The Rise and Fall of the Media (posted October 10, 1999)

On June 12, 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush began his official quest for the presidency by taking a chartered TWA flight to Iowa. Accompanying him on the plane dubbed "Great Expectations" were 100 reporters representing a wide array of media outlets. It was a sign of how much the press corps has changed. New outlets from cable and talk radio to newsletters and the Internet have transformed the media establishment.

In this report, I discuss the dramatic changes that have taken place in the media. During the glory days of the press from the 1920s to the 1960s, news reporters were well-respected by the public. Journalists were major powerbrokers, shaped the country's agenda, and brought down presidents (such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon) and candidates (such as Gary Hart) who committed misdeeds. Since then, due to structural changes in the media and a style of coverage disliked by the public, the press has fallen as a political power. It is fragmented due to the development of new media outlets and the coverage is much less professional and homogeneous. Citizens no longer trust the media messenger, which means reporters have lost the public credibility that gave them distinctive clout.

The hallmark of the journalism that emerged between the 1920s and 1960s was the goal of objectivity. Reporters were trained in professional standards, such as fairness and the effort to avoid direct partisan biases. Over the course of this century, news departments were separated from editorial departments. Newspapers were free to editorialize on the editorial page, but not on the front page. The goal of reporters became the search for truth and an effort to evaluate events along clear and objective standards.

Not only did the goal of coverage change, news coverage itself underwent a major transformation. Between 1865 and 1934, according to a study of local and wire reports by Harlan Stensaas, the percentage of all stories that were "free of values" rose dramatically. One-third of all stories from 1865 to 1874 were objective, compared to one-half from 1885 to 1894, two-thirds from 1905 to 1914, and 80 percent from 1925 to 1934.

The rise in journalistic objectivity had dramatic consequences for the way reporters did their job. Professional training and formal educational attainment arose as an important requirement for reporters. College degrees on the part of journalists became more common. Journalism schools flourished across the country. In these professional schools as well as in newsrooms themselves, reporters were taught to aim for objectivity. During elections, the task was to report on all the serious candidates and provide equal time for the two major parties. Between elections, the goal was to evaluate government performance.

By the 1960s, journalism had become a high-prestige occupation that exercised great power. In covering wars, investigating domestic scandals, and unseating two presidents (Johnson and Nixon) in Vietnam and Watergate, respectively, this era became the glory period of American journalism. Reporters were fighting for truth and justice. Media anchors were celebrities in their own right. Whereas past epochs had seen children dream of becoming president, during this time a number of young kids wanted to grow up and become television reporters. In 1972, it was documented that more people trusted CBS anchor Walter Cronkite than the president of the United States. According to an Oliver Quayle poll conducted with 8,780 people in 18 states, Cronkite headed the list of major public figures. Whereas 73 percent indicated they trusted Cronkite, 67 percent said they trusted the average senator, 59 percent the average governor, 57 percent President Nixon, 54 percent New York City Mayor John Lindsay, and 50 percent Vice President Spiro Agnew.

With several demonstrated examples revealing that journalists got the story right, public credibility toward and confidence in the American press was quite high in the 1960s and 1970s. Compared to European countries, American reporters were seen as more fair and trustworthy by its citizens, compared to the views of the English about the British press and Germans about their media. Whereas 69 percent of Americans expressed great confidence in their media, only 41 percent of Germans did, and 38 percent of British did, according to a study by Laurence Parisot.

The high source credibility of American journalists would have major ramifications for the political process. This extensive degree of moral authority on the part of the media would grow to the point where campaigns would be described as mass media elections and the governing process would require formal strategies for news management. No other outside participant in the political system would accumulate as much influence as journalists.

In the 1970s and 1980s, reporters became more interpretive in their approach. Rather than taking candidate and leadership statements at face value, journalists began to write news analysis pieces and Ad Watches designed to put political activities in a larger context. Reporters sought to bring their personal knowledge of and familiarity with newsmakers to the attention of readers and viewers in order to inform them about news activities.

As coverage became more interpretive, though, subjective judgment became more closely intertwined with the personal backgrounds of reporters. In the Hill-Thomas hearings, male and female reporters sparred verbally on the air and in newspapers over the credibility of sources. The popular expression among women reporters in regard to their male colleagues was "they just don't get it." By this, female journalists felt that men simply didn't understand how bad things could happen to a woman and why someone would keep quiet despite open harassment. Studies of press coverage during the hearings revealed sharp differences in how reporters covered that event. For example, a project looking at all the ABC, CBS, and NBC stories from October 6 to 14, 1991 dealing with the hearings revealed that "male news sources favored Clarence Thomas, while female sources supported Professor Hill."

