Page 264 - Culture Society and the Media

254 POLITICAL EFFECTS
The political meaning of the relationship between newspaper criticism and
political cynicism is not entirely obvious. Politics is conflict, and where
conflict is involved negativism and criticism will surely exist. Newspaper
stories that simply report disturbing events in a fairly objective style will
presumably produce discontent. What we have found, however, goes
beyond the impact of events and reflects the internal politics of
newspapers. The relationships disclosed by the analysis are far too
systematic to suggest that they simply reflect a happenstance of
presentation style. Only systematic editorial influence could produce such
a large variation in degree of criticism across papers. This does not imply
only that some newspapers set out to be particularly critical—perhaps to
fulfil their function as an adversary press. One must also assume that a
systematic avoidance of criticism is occurring in other papers…. Whatever
the explanation for the different levels of criticism in newspapers it is quite
clear from the evidence that type-set politics have a substantial impact on
public attitudes. (Miller et al., 1976)

Two further points are worth noting in connection with these examples. First,
they illustrate that research on the political effects of the media need not be
confined to the study of election campaigns and indeed can embrace questions
other than the impact of the media on voting behaviour. Second, they suggest that
the direction of media coverage of political affairs may have repercussions on
political legitimacy. Media outlets in a given society may vary considerably in the
amount of institutional support or criticism they project, and these may
accelerate a growth of mistrust rather than invariably promote the legitimacy of
political institutions. This last point stands in some conflict with the premise,
shared by some Marxist analysts of the media, that support for the legitimacy of
regimes is one of the main consequences of the operation of the media in
capitalist societies.

Television and ‘the social construction of reality’
Everybody carries a set of more or less coherent images in his mind of the kind of
society he inhabits: what it stands for; what its key institutions and power groups
are like; the rules of social order that prevail; how values and rewards are
allocated and to whom. Of course such impressions are partly formed by
people’s direct experiences of life. They also reflect their past and on-going
involvement with society’s traditional agencies of socialization and centres of
ritual and myth—e.g. the family, schools, churches, sporting events, festive
celebrations, patriotic ceremonies, etc. But one group of media researchers,
George Gerbner and his colleagues at the Annenberg School of Communication
in the University of Pennsylvania, maintain that television has become for many
people a prime source of socially constructed reality which they define as ‘a
coherent picture of what exists, what is important, how things are related and