SOURCES OF POLITICAL INFORMATION AND NEWS
Data for the study were provided from three province-wide bilingual mail-surveys of members of the Liberal Party (1985) and of the Progressive Conservative Party (1987 and 1989) of New Brunswick.
Overall, the three samples available in the present study were not chosen randomly from the universe of all supporters of the N.B. Liberal Party and/or the Progressive Conservative Party. Thus, it would be invalid to generalize universally on the basis of the data made available for this paper. The three samples of respondents provide only a few "blocks" of data which must be fitted to other blocks of data before formulating generalizations about the amount of political information and news obtained by all "New Brunswickers" from various media sources. Ultimately, this study satisfies only the need of an exploratory investigation. Consequently, the findings reported herein must be interpreted with this in mind. And certainly these findings are, at best, suggestive rather than validating, heuristic rather than conclusive.
RESULTS
Overall, the three samples available in the present study were not chosen randomly from the universe of all supporters of the N.B. Liberal Party and/or the Progressive Conservative Party. Thus, it would be invalid to generalize universally on the basis of the data made available for this paper. The three samples of respondents provide only a few "blocks" of data which must be fitted to other blocks of data before formulating generalizations about the amount of political information and news obtained by all "New Brunswickers" from various media sources. Ultimately, this study satisfies only the need of an exploratory investigation. Consequently, the findings reported herein must be interpreted with this in mind. And certainly these findings are, at best, suggestive rather than validating, heuristic rather than conclusive.
RESULTS
RESULTS
The public at large is continuously bombarded with political reports disseminated through various media channels. Hardly a day passes without provincial politicians and issues appearing on television, in newspapers and over the radio. Political commercials and advertisements, public policy announcements, debates, candidate's news conferences, political speeches by party leaders and the deliberations of the provincial legislature combine to form a weekly, if not a daily, diet of political news for the people of New Brunswick. In fact, it is widely accepted that much of the information about the political process and issues comes to provincial audiences through the news media.
In an attempt to assess the relative role of various media to provide "political party activists" with information and news about provincial politics, respondents were asked to indicate whether they acquired a great deal, some, hardly any or no information from each news medium. The results for the three data bases are presented in Table 1. Although it appears that respondents rarely rely exclusively on any one source of information, the findings that emerge from the three data bases suggest that television is the primary source of information. As might be expected, 48.5%, 54.2%, and 45.7%, respectively, of the respondents indicated that they obtain "a great deal" of their political news from television. Likewise, another 44.6%, 41.1%, and 50.4% of the samples said they gain "some" news from television.
In an attempt to assess the relative role of various media to provide "political party activists" with information and news about provincial politics, respondents were asked to indicate whether they acquired a great deal, some, hardly any or no information from each news medium. The results for the three data bases are presented in Table 1. Although it appears that respondents rarely rely exclusively on any one source of information, the findings that emerge from the three data bases suggest that television is the primary source of information. As might be expected, 48.5%, 54.2%, and 45.7%, respectively, of the respondents indicated that they obtain "a great deal" of their political news from television. Likewise, another 44.6%, 41.1%, and 50.4% of the samples said they gain "some" news from television.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The focus of this paper was to demonstrate the relative contribution of several sources of information in meeting the political information-seeking needs of politically "involved" New Brunswickers. These data show, with considerable consistency, not only among political parties but also overtime that television was the primary conveyor of political information and news for the majority of respondents. Further, these politically involved respondents showed a fairly high susceptibility to seek additional information from radio and the one provincial newspaper, The New Brunswick Telegraph Journal.
As has been noted, the results provide an interesting illustration of differences between English and French respondents (Grondin, 1981). The image that was projected consistently was that television, is a much more important source of political information and news for French than for English respondents.
To sum up, the size and nature of the three samples used in this paper preclude any broad generalizations, but the results are illuminating. Again, the evidence collected here would suggest that politically active, involved "New Brunswickers" tune in to a variety of mass and interpersonal media in their political information-seeking activities. Of those, the evidence presented documents the current importance of television in providing public information and news. However, the data does not support the assumption that it is the pre-eminently preferred source of information. Our findings, also, suggested the pervasive importance of radio and daily newspapers, more specifically, The Telegraph Journal, as providers of political information and news.
REFLECTION :
At the time the surveys were carried out, only two English television stations--a CBC-affiliate station (Saint John) and an ATV-affiliate station (Moncton)--on one French CBC station (Moncton) were available to the majority of viewers in New Brunswick. Only those that were subscribers to cable had access to more stations. However, these were American stations and/or Quebec stations, and thus carried no information about New Brunswick's political scene. Accordingly, the investigation did not attempt to identify which stations were utilized to obtain political information.
REFERENCE :
http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/622/528
Beaudry, A., & Schaffer, B. (1986). Winning local and state campaigns: The guide to organizing your own campaign. New York: Free Press.
Blumler, J., & McQuail, D. (1968). Television in politics: Its uses and influences. London: Faber and Faber.
Grondin, D. (1988). Differences in the relative media preferences of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadian consumers. Canadian Journal of Communication, 13(3) 128-135.
