Combative Politics: The Media and Public Perceptions of Lawmaking
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Combative Politics: The Media and Public Perceptions of Lawmaking
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226441924 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 04/27/2017 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Combative Politics
The Media and Public Perceptions of Lawmaking
By Mary Layton Atkinson
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2017 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-44189-4
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Conflict Breeds Opposition
Those who believe that Americans don't notice or don't care about how things get done are deluding themselves. ... Democracy, in other words, is as much about process — how we go about resolving our differences and crafting policy — as it is about result. — Lee Hamilton, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives
Health care reform topped President Clinton's domestic agenda in 1993 and 1994. It also topped the public's agenda. Ninety percent of Americans believed there was a crisis in the nation's health care system (Blenndon et al. 1995) and 74% wanted to see a system of universal coverage put in place (ABC News Poll 1994). The Clinton Administration devised a plan to do just that — one that included a range of provisions supported by huge majorities of the public. But, despite the overwhelming popularity of the policy's individual provisions, the plan itself received lukewarm public support and grew increasingly unpopular over the course of a protracted, partisan debate.
This disconnect between public support for the specifics of a policy and opposition to the plan as a whole has been observed time and again in modern American politics. For instance, public support for President Obama's health reform plan closely paralleled support for the Clinton plan. Many of the policy's specific provisions, like the requirement that insurance companies offer coverage to everyone who applies, were favored by as much as 80% of the public (Kaiser 2009). But the plan itself was far less popular. Opposition to it mounted over the course of a fierce debate in Washington and support for it fell to roughly 40% by the end of 2010.
Many Republican proposals have faced the same fate. Support for the specific substantive provisions of President G. W. Bush's Social Security reforms, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Federal Marriage Amendment were all much more popular than were the reform packages as a whole.
In this book, I offer a unifying theory that explains why members of the public frequently reject policies that seem to give them exactly what they want. Throughout, I develop and test my theory, which centers on public response to media coverage of the policy-making process — reactions that are distinct from partisan attitudes about specific policies. I demonstrate that the passage of bills with popular provisions can result in a public backlash stemming from exposure (via the news media) to the unpopular process of policy making.
How the Public Sees Policy Making: An Overview
Most people expect the government to help correct the problem of the moment, whether it be the high cost of health care, the ballooning budget deficit, or the insolvency of Social Security. With broad support for reform, lawmakers begin to debate a course of action. With bipartisan support, a reform might become law quickly. But more often, the initial bipartisan agreement that something must be done is eroded by a partisan dispute over what exactly will be done. The negotiations between and within the parties span weeks, months, and sometimes years. All the while the rhetoric becomes more heated and partisan as the stakes increase in proportion to the political capital expended.
Public affairs journalists and editors have incentives to focus on the partisan conflict and debate inherent in the legislative process. Doing so increases the entertainment value of their reports, provides a running story line that can be updated regularly, and conforms to norms regarding what constitutes balanced coverage. As a result, the partisan rhetoric on the Hill is only amplified by the news media, who track the successes and setbacks of each party, presenting political elites as polarized forces. Day-to-day and week-to-week, reporters document the compromises, concessions, roadblocks, and strategies employed by lawmakers on either side of the aisle. Factual information about the contents of a given bill is provided within this framework of partisan conflict and strategic maneuvering.
All the while, members of the public wait for a resolution to their problem. They follow the news about the debate, hoping to learn how the plan taking shape in Washington will help people like them. What they learn from the news coverage of the debate is that lawmakers cannot find common ground. Everyone in Washington seems to have lost sight of the problem at hand and to be pursuing policies designed for their own political gain. Special interests, rather than the interests of the common Joe and Jane are shaping the policy. And the tenor of the debate has deteriorated into a partisan brawl.
With their problem still unresolved and lawmakers wasting time on needless, ineffectual debate, members of the public become frustrated and deeply unsettled by the inability of lawmakers to work together. Many start to see the debate as ridiculous and disgusting rather than productive and healthy. These negative attitudes toward the policy-making process quickly become inextricably linked in people's minds with the policy itself. When they think about the policy they can't help but think about the partisan battle being waged over it — and this association tarnishes their view of the policy itself. As the debate drags on and reporters continue to offer blow-by-blow coverage of the fight, the association of the policy with the ugly process used to produce it grows stronger. As a result, public opposition to the policy mounts. By the time a resolution comes (in the form of a bill's passage or ultimate defeat), the public's patience is exhausted, and its focus has often turned to a new problem.
Fig. 1.1 provides a visual summary of this sequence of events. The theory boils down to four key elements: (1) the presence of policy debate in Washington, which (2) generates news reports on the policy-making process, which (3) leads to negative public sentiment toward the policy-making process. Lastly, because negative conceptions about the lawmaking process become linked to the policy itself in people's minds, the end result of this chain of events is decreased support and increased opposition to the policy at hand.
