When the Press Fails

This week's readings provide theoretical accounts of the media in the United States -- they offer theoretical explanations for why the press operates as it does as well as empirical studies to support those theoretical positions. In general, I view this week's readings as posing questions about how to define and study the press.

Timothy Cook's characterization of the press as an institution is helpful in that, in one respect, he expands on the obvious. It may be obvious, that is, that the press is an institution but applying a rigorous definition of the press as an institution leads to asking and answering different questions about the press. Thinking of the press as an institution involves asking questions about how the press as an institution formed, what is rules or norms of operation are, and traces patterns of convergence or divergence with the "norm." Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston apply this principle in When the Press Fails. In this book, they define and document what it is that the press does and how the press, as an institution, interacts and relates to other institutions.

On a side note, I found Bennett et al's discussion of the semi-independent press to be a good model for thinking about how to describe the federal judiciary -- the federal courts are also "semi-independent" in that they have the capacity in certain situations and in response to certain conditions to make independent decisions, but in the many other situations and circumstances, the judiciary acts only semi-independently.

Bennett et al seem to follow Zaller's (1992) theoretical and empirical discussion of the relationship between public opinion and consensus among elites. In brief, Zaller writes that if there is consensus among elites, public opinion is more likely to reflect elite consensus. When elites disagree and their disagreement is apparent, public opinion is also likely to reflect this disagreement.

The press, according to Bennett et al are better situated to notice elite disagreement even when opposition is not strong, but often has trouble sustain any meaningful opposition against a strongly coordinated official position. As a result, if initial opposition exists it may be quickly minimized and subsequently ignored. Additionally, institutional norms seem to push the press to report not on the actual content of news, but on the power plays behind them, or to avoid reporting on oppositional positions when they are not officially sanctioned. The Iraq War example shows how this is so: the press both reported on the power plays behind the "selling" of the war and reported on the Bush Administration's official position on the rationale for war while avoiding reporting of alternative positions. This entire characterization raises the question of what if opposition never forms?

Moments for press independence emerge mainly from, according to Bennett et al, exogenous events such as natural disasters, scandals, elections, or the emergence of within government opposition that can sustain its own message. Sometimes independence comes endogenously through the press picking up on stories directly -- often through technological advances -- without having to wait for an official line (think of Hurricane Katrina). What is interesting about this is that it seems as if large exogenous shocks are needed for error-correction. What if these shocks never come?

In thinking about potential research projects this book presents the empirical question of what young people view as the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq. As reported by Bennett et al, the Bush Administration was successful in convincing, at various times, a majority of Americans that such a link existed. Given what is known about disengagement on the part of young people with the media and with politics, what should their level of political knowledge on this issue be? Given what is known about the role of the media in indexing the position of those in power, what can be expected for those who do not engage with the media?