Politics as a Side Show
Kristol, William
A Symposium: Politics and the Miracle of Television Surveying Television There has recently been no shortage of discussion and controversy (one sometimes suspects there has been more controversy...
...This, in fact, seems unlikely, especially when what is being discussed is "the news...
...and then have triumphantly concluded that it is, or that it isn't...
...Below we are publishing excerpts from the two main sections of the report...
...William Kristol William Kristol is a senior editor of The Alternative and a student at Harvard...
...Unfortunately, much of the controversy-ranging from polemic to impressionistic personal opinions to scholarly survey to more polemic-has been marred by at least one of two faults...
...The key question then becomes: just how does the very nature of the television news medium, as differentiated perhaps from other news media, affect its presentation of "the news...
...How does the medium, and thus, its practitioners, shape the message...
...we all know that an event will be described differently in a newspaper, a magazine, a poem, a novel or a television production...
...A Symposium: Politics and the Miracle of Television Surveying Television There has recently been no shortage of discussion and controversy (one sometimes suspects there has been more controversy than discussion) about "the media," and specifically about the nature and effect of television's coverage of news...
...They have asked, "Is television news coverage biased...
...We wanted to discover the way in which television biases news...
...That is what we have at least tried to do...
...However, the assumption of at least the possible objectivity or neutrality of the medium leads the researcher to say, "Ha ha...
...This question presupposes, however, that television (or any other medium) could possibly be a neutral medium, that there is such a thing as an entirely neutral or objective form of discourse, that the medium itself does not shape the message...
...The second, by James R. Ferguson, demonstrates the significance of themes in television news and suggests alternative conceptions which the networks could have considered...
...Or rather, it seems that those who have done good, extensive empirical research on television news have, unfortunately, limited themselves to asserting: yes, television news is biased...
...Bias...
...Nor is it to claim that we at the Alternative Media Analysis Center have come along and far surpassed, in our report, everything else written on the subject...
...Only by understanding how the very form of television news governs the presentation of the news can we begin to understand the nature and possibly the effects of the "bias" in television news...
...The television reporters, executives, etc...
...while those who have perhaps thought more deeply about the nature of our television news have lacked empirical evidence to support their speculationsThis is not, we must emphasize, to in any way denigrate the work that has been done on the question of bias in television news...
...The excerpts are (since they are excerpts they are the somewhat over-simplified) conclusions wejeached about the nature of television news' coverage of each candidate...
...Many who have been writing on the question of the bias of television news may have been asking (themselves) the wrong question...
...In addition to asking the wrong question, much of the writing on the media, and on television news, is also marred by a lack of supportive hard empirical data...
...must be biased," and there his investigations stop...
...The reader (who is inmted to order the full report by sending $3.00 to the Alternative Media Analysis Center, R. R. 11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401) may judge whether we have been successful...
...Unfortunately, he is stopping short of the really interesting and perhaps important question: "in what way is television news as a medium 'biased,' or in some sense not neutral...
...This is perhaps more common-sensical than it seems...
...Last summer our Media Analysis staff studied video tapes, provided by the Vanderbilt Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University, which dealt with the evening news' coverage of the Democratic presidential primaries (starting in November and running to the New York primary...
...First is the detailed study of every national television news report on the activities of the Democratic presidential candidates from November 1 through the New York primary...
...It is perhaps rather a matter of us standing on the shoulders of those who have come before, hopefully avoiding both of the pitfalls of our predecessors and thus perhaps seeing a little farther than they have seen...
...Our findings were published in a two hundred page report released in Washington early in October...
...The third essay, by Marc Plattner, is excerpted from the main essay of the report, and suggests more general conclusions about the nature and political effects of television news as a medium...
Vol. 6 • November 1972 • No. 2
