Page 24 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

1. NEWS INFLUENCE ON OUR PICTURES OF THE WORLD 13

metaphoric onion contains many layers, ranging from the prevailing
social ideology to the beliefs and psychology of an individual journalist
(Shoemaker & Reese, 1991).
At the surface of our theoretical onion, what Shoemaker and Reese call
the extramedia level, are key external news sources. They include politi-
cians, public officials, public relations practitioners, and any individual,
like the president of the United States, who influences media content. For
example, a study of Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address in 1970
found that the agenda of 15 issues in that address did influence the subse-
quent month’s news coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post,
and two of the three national television networks (McCombs, Gilbert, &
Eyal, 1982). No evidence was found to suggest the media had an influence
on the president. Sigal’s (1973) examination of the New York Times and the
Washington Post across a 20-year period found that nearly half of their
news stories were based substantially on press releases and other direct
information subsidies. About 17.5% of the total number of news stories
were based, at least in part, on press releases, and press conferences and
background briefings accounted for another 32%.
Deep inside the onion are the interactions and influence of various
mass media on each other, a phenomenon commonly called intermedia
agenda-setting. To a considerable degree, these interactions reinforce and
validate the social norms and traditions of journalism. Those professional
values and practices are the layer of the onion surrounding the core, the
layer that defines the ground rules for the ultimate shaping of the media
agenda.
The New York Times frequently plays the role of primary intermedia
agenda-setter because an appearance on the front page of the Times can
legitimize a topic as newsworthy. The contamination of Love Canal in
New York State and the radon threat in Pennsylvania did not gain
national prominence, despite intensive local media coverage, until these
issues appeared on the Times’ agenda (Mazur, 1987; Ploughman, 1984).
The previous mention of the Times’ coverage of the drug problem in the
1980s (Reese & Danielian, 1989) also supports this finding. That study
showed that when the New York Times “discovered” the country’s drug
problem in late 1985, network news coverage and major newspaper cov-
erage of the issue soon followed.
Finally, in a laboratory experiment that explored the agenda-setting
function of the Associated Press, researchers found a high degree of corre-
spondence ( .62) among topics between the proportion of news stories in
a large wire file and the small sample selected by the subjects. The sub-
jects were experienced newspaper and television wire editors (Whitney &
Becker, 1982). This study, and others, connects agenda-setting theory to
research about gatekeeping (Becker, McCombs, & McLeod, 1975;
McCombs & Shaw, 1976).