Kraus, S., & Davis, D. (1976). The effects of mass communication on political behavior. London: Pennsylvania State University Press.
McPhail, T., & McPhail, B. (1990). Communication: The Canadian experience. Toronto: Copp Clark.
Meadow, R. (1990). Overview of political campaigns. In R. Rice and C. Atkin (Eds.), Public communication campaigns. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Nimmo, D. (1970). The political persuaders: Techniques of modern electoral campaigns. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Royal Commission on Newspapers. (1981). Ottawa: Queen's Printer.
Rust, R., Baja, M., & Haley, G. (1984, November). Efficient and inefficient media for campaign advertising. Journal of Advertising, 13, 45-49.
Siegel, A. (1984). Politics and the media in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Weaver, D. (1987). Media agenda setting and elections: Assumption and implications. In D. Paletz (Ed.), Political communication research: Approaches, studies and assessments. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
-Marc John Benneth L. Arguelles
Media justify anti-Trump bias, claim he's too 'dangerous' for normal rules
The media’s legions of Trump-bashers are finally acknowledging the obvious.
And trying their best to justify it.
But there’s one problem: Tilting against one candidate in a presidential election can’t be justified.
This is not a defense of Donald Trump, who has been at war with much of the press since he got in the race. Too many people think if you criticize the way the billionaire is being covered, you are somehow backing Trump.
And it’s not about the commentators, on the right as well as the left, who are savaging Trump, since they are paid for their opinions.
This is about the mainstream media’s reporters, editors and producers, whose credo is supposed to be fairness.
And now some of them are flat-out making the case for unfairness—an unprecedented approach for an unprecedented campaign.
Put aside, for the moment, the longstanding complaints about journalists being unfair to Republicans. They never treated Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush or Bob Dole like this.
Keep in mind that the media utterly misjudged Trump from the start, covering him as a joke or a sideshow or a streaking comet that would burn itself out. Many of them later confessed how wrong they had been, and that they had missed the magnitude of the anger and frustration that fueled Trump’s unlikely rise.
But since the conventions, and fueled by his own missteps, Trump has been hit by a tsunami of negative coverage, all but swamping the reporting on Hillary Clinton. Liberal investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Slate that “the U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president”—and, given his views, he has no problem with that.
Now comes Jim Rutenberg, in his first season as media columnist for the New York Times. He’s a good reporter and I give him credit for trying to openly grapple with this bizarre situation.
But Rutenberg is, in my view, trying to defend the indefensible:
“If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”
Yet normal standards, says Rutenberg, may not apply.
By “closer to being oppositional,” he means openly siding against Trump and thereby helping Clinton. And that’s precisely the kind of thing that erodes our already damaged credibility. If a reporter believes Trump is a threat to America, he or she should go into the opinion business, or quit the media world and work against him. You can’t maintain the fig leaf of neutral reporting and favor one side.
Rutenberg acknowledges that “balance has been on vacation since Mr. Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator last year to announce his candidacy. For the primaries and caucuses, the imbalance played to his advantage, captured by the killer statistic of the season: His nearly $2 billion in free media was more than six times as much as that of his closest Republican rival.”
I have to push back on this $2-billion argument. Trump got more coverage not just because he was good for clicks and ratings, but because he did many, many times more interviews than anyone else running. Much of this “free” media, rather than being a gift, was harshly negative. But that too helped Trump, because he drove the campaign dialogue and openly campaigned against the press.
Next Rutenberg argues that Trump is just too over the top in his rhetoric:
“And while coded appeals to racism or nationalism aren’t new — two words: Southern strategy — overt calls to temporarily bar Muslims from entry to the United States or questioning a federal judge’s impartiality based on his Mexican heritage are new.”
What’s disappointing is that Rutenberg doesn’t cite a single example of biased coverage from his paper, or any other paper or news outlet. (He does point to criticism from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who is, as the columnist acknowledges, a commentator.)
Instead he quotes Carolyn Ryan, the Times’ senior editor for politics, as saying Trump’s candidacy is “extraordinary and precedent-shattering” and “to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous with readers.”
And Rutenberg agrees, saying it would “be an abdication of political journalism’s most solemn duty: to ferret out what the candidates will be like in the most powerful office in the world.”
No one wants to abdicate that duty. No one is pretending Trump’s candidacy isn’t extraordinary. No one is saying he shouldn’t be fully vetted.
But there is an assumption among many journalists and pundits that of course Hillary Clinton is qualified, she’s been around forever, she just doesn’t need the relentless reporting that Trump requires. And so critical stories about Clinton—even when she said she “short-circuited” in that Chris Wallace interview on the email mess—are overshadowed by the endless piling on Trump.
Many of the reporters who feel compelled to stop Trump are undoubtedly comfortable because all their friends feel the same way.
But they are deluding themselves if they think that going after one candidate in a two-candidate race is what journalism is about.
And trying their best to justify it.
But there’s one problem: Tilting against one candidate in a presidential election can’t be justified.
This is not a defense of Donald Trump, who has been at war with much of the press since he got in the race. Too many people think if you criticize the way the billionaire is being covered, you are somehow backing Trump.
