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When the Numbers Don't Add Up: The Framing of Proposition 187
Coverage in the Los Angeles Times
Peter Hart
121 Louis Street #1
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
(908) 745-4639
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Rutgers University, Dept. of Journalism and Mass Media
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When The Numbers Don't Add Up: The Framing of Proposition 187 Coverage in the
Los Angeles Times
"Frames are chosen by poets because the most important part of what they have to
say seems to go better with that form than any other...and then, in its turn,
the form develops and shapes the poet's imagination."
---W.H. Auden
Generally speaking, one can make the argument that there are two competing
methodologies or philosophies in regard to mass communications research. The
methods diverge in their analysis of media effect, among other things. The
administrative school of thought often argues for a minimalist interpretation or
the phenomenon of "selective perception," while the critical school often
questions the ability to accurately gauge media effects at all, especially
independent of any social or political context. Instead, critical communications
scholars focus more on news frames, power dynamics, and political economy, often
creating broad generalizations about media conglomeration and biases in
coverage. The schism in regard to these two "schools of thought" is well
documented, as the Summer 1983 issue of the Journal of Communication was
exclusively devoted to this topic).
What, then, could be made of an analysis of news coverage that would try to
involve both paradigms, which are often thought to be mutually exclusive? This
is the beginning of my thesis. Using the same data, I will argue that the
conclusions reached will, not surprisingly, be very different. It is an approach
that is not often attempted, probably due to the fact that communication
scholars have found one method more comfortable, and have chosen to stick to
that methodology. Our news "item" will be coverage of Proposition 187, the
California ballot initiative of 1994 that was directed toward suspending health
and educational benefits and services to undocumented immigrants, as well as the
children that were born in the United States to illegal immigrants, in effect
denying service to those who technically have "legal" status. The details of the
proposition, which was approved by the
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voters in the 1994 election, will be outlined later. In the end, the two
separate analyses, while lacking in some comprehensiveness, will clearly show
the critical paradigm to be much more satisfying as a research option. The
questions it raises, as well as those that it answers, are far more intriguing
and intellectually complete.
The analysis of 187 coverage was exclusive to stories dealing specifically
with the proposition. Stories profiling illegal immigrants or discussing
immigration issues were excluded, for two reasons. The first reason was a simple
time consideration; accessing the Los Angeles Times Index from April 1993 to
November 1994 yielded a total of 134 articles dealing directly with the ballot
initiative, and perhaps twice as many that could have been considered of related
interest- Border Patrol stories, a series on immigration, etc. The work load and
conceptualization process would be a bit too much to handle in one relatively
short paper.
The second consideration was a structural concern. Including any articles that
might affect a reader's view of illegal immigrants would raise a number of
difficult questions about opinion formation and the like, as well as particular
questions about administrative research methodology. These are crucial
questions, and will be addressed later on in this discussion. (An interesting
side note: Perhaps another study could explore the ability of the Times to keep
the issue of illegal immigration alive in its pages long before Proposition 187
was a reality.) Those stories that were excluded ranged in their ideological
content, and as such their exclusion does not affect the results of the study
significantly. They were not, however, dismissed entirely, as will become clear
later on in the discussion of the critical research paradigm.
Nonetheless, articles were included in the administrative analysis only if they
could be considered as adding weight to one side of the 187 argument. For the
most part, coverage focused on press conferences held by prominent politicians
and community activists, "scientific studies" offered by the opposing forces
that attempt to measure
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immigration's costs, and protest events. For example, a press conference that
Roman Catholic Cardinal (and local political heavyweight) Roger Mahoney might
hold would be a prominent local event, covered on the front pages. If Mahoney
were to lash out against 187, offer area churches as safe zones for illegal
immigrants, or refer to the proposition as a "moral sin," that would be
considered an article with "anti-187" weight. In turn, a profile of a founding
member of S.O.S. (Save Our State, the group responsible for the initial
signature collecting) where he or she is allowed to outline the pro-187
argument, obviously would be considered to have pro-187 weight.
The Los Angeles Times was used exclusively for three main reasons. The paper
has by far the largest circulation of any of the Southern California papers (its
current circulation is 1,021,121 during the week), so there is much greater
possibility that its coverage reached the most readers. Second, the paper has a
broad local focus, in contrast to its closest competitor, the Daily News. The
San Fernando Valley is the home of the Daily News, and consequently most of its
resources are spent covering the issues that concern Valley residents. Focusing
on that coverage would provide an incomplete picture of the Proposition 187
battle. Finally, the Times is a newspaper with what might be called "national
aspirations (William Solomon, November 1996, personal conversation)." It is
available outside the Los Angeles area, operates its own wire service (in
conjunction with The Washington Post), and has bureaus in major cities
(Washington D.C., for example). It could be argued that a paper with such an
expanded audience might be focused on providing a clear understanding of local
issues to readers in other parts of the country, striking a balance between
coverage of liberal social activism and the conservative argument in favor of
187.
