Questions for Wednesday, September 10: In The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write that "The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing." Please consider the following questions: 1)It is sometimes said that real democracy is not possible without an informed electorate. Please read carefully the discussion of the debate between Lippmann and Dewey, on pages 21-24 of chapter 1 of The Elements of Journalism (the handout) and try to get a sense of the disagreement between them. Do you believe the American electorate is well-enough informed to be truly "free and self-governing?" Is it a realistic goal? (No need to post a comment, unless you want to, but bring your thoughts to class.) 2) Below is one recent survey of voter opinion regarding the most important issues in the 2008 presidential campaign. Between now and next Wednesday, please choose one of these issues that you find interesting or important, and consider the following questions: a) What are some of the more specific things that you would need to know about the issue, or the candidate's stand on the issue, in order to cast an informed ballot? (1-2 sentences). b) What are your initial impressions of the strengths and weaknesses of one of the news outlets you are monitoring. with regard to the issue you have selected? (Just a sentence or two about one outlet, but please come to class prepared to discuss the others.) USA Today/Gallup Poll. Aug. 21-23, 2008. N=1,023 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3."If you had to choose, which of the following issues will be most important to your vote for president: the economy, terrorism, the situation in Iraq, health care, energy, including gas prices, or some other issue?" Options rotated | ||||
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| The economy | 43 | |||
| The situation in Iraq | 15 | |||
| Energy, including gas prices | 14 | |||
| Health care | 11 | |||
| Terrorism | 9 | |||
| Illegal immigration (vol.) | 1 | |||
| Abortion (vol.) | 1 | |||
| Other | 4 | |||
| Unsure | 3 | |||
Friday, September 5, 2008
How Well-Informed Is the American Electorate?
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5 comments:
1)Lippmann's view seems to reflect current times as much as it did those in the 20's. I agree that "Lippmanns view dominates so much of how journalists operate today." The counter argument that the rise of the new citizen media is helping to address the problem may be too optimistic because new media increases chances for confusion with its many different choices. This can be empowering for some, but what medium(s)should a citizen choose/trust for their information? Drudge? Huffington? Daily Show? Public access TV at a City Council meeting? A neighbor? etc. Who points the way through the noise to decide what's helpful for a free and self-governing democracy? How many get so overwhelmed that they give up?
2)a. Health Care
-Why is health care in the U.S. so expensive?
-Is universal health care an option and why or why not?
-How are any proposed changes going to be funded?
-Where does the candidate get his/her information?
-What kind of heath care does the candidate have?
b. Monitoring my sites hasn't produced much breaking news on this, but a search of the US News and Word Report site brings up health care stories with a very good and timely "Related News" sidebar with links like:
* Voters See Very Different Healthcare Plans from Obama, Clinton and McCain
* Where Clinton, Obama and McCain Stand on Healthcare
1) I'll leave question 1 for class.
2) Energy + gas prices
2a) How does each candidate proposes to ween the country off fossil fuels?
Are the candidates looking beyond ethanol? What about the impact on food-based ethanol sources at the world food market? Are their projections reasonable and researched?
How does each candidate propose to deal with the issues of nuclear power, "clean coal", and natural gas? Off-shore drilling? ANWAR?
Do their policies include investment and research into renewable energy or alternatives?
2b) Two sites I visited were reporting on the election like its a sport - here are the results of fund raising: Candidate 1 has $X million and Candidate 2 has $Y million or they are focusing on recent polls, who received a "bump" from the convention, Candidate 1 scored higher in the recent ABCXYZ poll, but Candidate 1 has a five point lead in a poll by the pointy fingers institute.
I could do a Google search for " candidates stance on issues" and find 3,900,000 sites. I did, that's the actual number as of 1:30pm today.