And it’s not about the commentators, on the right as well as the left, who are savaging Trump, since they are paid for their opinions.
This is about the mainstream media’s reporters, editors and producers, whose credo is supposed to be fairness.
And now some of them are flat-out making the case for unfairness—an unprecedented approach for an unprecedented campaign.
Put aside, for the moment, the longstanding complaints about journalists being unfair to Republicans. They never treated Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush or Bob Dole like this.
Keep in mind that the media utterly misjudged Trump from the start, covering him as a joke or a sideshow or a streaking comet that would burn itself out. Many of them later confessed how wrong they had been, and that they had missed the magnitude of the anger and frustration that fueled Trump’s unlikely rise.
But since the conventions, and fueled by his own missteps, Trump has been hit by a tsunami of negative coverage, all but swamping the reporting on Hillary Clinton. Liberal investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Slate that “the U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president”—and, given his views, he has no problem with that.
Now comes Jim Rutenberg, in his first season as media columnist for the New York Times. He’s a good reporter and I give him credit for trying to openly grapple with this bizarre situation.
But Rutenberg is, in my view, trying to defend the indefensible:
“If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”
Yet normal standards, says Rutenberg, may not apply.
By “closer to being oppositional,” he means openly siding against Trump and thereby helping Clinton. And that’s precisely the kind of thing that erodes our already damaged credibility. If a reporter believes Trump is a threat to America, he or she should go into the opinion business, or quit the media world and work against him. You can’t maintain the fig leaf of neutral reporting and favor one side.
Rutenberg acknowledges that “balance has been on vacation since Mr. Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator last year to announce his candidacy. For the primaries and caucuses, the imbalance played to his advantage, captured by the killer statistic of the season: His nearly $2 billion in free media was more than six times as much as that of his closest Republican rival.”
I have to push back on this $2-billion argument. Trump got more coverage not just because he was good for clicks and ratings, but because he did many, many times more interviews than anyone else running. Much of this “free” media, rather than being a gift, was harshly negative. But that too helped Trump, because he drove the campaign dialogue and openly campaigned against the press.
Next Rutenberg argues that Trump is just too over the top in his rhetoric:
“And while coded appeals to racism or nationalism aren’t new — two words: Southern strategy — overt calls to temporarily bar Muslims from entry to the United States or questioning a federal judge’s impartiality based on his Mexican heritage are new.”
What’s disappointing is that Rutenberg doesn’t cite a single example of biased coverage from his paper, or any other paper or news outlet. (He does point to criticism from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who is, as the columnist acknowledges, a commentator.)
Instead he quotes Carolyn Ryan, the Times’ senior editor for politics, as saying Trump’s candidacy is “extraordinary and precedent-shattering” and “to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous with readers.”
And Rutenberg agrees, saying it would “be an abdication of political journalism’s most solemn duty: to ferret out what the candidates will be like in the most powerful office in the world.”
No one wants to abdicate that duty. No one is pretending Trump’s candidacy isn’t extraordinary. No one is saying he shouldn’t be fully vetted.
But there is an assumption among many journalists and pundits that of course Hillary Clinton is qualified, she’s been around forever, she just doesn’t need the relentless reporting that Trump requires. And so critical stories about Clinton—even when she said she “short-circuited” in that Chris Wallace interview on the email mess—are overshadowed by the endless piling on Trump.
Many of the reporters who feel compelled to stop Trump are undoubtedly comfortable because all their friends feel the same way.
But they are deluding themselves if they think that going after one candidate in a two-candidate race is what journalism is about.
REFLECTION:
The media tries to prevent bias from entering its neutral journalistic reports. Regardless of these efforts, many media watchdog organizations believe bias is a widespread problem. Some of these organizations find proof of liberal bias, while others find evidence of a conservative tilt to the news. Elections serve to highlight the many forms of bias in the supposedly neutral news media. It is important that people recognize bias so that they are able to use the media while understanding its limitations. The media is an integral part of our life, yet it can cloud our decisions because of the bias that often is a part of the media. However, it is important that the public does not discount the importance of media simply because there are some instances of bias. The media is the best source of information for the majority of the public and it is in the public's best interest to continue using the media to collect information while maintaining awareness of its possible bias.
REFERENCE:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/09/media-justify-anti-trump-bias-claim-hes-too-dangerous-for-normal-rules.html
-Marc John Benneth L. Arguelles
The media tries to prevent bias from entering its neutral journalistic reports. Regardless of these efforts, many media watchdog organizations believe bias is a widespread problem. Some of these organizations find proof of liberal bias, while others find evidence of a conservative tilt to the news. Elections serve to highlight the many forms of bias in the supposedly neutral news media. It is important that people recognize bias so that they are able to use the media while understanding its limitations. The media is an integral part of our life, yet it can cloud our decisions because of the bias that often is a part of the media. However, it is important that the public does not discount the importance of media simply because there are some instances of bias. The media is the best source of information for the majority of the public and it is in the public's best interest to continue using the media to collect information while maintaining awareness of its possible bias.
REFERENCE:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/09/media-justify-anti-trump-bias-claim-hes-too-dangerous-for-normal-rules.html
-Marc John Benneth L. Arguelles