Annotated Bibliography: Media

BOOKS

Cappella, J. N., & Jamieson, K. H. (1997). Spiral of cynicism: The press and the public good. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.


Cross, C. T. (2010). Political education: National policy comes of age (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Summary: Cross provides a history of national education policy from 1787 to the present, providing detailed accounts of developments since the end of World War II.

Comments: Although Cross cites various articles appearing in major newspapers, he makes few comments about the coverage itself or about its impact. When he does comment, it is without explanation or analysis [“The Washington Post, in an unseemly reference, called it a ‘political Jonestown’ (Heffernan, 2001, p. 472).”]

Even in the next-to-the-last chapter, Chapter 8 “Lessons Learned From a Half Century of Federal Policy Development,” Cross buries comments about communication problems of any kind as a factor in shaping public policy under the sub-heading of “The Federal Government Deserves a D in Implementing Programs, Building Capacity at the State and Local Level, and Getting Timelines Right” (p. 147). In this eight-paragraph section, astounding for its understatement, Cross quotes Barry White as saying that “when things fail, and they often do, it is almost always due to the lack of an implementation plan” (p. 147). Cross says major changes in federal law come with money for “technical assistance, training, and support,” and that this is a “problem that plagues all human –services programs” (p. 147).

The main problem? Communication. “How,” Cross asks, “does a politician explain [emphasis added] supporting the salaries of ‘bureaucrats’ rather than expanding services, even if the quality of the services suffers from the lack of the capacity to deliver them?” (p. 147). Then Cross says the “communication pipeline is inefficient and, as in the old game of telephone, messages are often received—if at all—with the content distorted as it passes from layer to layer, person to person” (p. 147). Web site designs are responsive to people seeking information rather than actively disseminating information. And, Cross says, the time lines in most bills don’t even consider school starting dates, when staff members are generally hired, or other important dates—information is not being sought or communicated. If internal communication is this faulty, can we assume external communication with an aggressive press is any better?

Dearing, M., & Barnett, G. (1999). What is agenda-setting? In Communication concepts: Agenda-setting (pp. 1-23). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Ltd.


Goldberg, B. (2003). Bias: A CBS insider exposes how the media distort the news. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Summary: Emmy-award winning news journalist Bernard Goldberg was with CBS news from 1972 until 2000. So when, in 1996, he wrote an op-ed article about liberal bias among the media elite—for the Wall Street Journal, no less—Goldberg became, in his words, “radioactive” (p. 4). When Bias first came out in 2002 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for several months, many second-tier news media outlets around the world talked about Goldberg’s book and invited him to appear. For months, none of the first-tier media broadcasting systems mentioned the book, according to Goldberg (p. 10).

Chapter titles give a clue as to why Goldberg found himself outcast: The News Mafia (1), Mugged by “The Dan” (2), “The Emperor is Naked” (3), How About a Media That Reflects America? (9), and Liberal Hate Speech (12) are among the chapter titles.

Chapter 5 explains “How Bill Clinton Cured Homelessness” (pp. 69-80). According to Goldberg, TV news did three things that caused this miraculous cure. First they “prettified reality;” second, they exaggerated reality; and, third, they were played by advocacy groups and politicians.

According to Goldberg, it went like this: Goldberg says he began noticing that the homeless people he saw depicted in the television news media were different from the homeless people he saw where he lived and that, in Tom Brokaw’s words (again, according to Goldberg), they were “people you know” (p. 69). Goldberg says reporters looked, as he did for one newscast, for the “atypical , blond-haired, blue-eyed family … and put them on national television as the faces of homelessness in America” (p. 70), and he says this was done for two reasons: ratings and NIMBY. Ratings were affected because viewers saw people who looked like them living in largely unimaginable conditions—remember that this was before reality TV shows took off in a big way a couple of decades later—and were titillated.

NIMBY? Goldberg says, “But there was another, more insidious reason we focused on those people who looked like our next-door neighbors. If we journalists could win sympathy for them, then we had a chance of winning sympathy for the less sympathetic homeless, which might translate into a new homeless shelter—in some non-journalist’s neighborhood, of course” (p. 70).

