Newspapers, Television and Political Reasoning

Abstract

Adults' use of newspapers is found to correlate positively with having reasons for preferring one U.S. senatorial candidate over another. Television exposure is negatively related to political reasoning to a nearly significant degree. Data were provided by a 1974 nationwide, postelection survey. Analysis was conducted at the aggregate level, examining media behavior and political knowledge in 67 markets. News markets with competition among daily newspapers show greater levels of information than monopoly areas, controlling for education and interest in politics. Results suggest that a decline in newspaper penetration, lessened competition, or shift toward use of television for would weaken peoples' understanding about partisan candidates. Peter Clarke is Professor and Chairman, Department of Journalism, University of Michigan. Eric Fredin is a student in the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Mass Communication, University of Michigan. Data for this report were collected by the Center for Political Studies of the Institute for Social Research. Support was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation, the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation. Survey documentation and data are available from the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research, University of Michigan. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the Consortium bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. Public Opinion Quarterly ? 1978 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/78/0042-0143/$1.75 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.100 on Thu, 25 Aug 2016 04:28:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 144 CLARKE AND FREDIN Researchers should take pains, therefore, to plot the educational role of journalism. The nature of this role, and how different media share in it, may yield hints about the future for rationality and order in American political life.3 Studies have recently confirmed that this educational role exists, despite solemn, sociological pronouncements a few years back about minimal effects. Agenda setting by media is widely recognized now.4 Learning about public affairs from media has been documented, holding competing explanations constant.5 This article presents two amplifications to recent documentation. The first details the relative contributions of newspapers and television to the public informing process. These contributions may interest prophets of the American political future who note the steady slippage in per capita circulation of newspapers and the persistent rise in minutes spent viewing television news.6 Although this shift may produce changes in levels of political understanding, it is also possible that informing functions traditionally served by newspapers are being assumed by electronic journalism.7 The first findings reported below shed light on these alternative possibilities. A second goal is to discern whether characteristics of media offered to citizens play a part in how informed people are. For reasons that will be made clear, amount of newspaper competition in markets is a key to understanding public information about political affairs. Since competition among newspapers is thought to be declining, any relationship between competition and levels of information would have implications for the future course of American political behavior. Knowing about Public Affairs What is the proper definition of being informed? The present analysis argues that possessing information about public affairs means 3 Comparisons between print and broadcast media in political effects have been reported recently. See McClure and Patterson (1974 and 1976). 4 Pertinent findings are reviewed in McCombs and Shaw (1976). See also Palmgreen and Clarke (1977). 5 For a study comparing national and local public affairs issues, see Palmgreen (1975). 6 Current criticism of both newspapers and local television leads to the discouraging prediction that the public's grasp of hard news would be on the decline, whatever media they use. For pessimistic analyses, see Powers (1977), and Bordewich (1977). Trends in audience research are amply portrayed in minutes of meetings by the American Newspaper Publishers Association and in the pages of Broadcasting