William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

Do the media work? 253

In sum, reporting on politics requires reporters to move beyond “just the facts.” They

must choose what to report on, how to describe the news, whether to reveal secrets, and

which sources to rely on. Moreover, events do not always speak for themselves—they

require interpretation. The fact that conservatives and liberals consult very different

media sources (as shown in Table 7.1 on page 240) suggests that conservatives and

liberals see different media sources as trustworthy, and that they are well aware of

framing, filtering, and potential bias and choose their media sources accordingly. Given

the vast array of political coverage in modern America, even if we take potential biases

as well as filtering and framing into account, virtually all of us can find several sources

that we consider reliable, if we take the time to search for those sources.^33

Do the Media Work?

In a democracy, the media’s role is to provide citizens with information about

politicians, government actions, and policy debates. It is easy to argue that the media are

falling down on the job: surveys taken in recent years show that substantial percentages

of Americans believe that voter fraud is a major problem, that a third of the federal

budget is spent on foreign aid, that America is no longer the preeminent military power,

and that undocumented immigration is on the rise. In fact, all of these statements are

false (in fact, foreign aid spending is only about 2 percent of the federal budget).

Claims of ideological bias do not explain these shortcomings. The central finding

of the political science literature on media effects is that systematic bias is hard to

find. In the 2016 election, for example, the press gave considerable attention to vulgar

comments about women that Donald Trump made in an Access Hollywood tape. But

these stories did not appear because reporters and editors are hard-core liberals

(or Democrats) who wanted to destroy Trump’s chances of getting elected. Rather,

coverage was driven by public attention to the scandal and by reporters’ belief that

the comments were an important signal of how Trump would behave as president.

Moreover, the same reporters and editors also gave considerable attention to Hillary

Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state, and to her

taking time off during the campaign because of pneumonia. Thus, insofar as the public

is misinformed, the reason is not a lack of coverage or biased coverage of events.

Lack of Citizen Interest

In part, the media’s apparent failure to create a well-informed citizenry is driven by a

lack of citizen interest. As we discussed in Chapter 6, the average American has a fairly

low interest in politics, and only a small percentage of Americans care enough to take

ASSESS WHETHER THE

MEDIA FULFILL THEIR ROLE

IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Americans often demand that journalists give “just the facts and all the facts” about

politics and public policy. Most of the time, however, what looks like biased reporting

is a journalist trying to make sense of a complex world. The act of reporting requires

decisions on which stories matter, which facts deserve mention, and how events should

be interpreted. To say that you don’t like how a journalist resolves these decisions

doesn’t mean that he or she is pushing a particular political agenda.

“Why

Should

I Care?”

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