McCain v. Obama Town Hall Debate

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McCain v. Obama Town Hall Debate
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Importance of Media in the New American Democracy

• Representative democracy
• Citizens need to know
• Events ?Media ? News
• Tree falling in the forest
• News shapes public opinion
• Need to make news shapes governments
  activities
• Inevitable concern about Bias and Accountability

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Bias in Historical Context

• Party Newspapers
• Federalists, Gazette of the United State
• Jeffersonians, National Gazette
• Funded by government contracts, print information
  party elites want citizens to hear

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Penny Press

• Emergence of independent press
• News is information about public life that
  sells.
• Muckraking, sensationalism
• Increase in corporate ownership

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TV, Radio Internet

• 99 of houses have TV
• 65 cable
• 75 use internet

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Primary Source 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

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Most Credible Source of News

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

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3 Potential Sources of Bias

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

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Liberal Media Bias
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Liberal Media Bias

• Journalists' views are to the left of the public,
  
• Journalists frame news content in a way that
  accentuates these left perspectives.
• AIDS Victim- white housewife w/bad blood
  transfusion
• 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?

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1992 Survey
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On __ issues, how would you characterize your
political orientation?
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Liberal Media?
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Household Income of DC Media
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I Report, You DecideWho 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

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Selection Bias

• Professional Criteria for Newsworthiness
• Drama, color, simplicity

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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

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Systemic Explanations

• National trend in increasing unemployment

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Individual Explanations

• unemployed auto worker in Ohio

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Framing (cont)

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

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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.

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Media Poor People

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

-unemployed New Orleans youth, Newsweek
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Real Poor People

• US Census
• 29 black, 71 non-black
• 51 work, 49 non-working

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Policy Consequences of Selection Bias

• Media Poor- black and unemployed
• Real Poor- white and working
• Surveys 50 of all poor people are black

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3 Potential Sources of Bias

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

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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

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ABC TV/Radio, ESPN, E!, Lifetime, AE, History,
Touchstone
AOL, Warner Bros, Time Warner Cable, TBS, CNN,
HBO, the WB, Turner Broadcasting
NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo
Fox TV, SKY, START, Weekly Standard, Tech Valley
Guide, New York Post
CBS, MTV, BET, Showtime, Infinity Radio,
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Impact on News

• Shift in Business Model
• Profitability gt Reporting
• Ratings driven
• FCC scraps Public Service Requirement

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Declining Amount of News

• Government news stories on "ABC World News
  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

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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

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Big Increase in Soft News

• consumer oriented - health, business, and
  technology
• Why

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Spectacle Stories
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BTK Out Of The Shadows48 Hours
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Dateline
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Primetime Live

• Are Your Kids Fans of 'Ultimate Fighting'?

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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.

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Dateline

• Actor leading the fight for a cure for
  Parkinsons 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

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(No Transcript)
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Is Soft News Bad?
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Soft News
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The Next Leader of the Free World?

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vRsWpvkLCvu4

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• 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?

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• 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?

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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

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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

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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/

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Being an intelligent citizen

• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Commercial orientation of networks