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.