Cohen Chapter 7

Remember the three components of the presidential news system? What are they? That system underwent a transformation from the golden age of television into the current age of new media. This chapter will discuss how this transformation changed one part of the presidential news system—the media.

Compared to the previous era, the new media age features a mass public that consumes less news and trusts the media less. This decline parallels other changes in the mass public such as: The decline in voter turnout Increases in public cynicism The rise of independents General decline in social capital

Well, there are a number of factors, but Cohen wants to focus specifically on the news media. Can you think of some other things that might be driving these changes?

Attention to the news can be viewed as a form of political and/or social participation. Here we are going to focus on four major forms of news attentiveness: Reading newspapers Reading weekly newsmagazines Watching television news Listening to news on the radio

Research suggests two mechanisms through which the rise of the new media has led to a decline in news attention: Cable television The characteristics of news reporting and the public response to that style of reporting What are the arguments here?

Thomas Patterson has done extensive work on this thesis. He argues that increased competition led the style of news reporting to change. It sensitized news organizations to the news tastes of consumers, leading them to substitute soft news for hard news.

News producers found several things by analyzing the public that led them to this change: There was a decline in audiences and their market research found that consumers possessed only a limited interest in traditional hard news, while desiring perhaps a greater quantity of soft news. The success of new news formats, which mixed entertainment and news values, provided news producers with another model of news programming to offer.

The McLaughlin Group

Patterson argues that this change in softer news affected people’s evaluations and consumption of the news. People who wanted hard news ceased watching news programs that added a higher quotient of the soft stuff. Those with a taste for the soft stuff were less likely to consume news of any kind and turned to entertainment shows.

Interestingly enough, Patterson conducted a survey in October 2000 to test this thesis of his. He found some pretty crazy things: Large margins of people say that the news is depressing rather than uplifting About one half of his respondents described news as superficial, biased, and not enjoyable By a wide margin, respondents said they prefer hard news to soft news.

So, how do we reconcile Patterson’s findings with the market research done by the news networks? Just because people say they like hard news, doesn’t mean they do. When sitting down to watch TV and given the choice between hard news and something else, what are they usually going to pick? Research by Prior (2005) found that about 50% of his subjects were indifferent, neither liking news a whole lot, or disliking it.

If Patterson is correct, then the news networks may be driving away the audiences they want to keep. By changing their news programs to offer more soft news they may be doing two things: Driving away hard news consumers Not gaining any soft news consumers because those individuals are simply less likely to watch the news anyhow. This, combined with the increase in channel alternatives offered by cable television has led these soft news people to be even less likely to watch news.

Baum and Kernell (1999) which you’ve already read, build on this. B&K argue that an individual will participate in an activity when the benefits outweigh the costs. The introduction of cable television altered the cost calculation of television viewing for many people.

Their study found that cable subscribers were less likely to tune into things like presidential debates. And, when controlling for the level to which individuals were informed about politics, they found that highly informed cable subscribers viewed the presidential debates at higher levels than uninformed cable subscribers. However, there was no difference in viewing the presidential debates between uninformed and highly informed NON-cable subscribers. Additionally, low information cable subscribers were less likely to watch the debates than low information non-cable subscribers.

This basically means that having more channels makes people less likely to watch presidential news, if they are not interested in watching it in the first place. People who are not interested in it, but have no other option, will tend to watch a presidential debate because that’s the only thing that’s on. But, people who have cable, with so many other things to watch, they will watch something else, especially if they are not interested in politics in the first place.

The degree to which people trust the media also plays a role here. When people begin to mistrust the news, because they think news reports are inaccurate or biased, they may reduce their consumption of news. Ultimately, this means, for the individual, the utility (value) of the news declines because it is untrustworthy. So, their cost benefit calculation that determines whether they tune into the news or some entertainment program is affected by low levels of trust.

To finish up, Cohen finds several things in his own research: Public consumption of news from traditional sources had declined relative to the golden age of broadcasting. There is little evidence that people have been substituting new media for traditional media. The spread of cable television is strongly associated with decline in public use of newsmagazines, radio news, and to a lesser extent, newspapers. Cohen finds support for both the Patterson argument and the Baum and Kernell argument. So, the two mechanisms that he posited in the beginning to have contributed to the decline in news consumption (reporting style and cable television) appear to be supported.