Image is Everything

William W. Bostock
University of Tasmania, Australia

Media Politics: A Citizen's Guide, by Shanto Iyengar and Jennifer McGrady. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.

Media and Politics, the Citizen's Guide starts with the maxim image is everything, giving examples of the fullest expression of this maxim in President Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003, at a time when actual victory in Iraq seemed possible, and President Clinton's emphatic but false denial of a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky leading to an unsuccessful attempt to end his presidency by impeachment, (with media coverage of these two incidents shown on the accompanying DVD). As well as the supply side of media politics, political media output from the perspective of the consumer is analysed, noting that the role of the elector has shrunk from "foot soldier" and occasional activist" to that of "disgruntled spectator".

Chapter 2 examines the theoretical dimensions of the media/politics relationship, from the electoral forum to the Habermasian public sphere and finally the watchdog function. The supplanting of party politics by media politics in the United States is attributed to the changing of party rules some decades ago, which weakened the influence of elites in candidate selection, as originally documented by Nelson Polsby. The role of media ownership is discussed and compared with public ownership in Great Britain and Europe where, however, deregulation of the media is moving in the same direction as the US, with the same likely results. In the case of the US, continuing deregulation in telecommunications is shown to have has significantly reduced the number of voices with access to the market.

Chapter 3 examines the media marketplace, finding that market forces have badly compromised the public sphere. For example, the hour long newscast produced by the Public Broadcasting Service is watched by fewer than three million Americans, while the thirty minute Hollywood gossip program Entertainment Tonight attracts a daily audience of over five million. Local news is also challenging national news, with the print media experiencing a similar displacement.

Chapter 4 studies the relationship between reporters and official sources. Here one can see the process of indexing or adjusting coverage of an issue to suit the level of disagreement among policy elites, such that when and issue is indexed as consensual, coverage will be deferential. There is also the process of managing media through the creation of closely supervised media pools, and the practice of embedding journalists, with a result which is in effect censorship, as shown in the book and reinforced with DVD presentation in relation to the coverage of the current Iraq conflict, and especially in the non-finding of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which were claimed to be the basis of the invasion. (As late as August 2004, the writers point out, nearly thirty percent of the American public believed that the United States had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq).

Chapter 5 analyses the effects of new technologies of the civil functioning of the media. Here the authors find that the new technologies may cause information to flow even less freely than previously, due to the fragmentation of audiences, though this effect can be exaggerated. Here they identify three theories of selectivity: partisan polarisation, the issue public focus, and the attentive public hypothesis, in which political "junkies" sample widely while the apolitical majority simply tune out. The discussion of the interpretation of the impact of the Internet as between optimists and sceptics is elaborated with the discussion of the situation of inequality of access.

Chapter 6 covers campaigning through the media, where advertising will be by far the largest expense incurred by candidates. There is a detailed discussion of candidates' strategies such as managing events, controlling expectations, issue ownership, regulating access and the use of wedge issues, with examples of how the use of these techniques have worked well and also not so well, again demonstrated with appropriate video-clips.

Chapter 7 presents the strategy of going public, where Presidents and other politicians appeal direct to the public. This and other presidential and political representative media management techniques such as speeches and press conferences and evaluated. The contrast between the role of the (recently former) Press Secretary Karl Rove and his fifty full time assistants and President Hoover's media staff of one during his presidency (1929-1933) is noted.

The final chapters consider conceptualisations of media influence as effects, specifically: priming, framing and persuasion, campaigning methodologies, and the consequences of going public, concluding with an evaluation of media politics. From these effects flow the authors' policy recommendations (directed at the US but relevant elsewhere), such as measures to give more free time to candidates, a more partisan and less consensual press, direct communication between candidates and voters, with the overall desired result of a more substantial and meaningful relationship between media and politics.

Thus in Media Politics, a Citizen's Guide, Iyengar and McGrady have provided a comprehensive, thorough and in-depth presentation of the relationship between media and the political process in the United States which is relevant to societies moving in the same direction, based on thorough and comprehensive but understandably mainly American research. Each stage of the exposition is backed up with highly relevant selected examples on the accompanying DVD, including British examples, and also significantly the episodic versus thematic framing of crime segments. Theory is kept to a minimum with minimal reference to classical theorists of media and before that, propaganda. There is very good reference to many contemporary theorists but not Frank Luntz, (famous for changing public discourse from global warming to climate change, "like a change from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale", as he described it). The role of the media in producing apathy and cynicism becomes quite unmistakeable, and clearly the media are the linking mechanism between politics and society and ultimately culture. Their concluding remarks on the need for a responsible and meaningful media are entirely well placed, making their book an excellent guide not only for citizens but also for students and practitioners in the United States and many other countries.