To back his claim, Goldberg cites a 1989 New York Times’ article which quoted Robert Hayes, who ran the National Coalition for the Homeless in New York, as saying that when “congressional committees and TV news producers contact him, ‘they always want white, middle-class people to interview” (p. 71). And he quotes a section of commentary by New York Times television commentator Walter Goodman, who called this practice the “prettifying of reality” (p. 71).

Goldberg says the news media also exaggerated reality by accepting inflated figures from advocacy groups—without verifying those figures—as to the number of homeless people living in America. Goldberg cites three government sources estimating there were between 230,000 and 462,000 homeless Americans in the 1980s and early 1990s (p. 72).

“Meanwhile,” Goldberg writes,” the homeless lobby was putting the number of homeless in the millions” primarily, he says, to win “more sympathy and support—more money—for our cause” (p. 72). Goldberg cites CNN as reporting three million homeless people faced the winter of 1989. NBC reported five million in 1993. A CBS news show reported an estimated 19 million people would be homeless by 2000, many of whom were the “hidden homeless,” who weren’t actually homeless but were living with relatives—a far cry from being on the streets at the mercy of the elements (p. 73).

“It’s as if our coverage of this very big story was being directed not by objective journalists but by the advocates for the homeless themselves. We took what they said at face value even though we would never do that with advocates for causes we did not embrace” (p. 73).

Was something more than advocacy journalism behind the questionable reporting? Goldberg suggests that enmity on the part of the media toward then-president Ronald Reagan motivated much of newscasters’ phrasing that blamed Reagan policies for causing an increase in homelessness. All of the examples Goldberg quotes aired after a 1989 New York Times front-page article ran that cited research pointing the finger at drug and alcohol abuse as the main cause of homelessness (p. 75-76).

So where does Bill Clinton figure into all of this? Goldberg suggests “homelessness ended the day Bill Clinton was sworn in as president” (p. 77). He claims coverage of homelessness as an issue began when Reagan was sworn in and ended when Clinton replaced Reagan—and that it reappeared when George W. Bush was elected (pp. 77-80). And he cites studies to back his claim.

Comments: Goldberg’s intense tone, which occasionally strays into sarcasm, evidences the passion he feels for what he writes and the claims he makes. He says he is not a disgruntled former employee, as others have accused him of being, but that he has journalism’s best interests in mind. Regardless of one’s opinion of Goldberg, Bias is thoroughly cited.

With regard to the particular topic of media and education policy, one wonders whether the same sort of game-playing has occurred, given the number of non-profit education organizations, each vying for media attention.

Disclaimer: I have not vetted Goldberg’s claims, but doing so would make for a really good study. It is interesting that Goldberg feels print journalists did not fall into the same pitfalls the way broadcast journalists did. This, too, deserves further study.

Hachten, W. A. (2005). The troubles of journalism: A critical look at what’s right and wrong with the press (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Summary: Hatchen, a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin, worked as a reporter from 1948 to 1956 before entering the academic world. Hatchen defines news as “useful public knowledge…usually distinct from rumor, titillation, diversion, gossip, and particularly scandal….” (p. xvi), although he also quotes an unnamed sociologist defining news as “organized gossip” (p. xvii). Hatchen’s first four chapters note the impact the American news media has had on this country’s development, its global influence, discusses First Amendment issues surrounding freedom of the press, and traces technological changes during the 20th century.

Hatchen’s next five chapters focus on changes Hatchen finds more problematic, including changes in financial ownership and consolidation, the decline in quality of television news, the decline in readership of newspapers, the loss of credibility and public mistrust of news media, and how mixed media or news convergence has changed journalism. Finally, Hatchen turns to foreign news coverage, terrorism and the news media, relations between the press and the military, the Internet and the rise of citizen journalists and bloggers, and college journalism programs.

Comments: While Hatchen presents a comprehensive look at first-tier news media, Hatchen also mentions two second-tier media sources without seeming to understand the importance attached to what he says about them.
1) On page 10, Hatchen devotes all of one paragraph to weekly newspapers, numbering, at the time, about 7,500. Hatchen says the total circulation of weekly papers was, at the time, around 55 million. 55 million!!! Hatchen has just finished listing the major daily papers and said the total circulation of the dailies was about 63 million. The circulation of the weekly papers almost equals the circulation of the dailies, but Hatchen only devotes one paragraph to this vibrant facet of print journalism.
2) On page 17, Hatchen says most of the news Americans were getting about what was happening in foreign countries came from just seven daily newspapers: “The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Baltimore Sun—which all maintain overseas news bureaus.” What does it say that The Christian Science Monitor is never mentioned again in the book, even though its ownership and financial model is unique and even though it has earned a reputation for quality, neutral reporting? Today, The Christian Science Monitor is published weekly, but its Web site is still updated 24/7.

