opinion is quite obvious: they control the flow of information, what we
hear about, for how long, how that subject is framed, and in what detail.
This is so widely acknowledged that dozens of organizations publish lists
of the most underreported news stories at the end of every year.^7 For
example, there has been very little news from the mainstream outlets on
the excesses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which
maintains more than a hundred secret facilities where persons suspected of
immigration violations are warehoused (Stevens, January 4, 2010).^8
Not so long ago, the traditional media’s ability to withhold,
misrepresent or trivialize potentially important or relevant news was a tool
that could stop major legislation. More recently the rise of the internet and
alternate media has made it much harder – and sometimes impossible – to
bury a story.^9 However, the media can still lift a story into the spotlight
and keep it at the forefront for as long as it likes. In extreme cases, the
media can institute or attempt to institute a moral panic (see the case study
of the Oakland Ebonics debate in Chapter 16 for an example of how this
process works).
Bad is stronger than good
Research in psychology and sociology has established beyond a doubt that
negative and positive evaluations are not symmetrical (Baumeister et al.
2001). That is, it seems to be human nature to assign more weight and
importance or validity to bad news than to good news.
It is important to keep this in mind when considering the impact the
media have on political campaigns and candidates. Bad news is far more
interesting to the public than good news, from which follows the fact that
bad news sells more papers and gets more broadcast coverage. However,
there are many cases where a media outlet prefers to overlook the bad in
favor of the good for a wide variety of reasons, few of which are neutral.
Two examples at either extreme: during the Reagan presidency, there
were multiple opportunities for the news media to show the administration
and the president in a very unflattering light. They declined to do, and
instead began referring to Reagan as “the Teflon president.” There’s an
irony to that pronouncement – a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – that was
largely lost on the public. At the other extreme, it was the print news
media that initiated a string of events that culminated in President Nixon’s