Public confidence in Congress, the government, and social institutions has reached new lows. Healthy skepticism may have given way to corrosive cynicism. Some media watchers and critics blame the media for their preoccupation with the game and strategy of politics rather than social problems and their solution. Others deny that changes in news have affected the quality of democracy or the depth of political alienation. Studies that we have conducted over the past four years show that subtle changes in the way news stories are framed can affect consumers' responses, activating their cynicism when strategic or conflict-oriented frames are used. The studies directly implicate media framing of political news in activating, if not creating, cynicism about campaigns, policy, and governance and imply that cynicism about the news media may be an indirect consequence.
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References
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1. David S. Broder, “War on Cynicism,”Washington Post, 6 July 1994.
2.
2. Richard Morin and David S. Broder, “Six out of 10 Disapprove of Way Hill Does Its Job,”Washington Post, 3 July 1994.
3.
3. Ibid.
4.
4. “Can Congress Ever Be a Popular Institution,” in The House at Work, ed. Joseph Cooper and G. Calvin Mackenzie (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 31.
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5. Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, eds., Congress, the Press, and the Public (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, 1994), p. 1.
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6. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 2.
7.
7. Ibid., p. 24.
8.
8. Asher and Barr, “Popular Support for Congress,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Ornstein, p. 22.
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9. Arthur H. Miller, “Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964-1970,”American Political Science Review, 68:951-972 (1974).
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10. Samuel Barnes and Max Kaaseet al., Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979).
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11. “The Confidence Gap During the Reagan Years, 1981-1987,”Political Science Quarterly, 102:22 (1987).
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12. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1950; New York: Harper Colophon, 1975).
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13. Miller, “Political Issues and Trust.”
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14. “Comment: The Political Relevance of Trust in Government,”American Political Science Review, 68:973-988 (1974).
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15. Seymour Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap (1983; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 437.
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16. Richard C. Leone, “What's Trust Got to Do with It?”American Prospect, no. 17, pp. 78-83 (Spring 1994).
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17. “Press Coverage of Congress,” in Congress, the Press, and the Public, ed. Mann and Ornstein, p. 109.
18.
18. Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Knopf, 1993), p. 20.
19.
19. Ibid., pp. 7-8.
20.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson , Dirty Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
21.
21. Jamieson, Dirty Politics, pp. 165-169.
22.
22. Patterson, Out of Order.
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23. “Media in the Middle: Fairness and Accuracy in the 1994 Health Care Reform Debate” (Report, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, 1995).
24.
“In a world where most campaigners make reasonably effective use of reasonably similar resources and technologies most of the time, much of their effort will necessarily be without visible impact, simply because every campaigner's efforts are balanced against more or less equally effective efforts to produce the opposite effect.” Ibid., p. 267.
25.
25. Matthew McCubbins, “Introduction,” in Under the Watchful Eye: Managing Presidential Campaigns in the Television Era, ed. Matthew D. McCubbins (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1992), p. 50.
26.
W. Russell Neuman , Marion R. Just, and Ann N. Crigler, Common Knowledge: News and the Construction of Political Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
27.
Rozell , “Press Coverage of Congress.”
28.
28. This research was funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to Kathleen Hall Jamieson.
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29. Jamieson, Dirty Politics.
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30. Michael Pfau and Allan Louden, “Effectiveness of Ad Watch Formats in Deflecting Political Attack Ads,”Communication Research, 21(3):325-341 (June 1994).
31.
31. The study is reported fully in Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Broadcast Adwatch Effects: A Field Experiment,”Communication Research, 21(3):342-365 (June 1994).
32.
William A. Gamson , Talking Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
33.
33. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella, “Media in the Middle: Fairness and Accuracy in the 1994 Health Care Reform Debate” (Report, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 1995).
34.
34. Two other questions about the cynical motives of the representative from the American Medical Association and from the health insurance industry yielded no differences.
35.
Patterson , Out of Order.
36.
36. This research was made possible by a grant from the Markle Foundation to Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella.
37.
37. Cynicism is measured through a series of agree-disagree and forced-choice questions about the motivations of politicians, honesty, superficiality, and self-interest. For example, participants were asked to choose one of a pair of sentences such as “The candidates told the voters what they needed to hear” and “The candidates told the voters what they wanted to hear.” People agreed or disagreed with other questions such as, “What candidates said depended on who was listening.” Our measures of cynicism correlate with established measures of alienation from government and with general measures of trust in government to “do the right thing.” These correlations and their predictive validity in several studies (Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Public Cynicism and News Coverage in Campaigns and Policy Debates: Three Field Experiments” [Paper delivered at the conference of the American Political Science Association, New York City, 4 Sept. 1994]) give some confidence that the questions are reliable and valid indicators of cynicism.
38.
38. The results are stated here in simplified form. For more complete information, see Cappella and Jamieson, “Public Cynicism,” p. 14. Not all measures exhibited significant differences, but the trends and overall levels of significance are accurately and fairly described.
39.
39. This research was supported by a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
40.
40. A sample of the issue articles dealing with the health care debate was selected for coding. The sample came from four newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, and the Los Angeles Times—at three different time periods. The time periods—24 Jan. to 27 Feb. 1994; 16-29 June 1994; and 1-25 Aug. 1994—were the periods of peak coverage of health care reform news dating from 15 Jan. to 15 Oct. 1994. The duration of the periods around the peaks are bounded by increases from the average value of coverage of health care reform climbing toward the peak and then decreasing back to the average.
41.
41. New York Times, 3 Nov. 1994.
42.
42. “Public Opinion and Demographic Report,”American Enterprise, pp. 94-95 (Nov.-Dec. 1993).