The topic of this paper, the 187 ballot initiative, offers a unique news event
that deserves some attention. It could be misconstrued as an "election"
analysis, as it does obviously involve a public vote. However, its features are
quite different from a campaign
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for public office. California ballot initiatives are presented to the voting
public if enough signatures are collected to qualify a proposition for the
ballot. In a manner of speaking, it is a method of by-passing the state
legislature, since the public directly votes on a particular proposal. In this
sense, coverage of a ballot initiative in a daily newspaper offers a unique
opportunity. Newspaper coverage is a potentially direct method of educating
voters about an initiative. Much of the debate over a proposition is carried out
in the newspapers, since legislative debate is essentially inconsequential to
the vote in most cases. Thus, the importance of the newspaper in a case such as
this one is great.
With a general topic and thesis in mind, let us move to an analysis of the two
scholarly paradigms. The administrative or empirical method borrows its major
assumptions from the work of Paul Lazarsfeld. It often depends on the concepts
of selective perception and selective avoidance, contending that selection
among items is found "in the field" (Noelle-Neumann, 1981, p.136). This lends
credibility to the assumption that the mass media often have very little effect
on attitude or attitude change (Noelle-Neumann, 1981, p.137). This is in a
decidedly minimalist tradition, but also positivist in the sense that it denies
any "inoculation," mass society theories. There is a reliance on the
traditional social science methods of data-gathering and organization.
Extraneous variables (that are, coincidentally, often those highlighted by
critical researchers) are disregarded, and the two-step flow of communication
and its very linear, orderly assumptions and procedure are embraced by many as
the most effective, scientific way of doing research. Mind you, not all
researchers in this tradition accept all of the above principles. What links
them together is their faith in traditional social science methodology as it
applies to mass communications research, and their collective disregard for
issues that critical researchers address. Todd Gitlin offers Thomas E. Patterson
and Robert D. McClure as examples of scholars doing research in this tradition
(1979, p. 246).
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There has been a growing body of research that is critical of this
administrative paradigm, skeptical of many of its findings, critical of its
methods, and uncertain about its assumptions. In empirical research, Melody and
Mansell contends the "structure of economic and political institutions...the
centralization of power...and the incentive of vested interests are excluded
from the analysis (1983, p.104)." Critics charge that empirical scholars ignore
the context, political and social, of a given message, instead focusing their
attention only on message content. In addition, there is some question as to
whether or not such methods can ever be an accurate way of measuring human
behavior. Physical phenomena may be suited for "number crunching" but the
complexity of human behavior requires a different experimental foundation
(Melody and Mansell, p.108).
There are also questions about the implications and goals of administrative
research (For a case study, see Gitlin, 1978, 205-253). In our case study we
will not bring these ideas into the debate, but it is important nonetheless to
know that such criticism exists. Melody and Mansell write that administrative
research is "entrapped in a methodological quagmire that permits support only of
the status quo (1983, p.107)." Conversely, Lang and Lang contend that
empirically-grounded research can be used as a tool against the status quo just
as easily (1983, p.128). Clearly, this is a heavily contested area of concern
for media studies. It should be said that, in terms of challenging the status
quo, critical research is much more prevalent, though obviously not necessarily
more "convincing" to most readers.
Empirical research has its own unique historical context as well. Stuart Hall
contends that this line of thinking was bolstered as a challenge to the post-war
pessimism of the Frankfurt school (1982, p.58), in a push to reinforce faith in
American pluralism that was under attack by thinkers like Horkheimer and Adorno.
Media effects were not studied in terms of ideology or hegemony, but rather as
events interwoven with other social processes. One could just as easily retain
information from interpersonal communication as
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from mediated, formatted message receiving, according to the pluralists. The
questions asked never investigated the roots of pluralism or its philosophical
underpinnings, but instead focused on proving pluralism's effectiveness as a
truly democratic process (Hall, p. 59).
The administrative framework often favors as its experimental model the
political campaign (Hall, p.59), viewed as a consumer-oriented choice between
two or more expressed categories or options. Direct behavior changes apparently
result from opinion changes or the solidification of existing opinion, with most
researchers preferring the latter (Hall, 61). In a case such as this, selective
perception enables the viewer/reader to appropriate significant material, while
selective avoidance guides the media consumer to avoid or ignore messages that
fall outside the reader's existing viewpoint.
