Ch2-1: Slide Index (1 of 3)

1. Ch2-1: Slide Index (1 of 3) • Cross-National Differences in Info • Information on Hard vs. Soft News • Consumers or Citizens? • Explaining Differences in Information • The American Media System in Comparative Perspective • Preview of Findings • Performance Criteria • Properties of Media Systems: Ownership • Public Broadcasting • License Fees • Revenues of Major Public Broadcasters • Cross-National Differences in Public Broadcaster’s Market Share • Ownership and Press Freedom • Regulatory Regimes • Role of Journalists

2. Ch2-1: Slide Index (2 of 3) • Strength of Political Parties • A Typology of Media Systems • Polarized-Pluralist Model • Democratic Corporatism • Convergence of Media Systems • Why Regulate News Media • The regulatory “double standard” • Public Broadcasters Deliver Public Goods • BBC Programming • The “Virtuous Circle” • BBC vs. CNN: Africa Coverage • First Phase of Regulatory Policy • Towards Deregulation • Limits on Ownership • Impact of Deregulation

3. Ch2-1: Slide Index (3 of 3) • Politically Biased Programming? • Biased Programming? (cont) • Print Monopolies • The demise of “equal time” • The European Model: Free Time • UK PEBS, 1980-2005 • Summary • Summing Up

4. Cross-National Differences in Info Y axis represents percent of sample answering question correctly.

5. Information on Hard vs Soft News Y axis represents percent of sample answering correctly.

6. Consumers or Citizens? Source: Survey of Stanford Univ students;Y axis represents percent of sample answering question correctly.

7. Explaining Differences in Information • Differences in media systems lead to differences in the production of “civic” information. Market-oriented media systematically under-produce “serious” news

8. The American Media System in Comparative Perspective Objectives: • Evaluating the civic performance of American news media against the baseline of news media in other industrialized democracies • Mapping the relevant properties of media systems

9. Preview of Findings • American media preoccupied with consumerism and audience size; reduced levels of public affairs programming and the dominance of “soft” news • Access to the electoral forum based on ability to pay (for TV advertising)

10. Performance Criteria • Foster informed citizenship by delivering information on the issues of the day and providing exposure to a wide range of political perspectives (“public sphere”) • Permit candidates, parties and other groups opportunities to make political presentations to a mass audience (“electoral forum”) • Monitor the actions of government officials (“watchdog function”)

11. Properties of Media Systems: Ownership • Ranges from exclusively private to government ownership – most systems feature a mix of public and private • Well-developed “public broadcaster” common to virtually all democratic societies (except US) • Less developed and authoritarian regimes feature more extensive government ownership and control over programming

12. Public Broadcasting “Public broadcasting” refers to television and radio networks funded by their government either in the form of “license” fees or general state funds. Some public broadcasters (for example, Radio Telefís Éireann, the national broadcaster in Ireland) also run commercial advertising to supplement their revenues.

13. License Fees Germany €193 UK €178 France €116 Italy €94 No license fee in Spain

14. Revenues of Major Public Broadcasters (in millions of UK Pounds)

15. Cross-National Differences in Public Broadcaster’s Market Share

16. Ownership and Press Freedom

17. Regulatory Regimes • Purely market-based with minimal state intervention (US) • “public service” model (Europe) – active intervention by government to ensure adequate civic performance • Intervention can be both supportive (subsidies, exemptions) and regulatory (ownership caps, programming requirements)

18. Role of Journalists • Professionalized journalism in the US, with well-developed norms and codes of conduct • Autonomy from political movements/groups; “objectivity” in the US, “commentary” in Europe where newspapers are affiliated with parties (Note: dominance of partisan press in the US, 1800-1850) • Mediated vs. unmediated coverage of political actors – interpretive coverage in the US, descriptive reporting everywhere else

19. Strength of Political Parties • American parties weak, European parties strong • Mass membership versus party identifiers • Party organizations control recruitment of elected officials in Europe; in US, “free agent” candidates contest elections on their own with party organizations playing a minor role • Party-based campaigns; no messages on behalf of individual candidates (Changing nature of PEBs)

20. A Typology of Media Systems I. “Liberal” model (US) – mass circulation and privately owned press, dominance of commercial broadcasting, minimal regulation of media, professional journalists autonomous from political parties, but subject to subtle government influence

21. Polarized-Pluralist Model Italy, Spain as exemplars – press as an extension of political movements, active state intervention, dominant public broadcaster, subsidies for newspapers, lack of professional norms or codes of conduct

