- High-tech politics: a politics in which the behavior of citizens and policymakers , as well as the political agenda itself, is increasingly shaped by technology
- Mass media would be television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the internet, and other means on popular communication
- Media events: events purposely staged for the media that nonetheless looks spontaneous
- Can be staged by individuals, groups, and government officials especially presidents
- They are staged primarily for the focus of being covered
- Can be staged by individuals, groups, and government officials especially presidents
- Example: John Kerry ordered his TV crews to record him going from house to house in a middle-class neighborhood
- His purpose was not to win the votes through personal contact but to get television coverage of him reaching out to ordinary people
- 60% of presidential campaign spending is devoted to TV ads
- About 2/3 of commercials are just negative comments of presidents
- This can affect American political process and decline turnout rate
- President's image is very importan
How Reagan managed to have a good image:
The Development of Media Politics
- Plan ahead
- Stay on the offensive
- Control the flow on information
- Limit reporters' access to the president
- Talk about the issues you want to talk about
- Speak in one voice
- Repeat the same message many times
- Presidents can hardly lead the country if they can't communicate effectively with it
- It's very hard to communicate what you believe in and what you're planning to do to the American people
The Development of Media Politics
Franklin D. Roosevelt practically invented media politics
- Press Conference: meetings of public officials with reporters
- Roosevelt promised he would do 2 a week
- 1000 conferences in his 12 years in the white house
- Many reporters saw themselves as an extension of government
- Coverage of a politicians personal life is off limits
- Investigative journalism: the use of in-depth reporting to unearth scandals, scams, and schemes, at times putting reporters in opposing relationships with political leaders
- this has gotten people to have government
- News coverage about presidential candidates has become less favorable
- Campaign reporting has changed from "what" to "why"
- Critics of the media say they over emphasize the controversial aspects of the campaign at the expense of an examination of the major issues
- Print media: newspapers and magazines
- Broadcast media: television, radio, and internet
- Since the rise of TV news, newspaper circulation rates have been declining
- People who read newspapers are more likely to vote because they get more information there than on TV
The Broadcast Media
- Example: Nixon vs. Kennedy
- Those that listened on radio said Nixon won
- Kennedy won for those who watched on TV
- Physical appearance played a big part of this
Government regulation of the Broadcast Media
- Federal Communications Commission(FCC): regulates the use of airwaves. Regulates communications via radio, television, telephone, cable, and satellite
- it is subject to many political pressures
- There has been rules to limit the number of stations owned or controlled by one company
- No single owner can control more than 35% of the broadcast market
- FCC conducts periodic examinations of the goals and performance of stations are part of its licensing authority
- Access to the airwaves for political candidates and office holders. Equal time rule states that if a station sells advertising time to one candidate, it must be willing to sell equal time to the other candidates for the same office
- If a person is attacked on a broadcast other than the news, they can reply through same station
From Broadcasting to Narrowcasting: The Rise of Cable News Channels
- "broadcasting": broad audience
- "narrowcasting": media programming on cable TV or the internet that is focused on one topic and aimed at particular audiences
- Political communication seems destined to bring more and more choices regarding what we can see about our government
- Some hardships:
- Only 11% of the time was taken up with written and edited stories
- exaggerate
- repeat news with no new information
- coverage of news = spotty (no new info)
- The ability to become well informed about political issues is easier than before
- The things that makes TV different from the internet is that what people see is he product of their own intentional choices
- Affects campaigns because they have the ability to post more information and communicate with supporters throughout the internet
- Journalism has long been big business in the U.S
- Small number of TV stations are publicly owned in America
- Governmnet ownership is not supposed to inhibit journalist from criticizing the government because the journalist are assured autonomy
- Journalist depend on advertising revenues to keep their business going
- Pubic ownership: media conserves public interest without worrying about the size of their audience
- Private ownership: getting the biggest audience is the primary. Sometimes the only objective
- Major television net works have often been bought out by giant corporations
- Disney bought ABC
- CNN=part of Time Warner
- Chains: newspapers published by massive media conglomerates that account for over 4/5 of the nation's daily newspapers circulation
- American journalism has been affected
- Striving for profits greatly shapes how the news is reported in America
- Odd news are reported the most
- TV networks define news as what is entertaining to the average viewer
- Major news organizations assign their best reporters to beats
- beats are locations from which news often emanates, such as congress
- some people specialize in an area and work in that particular beat
- 50% of news of the Gulf War from the beats at the white house
- Trial balloons: an intentional news leak for the purpose of assessing the political reaction
- This was seen through the Bill Clinton scandal as the New York Times had the advantage
- The pentagon allowed 500 reporters to join the other individuals upon entering the Iraq war to analyze the combat
- Ever since the Watergate scandal, reporters are sent to specific beats
- The news usually presented is usually not correct or just seen from the outside, and it is condensed into some sort of 30 second live format