Our Proposition 187 data will be plugged into a system similar to this one. Our
purpose is to detect values in the news, clearly ideological content in news and
opinion pieces. Herbert Gans distinguishes between values in the news and values
from the news (1979, p.40). The distinction is a difficult one, as he draws a
line between ideological content that exists in the stories, and ideological
conclusions a reader or viewer might reach that are unintentional. I do not wish
to distinguish between the two. Therefore, I will simply try to detect whether
or not a given piece lends credibility or weight to one side of the argument or
another. Placing these stories in their historical context, I will also try to
detect not only the ideological content of individual stories but patterns or
shifts in the general ideological thrust of the coverage of the Times.
There are previous studies that are analogous to the present undertaking,
though they are not necessarily wholly in the administrative tradition. W. Lance
Bennett's 1990 study of ideological similarity and temporal congruity between
Congressional activity and press coverage of Nicaragua offers some potential
direction and methodology. While our subjects are obviously different, the
present study will draw on some of Bennett's
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empirical methods. Bennett's studies benefits from the nature of his
consideration, an ongoing debate in the Congress. As such, he was able to set up
specific temporal intervals to work with, analyzing coverage between the given
intervals (p.116). In contrast, the 187 case was not subject to this kind of
ongoing congressional activity, nor was it predicated on any abrupt or explicit
historical events. At best, the supporters of Proposition 187 relied on a sense
of a lowered standard of living, but their own evidence ranged from personal
experience to outrightr paranoia. In an Oct. 30, 1994 article in the Times, 187
supporter Glenn Spencer described the situation in California as "part of a
re-conquest of the American Southwest by foreign Hispanics."
Thus, once the initiative was written, what followed was a very public debate
that spanned a number of months. While Bennett was able to compare Congressional
activity and newspaper content, the 187 case relied exclusively on newspaper
content, with no real legislative processes to serve as a comparison. The point
should be made tremendously clear that the present study differs from Bennett's
in these crucial areas. Nonetheless, some of Bennett's structural ideas are
relevant to the 187 study.
Specifically, Bennett divides the articles into two categories: those that
support White House opinion, and those that disagree (p.119). His argument is
that reporters cover a given story according to official source information, and
that consequently the range of such coverage, when analyzed as an aggregate
information source, is as limited as official sources wish it to be. Bennett
gives equal voice to opinions, regardless of the status of the person writing or
being interviewed, a truly pluralist move. The difficulties that arise from this
will be discussed later, although it is probably very clear where such a design
could be criticized. Bennett's analysis was pooled from the abstracts of New
York Times articles, as he reasons that the general thrust of each piece can be
determined from the content of the abstract. My own experience found this to be
true as well, in most cases. Where there was some doubt or discrepancy, the
actual article was read in its entirety.
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With that said, let us review some of the historical background. Proposition
187 was a California ballot initiative aimed at reducing or eliminating state
and federal funds to those who could not provide proof of legal residency
status, or those whose parents had immigrated illegally. It outlined specific
actions for different public agencies. In the school districts, employees would
be required to verify the legal status of their students. Community colleges and
universities would be required to bar students who were not citizens or lawfully
admitted immigrants. Non-emergency health care would be discontinued for those
without the required paperwork, and additional social services (child welfare,
foster care benefits, and at-risk programs for the blind and elderly, to name a
few) would be denied. Police officers also would be required to work in
cooperation with the INS to verify the legal status of those placed under
arrest.
While the initiative may have been born largely out of nativist tendencies on
the part of some Californians (a bitter irony, if one truly extends "nativism"
more than a few generation back, where one would find that true California
"natives" are now the targets of such legislation) , it also seems to follow a
line of thought prevalent in the local media, which had provided consistent
coverage of illegal immigration as an ongoing issue facing Californians. The
Times ran a series on the Border Patrol throughout April 1993, an extensive and
exhaustive series on immigration in the 1990's that was featured on the front
page throughout November and December of 1993, as well as a special series
devoted to 187 just prior to the election.
In addition to the media coverage, immigration was also an issue for other
reasons. The January 21, 1994 earthquake in the Northridge area was the most
expensive natural disaster in US history (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 31, 1994, p.
A:16), and stories concerning FEMA assistance programs and illegal immigrants
were "hot" issues for a number of months, especially in the Times. In addition,
the controversy over Zoe Baird's nomination as Attorney General was in full
swing, as it was uncovered that she had
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employed undocumented workers for personal domestic work. As it stood, illegal
immigration was being addressed locally and nationally as a potential threat to
American values and way of life.
