Coverage Of Americans Research Articles

News Coping and Resistance: An Examination of Entertainment as Self-Care in the Digital Black Press

ABSTRACT Scholarship on the mainstream press in the United States has argued that in the new media age, consumers prefer entertainment while journalists prefer hard news—yet digital Black press journalists and readers value both types of content. In the Black press, entertainment is produced and consumed as an alternative to mainstream media's often unfavorable hard news coverage of African Americans. The race-based trauma that African Americans experience through news consumption can negatively impact mental health and cause news avoidance, but some are resisting this by creating spaces for Black joy online. This research uses interviews with journalists and focus groups with readers to investigate the utility of entertainment news content in the Black press. I find that entertainment in the digital Black press contributes to positive and comprehensive coverage of the African American community, gives consumers a means to cope with or protect themselves from reading traumatic news coverage on topics such as Black Lives Matter, and can act as a form of self-care. I conclude that digital Black press entertainment content can counteract communal stress for African Americans who may experience high levels of news-related anxiety.

The effects of partisan framing on COVID-19 attitudes: Experimental evidence from early and late pandemic

Political polarization has dominated news coverage of Americans’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research note, we report findings from two experimental studies, in which we present respondents with news stories about COVID-19 mitigation measures that emphasize partisan difference or accord. The stories present the same numeric facts about public opinion, but highlight either the partisan gap that existed at the time of the study, or the fact that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supported the measures at the time. Results from our first study, conducted late April 2020, show that a media frame drawing attention to shared concern across party lines produced a less polarized response to social-distancing restrictions than a frame that drew attention to partisan difference. Our findings suggest that the extensive media coverage about the red-blue divide in COVID-19 opinions reinforced partisan polarization. These results, however, did not replicate in a second study conducted much later in the pandemic. Qualitative data collected across the two studies demonstrate the degree to which polarization had rapidly become a dominant narrative in Americans’ thinking about COVID-19.

Advocacy journalism in the 21st century: Rethinking entertainment in digital Black press outlets

The Black press is often conceptualized as an advocacy press, but in the current digital environment, in which there are numerous entertainment-focused outlets, what exactly constitutes advocacy is fraught. Perceptions of advocacy, which have previously been associated with hard news content, are broadening to accommodate the entertainment content on Black news websites. Informed by interviews with journalists and focus groups with readers, this research finds that there are two different categorizations of advocacy journalism – hard advocacy and soft advocacy. Some editors and consumers believe the Black press should contain hard advocacy content, such as political activism coverage, while others perceive entertainment in the Black press, which provides positive coverage of African Americans and additional representation of Black life, as soft advocacy. Expanding advocacy conceptions provides further nuance and insight into how the Black press functions in the new media age.

The Media Matters: Muslim American Portrayals and the Effects on Mass Attitudes

Muslim Americans are increasingly stigmatized and may be experiencing a backlash in the American news media and by the public. No study to date, however, has empirically assessed the sentiment of Muslim American cable news coverage over an extended period of time and evaluated its effects on mass attitudes. I address the following questions: How has the US news media portrayed Muslim Americans in its coverage? And, to what extent do these media portrayals affect American public opinion? I demonstrate that the media coverage of Muslims and Muslim Americans is negative and has increased over time. Compared to that of Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans, I find that Muslim American coverage is more negative. In a series of survey experiments, I find that negative news portrayals of Muslims and Muslim Americans increase hostility toward Muslim Americans and increase support for stringent policies targeting them, while positive portrayals have relatively weaker effects.

The Oxygen of Publicity: Explaining U.S. Media Coverage of International Kidnapping

What explains U.S. media coverage of Americans kidnapped abroad? While some hostages receive national media attention, others hardly make the local news. Using an original, event count dataset of newspaper stories about Americans kidnapped abroad since 2001, this article tests the oft-cited, under-measured assumption that “terrorism” receives more media attention than other violence. Controlling for variation across kidnapping, I show that those framed as “terrorism” receive more coverage. Challenging existing literature, I also demonstrate that incidents with more victims receive less coverage than those incidents with fewer victims, and that there is no “missing white woman syndrome” in international kidnapping.