22. Democratic Corporatism Northern Europe – press freedom coupled with active state intervention (Sweden, Germany); strong political parties with affiliated newspapers; commercial media coexist with partisan outlets and the news reflects both objectivity and ideology

23. Convergence of Media Systems • Since 1985, all three media systems are moving in the direction of expanded commercial broadcasting (increased audience share of private networks) and progressive weakening of government regulations over news programming

24. Why Regulate News Media • Regulations designed to ensure delivery of civic performance – broadcasters as “trustees” granted exclusive rights over a scarce public resource in exchange for programming in the “public interest” • Regulations designed to promote the industry -- FCC originally created as a “traffic cop” to address the problem of frequency congestion, DOD funding instrumental in development of Internet

25. The regulatory “double standard” • Operation of a newspaper printing press does not interfere with any other press. Radio and television, by contrast, are broadcast through signals of a specific frequency and power. Television and radio sets receive these signals on a fixed number of channels, each of which corresponds to the frequency of the signal. The channels have to be sufficiently far apart to avoid interference among the signals. Unlike newspapers, the production of which is not exclusive, "one person's transmission is another's interference”

26. Public Broadcasters Deliver Public Goods • In return for government financing, public broadcasters are required to provide sustained levels of public affairs programming, and to represent a diversity of regions, cultures and viewpoints. Thus, public broadcasters in Europe produce higher quantities of “serious” programming, a likely cause of the higher levels of political information in Europe

27. BBC Programming • BBC 1, the flagship public station in the UK, devoted 22.1% of its 2002 peak hour broadcasts to current affairs, compared to only 9% by the newest commercial British channel, Channel Five • BBC 1 airs an average of 2.2 hours of news and public affairs programming during primetime on weekdays; NBC, CBS, and ABC average only one hour each

28. The “Virtuous Circle” • Public broadcasters in Germany, Britain, Sweden and other countries are market leaders, despite their emphasis on “public service” programming • Commercial broadcasters mimic their programming, leading to an increase in “serious” content

29. BBC vs. CNN: Africa Coverage

30. Early regulations aimed at promoting competition and diversity; “one to a market” rule and ban on “cross-ownership;” no cable operator could control more than 30% of a market “Fairness doctrine” – required stations to air balanced treatment of controversial issues; extended to “right of reply” (Red Lion case) First Phase of Regulatory Policy

31. Towards Deregulation • 1987 FCC repealed the fairness doctrine on the grounds that access to the airwaves was no longer a scarce resource; cable and satellite TV, VHS tapes etc all seen as “substitutes” for basic TV. New approach, set in motion by the election of Reagan in 1980, relied on the market and “regulatory forbearance” • Time Warner challenged the cap on cable ownership; court ruled that the cap violated TW’s First Amendment rights to reach new audiences

32. Limits on Ownership • Limits on cross-ownership eased (in cities with >4 TV stations a single owner can control a daily newspaper and two TV stations) • In 1976, stations were required to air at least five percent community programming and five percent informational programming (defined as news and public affairs) for a total of ten percent non-entertainment programming. In 1984 the FCC abandoned these requirements; it was now sufficient for stations to “air some programming that meets the community’s needs” • Local news as “public affairs” programming

33. Impact of Deregulation • In radio, the top twenty companies operate more than twenty percent of all the radio stations in the country; in local television, the ten biggest companies own 30 percent of all television stations reaching 85 percent of all television households in the United States. In network television, the owners are all giant corporations…” • The result: homogeneity of program content

34. Politically Biased Programming? Corporate owners can encourage journalists not to pursue stories that reflect poorly on their parent corporations (ABC and Disney) Owners may impose programming in keeping with their political preferences. In 2004, the Sinclair Broadcasting Group ordered its television stations (which have a combined reach of 24% of the national audience) to pre-empt their regular programming and broadcast an anti-Kerry documentary film a few days before the 2004 presidential election.

35. Biased Programming (cont.) • Sinclair had previously ordered its ABC-affiliate stations not to air an episode (which they denounced as political) of Nightline, in which Ted Koppel read the names of all American military personnel killed in Iraq. • Disney refused to distribute Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911,” and CBS refused to air an anti-Bush ad made by Moveon.org during the 2004 Super Bowl.

36. Print Monopolies • Between 1910 and 2000 the number of dailies fell from 2,202 to 1,483. The number of cities with competing dailies dropped from 552 in 1920 to just 25 in 1987. • The percent of total circulation attributable to the ten largest newspaper chains in the United States now stands at 51% for weekday and 56% for Sunday newspapers.