On the legislative/political side of things, the same ideas were resonating. On
March 31, 1993, a bill that would have denied illegal immigrants the right to an
education was defeated in the California legislature (Los Angeles Times, April
1, 1993, p. A:21). Governor Pete Wilson, perhaps in an action that was in no way
related to his prospects for re-election, made several very prominent appeals to
the federal government for additional funding to head off illegal immigration,
and for assistance to the state in its uphill battle to pay for these services
for illegals. This campaign began on January 9, 1994, when Wilson asked the
federal government for an additional $1.4 billion in order to pay for social
services for illegals. The campaign predictably yielded few results, aside from
strengthening Wilson's position as the "tough on immigration" candidate for
governor.
The issue of Proposition 187 coverage, then , is not one of a ballot initiative
that emerges from the shadows. Instead, the framing of illegal immigration as a
threatening trend was well underway, and lent itself perfectly to the eventual
campaign to get 187 on the ballot.
My initial hypothesis, prior to research, was that Times coverage of the ballot
initiative would rely heavily on official groups and sources, would highlight
student protests, and ultimately would be rather neutral in terms of volume- in
other words, I imagined that there would be a careful balance between pro-187
and anti-187 articles.
Portions of this hypothesis were validated as I attempted to set up an analysis
in the administrative tradition. As would be expected, 1993 was a quiet year, as
the election was still a full year away. Nonetheless, articles and editorials
appeared in the Times throughout, although not with any stirring regularity. A
total of seven editorial/opinion articles appeared, with four of the articles
presenting arguments against the proposal, and
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two in favor of it. An additional editorial appeared to "discuss" the
initiative, but offered little in the way of opinion, instead focusing on the
essential facts of the case. As our earlier discussion provided, such articles
were not included in the analysis due to their lack of any discernible
ideological content.
Surprisingly, from the end of 1993 through May 1994 the Times offered no 187
stories whatsoever. The debate began again on May 17, when it was learned that
S.O.S., along with various other groups, had gathered the necessary signatures
to get 187 on the ballot. What followed, from mid-May until after the November
election, was a plethora of articles and opinions, many of which were included
in a series dealing specifically with immigration. There were a total of 29
opinion pieces published from July until early November. There were many other
editorials that addressed related topics, but they were not included. Letters to
the editor also were not included, mostly for the sake of time. In total, 19 of
the pieces could be considered anti-187 vehicles, while the remaining ten
focused on support of the ballot initiative, usually rather tacitly.
On the surface, that displays a distinct advantage for 187 protesters, at least
in terms of volume. Writer ranged from Times staff writers Peter H. King, Robert
Scheer, and George Skelton, to outside journalists such as Alexander Cockburn.
I had hypothesized initially that perhaps a shift in editorial position would
occur over time, probably getting more anti-187 as the election grew near.
Public opinion polls, which were conducted periodically by the Times and
included in the News sections, showed a significant decline in support for
Proposition 187, with the public deadlocked at about the 50% level at the time
of the election (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27).
Bearing that in mind, I had half-heartedly expected to see a similar pattern in
the editorials that were published. However, no such pattern emerged. Instead,
the opinion pieces seem to evenly spread out over the course of about four
months. The only really intriguing aspect is the shocking amount of time the
paper took in revealing its own
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position on the editorial pages. While editorials about general referendum
issues began on May 8, the Times did not print a 187 editorial until October 21,
a piece that praised Jack Kemp and William Bennett for taking their stands
against the ballot measure, despite stiff criticism from the GOP elite in
California. On a side note, political cartoonist Paul Conrad, never one to shy
away from critical and controversial local issues, submitted just two works
related to 187. It appears that the Times was more interested in not expressing
any clear position on the matter.
In terms of news coverage, those stories expressing a clear 187 theme totaled
67 over both years. It must be stressed that the majority, if not all, of these
stories expressed as much of an ideological position as the editorials did. In a
sense, the fact that they are grouped as "news" stories has very little to do
with their adherence to professional objectivity or the "inverted pyramid" style
of traditional newswriting. They are, more often than not, the coverage of very
partisan, ideologically-saturated "events." They testify to the fact that social
groups or collectivities must operate to manipulate the mass media as
"event-creating mechanisms (Molotch and Lester, 1974, p.120)." Along these
lines, the struggle or legitimacy of ideology was played out on the pages of the
Times, but much more so on the news pages than in the editorials (which,
incidentally, are included in the Metro section). This may do little to bolster
ideas about journalistic objectivity, but so be it. The fact remains that
coverage of a politically-motivated event, once a writer decides to maintain an
objective mindset, often becomes a vehicle for promotion of the expressed
political agenda. A journalist placing him or her self at the "center" does not
necessarily provide for a balanced account of the event: "...if you're in the
center, your ideology is centrism, which is every bit as much an ideology as
leftism or rightism (Barsamian, p.101. Interview with Jeff Cohen)."
