Page 259 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 249

whose motivations were medium or weak. The figure suggests that the
introduction of a motivational variable has transformed a modest relationship
between television exposure and pro-Liberal shift into a strong relationship, and
one that was concentrated among the less interested voters. The zig-zag pattern
for the more interested voters indicates that there was no consistent pattern
between the development of pro-Liberal views and the number of Liberal
programmes viewed. But among the less interested (see bottom bars of the
figure) there was a strong and progressive relationship between exposure to
Liberal programmes and a pro-Liberal shift. The implication is that viewers who
were in the audience less out of political interest and more because of attachment
to their television sets were most open to influence in their attitudes toward a
party about which at the outset they probably had little knowledge and few well-
formed opinions.

American newspaper endorsements of Presidential candidates

Preoccupation with the role of television in political communication, especially
during election campaigns, may cause the role of another important
communication channel, the press, to be overlooked. John Robinson (1974) has
argued that the potential influence of the press should not be slighted, especially
since newspapers are free to take a political stand, in contrast to television, which
is obliged to present all sides of the contest and to assume a ‘neutral’ stance. In
his words (p. 588): The newspaper endorsement is a direct message, which
appears to reduce the confusing arguments of the campaign to a single
conclusion.’ But can this have an effect? The title of his article, The Press as
King-maker, provocatively indicates Robinson’s answer. This reports his re-
analysis of national survey data for five Presidential elections (1956–72) in
which the percentages of respondents voting for the Democratic candidate were
calculated according to the candidates endorsed by the newspapers those
respondents read. However, since the choice of newspaper may depend, in part,
on the reader’s political preference—a factor which, if not controlled, may obscure
the potential influence of the newspaper—the respondents were divided into
three subgroups according to their prior party identifications: Republicans,
Democrats and Independents. For Republicans, for example, Robinson aimed to
see whether, among those individuals taking a paper endorsing a Democratic
candidate, there would be more Democratic votes than among those taking a
Republican-supporting newspaper.
Table 2 summarizes the results. It presents the percentages of individuals
voting for the Democratic candidate among readers of Democratic-supporting,
neutral and Republican-supporting newspapers in the three sub-groups
determined by prior party preference.