However, are those sites trustworthy? Are they biased or have their own agenda? After surfing through the first couple of pages of responses (laughingsquid.com also had a story entitled "Doogy Poo, A Heart Warming Fable For All Ages") I finally landed on an old reliable: the New York Times.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/issues/energy.html
The breakdown the issues, point-by- point, often (but not always) cite sources, and actual give names of who is maintaining the information/writing the summaries. I guess for me, I trust the established media on this more than a guy going by the name laughing squid. (Btw - do squids laugh? What would they find funny?)
2a) The Economy:
What are the major factors that impact the economy?
How does the U.S. economy impact the global economic situation, and vise versa?
Do economic stimulus packages work? What is the desired outcome of such legislation?
What is the long term outlook on the economy? On what issues to economists disagree, and what fuels each side of their debate?
Where do the candidates stand on the major issues? On which points do they dis/agree?
2b) I think news media provide many disconnected tidbits about the economy, but generally struggle to provide a comprehensive picture of the nation’s economic state, to say nothing of the world’s economy. They report daily swings in the major stock indices and quarterly benchmarks like the unemployment rate and consumer confidence index, but they rarely make an effort to explain the broader state of the economy, except to say that it is bad and getting better or bad and getting worse. As a rule, this describes coverage of the economy Minnesota Public Radio, though I might dare to suggest that they offer a few more tidbits than the average news outlet. In addition to their standard news coverage, every weekday for 30 minutes MPR airs Marketplace which reports on “any story related to money,” though I would argue that focus is not at all the same as the economy.
1. I'll save my discussion on Lippman and Dewey for class but I will say that I believe it is an unrealistic expectation to believe we have an informed electorate on all decisions. I found interesting the Theory of the Interlocking Public. I do believe the major media outlets do still play a prominent role in agenda setting but also see how anyone with access to a computer can introduce a topic onto the national scene that sets the agenda on occasion for a limited time.
2.a. To cast an informed ballot on the issue of Iraq, I would want to know about the candidate's position on:
(1) Maintaining an adequate troop strength to respond to other world contingencies considering our commitment to the "global war on terrorism" and our troop commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(2) What are we doing to reduce the amount of tours and turnaround time for our service men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan?
(3) What role do you serve as the commander-in-chief in decision making with the Joints Chief of Staff? When do you accept their recommendation? When would you make a decision in opposition to their recommendation?
2.b.. My Media Analysis: I've proposed a study desighned to determine the difference how television news in the the Minnneapolis-St. Paul market covers newsworthy items that could help us make decisions as informed citizens. My study, that I started this week, will cover the 10 p.m. newscasts Monday through Friday. I picked that newscast because, unlike the 5 p.m. slot, they are able to cover international and national as well as local news stories. I will track the length of the story, the story format (reader, vo, vosot or package), the category (economy, Iraq, energy, health care, terrorism, illegal immigration, abortion, crime, other); and the story order in the rundown. These are ethical decisions that the producer and news director make--the order of the story in the rundown and the time and type they devote to a particular topic give us an indication of the level of importance they place on the content (of course, the newsworthiness of the content will also be considered). I think it will be interesting to see how the local news stations differentiate these categories in their daily newscasts. It could also tell us, as a citizen, which station may be the one we want to watch if we denote a particular bias toward one category. Next week I will have data from the first week of viewing.
1) the American electorate is not fit to vote. The founder's felt that the American public were so incapable of voting that they feared such interaction in politics. I do not mean to sound callous. However, it is a near impossible goal to have all Americans well to fully informed about politics. The reasoning comes from what Lippman said in regards to how the public recieves information from the media. it is so hopelessly skewed and distorted that when the public wathces the local news they are merely being subjected to one, incomplete, picture of the world around them. this results in the public being misinformed and the others who just do not care.
2) Energy: what new technology are they going to use to secure independence. moreover how will we be using these technologies to improve our relationship with other nations to fully consolidate resources to rid the world of our basic energy problems.
B) the BBC is great for ud to date information. they even have a election page. it is straight forward and easy to read. However, there is still some gossipy articles which serve to distract from the importance of politics.
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