Kingdon, J. W. (2003). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Longman.


Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2001). The elements of journalism. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

Summary: Veteran journalists Bill Kovach and Ted Rosenstiel begin at the beginning by citing anthropologists and historians who claim that “’Humans have exchanged a similar mix of news…throughout history and across cultures’” and that “news satisfies a basic human impulse” (p. 9), what Kovach and Rosenstiel call the “Awareness Instinct” (p. 10). Journalism, of course, in its modern incarnation is a fairly new profession, but some feel it is currently in danger of “disappearing inside the larger world of communications,” which includes public relations, advertising, entertainment, and a host of other forms of exchanging thoughts and ideas (p. 11). This book is actually the report of a group, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, who conducted public forums, surveys, and summits—some in partnership with university researchers—to rediscover the essence, the elements, of journalism. They came up with a primary purpose for journalism, then broke that purpose down into nine elements:

The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing. To fulfill this task:
1) Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
2) Its first loyalty is to citizens.
3) Its essence is a discipline of verification.
4) Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5) It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6) It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7) It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
8) It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
9) Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience. (pp. 12-13)

After exploring each of these elements in depth, Kovach and Rosenstiel then include a final element—although they bury it in the last half of the final chapter: “The final element in the equation lies in how the members of the community, the citizens, become part of the process” and they suggest that non-journalists need to educate themselves as to the newsgathering processes and to refuse to settle for infotainment. (pp. 191-192). To those ends they propose a Citizen’s Bill of Rights on Truthfulness, on Loyalty to Citizens, on Independence, on Monitoring Power, on a Public Forum, on Proportionality and Engagement.

Comments: The book is well-written and well-researched. As with most books about journalism, however, it is written by journalists. Presumably, they have an inside understanding about the profession and about its elements. But those on the inside of any circle generally suffer from an inability to think like outsiders. What seems obvious to Kovach and Rosenstiel—and other journalists—either isn’t obvious to readers or runs counter to what they actually want and/or need. Narrative journalism, for instance, which is described on pages 155-161, has become such an accepted and vaunted style—garnering numerous Pulitzers and book contracts—among journalists, that no one seems to have bothered finding out whether the style is equally appreciated by readers. Anecdotal evidence leads me to believe readers yearn for a return to a less cluttered, more straight-forward approach. Ah, well.

Kovach and Rosenstiel don’t discuss local or weekly newspapers. Presumably they feel what applies to top-tier journalism applies locally. But to presume can be dangerous.

Lieberman, T. (2000). Slanting the story: The forces that shape the news. New York, NY: The New Press.


Lindblom, C. E., & Woodhouse, E. J. (1993). The policy-making process (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.


ARTICLES


Bartlett, C., Sterne, J., & Egger, M. (July 13, 2002). What is newsworthy? Longitudinal study of the reporting of medical research in two British newspapers. British Medical Journal, 325(7355), pp. 81-84.

Summary: The authors compared the number of newspaper articles written about medical journal studies to the number of press releases issued by two British medical journals over a two-year period. The authors studied two newspapers, a broadsheet (the [London] Times) and a tabloid (the Sun), both published by News International. Although the difference in terms technically is only in the size of the paper, broadsheets are considered more legitimate and tabloids more sensational. For the purposes of this study, the Sun would likely be considered second-tier.

The authors first noted the role of newspapers in disseminating medical research saying, “Health related articles in newspaper may influence policy makers, consumers of health services, and the population in general and may therefore affect provision and use of health services and health related behaviors” (p. 81).

Of the 1193 articles published in the British Medical Journals and the Lancet in 1999 and 2000, information about 517 articles was sent to newspapers by the journals, typically in a press release that summarized several, but not all, of the articles in an upcoming issue. Of the 676 articles not included in the press releases, none were covered by either newspaper.

