Doris A. Graber

Say it with Pictures

The visual information presented in televised news constitutes an important underused and underestimated information resource. After pointing out that human brains extract valuable information from audiovisuals more quickly and more easily than from purely verbal information, the author discusses the advantages of audiovisual processing. They include a more comprehensive and error-free grasp of information, better recall, and greater emotional involvement. Attention then turns to research findings about the content and format of current television news. It is richer than generally believed in significant visually conveyed information that is not covered by the words. It falls far short, however, of taking full advantage of the mediums potential to serve as a vicarious political experience and to offer benefit from the intimacy of the involvement. The article ends with a plea to focus television news on information that citizens in the post-Gutenberg era really need to know in order to carry out the civic functions that they actually perform.

Press and TV as Opinion Resources in Presidential Campaigns

A comparison of campaign news in two successive presidential elections reveals major deficiencies in information supply. Newspaper audiences, even more than television viewers, receive confusing, heavily negative information which makes candidate appraisal difficult. Incumbency of one candidate does not lead to substantially greater emphasis on public policy issues and professional qualifications. A pattern of heavy stress on personal characteristics and daily campaign events prevails in all sources. Data come from content analysis of nearly 10,000 campaign stories from network television news and 20 U.S. daily newspapers. Doris A. Graber is Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. POQ 40 (1976) 285-303 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:43:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The Infotainment Quotient in Routine Television News: A Director's Perspective

To what extent does routine television news supply citizens with essential political information? To what extent are routine stories sensationalized so that their informational content is diluted or obscured? How do television news directors frame routine news stories and rationalize the mix of factual reporting and dramatization that they present? To answer these questions, television news producers were presented with hypothetical routine news events and asked to construct news presentations and explain their framing rationales. The content of actual routine news stories was also analyzed for comparisons with the hypothetical accounts. The data indicate that both actual and hypothetical routine television news stories are designed and executed to answer the who, what, where and when questions that provide essential information to citizens. But they slight the why and how questions that would assist viewers in placing the facts into a more meaningful perspective. Framing is deliberately dramatic so that the policy-relevant aspects of news are often overshadowed by entertainment features.

The Rocky Road to New Paradigms: Modernizing News and Citizenship Standards

There was a time when nearly everybody who was anybody among Western cognoscenti knew that the world was flat. All the maps showed it, the scientists confirmed it, and the church preached it. Anyone who nonetheless proposed sailing westward from Europe to reach India found himself without resources to undertake a voyage expected to lead to a disastrous drop off the edge of the flat earth. Anyone daring to even question the established paradigm about the shape of the world risked excommunication from the church and eternal damnation. Came Christopher Columbus! He was able to convince the Queen of Spain that testing the accuracy of prevailing geography paradigms was worth modest funding for ships and crews. The rest is history, familiar to all of us. Columbus’ trip proved that the earth is round. Still, it took a very long time before the scholarly community, the church, and the proverbial men in the street were willing and psychologically able to tolerate, accept, and finally embrace the paradigm switch. John Zaller is no Christopher Columbus. In fact, to carry out the analogy, he is probably more like some of the early converts who embraced the new, empirically grounded, round-earth paradigm ahead of the crowd. “A New Standard of News Quality: Burglar Alarms for the Monitorial Citizen” puts Zaller squarely into a small camp of iconoclastic scholars. These scholars have been laboring to bury the unsustainable belief that democracy requires citizens who fully understand all major policy issues and a press that supplies them with all of the necessary information. As a long-time member of the iconoclast group, I welcome John Zaller with open arms. I share his belief that American democracy can thrive even though American citizens (and citizens in other Western democracies as well) cannot and will not be held to the standards of the “Informed Citizen,” as Michael Schudson (1998) describes the breed. Full knowledge about all major political issues has become impossible. There is simply too much to know and most of it is extraordinarily complex, requiring technical, managerial, and political expertise beyond the reach of most citizens. I agree with Zaller and like-minded scholars that good citizenship in the 21st century requires a new paradigm and that the “Monitorial Citizen” serves the purpose quite well. That paradigm takes into account that most citizens lead complex lives in which civic duties are one of many pressing claims for each person’s attention. Given the strain on most citizens’ attention resources, it is also clear that the database that citizens

Live from Capitol Hill! : studies of Congress and the media

In this fourth volume of his highly acclaimed Newswork series, Stephen Hess offers a revealing look at the culture of journalism in Washington and the relations between legislators and the media. Satellite technology, cable television, and gavel-to-gavel coverage of floor proceedings in the House and Senate during the 1980s led many to believe that local media were challenging the importance of big-circulation newspapers and network television news. As headlines proclaimed that hometown coverage was booming, observers envisioned new sources of information for viewers and voters. But journalists and scholars questioned whether increased local coverage would further ensure the reelection of incumbents, whether senators and representatives would become media show horses, and whether the commitment to representing the people would be compromised. In Live from Capitol Hill! Hess challenges conventional wisdom about media-Congress relations by vividly exploring how Congress affects local news media and how the media influence Congress. He assesses how much gets reported by the Washington regional news bureaus and how little actually appears on television screens across the country, and discusses which members of Congress receive coverage and in what context. On the other side, he shows how legislators try to influence new coverage through press releases, video tapes, columns in local newspapers, and op-ed articles.

Press Coverage Patterns of Campaign News: The 1968 Presidential Race

This study of press coverage of the 1968 presidential campaign finds great uniformity among 20 newspapers in discussion of issues and of qualities of candidates.

Flashlight Coverage State News on National Broadcasts

Content analysis of the early evening national newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC from July 1985 to June 1987 reveals that the New Federalism has failed to focus national media attention on state issues. State news was extremely sparse, spotlighted a small number of states, and lacked political substance. Disaster, crime, and trivia stories prevailed. A parallel content analysis of state news covered by the New York Times indicates that newsworthy political stories were plentiful so that much better coverage of this important aspect of American politics was possible. When population is used as a yardstick of political significance, the concerns of midwesterners received the least attention while the Pacific region dominated in television as well as in print news. Compared to news broadcasts in the seventies, media attention has shifted from the Northeastern and New England regions to the West and Southwest, possibly contributing to the economic decline of Rust Belt states. State news coverage during presidential campaigns suggests ways for increasing coverage at other times.

Looking at the United States Through Distorted Lenses: Entertainment Television Versus Public Diplomacy Themes

The image of the United States in the Middle East has plummeted dramatically since 9/11. To stem growing anti-Americanism and improve Americas image, the U.S. State Department has substantially increased public diplomacy staffs and program funding in selected Middle East countries. Although officials stationed in the Middle East give their public diplomacy operations favorable ratings, the image of the United States remains bad and continues to decline despite occasional upward spikes. In this article the author argues that television entertainment programs, particularly American situation comedies broadcast throughout the Middle East, can be another reason for the continued low regard for Americans and for the United States. An analysis of three American television programs (The West Wing, That 70s Show, and Friends) shows that the images presented by the programs are distorted and portray an unrealistic picture of life in America. The fact that the attitudes of Middle Easterners are more in tune with television drama images than with their more realistic public diplomacy counterparts leads to the conclusion that the shows trump the State Departments public diplomacy efforts.

Rhetorical republic : governing representations in American politics

Reflects on how practices of representation in popular culture, the news media and the law constitute the primary instruments of political governance in the United States. The editors argue that the struggle over the representation of politics is as important as the struggle over power.

Effect of Incumbency on Coverage Patterns in 1972 Presidential Campaign.

As in 1968, coverage by dailies was very uniform. Most striking feature was reduced emphasis on personality characteristics of candidates, and increased emphasis on professional qualifications.