The new style of coverage which emerged during this period had dramatic consequences for how the public saw the press. If media credibility reached its high point during the objective media stage, then the interpretive phase saw the start of a slow but steady decline in public trust and confidence in the media. Ordinary citizens were not comfortable with having deeply personal behaviors splashed onto the news. Some felt the media were going "tabloid" and resorting to sensationalist coverage in order to boost their ratings. Others worried that with all the attention to private lives, qualified people would not seek public office due to having to run a media gauntlet.

Overall ratings of media job performance started to drop. Whereas earlier, two-thirds of the American public gave the media positive ratings for how they handled their jobs, in 1992 about half were positive. The public was becoming more worried about whether press coverage was biased in nature. When asked in the 1992 campaign whether they thought campaign coverage was biased against particular individuals, 43 percent felt it had been and 49 percent said it was not. Public faith in a fair and balanced national press corps was starting to erode.

The high source credibility of journalists, which long has been crucial to the special power exercised by the American press, was weakening. With the erosion of media credibility came a decline of power as well. If reporters were more subjective in contextualizing information, it was easy for the public to conclude they were biased, unfair, and not to be trusted.

The most recent stage of American history has evolved into an era of media fragmentation. In this period of declining media power, we see the emergence of new television networks, cable outlets, satellite technologies, and the World Wide Web. Along with an expansion of the local news, these new viewing options have dramatically increased the number of news channels, changed the relationship between the media core and periphery, weakened the overall professionalism of news presentations, and undermined media influence. As illustrated by the infamous Drudge Report, the previous days when ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post could dominate news-gathering have given way to tabloid journalism, cut-throat media competition, and an era when obscure press outlets can break major news stories.

The mass media in the 1960s and 1970s were an elite country club dominated by a small number of leaders and a patrician sense of responsibility for the industry. Between the two wire services, three national television networks, and a handful of top newspapers, the press operated under a "follow-the-leader" mentality. Opinion leaders at top outlets defined the news and determined what stories were worthwhile. Lacking prestige and resources, other news organizations generally followed the agenda set by these units.

The clubby world of ABC, CBS, and NBC has given way to nearly 100 channels. All-news channels such as CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC offered political coverage around the clock, whether anything had happened or not. New television networks appeared, such as Fox, UPN, and WB. Non-television alternatives like talk radio sky-rocketed in popularity. Local news stations moved aggressively into coverage of national political events. And in 1991, the World Wide Web would transform the way people accessed information. The impact of this overall revolution in media structure was staggering. Not only were there dozens of channels on many cable systems, the country ended up with a profusion of national television networks (seven at last count), talk radio shows (4,000), newsletters (more than 1 million), radio stations (over 12,000), Internet sites (more than 1.5 million), and magazines of various sorts (over 20,000).

The result of all these changes on the elite television networks was dramatic. The mass audience among all households with televisions for the "Big Three" networks fell from just under 60 percent in 1976 to 28 percent in 1998. If one looks only at the television watching part of the audience, the network share fell from 90 percent in 1976 to 47 percent in 1998. As a sign of public fickleness, half of those who watch the news do so with a remote control in their hand, according to national studies.

It is unsurprising that with a dramatic increase in media options, people have deserted the networks in droves. The prime-time competition no longer is ABC, CBS, and NBC, but ESPN for sports lovers, old comedy shows on Nick-at-Nite, variety options on the Comedy Channel and the Family Channel, and Star Trek on UPN, among many others. It is an era of cut-throat competition for viewers and ad revenues. Even hit shows like "Ally McBeal" are watched by only 10 percent of America's households with television. And a smash success like "Seinfeld" with extraordinary ratings by contemporary standards barely would have made the top 20 in the 1970s. Speaking of this decline in network viewing audience to a New York Times reporter, former ABC President Robert Iger said, "We used to think the possibility existed that the erosion was going to stop. We were silly. It's never going to stop. As you give consumers greater and greater choices, they are going to make more choices."

If the core media previously was defined as a few prestige organizations, today the media includes a bewildering variety of outlets, such as the tabloids, "Inside Edition," and talk radio outlets like Rush Limbaugh. The latter's show, which was started in 1988, is carried by 650 stations across the country and reaches an estimated 25 million listeners a week. Featuring conservative rhetoric combined with entertaining satires on leading political figures, Limbaugh brought a tabloid-style mentality to talk radio.

