Framing Inequality

Abstract

Abstract This book examines how major news media have influenced the politics of economic inequality by shaping U.S. public opinion toward key policies since the early 1980s. The book describes the substance and ideological texture of news coverage during economic and social welfare policy debates across the neoliberal era. It also compares this news content to patterns of official and nongovernmental discourse. The book argues that the media’s structural position as a corporately organized and commercially driven institution helps to explain politically significant discrepancies between news coverage and broader policy discussions. The book also shows how framing patterns in the news produced through these political-economic processes may influence concrete policy attitudes. Its experimental analysis demonstrates that news coverage can shape public opinion to favor neoliberal policies, including among key segments of the American public that otherwise would not express support. The book contends that structural and institutional shifts which mark the rise of neoliberalism as a governing framework for media policy and practices have reinforced patterns of superficial and narrow news content during policy debates. Ultimately, the book argues that media coverage has fostered political climates conducive to neoliberal domestic policies at important historical moments. It suggests that changing media technologies have done little to arrest these trends in corporate news media, and that significant shifts in public policy coverage would require changes in media policy.