Media and Public Policy

Political scientists and media specialists accept the commonplace assumption that the mass media have a profound and direct impact on virtually every aspect of the political process, yet remarkably few systematic studies examining the relationship between media and policy exist. Media and Public Policy brings together 15 prominent scholars who focus analytic attention on the underexamined connection between the media and public policymaking.

Part I, which addresses theoretical perspectives, includes a chapter on media impact on the political status quo by leading expert Doris A. Graber and another on newsmaking and policymaking by Julio Borquez. Part II, Media and Domestic Policy, includes chapters on FCC decisions (Wenmouth Williams, Jr.), understanding public policy through news broadcasts (Marion Just and Ann Crigler), the role the media plays in economic development and agenda setting (Michael Hawthorne), and media and the right to privacy (Dean Alger). Jerry and Michael Medler contribute a chapter about media images as environmental policy, and Montague Kern examines the rhetoric of public policy issues in mass media elections. In the final section, Robert Sahr and Patrick O'Heffernan discuss mass media and U.S. foreign policy processes in two chapters, and Holli Semetko and Edie Goldenberg examine how AIDS reporters in several countries use the media to affect policymaking.

ROBERT J. SPITZER is Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Cortland.