“This Act of Brutal Savageism”: Coverage of Native Americans at the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas

The clash between Confederates and Yankees at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in 1862 is famous as the battle that saved Missouri for the Union, preventing a Southern army from a planned invasion to drive through the state and capture St. Louis. But a less well-known fact is that Pea Ridge was the only major battle of the Civil War in which Native American troops participated in significant numbers. About 1,000 Indians from the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Cherokee tribes fought for the South at Pea Ridge, and some might have scalped dead and wounded Union troops. This article examines stories about the battle from a sample of both Northern and Southern newspapers with the intent to shed light on the coverage of Native Americans during the Civil War. The article concludes that the type and quantity of coverage of Indians at Pea Ridge depended upon whether the journalists were Southern or Northern. The article thus adds further support to the notion that the Civil War press served as an arm of the government, and the stories of war correspondents of both sides have to be evaluated with the knowledge that facts were often secondary to supporting the war effort

The “Undeserving Poor,” Racial Bias, and Medicaid Coverage of African Americans

The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion increased coverage especially for the “undeserving poor”—nondisabled, nonelderly adults, who disproportionately are African American. However, African Americans benefited comparably less than other groups from Medicaid expansion because they disproportionately reside in states that rejected Medicaid expansion. Psychological and other social science research establishes that disapproval of providing “welfare” to “undeserving poor” is closely aligned with racial bias, and that these sentiments partly motivate public disapproval of policies such as Medicaid for nondisabled, nonelderly adults. It is important to clarify and acknowledge this barrier for a realistic perspective on obstacles to keeping and expanding Medicaid coverage.

The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox by Gerald Horne

Reviewed by: The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox by Gerald Horne Jerry Gershenhorn (bio) The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox. By Gerald Horne. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp. 258. $95.00 cloth; $24.95 paper; $22.46 e-book) From 1919 to 1965, Claude Barnett (1889–1967) operated the Associated Negro Press (ANP), a black news service that, at its peak, distributed press releases to dozens of black newspapers in the United States, the West Indies, and Africa. In 1984, Lawrence Hogan published A Black National News Service: The Associated Negro Press and Claude Barnett, which focused primarily on Barnett's American operation up through the end of World War II. Horne's The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox, which emphasizes Barnett's Pan-Africanism, complements Hogan's work because it highlights the ANP's role in disseminating news articles about Africa and the West Indies. Horne also details the ANP's expansion of its customer base to include many African newspapers after World War II. Based largely on Barnett's papers, including correspondence and news releases, Horne emphasizes two themes: the ANP's focus on blacks in Africa and the West [End Page 421] Indies, and the paradox that the ANP's role aided in undercutting racial segregation and oppression ultimately helped precipitate the end of the news agency. Although the ANP distributed many articles that detailed the injustices of Jim Crow in the United States and the rapaciousness of European imperialists in Africa, Barnett was no radical. A longtime Republican, Barnett used the ANP to make connections with international businessmen, which helped him promote his public relations business and make other business deals. And Barnett, according to Horne, was not above compromising his "ethics to benefit a favored client" (p. 13). Barnett's relationship with imperialism was also ambivalent. On one hand, Horne shows that the ANP informed "a broad audience about . . . the evils of colonialism, the plight of black people . . . worldwide" (p. 19). But, at the same time, Barnett could be naively uncritical of British imperialism, with the ANP distributing photographs from British Information Services that put British colonial policies in a favorable light. Some of Horne's assertions outpace his evidence, including his claim for "ANP's critical role as the megaphone of the [civil rights] movement" (p. 8). Similarly, Horne insists that Barnett had great influence in Africa, but it would be more accurate to say that he had great access to African leaders, but no inordinate influence on them, except in promoting his own personal business affairs. Horne's evidence tends to undercut his claim that Barnett was a Pan-Africanist. Although scholars have defined the term in disparate ways, most would agree that Pan-Africanists typically oppose racism and imperialism, while seeking to unite people of African descent. While the Pan-Africanist Council on African Affairs refused to do business with its colonial enemies, like the Belgians in the Congo, Barnett apparently saw no problem with cozying up to imperialist powers. Can someone who regularly does business with colonial oppressors be accurately portrayed as a Pan-Africanist? In his analysis of the ANP's demise in the mid-1960s, Horne argues that the key factor was, paradoxically, the success of the civil [End Page 422] rights movement because it created opportunities for black journalists in white-owned media, while increasing coverage of African Americans by the white press. These developments dramatically cut into African American support for the black press. However, Horne's argument is weakened by his admission that despite competition from the Ghana News Service, as late as 1963, the ANP had 150 subscribing newspapers and magazines from Africa and the West Indies, a sign of the news service's viability. In addition, it seems likely that Barnett's aging—he was now in his mid-seventies—and the fact that the ANP was so dependent on its director, may have contributed to the press service's...