37. The demise of “equal time” • The equal-time rule was designed to ensure that the public would have roughly equal exposure to the perspectives of opposing candidates. The FCC has rendered the rule meaningless by only requiring that broadcasters make available time to candidates on equal terms. Thus, candidates who cannot afford to buy the same amount of ad time as their opponent (a frequent occurrence for challengers running against congressional incumbents) are denied access to the public.

38. The European Model: Free Time • In every industrialized democracy other than the United States, political parties are granted blocks of free airtime for during campaigns • In the UK the amount of airtime is based on the number of candidates being fielded by each party, in France broadcasters are obliged to grant equal airtime to candidates irrespective of their prominence or electoral strength • the party election broadcasts are required to be carried not just by the public channels, but also by the commercial stations

39. UK PEBS, 1980-2005

40. Summary News media in democratic societies are more likely to make good on their civic responsibilities when: 1 Society adopts a relatively stringent regulatory framework that requires minimal levels of public affairs programming 2. Broadcasters are given some protection from the market. Publicly funded television networks have the necessary cushion to deliver a steady flow of substantive, “hard” news;

41. Summing Up • Among modern democracies, the US media system ranks as the most commercialized and unregulated • American news organizations free to “shirk” their civic responsibilities • Consequences include uninformed and misinformed citizens

42. Overview: From Party- to Media-Based Campaigns • Reform of the nomination process, the onset of public financing of presidential campaigns, and universal access to television combined to create a new system of campaigns in which free agent candidates rely on media strategies to appeal to voters • Mass media replaced political parties as the principal link between candidates and voters

43. Party-Based Politics • Parties aggregate interests and provide popular control over policy • Nominate candidates and mobilize citizens to vote • Reduce information costs of voting (voting for party equivalent to voting on the issues) • Disseminate campaign messages (PEBs vs. ads) • Control candidates’ policy positions (party-line voting in parliamentary systems) [two party versus multi-party systems; members versus identifiers]

44. Primaries in the Pre-Reform Era • Humphrey: “you have to be crazy to go into a primary … worse than the torture of the rack.” • Primaries pursued by weaker or insurgent candidates who wished to demonstrate their vote-getting ability (JFK in 1960, Kefauver in 1952) • “Before 1968, the pursuit of a presidential nomination principally by entering primaries constituted a high risk strategy. The increasing presence of television, the decline in the influence of political parties, the success of John Kennedy… all suggested that it would prove to be more useful in the years ahead.” (Polsby, p. 16)

45. Prelude to Reform • Dissatisfaction with Vietnam War among Democratic activists; emergence of Eugene McCarthy as the “anti-war” candidate • McCarthy’s strong showing in 1968 NH primary brings RFK into the race • Humphrey stays out of the primaries and counts on “insider” support to win the nomination • The spectacle of the Democratic convention (”sea of blood”) and Nixon’s defeat of Humphrey send the Democrats down the path of reform • Party caucus and delegate primary banned as methods of selecting delegates to the nominating convention • “affirmative action” in the selection of delegates • Candidate primaries emerged as the dominant method of nomination

46. Varieties of Primary Elections • Closed Primary – limited to party registrants only; favors “ideologically pure” candidates (case of Tom Campbell v Bruce Herschensohn for CA Senate) • Modified closed primary (CA) party registrants + independents • Open primary – any registered voter eligible; may encourage centrist candidates able to attract cross-over votes. Possibility of strategic voting • “Blanket” primary – both party candidates on same ballot (Proposition 198 and ensuing Supreme Court Decision)

47. Changes in Delegate Selection

48. Summary: The Impact of Reform • Weakening of party organization and elites • Increased candidate autonomy-reduced entry costs (public financing) • Importance of media coverage and “momentum” • Personal factions rather than broad-based coalitions as the dominant strategy (additional problem of unrepresentativeness of primary electorate) • Professionalization of campaigns

49. 1960 2004 Jan 20 Iowa Jan 27 NH Feb 3 AZ, DE, NM, OK, SC Feb 7 MI, WA, ME Feb. 10 TN, VA Feb 17 WI Feb 24 UT, ID Mar 2 “Super Tuesday” Mar 8 NH TX,FL,LA TOTAL: 1 29 1960 2004 Mar 16 IL April 5` WI April 12 IL April 19 NJ April 26 MA, PA PA May 4 AL, OH, IN IN, NC May 11 NE, WV WV May 18 MD, OR AR, KY, OR May 25- June 7 FL, CA, NJ, MT NY, SD 16 10 Primary Calendar – 1960 & 2004

50. Percentage of Delegates Selected 1968 1996 Week 1-3 2 26 Week 4-6 8 74 Week 7-9 43 74 Week 10-12 58 87 Week 13-15 100 100