1. Complete control

2. Image

3. Attack

4. Mobilize faithful

1. Highly lucrative

2. Often false, borderline false

1. 15-30 seconds

2. Simplify issues

3. Informative?

4. Emphasis on image

Polling

1. Huge amounts of polling

2. Candidates’ use

3. Premise: sample representative of nation

4. Biased polls

Sample too small

700+ v. 300

Pay phone calls

"Random" meaning accidental

Person on street

Non scientific

5. Reporting

Questions

Undecideds

Margin of error

+ or -

6. Nature of opinion

Not immediate

Questions:

Do you support President’s position on health care?

Do you support President’s plan to raise some taxes to pay for national health care?

Do you support higher taxes to pay for national health care?

Undecideds.

Do you support a rapid transit tax in Seattle?

Yes: 30 per cent

No: 20 per cent

Undecided: 50 per cent

Yes: 60 per cent

No: 20 per cent

Margin of error

The Civil Rights Movement and the Media

Background

1. 1950s and African Americans

2. Nature of Segregation

Jim Crow: Separate but Equal,

Political Powerlessness

3. Civil Rights = national issue

Northern migration

Black middle class

Civil Rights groups

4. Brown v. Board of Education

1954.

Separate not equal.

All deliberate speed

5. Southern backlash

Mobs, boycotts,

"Southern" view

S. Manifesto

6. Confrontations

Clinton, TN.

Montgomery,AL

Bus Boycott

7. 1960s

Blacks losing ground

economically

8. Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin

Media and Civil Rights

1. News is event-oriented,

reactive

Not thematic

But episodic

No context

2. News = controversy

Unusual, dramatic

3. Media ignorant

Limited knowledge between races

Media personnel = 99% white

4. Sources

Official Sources

Police beat

News about crime, unrest

5. Objectivity

Segregationists

6. Labelling

7. Southern Media

Defensive

Problem: outsiders

Ad pressure

WCC boycotts

News blackouts

Ralph McGill

A. Constitution

8. Television

Nationalizes issue

Sympathy for protesters

Brings reality to South

Limits on TV coverage

1. Access

Accreditation/protection

Accreditation/censorship by military officials

2. Patriotism of reporters, editors, audience

3. Source dependence

Problems in coverage

1. Reporters’ expertise

Short stays in SVN

Language

2. Accreditation necessary from SVN, not US.

3. Sources: Joint US Public Affairs. Org.

Military sources

4. Alternative to JUSPAO: field.

45 die.

5. SVN govt: spies

Monitoring, intimidation,

plants

6. JFK admin: appeals to patriotism, pressure, Halberstam case.

7. Self censorship

Newsweek

Time

Gelhorn Series

8. Reporters

Involved? Detached?

Peter Arnett

Alex Shimkin

9. Stories not told

Corruption

Atrocities (My Lai)

10. Nature of news

Source dependence

Before TET: sources agree

After TET: sources divided

III. Post Vietnam Media

Grenada 1983

Panama 1989

Persian Gulf 1990-91

1. Access restricted

Accreditation

2. Access with US military escort only

3. Access to personnel: escort only

4. Official briefings

5. Consequences

• Sanitized war
• Few/no pictures of injuries, deaths
• Official sources dominate
• Frames: surgical strikes, carpet bombing
• Emphasis on technology ("smart" bombs, Patriot missiles)