A Distorting Mirror: Major Media Coverage of Americans’ Tax Policy Preferences

Over the last four decades, Americans have consistently told pollsters that they favor higher taxes on business and the wealthy, even as tax policy has moved sharply in the other direction. Political scientists and political commentators regularly assume that elected officials respond to the preferences of citizens, despite recent findings that the correlations between public preferences and policy outcomes disappear when accounting for the preferences of the wealthy. This paper quantitatively assesses the failure of democratic responsiveness on this issue. It examines coverage of American’s tax policy preferences in two major national newspapers, the New York Times and USA Today. Both newspapers exhibit nearly identical behavior: they privilege elite sources, ignore the voices of ordinary citizens, and misrepresent public preferences. They also highlight expressions of public opposition to taxes and suppress evidence of persistent public support for higher taxes on business and the wealthy.

The Effect of Employer Health Insurance Offering on the Growth and Survival of Small Business Prior to the Affordable Care Act

Whether or not small businesses offer health insurance to their employees is a critical factor in the health care coverage of many Americans, yet many entrepreneurs and decision makers fear that the cost of offering health care coverage to their employees will diminish the growth and survival of small firms. While there is an emerging consensus among economists that small businesses both create and destroy a disproportionately large number of jobs, less is known about the relationship between health care costs and business growth. We examine this latter issue prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.We first review information on the relationship between small employers’ decisions to offer health insurance prior to 2010 and i) financial factors (including premium variability and tax advantages), ii) labor markets with a focus on employee characteristics and the demand for employer's health insurance, iii) insurance markets and products, discussing access and insurance options with lower premium costs, and iv) the health insurance regulatory environment with an examination of state-level reform and health insurance mandates. We then discuss employer reactions to rising health care costs, followed by a review of factors other than rising health care costs that often affect the growth and survival of a small business. In the remaining sections, we describe our longitudinal analysis of how health insurance offering (HIO) affected the expansion and survival of small businesses. Using 2001-05 linked data from the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) and the Insurance Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-IC), we look at how HIO affected four measures of business performance (growth in employment, growth in payroll, growth in average wage, and survival) – after controlling for business characteristics and relevant state-level variables. We employ instrumental variable two-stage least squares estimation to address the endogeneity that permeates the question at hand. We find that young businesses (both large and small) that offer health insurance grow at not significantly different rates as those that do not, possibly due to selection effects. Older businesses offering health insurance – both small and large – seem to have higher employment and payroll growth. Survival is strongly and positively correlated with HIO for older establishments at both large and small firms. However, these results should be interpreted with extreme caution due the concerns we raise about the available testing methodology for our context.

American National Biography

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the American National Biography including a brief history of the book and details on its electronic format. Design/methodology/approach - An historical account of the forerunner publications is provided, followed by consideration of the printed and the electronic versions. Illustrative examples are used throughout. It is briefly compared with a similar work from the UK. The advantages of the electronic format are assessed. Findings - The American National Biography provides a comprehensive coverage of notable Americans and offers detailed portraits focusing mainly on the public and professional lives of its subjects. It is easy to navigate and use in its electronic version. This is a useful biographical resource for libraries, especially in the USA. Originality/value - There have been many reviews of the American National Biography, but this one provides an overview of the electronic version and a comparative assessment of it against similar books in the field. For information professionals it offers a useful summary of the main features of this resource and a reminder of its value as a biographical information tool.

The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession

This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for 2004-2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007-2009. We find that a one percentage point increase in the state unemployment rate is associated with a 1.67 percentage point (2.12%) reduction in the probability that men have health insurance; this effect is strongest among college-educated, white, and older (50-64 years old) men. For women and children, health insurance coverage is not significantly correlated with the unemployment rate, which may be the result of public health insurance acting as a social safety net. Compared with the previous recession, the health insurance coverage of men is more sensitive to the unemployment rate, which may be due to the nature of the Great Recession.

