The%20News%20Media

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The News Media

• POLS 21
• The American Political System

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In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, host
Chuck Todd pressed Trump senior adviser Kellyanne
Conway about why the White House had sent press
secretary Sean Spicer into the briefing podium
for the first time to claim that this was the
largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,
period. Conway "You're saying it's a falsehood
and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave
alternative facts to that. Todd "Alternative
facts are not facts. They are falsehoods. Conway
"If we're going to keep referring to the press
secretary in those types of terms I think we're
going to have to rethink our relationship here."
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Fake News?
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It is frankly disgusting that the press is able
to write whatever it wants to write. Donald
Trump, challenging the First AmendmentOctober
11, 2017
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The Media as Linkage Institution

• The media educates and informs average citizens
• The media allow political actors to communicate
  their message

People
Government
MEDIA
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Types of Media
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Selective exposure
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A Typology of Media Effects
There are 3 kinds of media effects

• Persuasion
• Agenda-setting
• Priming and framing

The Law of Minimal Effects
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Agenda-Setting
The mass media may not be successful much of the
time in telling people what to think, but the
media are stunningly successful in telling their
audience what to think about. Bernard Cohen
(1963)
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Presidential Voting and Economic Growth
Incumbent president George H.W. Bush
underperformed in 1992.
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Perceived Economic Conditions, 1980-2012
Perceptions of the economy mattered in 1992, more
than reality.
Source National Election Study, various years.
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Economic Conditions During the 1992 Presidential
Campaign
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News Coverage of the Clinton / Lewinsky Scandal
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Trends in President Clintons Job Approval, 1998
If the media is so powerful, why haven't the
polls changed? Does this suggest the limits of
priming?
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Media Coverage of the War in Iraq
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Key Misperceptions

• That U.S. forces found weapons of mass
  destruction (WMD) in Iraq
• That clear evidence was found linking Saddam
  Hussein to al Qaeda
• That world opinion was in favor of the U.S. going
  to war with Iraq

Those who held these misperceptions were far
more likely to support the war.
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Cumulative Effect of Having Key Misperceptions on
Support for the War
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Is this evidence of media bias?
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For most people, political reality is what is in
the news. Mathes and Rudolph (1991)
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Does the internet threaten democracy?
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Its clear that the internet and social media
have succeeded in doing what many feared and some
hoped they would. They have disrupted and
destroyed institutional constraints on what can
be said, when and where it can be said and who
can say it They are contributingperhaps
irreversiblyto the decay of traditional moral
and ethical constraints in American
politics. Thomas Edsall, Democracy
Disrupted The New York Times, March 2, 2017
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Two developments in the 2016 campaign provided
strong evidence of the vulnerability of
democracies in the age of the internet the
alleged effort of the Russian government to
secretly intervene on behalf of Trump, and the
discovery by internet profiteers of how to
monetize the distribution of fake news stories,
especially stories damaging to Hillary
Clinton. Thomas Edsall, Democracy Disrupted
The New York Times, March 2, 2017
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Limitations on the News Media Influence

• Low media credibility
• Alternative interpretation of events provided by
  other media outlets
• Conflict with an individuals values and
  political orientations

Democracy needs passion, and partisanship
provides it. Journalism needs passion, too,
though the passion should be for the truth. If we
can encourage some adherence to professional
standards in the world of partisan journalism,
not via the government but by criticism and force
of example, this republic of oursthankfully no
longer fragilemay yet flourish. Paul Starr