When covering any topic, reporters cannot convey all possible points of view. Inevitably, they must decide which perspectives on the news to cover and the extent of that coverage. How those decisions are made is one of the most controversial topics in media politics and at the center of this provocative book.
When the Press Fails has two central theses, one positive and one normative. The first is that national news coverage is “indexed,” so that opinions (or frames) on issues receive coverage in the proportion that they are voiced by official government sources. The second is that this indexing process serves democracy poorly, and that instead the press should play a more “independent” (or “watchdog”) role.
The text is a pleasure to read, as the authors weave together both theses, taking the reader on a guided tour of media politics during the presidency of George W. Bush. They give special attention to the Iraq war, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, devoting at least a chapter to each. The breadth is so thorough and the prose so engaging that this book has the potential to become the definitive account of media politics during the Bush years. While the positive and normative arguments blend together, for the sake of more careful analysis I will discuss these arguments in turn.
As a piece of positive social science, the book makes probably the most compelling theoretical and empirical case yet for the indexing model of media coverage. This model, first proposed by coauthor W. Lance Bennett (“Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States,” Journal of Communication 40 [no. 2, 1991]: 103–25) and developed in a series of subsequent publications, posits that viewpoints are covered in the national news media in the proportion that they are voiced by government officials. The model centers on the observation that journalists face a pressing dilemma: While “objective reporting” is a strong professional value, “objectivity” is nonetheless notoriously difficult to define (see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News, 1978). Given this, the authors explain, the establishment media claim the mantle of objectivity by relying on powerful political figures to determine which sides of a controversy are legitimate to report. Consequently, views expressed by high-level Washington sources are represented in news coverage, while other views, regardless of their merits, are not.
The authors test the model by analyzing news coverage of a series of major events during George W. Bush's presidency. Their analysis of the Abu Ghraib scandal coverage is especially thorough and convincing. Their content analysis tracks quantitatively the prevalence of the word “torture” in news frames describing Abu Ghraib over time. They find that its prevalence sharply declined shortly after the scandal broke, when most Washington sources aggressively advocated more benign frames.
In addition to the extensive content analysis of Abu Ghraib coverage, the book contains in-depth qualitative analyses of the interaction of political officials and the news media during coverage of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. Its descriptions of these events strongly support the indexing model. However, a more systematic test of indexing, using a content analysis similar to that used for Abu Ghraib coverage, would make these sections significantly more convincing. Yet, even with this reservation, the overall evidence for the indexing model is strong.
The normative argument is no less vibrant and interesting, but likely more controversial. In short, the authors argue that the press abdicates its democratic duty when it follows the “indexing” procedures analyzed by the indexing model. Instead, the nation would be better off with what they label an independent (or watchdog) press, making its own coverage decisions without constant reliance on official Washington sources. In support, they make the positive claim that indexing provided the public with inaccurate information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's relationship to the September 11 terrorist attacks, whether prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib met commonly accepted definitions of torture, and the root causes of the inept governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. This leads to the (sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit) secondary positive claims that if news coverage had followed a watchdog model, public opinion on these matters, and maybe even government policy, would have been different.
While the authors argue for their normative thesis as thoroughly and convincingly as I could imagine, I must admit I remain unpersuaded. While there is much to dislike about the indexing processes analyzed in the book, it is not clear that the alternatives would be preferable. As there is almost an infinite number of views in any large country, the press still needs some way of determining which interpretations to present in the news. The watchdog model seems to argue that the press should use its own research and judgment to decide the perspectives that are correct and thus deserving of coverage. This would serve the country well in instances where the press has a better grasp of reality than political leaders do. Yet I am not convinced that over the long run, reporters will necessarily possess greater wisdom than our political leadership.
I am more sympathetic to the views of those like Walter Lippmann (Public Opinion, 1922), who, in the authors' characterization, have argued that “it [is] misguided to expect the press to supply truth and enable popular sovereignty” (p. 189). Instead, to avoid more national tragedies like those of the Bush years, we may be better off resting our hopes on a more vigorous opposition party offering a clear alternative program, as E. E. Schattschneider might propose (e.g., Party Government, 1942), or on an electorate willing and able to punish incumbents for objectively poor national conditions, as retrospective voting theorists might argue (e.g., Jeffrey S. Banks and Rangaragan K. Sundaram, “Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in a Model of Repeated Elections,” in William A. Barnett, Norman Schofield and Melvin Hinich, eds., Political Economy: Institutions, Competition, and Representation, 1993), or on wiser political elites with more willingness to each protect their own prerogatives by preventing the concentration of power, as the authors of The Federalist Papers might advocate. In the absence of these things, I am not convinced a watchdog press can save us. With these things, I am not convinced a watchdog press is indispensible.
While I may not agree with every argument presented therein, that should not diminish the fact that When the Press Fails is an excellent book. Its positive arguments are a model of good social science research. I suspect that they would also work well in an undergraduate class, as a first exposure to serious media research. Furthermore, the book's normative assertions are well argued, provocative, and a good place to start a class discussion about the proper role of the media in a democracy. In summary, if you want an introduction to how the media operates in the modern American political system, this is a good place to start.