- Television presents news that is seen as worthy and clear
- News covering soecific policies are rarely covered
- Example: Clinton's health care imposition people analyzed the strategy of how the political game was played, not the actual policy itself
- High tech has allowed the news to become more efficient but now became less thorough
- News has been condensed alot
- example would be political speeches
- Speeches have now only been on one newspaper and that is NY times
- Now speeches are condensed to Sound Bites
- Sound Bites: 10 seconds or less of television airtime of a political speech
- In 1992, CBS allowed a candidate to speak for about 30 seconds on their late night television broadcast, later they saw it as ineffective and deemed that 20 seconds was being flexible
- In 2004, the average sound bite for a candidate was 7.8 seconds
- This allows politicians to gain an advantage and avoid stating policies or problems by mainly just addressing what individuals would like to hear
- Bush and Gore only spoke on major networks for about 12-14 minutes upon late night talk shows
- Before in the Cold War, presidents were able to request any major network the airtime they wanted to speak and what they would like to address
- When Clinton asked for some airtime, to discuss the relations between the U.S. and China, on companies like ABC, CBS, and NBC, he was denied
- The transition of presidencies between Clinton and Bush had a major change towards media coverage
- Throughout eight years of the Clinton presidency and the early Bush presidency, television coverage of the white house had decreased 43% as well as newspapers having decreases up to 30-40%
- This number had changed after the nationalist surge after the terrorist attacks of 9-11
- Bias in the News
- Since liberals dominate the media, Republican believe there is a strong bias towards them
- In the 1980s, reporters were twice as likely to call themselves liberals
- In 2002, out of 1,149 reporters, only 37% were to call themselves democrat while only 19% identified as republican
- News is presented in a "Democrats v. Republicans
- The reason why it is presented fairly is because of two reasons:
- Journalists are not rewarded adequately by their editors without considering their objectivity
- Large Networks are not biased because they will eventually lose audience
- Reporters are supposed to show stories that are exciting about major problems like disasters, conflicts, acts of violence, and scandals and they simply report what the audience wants to hear instead of actual politics
- Television networks attempt to prevent talking heads.
- Talking Heads: a person's face talking directly to the camera
- George Bush’s Iran-Contra situation was discussed on CNN and actually brought ratings down as it was merely a debate between two talking heads
- this is why talking heads are avoided
- What was interesting instead of the Iran-Contra debate was two ambassadors squaring off in a U.N. meeting, fistfight style
- this is usually shown in the news because this is what the audience likkes.
- It is hard to isolate an opinion from influencing factors such as legislatures, presidents, interest groups, and news organizations
- Many news stories compiled together can change the audience's opinions
- THIS IS WHY NEWS IS VERY IMPORTANT
- People used to doubt that media actually had an effect on politics
- this is known as the “Minimal Effect Hypothesis”, but results have actually been more positive
- Experiments shown that television actually influences the policy agenda of Americans
- Stories are rather affecting the citizens and how they choose what leader they see best to be president
- When the media only covered George Bush’s presidency for having slow economic growth, rather than low inflation and interest rates, the coverage affected the way he was seen and many disliked him
- The media overall makes up a key political institution
- Policy Agenda: the issues that attract the serious attention of public officials and other people actively involved at politics at the time
- Interest groups, parties, politicians, public relation firms, bureaucratic agencies, congress, and the president all have their own motives
- Political activists need the media to have their concerns on the government's agenda
- Political Activists are usually called Policy Entrepreneurs
- Policy Entrepreneurs: people who invest their political “capital” in an issue like an entrepreneur with an investment in a business
- These people call press conferences, press releases, letter writing as well as convince reporters and journalist to tell their sides and they even go on to their own measures to stage their own events
- Events like a graduate student in 2002 camped in the campus parking lot of UCI to protest for more investment on in campus housing.
- News reporters flushed in and eventually to reduce the drama, the University had Given in
- The media acts as a linkage institution between people and their policymakers
- Observers say there is a bias against office holders
- Claim that they would like to ‘expose” what they have done
- Politicians believe that the media casts an image of their motives as self serving with hypocritical qualities as well as lacking integrity only desiring reelection
- This watchdog reform is not liberal or conservative, but reformist
- The reporters look on the bad side of the government and see how they act upon many issues, broadening the scope of it
- This causes the illustration of the government to handle each and every problem and the expectation to act on it, but it also positively encourages the government to take on more and more tasks
- Rise of television broadcasting has reinforced individualism in American politics
- The fact that candidates can broadcast themselves on the T.V. and show who they are reveals how people can simply vote for the candidate instead of focusing on the party and what they represent
- The personality is everything in this case, as it is easier to vote of a president for his qualities than 535 members in congress
- Media coverage of the Three Branches of Government:
- Executive: 60%
- Legislative: 31%
- Judicial: 9%
- People assume the networks are the problem
- Only show what the audience want
- This shows that networks would gladly show politics if people were actually interested in it
- we need more people to be interested in politics