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Week 4: Basic Concepts

• Bennett, Chapter 1, "The News about Democracy: an Introduction to Governing the American Political System," pp. 1-31.

 
What does Bennett mean by the "media information regime?" What is its history, up to the present? What is agenda setting? How have private and public officials learned to take their political messages into the news? What triggers news coverage of important problems? Why is so much news about topics that reflect individual's lifestyles, like crime, health, and celebrities? What does Bennett mean by the "new gatekeeping"? What does he mean by "press-politics"? How did patriotic coverage in the post-9/11 era change the ratings of 24 hour newscasts, and what conclusions does Bennett draw from this fact? Why does Bennett argue that "free speech cannot guarantee good information"? What is "soft news"?

• Bennett, Ch. 2, "News Content: Four Information Biases that Matter," pp. 36-70

 
According to Bennett, what are "news frames"? What are the "four information biases that matter?" How did personalization play a role in the Presidential news coverage in the last 25 years? How does it encourage a "me first" view of the world? What kinds of public issues are easy to dramatize, and which ones are hard to dramatize? What kind of image of the world emerges from news that is heavily pressured to dramatize? What drove the popular news narrative "how government is wasting your tax dollars?" What does Bennett mean by the "authority-disorder" bias? What are its key characteristics? How does this bias isolate stories from social and historical trends? What does Bennett mean by the "crisis cycle"? What role do visuals play in driving news drama? Why does Bennett think these patterns encourage cynicism and "discouraged citizens?"

• Schudson, "Introduction: Making News," pp. 1-10.
• Schudson, Ch. 1, "Defining Journalism," pp. 11-15.

What is Schudson's point in retelling the story about how journalist Lincoln Steffens "made a crime wave"? What does Schudson mean when he says "journalists create reality?" Does he think this is a problem? What are "parajournalists?" What is Schudson's point in the story of how a Cessna plane crash in the back of the White House derailed a news conference about the newly-formed AmeriCorps?

How does Michael Schudson define communication? How is journalism like school systems and hospitals? What does Schudson mean by – and why does he think it important that – news is "a dominant force in the public construction of common experience and a popular sense of what is real and important."