This process is self-reinforcing. Strategic politicians who oppose the legislation understand that prolonging debate can work in their favor. An incentive exists for the opposition to use parliamentary maneuvers (like the filibuster) to stall the progress of the bill, which in turn provides fodder for the news media, leading to more process coverage, more negative sentiment about the process, and a further increase in policy opposition. The time dynamic is, therefore, one of great importance. The longer the time span between the introduction of the bill and its ultimate passage (or defeat), the longer the system shown here remains a closed, self-reinforcing one. Only a conclusion to the debate can break the cycle.
This creates perverse incentives for lawmakers in the minority party. Those who want to stymie the majority party's legislative agenda have an incentive to generate controversy around the majority's proposals — even when (and perhaps especially when) the substance of the legislation is publicly popular. Doing so generates media attention focused on the political conflict as opposed to the popular substance of the legislation. This coverage can dampen public support for the proposal at the center of the debate, reinforcing the minority party's commitment to conflict. The incentives that motivate reporters and lawmakers, thus, predictably reinforce each other's behavior, creating a feedback loop.
For the remainder of this chapter I attend to unpacking this dynamic process. I pay particular attention to the motives that drive news reporters and the cognitive processes that underscore opinion formation. The theory developed applies to a wide range of policies including health care, social welfare, economic, and morality policies and it transcends more simplistic partisan explanations of public opposition to major proposals. The hypotheses derived from the theory developed here are then tested throughout the book via multiple methods including analysis of media coverage, individual level experiments, aggregate analyses, and case studies of specific policies.
If It Bleeds, It Leads
The old adage that violence, war, and crime sell newspapers remains as true today as ever. It is not surprising, then, that political reporting is rife with war metaphors. Physical violence rarely breaks out among lawmakers, but, judging from news reports, verbal assault is an everyday occurrence on Capitol Hill. Reports about policy making describe conflicts among lawmakers in gory detail as a way of attracting attention to an otherwise bloodless sport. Headlines allude to battles among political elites and highlight the strategies employed by those on opposite sides of the fight.
This type of conflict-focused reporting is so common that communications scholars have classified it as one of a handful of "generic news frames" employed by journalists (de Vreese 2002). These frames provide reporters with templates for synthesizing complex information in ways that are routine and manageable for both the writer and the reader. The "conflict frame," which bears similarity to the "strategic" frame and "game schema," is a generic frame with a narrative structure that presents actors as polarized forces (Neuman, Just, and Crigler 1992). Reports that employ the frame focus on which side is winning and losing, and often include language related to war, competition, and games (Capella and Jamieson 1996; Jamieson 1992; Neuman et al. 1992; Patterson 1993).
Scholars have documented the conflict frame's frequent use in campaign coverage and posit that it likely dominates public affairs reporting more generally (Capella and Jamieson 1997; Morris and Clawson 2005; Patterson 1993; Zaller 1999). This assumption is based on an understanding of the goals and incentives that motivate journalists. Like politicians — whose primary goal is to attract voters — the primary goal of journalists is to attract an audience (Zaller 1999). Achieving this goal has become more difficult for traditional news outlets over the past few decades owing to increased competition from the proliferation of soft news, online news, and cable news sources. The greater this competition, the more newsmakers seek to tailor their products to the preferences of their target audiences (Postman 1985; Zaller 1999). And what audiences want is not hard news, but entertainment (e.g., Bennett 1996; Graber 1984; Iyengar, Norpoth, Hanh 2004; Neuman 1991; Postman 1985; Zaller 1999). By emphasizing conflict — a key ingredient in film, television, literature, and sports — journalists are able to increase the entertainment value of public affairs reports (Iyengar, Norpoth, Hanh 2004; Zaller 1999). Yet, in so doing, journalists are also able to uphold professional norms of objectivity and to offer "balanced" coverage.
Journalistic Norms
News reporters seek to provide objective portrayals of the events and opinions they cover. To do so, they rely on professional norms and regularized procedures in gathering and reporting the news. One such norm, often referred to as indexing, is the practice of reflecting opinions in relation to how widely they are expressed by political elites (Bennett 1990; Hallin 1984; Kuklinski and Sigelman 1992). Objectivity is, therefore, predicated upon reporting all sides of an issue, not upon reporting the facts, as the relevant facts in a policy debate might be subjective.
