Is Anyone Responsible?
Prinz, Timothy S.
POLITICS, PUBLIC OPINION & THE TUBE IS ANYONE RESPONSIBLE? How Television Frames Political Issues Shanto Iyengar University of Chicago Press, $19.95, 243 pp. Timothy S. Prinz host of recent...
...As Walter Lippmann noted almost half a century ago, most people spend their time earning a living, and once home from work are more likely to peruse the comics than to inform themselves of the pros and cons of weighty issues...
...Iyengar's point of departure is the well-known dismal state of public affairs knowledge in this country...
...The way the choice is framed can be an important contextual cue...
...Television news enters the picture because of the way it shapes people's attributions or responsibility through the framing of its coverage...
...Finally, Iyengar finds that the way television news frames its political stories can have important consequences for the way citizens evaluate political leaders...
...They will take a stand on abortion, social welfare, defense spending, and the like, and will offer their opinion to the growing array of surveys and polls across the country...
...Yet, when asked, most citizens can provide an opinion on the issues of the day...
...In essence, television news engages viewers in a political kind of Rorschach test, prompting them to see one version of the image as opposed to another...
...Timothy S. Prinz host of recent events has reinforced a sense among many Americans that television's pervasive presence is exerting a not-so-subtle influence over our society and our politics...
...Not surprisingly, episodic and thematic stories tend to dominate television news...
...Thus, studies have found that surgery is viewed as a more attractive option for treating cancer by doctors and patients when survival rates are used to describe its success rather than mortality rates...
...Unfortunately, television news often dampens the sense of societal or governmental responsibility, distracting the viewer's attention from fundamental causes through its focus on the anecdotal or idiosyncratic...
...Americans thus come to view chronic problems like poverty and crime not in terms of deep-seated social and economic forces, but as mere idiosyncratic outcomes...
...these reports make for "good pictures," the sine qua mm of television news...
...This powerfully affects how individuals assess responsibility for causing or treating political problems...
...The Rodney King verdict and its aftermath, Ross Perot's presidential campaign, and the seemingly endless commentary joined to the coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions emphasize television's importance...
...Simply put, the more individuals hold society or government responsible for causing or treating a problem, the more likely they are to focus on that problem in their evaluations of politicians...
...The crucial point is that these two frames produce dramatically different attributions of responsibility...
...Social psychologists have known for some time that people are highly sensitive to context when they are asked to make decisions or offer an opinion...
...Study after study has found that most citizens have little knowledge of and pay little attention to matters of public policy...
...Citizens' opinions flow directly from their vision of who is responsible for causing or resolving political problems...
...At the very least, lems may go a long way towards exthe fact that television news reduces the plaining the current dissatisfaction with inclination to hold political leaders re- politics in Washington...
...Similarly, oil companies "frame" our choices at the gas pump by offering a cash discount rather than a credit surcharge...
...To cite a few examples, Iyengar finds that the emphasis on episodic coverage of crime and terrorism raised viewer support for the death penalty and military intervention...
...These framing effects extend to individuals' evaluations of political issues...
...Iyengar's conclusions concerning the role television plays in reducing democratic Commonweal 23 October 1992:23 accountability at its most basic level can- sponsible for social and economic probnot easily be ignored...
...Iyengar observes that television news about politics is dominated by two types of stories: episodic and thematic...
...Given recent shifts in public preferences toward more law and order and less government, Iyengar suggests that these changes have occurred not only because of the repeated election of political leaders espousing these views, but also because of prevailing patterns of television news coverage that drive public opinion...
...Thus, when asked to think about crime or unemployment, people will often consider who is responsible for causing or solving the problem, and evaluate the issue accordingly...
...He identifies attributions of responsibility as a significant heuristic (or rule of thumb) that people use to simplify the world around them...
...Similarly, episodic coverage of poverty reduced support for government programs and increased public approval of leaders committed to reducing such programs...
...By reducing political issues to the level of the anecdotal, television news leads viewers to focus on issue-specific explanations, which in turn, shields society and government from responsibility...
...It seems that many citizens are looking for someone to blame for the state of our politics, and Iyengar's study hints that television news' coverage of politics and events may play a large role in the current void in responsibility...
...Shanto Iyengar's study examines how television news covers politics and its influence on public opinion, and finds that the way television frames political issues significantly affects the way people evaluate those issues and political leaders...
...Episodic stories take the form of a case study or event-based report and depict political issues by focusing on concrete instances...
...Iyengar explains this by focusing on the psychological processes that underlie opinions...
...Thematic stories place public issues in a more general or abstract context, and often take the form of the well-known background piece...
...Episodic stories tend to cause viewers to focus on the individuals involved in the stories, rather than on social and economic forces...
Vol. 119 • October 1992 • No. 18