Much like the editorial/opinion pieces, the news stories were analyzed in terms
of their pro- or anti-187 content. The abstracts for their stories were read in
the Los Angeles
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Times Index, and their ideological content could usually be gauged from that.
The stories consisted of news conferences, "independent" analyses of immigration
statistics, and so on.
Like a previous hypothesis concerning editorial content, I had expected to
detect a pattern of coverage that would lend itself to the eventual election
results, or to the shift in public opinion that happened as the election
approached. An alternative hypothesis could be one in defense of traditional
journalistic standards and practices, that would predict a near-perfect balance
of pro- and anti-187 sentiment. In regard to the latter, the Times coverage was
overwhelmingly anti-187, which leads in to a discussion of the first
hypothesis. There does not seem to be any pattern at all in the almost 12 months
prior to the vote. As we noted earlier, the news stories consisted primarily of
coverage of prominent local/national politicians and grassroots groups, as each
story in effect added credibility to one side of the 187 debate. There was
extensive and exhaustive coverage of student protests against 187, as well as
frequent stories concerning the effect that 187 might have on the schools, in
particular on the Los Angeles Unified School District. All in all, there were 49
anti-187 stories and 18 pro-187 stories, which was a startling discovery,
considering the initial hypotheses.
What, then, is possible to conclude from these facts? Media effect is a tricky,
often methodologically questionable field of study. In relation to our
administrative model, one could conclude, perhaps rather forcefully, that the
shift in public opinion was due in no small part to the Times coverage. Faced
with an overwhelmingly negative stream of articles, the voting public turned
from its previous position to one of nearly 50-50 division on the issue. On the
surface, the argument appears at least partially valid. As the amount of
negatively valenced articles piles up, coupled with the negative opinion pieces,
public opinion shifts to the negative as well. Now, this does conflict with some
administrative thought about minimal effects, but as we stated before, the
concept is not one all
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administrative researchers strictly adhere to. The final 187 vote, with 59%
voting for the measure and 41% voting against it, seems to indicate that earlier
public opinion polls were more accurate on the matter. A May 24 poll by the
Times showed the difference in opinion to be 59% pro-187 and 32% anti-187, as
did a poll conducted in early October. Taking that into account, one could make
the case for a minimalist interpretation of the data, contending that the
majority in favor of the initiative from the start was unaffected by the
negative coverage.
However, an analysis of newspaper coverage, or an analysis of media in general,
is incomplete if it is discontinued at this point. Here is where the alternative
point of view becomes crucial: numbers, percentages, and statistical comparison
is not acceptable as the only method of measuring media effect. Arguing that
media coverage is slanted in one way or another because of statistical evidence,
or pointing out that media coverage is not sufficiently informing the public, is
not analysis if it does not dig any deeper. While such acute observations may
indeed be true, they fail to link a lack of coverage or improperly balanced
coverage with other factors, in essence blaming individual journalists or papers
(Parenti, 1986, p.9). The point is clear: a deeper understanding can be gained
with a more theoretical, contextual approach.
In a broad sense, all of this work concerns media effects, and as such there
has always been some degree of concern that facts could not be adequately
measured, graphed, and analyzed as equal inputs in a system. Lang and Lang
emphasized the fact that effects can not be understood or conceptualized as
"linear" in nature, and that effects research in the pluralist tradition
ultimately mirrors market research, a narrowly-based concern with individual
responses (1983, p.133).
The similarity between our study and Bennett's analysis is crucial at this
point. One of Bennett's initial assumptions is now an important consideration.
He weighs each article equally, regardless of whether or not the argument is
made forcefully, with no regard to the
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author, and without considering the source of the opinion. It is a genuinely
pluralist viewpoint, but with regard to effect the issue is decidedly unclear.
The person or group delivering the message is stripped of any power
relationship.
Was Bennett in fact measuring effect? According to his own study, there is
little mention of it whatsoever. His thesis was that coverage of Nicaragua
operated in accord with Congressional proceedings and White House opinion. There
exists in Bennett's data the opportunity to make a very complete, socially
grounded argument about the news media, positing that the stream of stories was
produced in order to re-inforce public ideology about the Contras and the
situation in Nicaragua. Instead, Bennett stops short, analyzing only the
numbers. He does not assign a public value to his findings. Bennett could have
reasoned that such coverage existed as part of an ideological system, similar to
perhaps Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model (see Manufacturing Consent, 1988,
Chapter 1). Bennett is indeed very critical of journalistic practices, and even
calls for a "return to an independent press willing to exercise independent
judgment (p. 124)." However, he fails to broaden his own discussion to include
issues of political economy or a sociological understanding of newsmaking. From
a different viewpoint, one might conclude that coverage of Nicaragua did not
merely demonstrate the ideological similarities between the press and the
Administration, or the dominance in mainstream journalism of lazy reporting;
instead, it was a means of guaranteeing that public opinion would be uniform on
the subject, or that certain issues relating to the Contras would be excluded.
