Editorial Cartoons

The first two cartoons stand in sharp contrast to one another.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/crook.html

The first is that of President Nixon.  Here the focus is on his crime in wiretapping his executive office and the greed that accompanied it.  The cartoon and message is very stylized.

http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/clinton-cartoon.jpg

In this cartoon portraying President Bill Clinton during the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal,  the focus is on his private matters.  The slapstick comedy that accompanies this is strikingly different in style than the "I'm not a crook" cartoon of Nixon. 

Together, these two present evidence of the evolution of the media's use of comedy and political opinion to influence the public.  

Sabato, Larry J. and Robert S. Lichter. “News Coverage of the Clinton Scandals: An Overview.” When Should the Watchdogs Bark? Media Coverage of the Clinton Scandals. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994. 5-13. Print.

            Sabato and Lichter provide an overview of the Clinton Scandals and their media coverage.  The skeptics of the Clinton Administration start with personal affairs that date to long before the president’s campaign to the Whitehouse.  In 1993, “four Arkansas state troopers who had worked on then-Governor Clinton’s security detail publicly accused him of rampant womanizing”.  The media picks up this scandal and exposes the new issue in political news coverage: whether or not the “president’s personal life” is fair game for broadcast outlets.  The Whitewater case, which involves the controversies of financial problems associated with Whitewater Development Corporation, grabs far more headlines than the President’s personal relationships.  The Whitewater coverage outweighs that of the personal scandals during the Clinton Administration, and the coverage on the Whitewater Scandal is at a minimum.  For, over the years of Clinton’s presidency, “scandal news of all types has accounted for only five percent of the administration’s coverage of the network evening news broadcasts”.  Thus, the coverage of the Whitewater Scandal has been at a minimum in the news press, and the broadcast media has been more focused on the policies of the president, as opposed to personal issues.      

Paletz, David L. and Robert M. Entman. “Public Opinion.” Media Power Politics. New York: Free Press, 1981. 184-195.

            Paletz and Entman argue that “elites crystallize and define issues… (and) establish public opinion”  by manipulating the mass media, who are the “handmaidens of the powerful”.  The three main types of media are the specialized press such as business periodicals, prestige print media such as The Nation, and the popular press such as ABC.  The elites generate policy dependant on problems and events, and catapult their agenda into the public media. These ideas “flow downward”  and reach the masses.  This diminishes the general public’s power to create new ideas for political issues.   The elites, who are made up of politicians, intellectuals, and reporters, have a an unsteady hold on the public.  In 1979, the elites agreed that the gasoline shortage was “authentic, (but) polls showed that the majority of Americans felt it was contrived by the oil industry”.  This power-struggle persists to create a “frustration in exerting domination” for the elites.  The struggle persists from within the elites as well.  The media utilizes this “frustration” by swaying the public in their favor when the elites disagree, for the “media more often expedite than frustrate the control of elites as a class over the rest of society’s political ideas”. Whether the issue is domestic or foreign, the elite and the media have an intertwined role to play.   

New Project Guidelines

I will be researching the American mass media's effect on the public perception of politics and politicians.  I will analyze the way the media portrayed the Clinton and Watergate scandals, and how these portrayals impacted the public's perception on the government.  Using political cartoons and a brief history of the media, I will attempt to show my audience how to analyze the media's information on political agendas, and determine whether or not the facts or biased.  This will uncover the centuries-long power of the media to shift public opinion in american politics.

Abstract

Here is my abstract for my research paper.  I have since defined my thesis further, but this is the general subject matter of my project.

Kalee Mitchelson Dr. O’Conner

History Major

Public Perception: Media’s Influence on Public Political Opinion

Since the birth of American mass media during the 18^th century, power has been given to the media to mold public opinion on politicians and political issues.  This power has shifted over the centuries from agenda-driven political parties to a whole new sector of single-issue driven reporters, who seek to either destroy or advance specific political agendas.  I will explore this turbulent history of the mass media, and discover their biases and views on politics in America.  In analyzing the different media coverage on the Watergate and Clinton Scandals of the 20^th century, I will determine the current state of the mass media, its intentions, and its biases in the shaping of modern public opinion. 

Smith, Anthony. “The Condition of the Newspaper.” Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980’s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980. 27-41. Print.

            The newspaper’s long history begins in the seventeenth century with the “news-hawker”, who “negotiated” the released information.  The “nouvellistes” speak the news to crowds and in the early 19^th century, newsboys make the newspaper the “mental highway through which the imagery of the city traveled; it brought people into the city and held them there”.  The images and stories of individual American success fuel what Oswald Spenglar calls the “Age of Discussion” where “political change shifted irreversibly…from physical to mental struggle”.  The 1880’s provide the modern approach to “the signed dispatch” and the interview.  With that, the interview and the investigation become the most highly praised form of journalism.  The Washington Post maintains its hold on Watergate investigations by holding a monopoly over local newspapers.  This new economic stronghold changes the newspaper business to a “local monopoly market”.  The demographics change as a result.  The old demographics of the newspapers, the “elite”, lose interest in the commonality of the papers.  The population shift in the 1960’s to a “megalopolitan” lifestyle threatens the newspaper industry. Television dominates the news business and relays information faster than newspapers.  The old political opinions neutralize, and the public grow discontented with the “homogeneity of opinion” in the newspapers.  The “mid-life crisis” of the newspaper occurs with the increase of television maturity.   

Snow, Nancy. “Terrorism, Public Relations, and Propaganda.” Media, Terrorism, and Theory: A Reader. Ed. Anandram P. Kavoori. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 145-160. Print.

Snow uncovers the changing face of propaganda in the United States.  The “looming charge of…propaganda casts a shadow on legitimate tools of persuasion that may benefit…the people of the United States”.  Since the Cold War, public relations have been muddled with government propaganda.  The Public Relations Society seeks to change this stigma.  The goal to persuade the audience, whilst maintaining credibility, is overshadowed by propaganda’s negative connotations. The beginning of propaganda, rooted in Pope Gregory XV and his Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith “ to promote the Catholic faith against the rise of Protestantism in northern Europe”, started as a tool of persuasion.  It has since evolved into American Government by being used interchangeably with “public diplomacy”.  Every government, “no matter what level of control”, uses propaganda to promote a desired view or information.  But, the difference between real public diplomacy and propaganda rests in credibility and the representation of different views.  Public diplomacy “involves interaction…with non-governmental individuals” to present many different views. Propaganda remains the poison of this higher form of persuasion.  The public distrusts its government and rejects the honorable forms of persuasion in fear of manipulation.  To repair this, public diplomacy must build “influence, trust, and credibility” with their clients to ensure a better relationship with the public.