As demonstrated by the Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky stories, peripheral outlets such as the Star or "Hard Copy"can break news stories as easily as the New York Times. Even CNN is capable of launching an independent presidential candidacy, as it did with Ross Perot in 1992 when he gained prominence and declared his election bid on the "Larry King Live" show.

The World Wide Web has further challenged the hold of the establishment press. According to industry experts, at the beginning of 1998, there were "30 million computers in the system, 70 million users (worldwide), 1.5 million WWW servers, serving 350 million web pages of information." Each day, thousands of new web sites are created, which turns nearly every American into a virtual broadcaster. A Pew Center national survey in 1996 found that 21 million Americans (12 percent of the voting age population) said they obtained political information on-line sometime during the year. Seven million said they had used the World Wide Web specifically to obtain information about the presidential campaign that year. By 1998, the number getting news at least once a week from the World Wide Web had risen to 20 percent of all adults, or 36 million people in all.

Not only was the Web affecting where people got the news, it was transforming how the industry presented coverage. A survey of 192 newspaper editors and 170 magazine editors reported in the New York Times revealed that between 1995 and 1998, the number of outlets with a Web site doubled from 25 to 58 percent. More and more journalists also were posting original accounts on their Web site, as opposed to merely duplicating stories already available through their print editions.

While the total news audience on the World Wide Web was growing in leaps and bounds, no individual site dominated the market. According to industry estimates, in March, 1998, the country's two largest news websites, CNN (founded by Turner) and MSNBC (a union between Gates' Microsoft and NBC) attracted 4.2 million and 3.3 million viewers, respectively. Even with several million viewers, the CNN audience share of all website viewers was only 8 percent and MSNBC was just 6 percent. At this point in time, the World Wide Web looked more like the FM radio dial, having lots of small stations, each of which had tiny listening audiences.

The gentlemanly competition that used to characterize the oligopolic media in the 1960s was breaking down into a situation of chaos and cut-throat competition. Structural fragmentation and de-institutionalization became the new world order for the media. With thousands of new information options from the tabloids to talk radio to the World Wide Web, old organizational routines were being transformed. A variety of new outlets were gaining a foothold in people's information networks. At the same time that new outlets were arising, waves of layoffs and buyouts robbed mainstream media outlets of their most professional and experienced staffs. A press which had been governed by professional norms on news-gathering and layers of bureaucratic checkpoints to insure accuracy was losing its structure. Unfettered market competition was turning every media outlet and every reporter into direct competitors. New York Times reporter James Bennet worried in one publication, "With the Internet and cable television fracturing the audience, wonderfully diversifying the coverage, and providing more opportunities for direct access to audiences, I wonder how the mainstream media can stay relevant."

One dramatic consequence of this revolution in the American media has been a public that doesn't trust the media messenger. Near the conclusion of the Clinton Senate impeachment trial, according to a Pew Research Center survey, only 35 percent indicated they approved of the job done by the media. The trust and confidence Americans had expressed in the industry just two decades earlier was gone and major concerns were being expressed about the nature of contemporary press coverage.

Even more noteworthy is the long-term decline in views about the favorability of news organizations. From 1991 to 1998, according to Pew polls, the media's favorability rating dropped from 91 to 76 percent. Between early and late February, 1998 alone, there was a drop of seven percentage points in favorable ratings of media coverage about the Lewinsky scandal.

The public increasingly is worried about press inaccuracy, sensationalism, and lack of fairness. In 1985, 55 percent claimed news organizations generally got the facts straight and 34 percent believed that stories often were inaccurate. By 1997, in a Pew poll, these numbers were reversed. Thirty-seven percent felt news organizations got their facts straight and 56 percent believed stories often were inaccurate. People report mixed feelings about common investigative reporting techniques that emerged in the past decade. Just 52 percent said they approved of reporters running stories with unnamed sources, 42 percent approved of using hidden cameras and microphones, 31 percent supported reporters not identifying themselves as reporters, and 29 percent approved of paying informers for news information. Another study revealed that 67 percent of the general public believed journalists "invent stories" and 87 percent feel they "use unethical or illegal tactics."

To the extent that the public turns off the news or no longer trusts coverage, the media loses its influence over citizen beliefs. The good old days when the media could make or break politicians are over. The high source credibility of the objective media was idiosyncratic to that era. There is little reason to expect the media to wield great influence when reporters are held in low esteem. The more subjective and opinionated reporters become, and the less able the public is to distinguish the core from the peripheral media, the less influence reporters hold over the political process.