Page 74 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

P1: kic
0521828317c03.xml CY425/Esser 0521828317 June 2, 2004 23:23

DavidL.Swanson

in its tone, more skeptical of leaders’ motives, and more centered on
the journalists as independent actors and adversaries of politicians (e.g.,
Semetko et al. 1991; Franklin 1994; Bennett 1996; Steele and Barnhurst
1996; Barnhurst and Steele 1997; Fallows 1997; Patterson 2000).
These trends produce a style of political journalism that portrays pol-
itics and politicians in terms that are most unflattering, as actors who
are concerned primarily with their own power and influence and whose
words cannot be taken at face value. It is not surprising that such jour-
nalism has been cited as a cause of growing public cynicism and mistrust
of political actors and institutions. High levels of cyncism about politics
have been noted in all the Western democracies, accompanied by doubts
about the political system’s effectiveness, responsiveness, and especially,
relevance. Some of the blame for voters’ mistrust has been placed on
these transnational trends in political journalism (e.g., Patterson 1993,
1996; Cappella and Jamieson 1996, 1997).
Cynicism has been documented extensively in the United States. In
a 2000 national survey in the United States, 87 percent of respondents
agreed that “most politicians are willing to say whatever it takes to get
elected,” and 71 percent agreed that “politics in America is pretty dis-
gusting” (Patterson 2002). Such cynicism has been rising for a number
of years. Around 1960, about 75 percent of the American public believed
that they could trust “the people in Washington to do what is right”
always or most of the time, but only 25 percent held this belief by 1995.
Cappella has noted that “Although these changes in trust in governmen-
tal institutions are not uniform over time, they do exhibit a consistent
pattern of declining trust, and that decline applies to every agency at
every level of government” (2002, 231).
As disenchantment with democratic politics and institutions, along
with low rates of citizen participation in traditional forms of politi-
cal expression, were noted in both older, established democracies as
well as some of the new democracies (e.g., Dogan 1997; Giddens 1999;
Norris 1999), it came to seem that growing skepticism about traditional
political institutions was an unavoidable consequence of the modern
model of political communication. The marketing strategies used by
catch-all political parties and the negative news coverage of politics, to-
gether, appeared to lead inexorably to erosion of the public’sconfidence
in government. Thus, a key question facing those who were concerned
about the health and future of democracy concerned how to reverse the
steadilygrowingcynicismthatpublicseverywherefelttowarddemocratic
politics.

54