What shapes Americans' opinion of China? Country characteristics, public relations and mass media

This study looks at the effect of China's political freedom, economic development and public relations efforts on the US media's coverage of China, and on Americans' opinions of China in the past 30 years. China's political freedom was found to be significant in predicting US media coverage of China and Americans' opinion of China, with more freedom leading to more positive coverage and more favorable opinions. More positive news coverage is related to more favorable American opinions of China when controlling for political and economic development and for public relations efforts. The number of public relations contracts China has signed with the US is also related to the increase in positive US media coverage of China.

Healthcare Reform and the Hospital Industry: What Can We Expect?

Healthcare costs continue to increase dramatically, while quality remains a significant problem. Reform measures adopted by Congress will fuel expansion of these costs, further stressing taxpayers and employers and forcing hospitals to adopt transformational changes as they adjust to increased demands for services and shrinking reimbursement. Cost control and quality improvement can be achieved through increased competition or greater government intervention. Competition will require unpalatable changes to the healthcare system to decrease costs without further restricting access or decreasing quality. Increased government intervention will result in changes to reimbursement and hospital-physician relations and increased demands for improved care. To improve cost and quality while preserving increased access, we advocate for a universal standard coverage of Americans; accountable healthcare system leadership; leverage of information resources to make utilization decisions and evaluate performance; alignment of physician, hospital, and payer incentives to focus on care outcomes rather than profit maximization; and the use of quasicompetition to allow for consumer choice within this system.

Covering Asian America: A Content Analysis Examining Asian American Community Size and Its Relationship to Major Newspapers' Coverage

This study attempts to determine whether 4 decades after the Kerner Commission, newspapers report more accurately on an increasingly diverse population. Specifically, it studied whether the size of the Asian American population covered by a newspaper influences the coverage of Asian Americans in newspaper articles. It appears that although newspapers situated within larger Asian American communities report more frequently, at more depth, and with more prominence on Asian Americans, the quality of that coverage is not influenced by the size of the Asian American community. In cities with larger Asian American populations, newspapers have responded with increased stories and length but not with increased quality of coverage. This is likely because of newspaper fears of alienating European American readers, leading to a “White flight” in circulation and because of news practices that lead to distorted reports of Asian Americans. These findings renew calls for the newspaper industry to more fairly represent the diverse range of its readership and not just its most favored demographic.

Historical Atlas of Texas Methodism (review)

20ogBook Reviews113 from the perspective of the livestock industry, manufacturing and mining, agricultural irrigation, energy needs, per capita use, and municipal demands. Their predictions, while cautionary, are not wholly pessimistic. Mapping can reveal small differences that are far harder to explain in words. For example, the regional disparities indicate concerns that may be magnified or reduced according to whether the location is a heavily or sparsely populated area. Coastal problems differ from those in the High Plains, Houston and El Paso share some issues, others are wholly dissimilar. Although this may be obvious to anyone who gives such matters a thought, it is sobering to see the reality on an illustrated page. Lawrence Estaville and Richard Earl are geography professors at Texas State University, and Estaville served as the department's chairman for several years. The clarity of the maps owes a measure to advances in cartographic technology, but it is their consummate skill and experience that enables us to recognize the complexities of this precious and irreplaceable resource. The atlas's approach and organization take it beyond the classification of a reference book. Austin, TexasJane Manaster Historical Atlas of Texas Methodism. By William C. and John Wesley Hardt. (Garland, Tex.: CrossHouse Publishing, 2008. Pp. 248. Maps, figures, references , index. ISBN 9781934749074, $ 34.95 cloth.) The Methodist people, long influential in the history of the frontier and the United States, have a proud and storied chronicle of struggle and achievement. The Texas portion of this struggle has been well documented by William and John Hardt. William, the younger of die two, is retired from a career in public schools and as a writer of educational materials, and the elder Hardt, John Wesley, is a retired bishop and currently serves as Bishop Emeritus at the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas. The Hardts' roots in Methodism run deep, almost from the beginning of the Methodist presence in Texas, and it is obvious that this work for both historians is a labor of love. Covering the entire history of the denomination in Texas from its beginnings in Austin's colony through the present time, the authors use a short and tight chronology in an effort to give a concise historical account of Texas Methodism. As a reference book it is not strong on narrative; rather, it is quite the opposite. Nevertheless, readers can sense throughout the authors' love of their subject, but those same readers, due to the terse writing, may not share that love and have difficulty perusing these pages. There are, however, some anecdotal and humorous quotes in the text, which give relief from the litany of facts. An example is when William Stephenson, a presiding elder and missionary, sought to establish a Methodist mission in Austin's colony, to which Austin remarked that "one Methodist preacher would do more mischief that a dozen horse thieves" (19). After Austin's imprisonment in Mexico, the Methodists proceeded to begin their "mischief" in Austin's colony. It is disappointing that the writers do not delve more deeply into the work of 114Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly the Methodists in the establishment of die Texas Republic and their role in the Mexican War. The same could be said for another exciting chapter in the history, "The War Between the States," and the impact die conflict had on American religion , especially the dominant evangelical denomination of the period— Methodism. The authors submit no more than two pages about Methodism on the eve of the war, and nothing at all on the war itself. Surely, something could have been written about the Methodists who served as Confederate chaplains, in denominational humanitarian ministries, colportage work, or those who entered the ministry after the war. The adas is particularly strong in its coverage of African Americans, Spanishspeaking groups, Germans, Swedes, Bohemians, and Italian Methodists in the periods after the war, and in its chronicle of the holiness movements that sprang from Methodism such as the Church of the Nazarene and the Wesleyan Church. The authors also included over forty maps, more than two-dozen charts, and an index with over two thousand entries. The work is useful for those interested in American, southern, southwestern, or Texas Methodism. Readers of...