Interviews with journalists support these assertions. When asked what they believe constitutes objectivity in news reporting, a plurality of American journalists (39%) stated "expressing fairly the position of each side in a political dispute" (Patterson 2007, 29). Another 10% stated "an equally thorough questioning of the position of each side in a political dispute" (Patterson 2007, 29). Together, 49% of the journalists surveyed stressed the importance of gathering and reporting information from elites on both sides of a political debate. Just 28% stated that "going beyond the statements of the contending sides to the hard facts of a political dispute" constitutes objectivity, and 14% gave other responses (Patterson 2007, 29). By structuring reports around the two sides of the story, the conflict frame coheres to this norm of balanced reporting.
Focusing on the competition between political actors also allows journalists to craft a running story line that can be updated regularly (Patterson 1993). The same cannot be said for reports that focus on the policy platforms of candidates or the provisions of pending legislation. Politicians stumping for a policy or for election are coached to stay "on message" by emphasizing and reemphasizing key talking points (Patterson 1993). As a result, daily (or hourly) news reports focused on the substance of these appeals would be extremely monotonous. Focusing instead on the dynamic, often contentious process of policy making allows journalists to craft reports that are fresh each day. These process stories evaluate how politician's messages are being received by the public, which candidate or lawmaker is polling ahead, and what strategies could be used to improve the fortunes of the underdog.
For all of these reasons, conflict is an essential determinant of an event's newsworthiness. But this relentless focus on conflict sometimes leads reporters to offer the public a skewed depiction of lawmaking. For instance, Eric Montpetit (2016) shows that when covering lawmaking, reporters focus on the opinions of a few "celebrity politicians or other highly visible individuals taking unexpected positions — sometimes extreme ones" (5). Other actors, who are central to the policy-making process but whose views and tactics are less extreme — such as bureaucrats and nongovernmental experts — are absent from media portrayals of the debate. By excluding the views of these more moderate actors and focusing on the most controversial aspects of the debate, the news media magnify the disagreement. As Montpetit puts it, "the disagreements covered by the media are so out of proportion that they can only inspire a strong sense of disapproval among citizens" (2016, 5).
Numerous authors who find that citizens have negative reactions to the political conflicts they learn about from the news media share this conclusion. Jacobs and Shapiro (2000) use aggregate level survey data to show that media coverage of "polarized policy struggle" generates public uncertainty about the reforms and a sense that "their personal well-being is threatened" by it (27). Cappella and Jamieson (1996) use an experimental design to demonstrate that campaign coverage focused on strategy and political tactics results in higher levels of cynicism among study participants than does coverage concentrating on policy issues. In another experimental study, Forgette and Morris (2006) show that "conflict-laden television coverage decreases public evaluations of political institutions, trust in leadership, and overall support for political parties and the system as a whole" (447). Durr, Gilmour, and Wolbrecht (1997) couple survey data with content analysis to demonstrate that periods of heightened conflict in Congress and the reflection of that conflict in the news have a negative impact on Congressional approval. In the context of campaign advertisements, a number of studies find that exposure to negativity and incivility decreases turnout (Kahn and Kenney 1999), political trust (Lau, Sigelman, and Rovner 2007; Mutz and Reeves 2005), and feelings of political efficacy (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Lau et al. 2007). Members of the public may be entertained by partisan battles, but this evidence collectively suggests that they are simultaneously sickened by it.
Why Americans Love to Hate Political Conflict
Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002) argue that these types of negative responses to policy debate occur because many Americans view debate as politically motivated bickering that stands in the way of real problem solving. Americans generally believe there is consensus around the goals government should pursue — like a strong economy, low crime, and quality education — and think lawmakers should "just select the best way of bringing about these end goals without wasting time and needlessly exposing people to politics" (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002, 133). The fact that a best solution may not be apparent or available does not occur to some members of the public. Particularly among those with lower levels of political knowledge and weaker policy preferences, "people equate the presence of dissenting policy proposals with the presence of special interests and the attendant demotion of the true consensual, general interest" (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002, 157).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Combative Politics by Mary Layton Atkinson. Copyright © 2017 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Tables xiii
List of Figures xv
Chapter 1 Introduction: Conflict Breeds Opposition 1
Chapter 2 The Dominance of the "Conflict Frame" 26
Chapter 3 Love the Substance, Hate the Plan 53
Chapter 4 Support for the Federal Marriage Amendment 80
Chapter 5 The Politics of Health Care Reform 98
Chapter 6 Exceptions that Prove the Rule 123
Chapter 7 Conclusion 148
Appendix A Creating Keywords for News Searches 161
Appendix B Codebook for Content Analysis 163
Appendix C Experimental Treatments 177
Appendix D Alternative Model Specification (Estimating Support for the FMA) 185
Appendix E Detailed Predicted Probability Plots (Opposition to Health Care Reform) 187
Notes 189
References 195
Index 207