That is, however, not Bennett's thrust. Our position will try a little harder to
incorporate social theorizing. It is, in essence, asking a difficult question:
Are media effects derivative of a larger ideological structure?
Further, in the case of Proposition 187, does "effect" necessarily consist of
the vote on the initiative? This is an often unquestioned topic in mass
communication research on elections, for it calls into question the most basic
of methodological designs. Without such
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a convenience, research comes to a grinding halt, or is subject to a complete
overhaul in terms of its assumptions about media, media's role in society, and
power relations as they exist in contemporary society. The arguments to be
presented and discussed do not at all make the analysis of news "easier," but
perhaps make it more accurate as a method of understanding how the news media
operate in a broad, social perspective.
With that in mind, a rejection of the dominant paradigm and research
methodology is in order. As Stuart Hall wrote, "Only those who believe that
there is a given and an incontrovertible set of facts, innocent of the framework
of theory in which they are identified which can be subject to empirical
verification according to a universal scientific method, would have expected
that to be so. But this is exactly what American behavioral science offered
itself as doing (p.58)." The present example, as in most cases, does not provide
an "incontrovertible set of facts," but instead a very open-ended mass of data.
As we have (and will continue to) seen, the manner in which the data are
organized is the most crucial ingredient in the end result we reach.
In dropping the dominant, administrative paradigm, there are two different
reasons to consider. On the one hand, the concepts of selective perception and
the media as a "representation" of reality leave much to be desired in their
implications and assumptions. Selective perception was an empirical finding that
showed that media consumers were able to pick and choose from available
messages, more often than not finding information that they previously were in
agreement with. This falls in line with the minimalist school of thought, but
assumes that there are messages for all to "agree" with, or to find
ideologically agreeable. This idea supports pluralist thought, as it assumes
that mass media messages will, in one way or another, conform with the public's
preconceived ideas. The notion of finding nothing agreeable, or in fact finding
much disagreeable with the mass media, denies all pluralist arguments, or at the
very least complicates them. Media coverage existed as
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such largely due to the assumption that it was "largely reflective or
expressive of an achieved consensus (Hall, p.61)."
As the pluralist argument matured through the years, the conceptualization of
the media changed. It moved from being a "reflection" of the external world to
a "representation." It is a feature, often an unchecked fact, of much of the
work done in the journalism/communications field. However, the very notion rests
on shaky ground. The word "representation" is a very accurate one in that it
"implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and
shaping...the more active labor of making things mean (Hall, p. 64). This moves
our analysis of news in a different direction, as it assigns the mass media a
considerable level of power.
This power dynamic is something sorely lacking in traditional media research.
Previous theories had cast message delivery and communication in very
one-dimensional terms, as an exchange of information from A to B, with the
possibility that B's behavior could change or be reinforced by the message. The
existence of other messages or communication options is not included. However,
this new "power" model is best understood as such: "Power is also exercised when
A devotes energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and
institutional practices to public consideration of only those issues which are
comparatively innocuous to A (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970, p.7)." The end result
of these ideas is a mass media system that wields the power to define and limit
public debate and knowledge, doing so in an active and intentional capacity. The
shift to this understanding involves changing the communication paradigm into a
two or three-dimensional model, conceptualizing the mass media as chiefly
responsible for "shaping the whole ideological environment (Hall, p.65)." In
doing so, the media exists as part of an ideological tradition, pluralism, that
enables and supports the existing political/economic system to such an extent
that there seems to be " a way of representing the order of things which endowed
its limiting perspectives with that natural or divine
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inevitability which makes them appear universal, natural, and coterminous with
'reality' itself (Hall, p.65)." Of course, the notion of maintaining
journalistic objectivity fits nicely into this "order of things," both as a
professional goal of individual reporters and of the entire journalistic
profession.
In short, the accepted media studies model appears to accept these assumptions
as well. However, if we define media-society relations as a dynamic power system
involving the design of reality via media messages, the power to create symbols
appears to involve the capacity to form ideas. It recasts the journalist's role
in a very sociologically-grounded manner, conceptualizing the reporter not as an
innocent viewer of events but as part of a "culture-producing institution
(Golding, 1981, p.67)."