Of the 517 articles included in press releases, 81 articles (7% of the total 1193) were covered by the newspapers; 68 in the Times, 21 in the Sun, and eight in both, most as a full story. The study’s findings included:
o Reports about elderly people were proportionately included in press releases but were less likely to be picked up by journalists.
o Reports about babies, children, and mental health were more likely to be included in the press releases, but were less likely to be picked up by journalists.
o Reports about women’s health and cancer were more likely to be included in the press releases and even more likely to be reported on in the news.
o Randomised controlled trials and observational studies were more likely to be included in the press releases, but randomized trials were less likely to be reported in the news.
o “Good news” and “bad news” articles were equally likely to be included in press relases, but “bad news” articles were more likely to be reported in the news.
o Research articles originating outside of Britain were less likely to be reported on; research articles originating from emerging nations were not reported on at all.

Comments: Apparently, even so-called medical journalists don’t read the journals they should be covering, but rely on press-releases to tell them what is news. The authors noted that a 2000 article in the New England Journal of Medicine “criticized the issuing of press releases as inherently self interested and argued that reporters should make their own decision about what is important to their readers” (p. 84).

The study also noted that it did not study the quality of the reporting (p. 84). Earlier, however, the authors said most of the articles in the Times “were attributed to the medical correspondent, whereas in the Sun this was the case for only five stories” (p. 82). Newspapers sometimes run lightly edited (very lightly edited) press releases about studies in place of an actual article, although the headline is usually original. The study noted the “entertainment” aspect of most of the headlines. This practice, coupled with the lack of reporting on randomized trials, seems to indicate a lack of understanding of research methods on the part of the journalists and a low confidence level in analyzing academic studies.


Johnson, T. J., & Kaye, B. K. (Autumn 2004). Wag the blog: How reliance on traditional media and the internet influence credibility perceptions of weblogs among blog users. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(3), 622-642.


Lee, S. (2007). International public relations as a predictor of prominence of US news coverage. Public Relations Review, 33, 158-165. doi:101016/j.pubrev.2007/02.002


Myhre, S. L., Saphir, M. N., Flora, J. A., Howard, K. A., & Gonzalez, E. M. (2002). Alcohol coverage in California newspapers: Frequency, prominence, and framing. Journal of Public Health Policy, 23(2), 172-190.

Summary: This paper notes the “critical role” newspapers play in policy development by the frequency, level of prominence and framing of an issue and the equally critical role newspaper readers—as opposed to those who get their news from broadcast sources—play in the formation of public consensus on “issue priorities that, in turn, influence opinion leaders who shape public policy” (pp. 172-173). The authors cite studies showing how print coverage “influence[s] the tone of television news coverage that may read a broader viewing audience” and studies showing that this effect applies to both national issues covered by large papers and also more local issues covered by smaller papers.

However, this paper also noted the dearth of studies about news media coverage of alcohol issues—the authors found only four—as opposed to the number of studies focusing on advertising media.

The authors conducted a content analysis of four larger newspapers and five smaller papers over a 44-week period using a constructed week strategy for sampling issues. Findings pertinent to my topic include:
o Differences in the number of alcohol-related stories per day (“smaller papers contained, on average, twice as many…per day as large-circulation papers”) (p. 180)
o Differences in the ratio of alcohol articles to news hole (“the ratio of alcohol articles to news hole in the smaller newspapers was nearly twice that of the larger newspapers”) (p. 180)
o Differences in the level of prominence given to alcohol articles:
• Smaller papers placed more articles on the front pages of hard and soft news sections
• Larger papers included more photographs
• Smaller papers had more policy-related articles
• Larger papers had more articles written by local reporters (as opposed to letters to editor, press releases, etc.) and more editorial pieces (staff or public generated) (p. 185)

Comments: This paper confirmed what I have found in terms of the lack of studies about news media coverage of various issues. This, to me, seems critical. I wonder if there is a prevalent “news is truth” attitude that has precluded such studies. In any case, the language of the conclusion and recommendations is worth noting. The authors suggest “public health advocates . . . make better use of print media to advance appropriate alcohol policy” and that they do so by “educating journalists about the importance of utilizing framing techniques” in terms of providing thematic information in episodic articles.