Designing Administrative Organizations for Health Reform

Many proposals for expanding health coverage involve the creation of organizations to produce information on comparative effectiveness, make coverage decisions, manage the marketplace for health insurance, or offer a public health insurance plan. These new organizations might take the form of a federal executive branch agency, an independent commission, government corporation, legislative branch agency, or public-private entity. Some proposals would create entities with substantial independence from the usual political processes, such as the Federal Reserve enjoys.The choice of an appropriate organizational structure to carry out a public function raises several issues: the source and predictability of the entity's funding, its operational flexibilities, its degree of political independence and accountability, and the structure of its management. These matters are not fully determined by an agency's organizational form, however, and targeted solutions are often available and usually preferable. For example, the Congress may provide an agency with a permanent appropriation or exemption from certain legal or regulatory constraints without removing it from an executive department.Organizations that use governmental powers and funds and make public policy need to be accountable as well as effective. A quasi-governmental or Federal Reserve-like entity might be suitable for producing advisory information on the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments but not for making decisions that directly affect the health coverage of individual Americans.

Will Past Failure Improve Odds for Major Health Care Reform?

Will Past Failure Improve Odds for Major Health Care Reform?

The Impact of Macroeconomic Conditions on the Health Insurance Coverage of Americans

In March 2001, the longest economic expansion in U.S. history ended, and an economic recession began. This paper seeks to provide a better understanding of the historical relationship between macroeconomic variables and health insurance coverage.We use data from two nationally representative samples: the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The longitudinal nature of our data allows us to remove individual-specific, time-invariant heterogeneity and to focus on changes in health insurance status in response to changes in macroeconomic variables.The results confirm our prediction that the probability of any health insurance coverage is negatively associated with unemployment rate. We find that a one percentage point increase in the state unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in the probability of health insurance coverage, through any source, of 0.62 percent for men, 0.54 percent for women, and 1.1 percent for children. However, our prediction that an indicator variable for national recession would be negatively correlated with the probability of health insurance coverage is not supported by the data. We find that changes in employment status explain roughly one-quarter of the correlation between health insurance coverage and unemployment rates. Our estimates imply that 440,000 men, 436,000 women, and 494,000 children have lost health insurance coverage during the current recession.

True to Life:LifeMagazine's Coverage of African Americans, 1936–40

Four months after the first issue ofLifemagazine reached the news-stands a reader commented onLife's portrayal of African Americans:May I take this occasion to express to the editors ofLifeour appreciation for the magnificent photographs of Negroes, including Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, flood refugees and others which have appeared in recent issues ofLife? This fair pictorial presentation of various aspects of Negro life is of inestimable value in helping to give a more balanced concept of the American Negro, which in turn helps all Americans.We want you to know how much we appreciate what you are doing.