This shift to understanding concepts like "three dimensional model" and
symbol-making lends itself to the first step in creating a new model. The
groundwork consists of the assumption that journalism exists as part of a system
of cultural hegemony. This theoretical orientation fulfills the needs of many
communication researchers to incorporate media studies to include "a broader
political sociology that places the examination of the press in a social context
beyond individual organizations or the journalistic profession (Rachlin, 1988,
p.3)."
Defining hegemony involves conceptualizing it not as "thought control" or a
fascist state, but as a set of forces that stabilize status quo thinking to such
an extent as to make it seem natural. Rachlin considers hegemony to be borne
within institutions of socialization, which will "introduce us to manners of
thinking, schools of thought, and general world views that are seen as natural-
and therefore right (p.24)."
Accepting a hegemonic viewpoint, it is difficult even to conceive of "media
effects." The media are re-defined as a component in an involved social system
that either endorses status quo thinking or acts as a tool for social control,
or both. "Effects" are therefore conceptualized as part of a larger
socialization schemata, making them extremely difficult to
187 Coverage 19
measure. Thus, separating the news media for such analytic purposes as this
must be done with some care, so as not to endorse the idea that journalism
exists outside other social institutions: "Investigation of any particular
aspect of the media must acknowledge the fundamental nature of their integration
within a particular social order (Rachlin, 1988, p.27)."
If one does in fact accept the hegemonic tendencies of news media, then
communication and symbol-making, and more importantly the control of said
functions, is of paramount importance. Thus, journalism is a crucial element in
maintaining hegemony. This is not necessarily performed through state-sponsored
censorship or blatant ideological control; rather, hegemony operates via
preferred vocabulary, persistent patterns in journalism, and recurrent imagery.
It is important to stress that journalism existing within this hegemonic
framework operates according to certain professional principles that journalists
are not necessarily aware of. News frames is the most coherent way of
understanding journalistic hegemony , as it can be considered the performance of
hegemony in the "real world." Gitlin describes frames as "persistent patterns of
cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and
exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse, whether verbal
or visual (1979, p. 12)." Naturally, frames are not described in introductory
journalism textbooks or discussed by news professionals; in fact, frames
generally are taken for granted as standard operating procedure, employing
methods that on their face do not appear to be hegemonic (Gitlin "News as
Ideology," p. 18).
Gans' news values also can be understood as similar to the workings of news
frames as well. As such, frames are the "familiarities" of news work, the
dominant methods of casting a news story. Frames consist of the unspoken
structure of the news story, the characteristics that make the news "readable."
News accounts resonate only when they are framed in ways that re-inforce
dominant thinking or follow familiar patterns.
187 Coverage 20
In the case of a social protest situation, a news frame would cast the different
views as two generalized oppositional positions, with a certain identifiable
group pitted against another. This would be an example of news framing at work,
wherein an event or series of events is given a specific narrative structure
that makes the processing of information more familiar. At its core, the frame
ignores dissenting viewpoints in order to present a unified narrative,
coinciding with traditional news values. Gitlin offers examples of news framing
during the Vietnam War and protests against nuclear energy ( "News as Ideology",
pgs. 33 and 45, respectively), noting that mass media coverage of protesters and
dissenters often distorts their messages, at times even implying violence or
social disorder. In fact, Gitlin maintains that the success of social movements
lies in their ability to present their messages in accord with the dominant news
frames (p.41).
Returning to Bennett's study, he proposes a very similar idea, one that he
terms "indexing" (p.106). In this framework, he argues that reporters generally
report official source information and conceptualize it as reflective of the
entire spectrum of debate on a particular subject. It is assumed that official
sources provide both the relevant facts of a situation as well as the necessary
ideological balance between different arguments (p.106). In effect, indexing
certifies the limits of an argument. It is an analysis that functions well
within Bennett's press-state hypothesis, but also applies specifically to the
Proposition 187 analysis, and to news frames and hegemony in general.
Perhaps the most illuminating aspect of Bennett's argument (and coincidentally
the most useful to the 187 discussion) was the relationship between protests,
civil disobedience and the indexing hypothesis. Bennett, borrowing from Todd
Gitlin's The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of
the New Left , argues that when such voices of dissent are included in mass
media discourse, the means they adopt in order to gain coverage- protests,
marching, or even lawlessness- cast their actions in a negative light. The fact
that much of the coverage of the anti-187 campaign consisted of
187 Coverage 21
demonstrations and/or student walkouts raises troubling questions for
administrative research methods. How are such messages read? True, the message
content is anti-187, but how does it resonate with the reader when placed in the
"protest" frame? In my attempts to analyze the 187 issue from an administrative
point of view, I had conceptualized such demonstration coverage as "anti-187"
content, weighed equally as pro-187 opinion pieces. However, it is wholly
unclear what the ensuing effect of such coverage may have had on the reader.
