250250 Chapter 7 | The Mediacomplained that reporters were spending too much time searching for inconsistencies
and exaggerations in his autobiography, arguing that they had not scrutinized President
Obama or Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the same way.^30 Yet it is easy to find
exhaustive media coverage of similar issues in Obama’s and Clinton’s autobiographies.
You may think that the media were making too much of Carson’s past—but it is hard to say
that they gave a free pass to Obama, Clinton, or other candidates.
Moreover, while some academic studies have found evidence of press coverage
favoring one type of candidate or issue position over another, an equally large body of
work has produced important critiques of these studies. For one thing, a finding that
most reporters are liberal (or Democrats) and few are conservative (Republicans) does
not imply that political coverage must necessarily favor liberal positions or Democratic
candidates. Reporters may prioritize being as objective as possible, fear that favoring
one side would cause their audience to decline, or be subject to review by editors who are
on guard against bias. Similarly, the fact that a reporter criticizes a politician or party is
not evidence of his or her lack of objectivity. Critiques do not by themselves suggest that
a reporter is being unfair—the question is, what would a fair analysis look like? Many
analyses of President Trump’s first year in office acknowledged the strong American
economy but gave little credit to Trump for this outcome. Were these reporters biased
against Trump, or had they read the literature on political control of the economy,
which shows that presidential actions have little impact on economic conditions,
particularly in the short run? Untangling these effects is difficult, and if media bias were
as pronounced as some critics claim, it would likely be easier to measure.Filtering and Framing
Compared with overt bias, filtering and framing may produce subtler but stronger
impacts on public opinion. Filtering (also called agenda-setting) refers to the ways in
which journalists’ and editors’ decisions about which stories to report influence which
stories people think about. Framing refers to how the description or presentation of a
story, including the details, explanations, and context, changes the ways people react
to and interpret the information. Space and time limitations mean that some filtering
is inevitable as reporters and editors decide which of many potential news stories
to cover. Similar decisions about what to report and how to present the information
lead to framing effects. Even if everyone in the political media adhered to the highest
standards of accuracy, these influences would still exist.
The concept of filtering is illustrated by Project Censored’s annual list of Top
Censored Stories.^31 The group’s list for 2017 included stories about the risk of personal
information being shared on social media, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and the
prevalence of lead in water supplies throughout the nation. The group’s point is not that
the government forces reporters to keep quiet; rather, it claims that reporters and their
editors decide against covering these stories, sometimes for self-serving reasons, such
as beliefs about what their audience wants to see or read.
The impact of filtering is also apparent in cases of government inaction. Figure 7.1
shows media coverage (number of stories) of gun control legislation following the mass
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December- The pattern in the graph is typical for mass shootings: after sharp spikes in
the number of stories following the shooting, the topic gradually disappeared from
coverage, with smaller, temporary spikes after the failure of a Senate gun control bill
and a subsequent shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. To a large extent, the drop in
media coverage mirrors public opinion—as Americans move on from thinking about a
mass shooting, media attention shifts with them. Whether sustained media attention
filtering
The influence on public opinion that
results from journalists’ and editors’
decisions about which of many
potential news stories to report.framing
The influence on public opinion
caused by the way a story is presented
or covered, including the details,
explanations, and context offered in
the report.Full_08_APT_64431_ch07_232-261.indd 250 16/11/18 1:39 PM