1.3 Communication, Information, and the Media
Learning Objectives
After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What are communication, information, and mass and new media?
- How do economics, government and politics, and technology shape the media and their contents?
- What are the main criticisms directed at the media industry?
- What are the types of mass media?
Where and how Americans obtain their information about government and politics plays an increasingly greater role in society during the technological age in which we live. In this section we explore several key components of where and how Americans become informed.
Communication is a central activity of everyone engaged in politics—people asserting, arguing, deliberating, and contacting public officials; candidates seeking to win votes; lobbyists pressuring policymakers; presidents appealing to the public, cajoling Congress, addressing the leaders and people of other countries. All this communication sparks more communication, actions, and reactions.
What people communicate is information about subjects and events, people and processes. It can be true or false, fiction or nonfiction, believable or not. We define it broadly to encompass entertainment, news, opinion, and commentary.
The bulk of information that Americans obtain about politics and government comes through the mass and new media. Mass media are well-established communication formats, such as newspapers and magazines, network television and radio stations, designed to reach large audiences. Mass media also encompass entertainment fare, such as studio films, best-selling books, and hit music.
New media is “any media – from newspaper articles and blogs to music and podcasts – that are delivered digitally. From a website or email to mobile phones and streaming apps, any internet-related form of communication can be considered new media” (Cote, 2022).
The media, old and new, are central to American politics and government in three ways that we highlight throughout this book. First, they depict the people, institutions, processes, issues, and policies involved in politics and government. Second, the way in which participants in government and politics interact with the media influences the way in which the media depict them. Third, the media’s depictions can have effects.
Economics, Government and Politics, and Technology
Three interrelated factors are central to the development of the US media industry and its political contents. They are economics, government and politics, and technology.
We start with economics. Journalist A. J. Liebling wrote, “The function of the press…is to inform, but its role is to make money” (Liebling, 1964). Even when profit is not the motive, the media need financing to survive. The commercial media rely on advertising, sales, and subscriptions, and so the content of their diverse products is aimed at attracting audiences desirable to advertisers. Unlike other countries, the United States has no media primarily financed by government.
Government is involved with the media as a regulator, censor, and enabler. Regulation often involves decisions on technology: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has given away approximately $70 billion worth of digital spectrum, the wireless airwaves that carry television and radio broadcasts, to major media companies. Government censors by restricting content it deems obscene or by punishing media for producing such content. Government enables when, for example, it waives the antitrust laws for media companies or subsidizes and thus lowers the postage costs for mailing newspapers and magazines.
Technological innovation can change media economics, relations with politicians and government, and the media’s political contents. Thus the development of television made it easier for candidates to communicate directly with voters and temporarily reduced the importance of political parties in elections. Social Media also has the potential to allow candidates to bypass traditional media outlets and reach directly to the people. Former President Donald Trump, was effectively able to do this while running for president in 2016. However, his continued spreading of misinformation, caused his account to be permanently removed from Twitter.
Economics, government, and technology interact. The degree to which a technology influences politics depends on the way in which the technology is used. This in turn is shaped by the economic realities of the marketplace and by government policies concerning who can use a medium and for what purpose. Although the technology of television, even before cable, could have allowed for multiple and diverse channels, the economic search for a big audience to attract advertising revenue, paired with government regulation that favored private for-profit ownership, created the “three-network system” that endured until the 1980s. This system provided airtime for presidents to present their programs to a huge national audience. When cable television offered more alternatives for viewers, it became harder for presidents to be heard above the clamor of competing programs—a difficulty furthered by the emergence of new media.
The Media Industry
A few multinational conglomerates dominate the mass media; indeed, they are global media empires. Between them, they own the main television networks and production companies, most of the popular cable channels, the major movie studios, magazines, book publishers, and the top recording companies, and they have significant ownership interests in Internet media. Other large corporations own the vast majority of newspapers, major magazines, television and radio stations, and cable systems. Many people live in places that have one newspaper, one cable-system owner, few radio formats, and one bookstore selling mainly best sellers (Baker, 2007). Furthering consolidation, in January 2011 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the merger of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable and home Internet provider, with NBC Universal, one of the major producers of television shows and movies and the owner of several local stations as well as such lucrative cable channels as MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo, and SyFy.
Some scholars criticize the media industry for pursuing profits and focusing on the bottom line. They accuse it of failing to cover government and public affairs in depth and of not presenting a wide range of views on policy issues (Bagdikian, 2004).
The reliance of most of the mass media on advertising as their main source of revenue and profit can discourage them from giving prominence to challenging social and political issues and critical views. Advertisers usually want cheery contexts for their messages. Advertisers want stories that lead to larger audiences.
Nonetheless, the mass media contain abundant information about politics, government, and public policies. Here is the essential information about the main types of mass media and their political contents.
Newspapers & Magazines
The core of the mass media of the twentieth century was the newspaper. During recent years, sales have plummeted as many people have given up or, as with the young, never acquired the newspaper habit. Further cutting into sales are newspapers’ free online versions. Revenue from advertising (automotive, employment, and real estate) has also drastically declined, with classified ads moving to Craigslist and specialist job-search sites. As a result, newspapers have slashed staff, closed foreign and domestic bureaus (including in Washington, DC), reduced reporting, and shrunk in size.