These considerations seem to indicate that classifying stories simply as "pro"
or "anti" is not a sufficient way to gauge media behavior or effect. Providing
for only two categories strains one's ability to do any real analysis at all.
One excruciatingly clear example of coverage in the Times can be considered now
as a perfect example of both journalistic irresponsibility and the limits of
such a classification strategy. As well, it calls into question the pluralist
"equal inputs" approach, which considers each story as having equal weight in
the final analysis. On November 4, the front page of the Metro section was
emblazoned with the headline "Police to be on alert in case vote sparks
violence." The accompanying story explained the possibilities for violent
reaction to the vote, and featured a photo of two Compton teenagers being placed
under arrest after an anti-187 protest degenerated into acts of vandalism.
The methodological headaches that come with such a story are tremendous.
Obviously, the story was classified as a pro-187 story, due mostly to its
implied threat of violence. However, dealing with a major metropolitan city that
was still recovering from civil unrest that occurred two years prior, how
seriously could this have affected voting patterns(or, if you prefer, media
effect )? Of course, exit polls conducted by the Times did not ask the question
"Did our November 4 story scare you into voting differently?," but it is
probably a fair consideration. Given that, it seems terribly inadequate to
classify the story simply as just another pro-187 piece, balanced out by an
editorial on the next page critical
187 Coverage 22
of American nativist tendencies. The two cannot logically be considered equal,
but that is precisely what much of the dominant media research is asking us to
do.
With frames and indexing also come a discussion of things ignored or ideas not
covered. In the 187 case, the examples are easy to find. The day after the
election, Thursday, November 10, the front page of the Times featured in the
headline the fact that eight lawsuits had been filed within hours of the passage
of the initiative. In fact, as the story reveals, the prospects of the
proposition standing up in court are slim. These are important ideas that were
virtually excluded from the 187 debate prior to the election.
In fact, the Times seems to have been apologizing for certain aspects of its
coverage on this Thursday after the election. The front page of the Metro
section featured a story that was dubbed "Unflagging Controversy," written by
Sandy Banks. The story made a forceful case about the imagery used in mass
protests. It consisted primarily of an analysis of the prominence of Mexican
flags at anti-187 gatherings, highlighting the negative and potentially hostile
reactions of whites to the flags. It was stirring imagery that the Times was
not afraid to include in its protest coverage, and it was a point absent from
the pages of the Times until after the election was over. However,
administrative research methods would consider such protest coverage as
"anti-187."
These are but a few of the examples of framing that were apparent upon a closer
inspection of the Times' coverage. Why was an October 28 pro-187 gala covered as
a "fund-raiser," while anti-187 forces engaged in a "last ditch effort" and a
"$1 million advertising blitz" two weeks later? The differences include such
subtle differences in language ( for example, the usage of "illegal alien" as
opposed to "undocumented immigrant) and imagery that fly under the radar of
administrative research methodology.
In addition, it is beneficial to recall early statements made about the
existence of anti-illegal stories in the Times that were not part of overt 187
coverage. It is impossible to conceive of such stories as not having much effect
on readers, but that is precisely what is
187 Coverage 23
asked of the researcher when adopting an administrative model. The task becomes
a separation of temporal considerations, establishing a beginning and ending
point for coverage of an issue without regard to stories existing prior to the
starting point. In addition, stories that relate in one way or another to the
topic of research are usually discarded, for similarly illogical reasons.
In the end, studies such as this exist to point out such methodological flaws
as much as they exist to analyze 187 coverage. Earlier comments in this paper
about the research methods being just as important as actual research content
have been validated in this case. The data exists for both methods, but the data
can be construed in entirely different ways. However, when one conceptualizes
the role of journalism as an institution deeply embedded in social processes,
responsible for ideological uniformity and reflective of cultural patterns, the
administrative model seems absolutely inadequate to deal with all of the
additional, "extraneous" information.
187 Coverage 24
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187 Coverage 25
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Abstract
This paper examines coverage of California's Proposition 187 (1994) in the Los
Angeles Times by means of both the administrative and the critical research
paradigms. In the end, the critical research methodology appears to be more
thorough and intellectually satisfying, as it both offers and answers
substantial questions concerning the Times coverage. The paper addresses the
competing research methodologies in regard to both Proposition 187 and in a more
general context.