My guess is that, while journalists would see this as an attempt to manipulate the news, other people would see this as fighting fire with fire.

The paper concluded by suggesting future research study the possible link between newspaper coverage and policy decision making.

Question: I’m wondering if a better research method might not be to take a paper like this and track the references back and the citations of the paper in other studies forward rather than searching databases for keywords.

Ognyanova, K. (May 2010). Talking past each other: Academic and media framing of literacy. Digital Culture and Education, 2(1), 44-61.

Summary: The author discussed changing definitions of literacy, particularly definitions that include so-called new media literacies and the shift from cognitive to socio-cultural perspectives on literacy (p. 44). The author then compared a white paper produced for the MacArthur Foundation initiative on Digital Media and Learning with coverage of literacy in the New York Times. The author cites sources calling the New York Times the “American newspaper of record” which has “been identified by scholars as a key gatekeeper in national news coverage” (p. 48). Additionally, the Times’ Web site has a noted online presence and is “one of the sites that bloggers most often link to” (p. 48).

The author studied both the number of articles and the length of articles with “literacy” as a keyword published in the Times between 1999 and 2009 and found that while the length of the articles did not change, the number of articles dropped beginning in 2007 from an average of about 100 per year to about 50 per year and that many of those articles dealt with literacy in developing countries. In terms of percentage of articles compared to total articles, literacy articles averaged about 12% until 2007 when they began falling and are now at about 7%.

The author then compared, using semantic mapping analysis, the white paper and 329 articles about literacy which ran in the Times between January 1, 2006 and December 1, 2009. The words most frequently used in the Times’ articles are traditional education words—what the author calls “a legacy literacy frame” (p. 54) in the categories of institutions, policies and programs, people, etc. The top three words are schools, reading, and books. The words used most frequently in the white paper, on the other hand, are newer education words in the categories of technologies, communities, and activities. The top three words are (new) media, students, and culture (the author says they are digital, media, and learning [pp. 54-55]—but that’s not what I see).

The author pointed out that the Times does cover new media and children/teens, but it is not within the context of school or literacy (p. 55). The author concluded that the two different literacy frames may reflect two different mindsets—one in which “contemporary practices are still seen as grounded in long-standing assumptions about the physical world, printed text, authorship, ownership, etc. …. The practices of learning are linked to the reading of printed books” (p. 55). The second mindset “recognizes possibilities for new modes of social interaction, economic transactions, and cultural expression” (p. 55).

Comments: As fascinating as I find this article, and as much as I understand what the author is trying to say, I think she has given an apples to oranges sort of comparison, and I question her premise that just because the two sets of text used the word “literacy” with approximately the same frequency that they were, in fact, discussing the same thing.

In fact, I think the whole “new literacies” movement has given us oranges when we really needed apples with which to bake the reading pie—and now we’re wondering what went wrong with the recipe. Look, for instance, at the words the author uses to describe the two mindsets. One is about the “practices of learning,” the other is about “social interaction, economic transactions, and cultural expression.” This is not to say that one is better or worse, more important or less important, than the other. But being able to translate combinations of letters of the alphabet into meaningful messages requires different—not better or worse—skills than translating facial expressions and body language during a social interaction or buying, selling, and banking online. The word “literate” has at its roots the word “letter.” My unsubstantiated hunch is that somebody realized that the term “literacy” had funding and respect attached to it and jumped on board. The term “literacy” has been applied so liberally it has lost its meaning. Jenkins’ white paper may have been about “literacy,” but it doesn’t appear to have been about learning to read.

Be that as it may, how does this affect the issue of second-tier media and the dissemination of information about education policy? My guess is that most people outside of academia—including most politicians—think of reading and writing when they hear the term “literacy.” That is what they have in mind when they formulate policy and pass legislation and write regulations. That is what parents, for the most part, expect when they are told their children are becoming literate. That is what employers expect when they hire workers. They may also want them to be skilled in other areas; but when it comes to literacy, they expect reading and writing.

Should children learn technological skills? Absolutely. Should teachers understand and recognize students’ out-of-classroom online reading and writing on social media and in role-playing games and fan fiction as “real” reading and writing? Absolutely. But first they have to learn to read and write. Let’s use the word proficient when we are speaking of skills other than reading and writing. Let’s be literate about the word literacy.