sugary drinks going before voters in November, the latest attempt by states and local governments to curb sugar consumption in the name of improving public health.

Media Poor People

• CBS News • 66% black, 34% non-black • 15% working, 85% non working

-unemployed New Orleans youth, Newsweek Real Poor People

• US Census • 29% black, 71% non-black • 51% work, 49% non-working Policy Consequences of Selection Bias • Media Poor- black and unemployed • Real Poor- white and working • Surveys 50% of all poor people are black 3 Potential Sources of Bias

• Ideological bias of reporters/editors • Professional/selection bias of reporters • Profit bias of corporate owners Competition

• 1960- 7 channels; today 500+ • more ways to obtain news or avoid it. • Changing demographics • 24-hour-a-day cable news • viewers harder to attract ABC TV/Radio, ESPN, E!, Lifetime, A&E, History, Touchstone

AOL, Warner Bros, Time NBC, CNBC, Warner Cable, TBS, MSNBC, CNN, HBO, the WB, Telemundo, Bravo Turner Broadcasting

Fox TV, SKY, START, Weekly Standard, Tech CBS, MTV, BET, Showtime, Valley Guide, New Infinity Radio, York Post Impact on News

• Shift in Business Model • Profitability > Reporting • Ratings driven • FCC scraps “Public Service Requirement” Declining Amount of News

• Government news stories on "ABC Tonight" dropped from 40.2% of all stories in 1977 to 15.9% in 1997 • In 1997, Time Magazine, ¼ the number of government stories as in 1977 Less Coverage of Government

• Department of Veteran's Affairs, 2 reporters • Interior Department, not 1 reporter • Full time Wisconsin state government reporters, 24 in 1972, 12 in 1996 Gotcha http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/paid/stories/ you-paid-love-ny-sign-81.shtml http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/obamacare- deadline/obamacare-website-fails-deadline-arrives- n67666 Big Increase in Soft News

• consumer oriented - health, business, and technology • Why “Spectacle Stories” BTK: Out Of The Shadows

48 Hours This image cannot currently be displayed.

Dateline Primetime Live

• Are Your Kids Fans of 'Ultimate Fighting'? 48 Hours • Bad Girls What would drive well-educated suburban girls to become armed robbers? 48 Hours looks at the case of four Texas teen-agers charged after a robbery spree last year. (Dec. 28,

• Dead Men Tell No Tales Tommy Lynn Sells claims he's killed scores of people over the past 18 years. And as 48 Hours reports, it was a 10- year-old girl that helped bring him to justice. Dateline • Actor leading the fight for a cure for Parkinson’s disease

• Conjoined twins Kathleen and Charity Lincoln undergo a risky operation.

• Breaking away Follow four families as they struggle to move out of the housing projects. Maria Shriver reports in this Special Interactive Documentary

Avg Time Devoted to 9 News Categories by local tv

disaster state policy 9% 9% national policy weather 7% 8% local policy 5% local economy human interest 4% 14%

sports Happy talk 16% 28% Is Soft News Bad? Soft News The Leader of the Free World? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWpvkLCvu4 Who is Acorn? (Think Madison – Fed 10) The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now Who Opposes

• (organize a majority • Employment Policies constituency of low- to Institute moderate-income people • Banking Industry • discrimination, affordable housing, a quality • opposed to campaigns education, or better public against redlining and services predatory lending, pay • low- to moderate-income day lending, credit card people are the best abuses advocates for their communities Media Power Agenda Setting and Framing • Agenda Setting- media don’t tell people what to think, but what to think about. Public concerns about issues is shaped by what the media covers or not. • Frames- “persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse, whether verbal or visual.” Gitlin • frame shape what or how people think. • Iraq is framed as part of war on terror. New News Environment

• Diminished gate keeper role • Rise of ideological /political news • More direct news

• Kavanaugh Hearing? 3 Potential Sources of Bias

• Ideological bias of reporters/editors • Professional/selection bias of reporters • Profit bias of corporate owners Conservative Echo Chamber

• Malkin “Guess which left wing group is a the center of the worst case of voter registration fraud? Yep you guessed it, ACORN. The same ACORN tied to massive voter fraud in Missouri and 12 other states, p. 770. Right Wing Ecosystem

• https://dailycaller.com/ • https://www.breitbart.com/ • https://www.infowars.com/ 3 Potential Sources of Bias

• Ideological bias of reporters/editors • Professional/selection bias of reporters • Profit bias of corporate owners Putting Acorn on the Public Agenda

Obama, Ayers, & ACORN @ Hofstra Presidential Debate Senator John McCain’s claim • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mTx-9FmgRM • Figure 1 Agenda Setting p. 772 CBS News

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3JFzabGL7c

Media – Fair and Balanced?

• CNN p. 774 • National Newspapers- “competing truth claims” • “Ohio Republicans and Democrats traded accusations today…” p. 776 • Local Newspapers- Minn. Star Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer- use local sources to create local narrative. • Fact Checking • P. 777 5 potential fact check statements

• Time 9th top 10 scandals • US News and World Report Acorn 4th in top 10 • Fox News- Acorn 2nd in 9 stories mainstream media missed

• Glen Beck 1,224 mentions of ACORN, Al Qaeda 50 times, Van Jones 267 times. Iraq 95 times. ACORN Filmmaker James O'Keefe

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL68WFEw2Gk James Keefe- Pimp Acorn Undercover Video Planned Parenthood Scandal

• Center for Medical Progress, has accused Planned Parenthood of selling aborted fetuses for a profit • Undercover videos Professional Criteria

• Scandal- selling baby parts for $; gree Difference? 2016 Election

• Rise of issue entrepreneurs attempting to create news • Low cost, Ratings, Easy to understand • What makes something newsworthy • Trump violence- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY • Bonus slides- not covered in class • Will the internet revitalize democracy and increase the voice of citizens in political affairs? Why or why not? What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of this medium over traditional media sources like television? • Can the Internet improve our democratic system and remove the problems of media bias? How? In what ways could it threaten or undermine our democratic system? Politics in Cyberspace

• Will new technologies revive democratic politics? • “Offer a means of reestablishing the connection between voters and candidates” email, chat room • “dramatically change the quality of information readily available to voters”, wide spectrum of political groups • CNN et al will develop multimedia sites devoted to political coverage • More “unmediated sources of information” Politics in Cyberspace

• Will new technologies revive democratic politics? • Will reduce the cost of political contributions .. Open the electoral process to groups and candidates who have traditionally been priced out of the political market • Voters will have more candidates to choose from • Will make it easier to participate via email • Easier to do fund raising Politics in Cyberspace

• Concerns • Fair and equitable access, certain segments of the electorate may be disadvantaged • Requires a high level of motivation • Rise of formal and informal neo-intermediaries • http://www.cnn.com/ • http://www.foxnews.com/ • http://news.yahoo.com/