Nonetheless, as of 2020, there are still almost 1,300 daily newspapers in the United States with estimated combined daily circulations of roughly 24 million people; many more millions read the news online. Chains of newspapers owned by corporations account for over 80 percent of circulation. The future some newspapers may go completely online—thus reducing much of their production and distribution costs.
There are roughly five thousand magazines published on every conceivable subject. Five publishers account for around one-third of the total revenue generated. Political and social issues are commonly covered in news weeklies such as Time and also appear in popular magazines such as People and Vanity Fair. To survive, journals of political opinion usually skew toward one side of the political spectrum. The National Review, founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley Jr., is a leading magazine of conservative opinion. The Nation, founded by abolitionists in 1865, is a more progressive, liberal periodical.
Television
People watch an average of twenty-eight hours of television weekly. Over one thousand commercial, for-profit television stations in the United States broadcast over the airwaves; they also are carried, as required by federal law, by local cable providers. Most of them are affiliated with or, in fewer cases, owned by one of the networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), which provide the bulk of their programming. These networks produce news, public affairs, and sports programs. This number has actually declined as viewership has shifted to other forms of new media, such as YouTube, and streaming services. In recent years, the networks have begun developing their own streaming services, such as NBC’s Peacock, and CBS’s Paramount+, in order to bring back their audiences. They commission and finance from production companies, many of which they own, the bulk of the entertainment programming shown on their stations and streaming services. The most desired viewers are between eighteen and forty-nine because advertisements are directed at them.
Cable and Satellite television is mainly a niche medium. Of the ninety or so ad-supported cable channels, ten (including USA, TNT, Fox News, A&E, and ESPN) have almost a third of all the viewers. Cable channels thrive (or at least survive) financially because they receive subscriber fees from cable companies such as Comcast, Time-Warner, and DirecTV. As mentioned earlier, many people are turning toward subscription streaming services through platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. Netflix claims to have over 220 million subscribers.
Public Broadcasting and Commercial Radio
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was created by the federal government in 1967 as a private, nonprofit corporation to oversee the development of public television and radio (Hoynes, 1994; Lashley, 1992). CPB receives an annual allocation from Congress. Most of the funds are funneled to the more than three hundred public television stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and to over six hundred public radio stations, most affiliated with National Public Radio (NPR), to cover operating costs and the production and purchase of programs. Public broadcasting delves into politics, particularly with its evening news programs and documentaries. National Public Radio, with an audience of around nine million listeners weekly, broadcasts lengthy news programs during the morning and evening with reports from domestic and foreign bureaus.
Around fifteen thousand commercial FM and AM radio stations in the United States broadcast over the airwaves. During the 1990s, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dropped many restrictions on ownership and essentially abandoned the requirement that stations must serve the “public interest.” This led to the demise of much public affairs programming and to a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions. iHeartMedia, Inc. is the largest owner of radio stations, with nearly 1,000, in the United States. Most radio programming is aimed at an audience based on musical preference, racial or ethnic background and language, and interests (e.g., sports). Even on all-news stations, the reports are usually limited to headlines and brief details.
Key Takeaways
The subjects of this section are communication, information, and the media. We have explained how economics, government and politics, and technology shape the media and their contents. Market domination by a few conglomerates limits competition and, arguably, the wide availability and range of media contents. The main types of mass media are newspapers, magazines, television, public broadcasting, commercial radio, music, films, and books. Their contents relevant to politics and government are entertainment, news, and opinion. They are largely aimed at a vast, undifferentiated audience.
Exercises
- Where do you get most of your information? How do you think the type of media you consume affects the kind of information you get?
- How does the need to attract a large audience for advertisements influence media content?
References
Auletta, K., “Publish or Perish,” The New Yorker, April 26, 2010, 24–31, is the source for much of this discussion; the quotation is on p. 30.
Auletta, K., “You’ve Got News,” The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, 33.
Bagdikian, B. H., The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).
Baker, C. E., argues for the importance of media diversity in Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Bhattacharya, S., “Homer’s Odyssey,” Observer Magazine, August 6, 2000, 19.
Bimber, B. Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially 9–12.
Cieply, M., “A Digital Niche for Indie Film,” New York Times, January 17, 2011, B5.
Cote, J. “What is New Media?,” Southern New Hampshire University (Manchester, NH: SNHU), February 3, 2022.
Hoynes, W., Public Television for Sale (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994)
Kondolojy, A. “‘Don’t Look Up’ Smashes More Records at Netflix, Orlando Sentinel, January 14, 2022.
Kopytoff, V. G., “AOL Bets on Hyperlocal News, Finding Progress Where Many Have Failed,” New York Times, January 17, 2011, B3.
Lashley, M., Public Television (New York: Greenwood, 1992).
Liebling, A. J., The Press (New York: Ballantine, 1964), 7.
Litwak, M., Reel Power (New York: Morrow, 1986), 74.
McClellan, S., What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).
Twentieth-Century Fund Task Force on Public Television, Quality Time (New York: Twentieth-Century Fund Press, 1993), 36.
