1. Niven, coverage of Clinton and Bush
Need a “meaningful baseline” from which to compare coverage and assess bias
Issue covered
Findings?

3. Schiffer – Affordable Care Act (2009-2010)
Looked at network news
Biases found??

4. Bias toward administration sources
Sources used:
Obama admin
Senate Ds
House Ds
Senate Rs
House Rs
Total Lib: Con = 1500: 500,
Without Obama admin, Lib: Con = 600:500

5. Also looked at coverage of Social Security Reform (2005)
Why examine this? What was his hypothesis?
What did he find?

6. Bias toward administration sources
Bush admin
Senate Ds
Senate Rs
House Rs
House Ds
Total Con: Lib = 3:1,
Without Administration Con: Lib = roughly equal

7. Other biases found?

8. Not a lot of experts used as sources (only 6% of all sources) Citizens quoted (17% of all sources) = “Personalization bias” Bias against substantive coverage (what would proposals actually DO?): instead 44% of coverage focused on politics/strategy of the proposals ACA opponents seemed to win “framing/messaging” war Terms they liked such as “death panels,” “rationing” appeared more than concepts promoted by supporters of the ACA (such as “greedy insurance companies”)

9. Implications of the biases he found
Implications of the biases he found? What difference does it make if coverage showed a bias toward admin sources, bias against experts, personalization bias, and bias against substantive coverage?

10. Media coverage of the President
Gets the most coverage of any national public official
“Adversarial relationship”
President needs the press to “go public” and gain support for his initiatives, get his message across

11. History of Presidential-press relations
Teddy Roosevelt – builds press room in White House 1902, begins daily press briefings
Hoover 1929 – first one to have a “press secretary” even though term wasn’t used officially until 1933
Truman 1947 – first to use TV to broadcast State of the Union

12. Ways the Prez communicates with the public
Formal speeches
Non-traditional venues (Jon Stewart, Letterman)
Press releases
Press briefings/news conferences
“Off the record” conversations

13. White House communications operation
White House Press Office (created by FDR, under direction of press secretary
White House Office of Communications (created by Nixon 1969) – coordinates flow of news from executive branch, aims to create “unified” message coming from exec branch
Office of Media Liaosn
Speechwriting Office, News Analysis Office,
Office of Foreign Affairs, Office of Congressional Relations….. Coalition Info Center (Bush 2012)

14. How does media cover Prez?
Focus on scandal and conflict
Negativity
Superficiality –”shrinking soundbite” and growing media commentary