Concludes that the notion that the media provides a newly elected president with a "period of grace" is oversimplified. (FL)

Unlike her energetic predecessor, Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady Bess Truman sought to remain outside the public spotlight. While Mrs. Roosevelt held weekly press conferences for women reporters, Mrs. Truman held all press conferences somewhat under protest, and in absentia, with questions filtered through her social secretary. As she consequently…

Concludes that the news media report less favorably on deviant political groups but not less prominently. Suggests the findings support the theory that the media act as agents for social control. (FL)

Concludes that the amount of newspaper space given to the 1980 presidential campaign was less than that for any of the campaigns of the 1960s. Finds also that candidate John Anderson received less coverage than did George Wallace in 1968. (FL)

Defines mobilizing information (MI) as any information that allows people to act on the attitudes and desires they already have. Concludes that MI is missing in news of political controversy at least in part because journalists decided to withhold it. (FL)

Analyzes the questions posed by reporters and the answers given by President John F. Kennedy in his formal press conferences. Concludes that questions that followed the rules for interviewing set forth by experts produced better answers than those that did not follow rules. (FL)

Discusses the relative momentum of the presidential candidates in the 1976 election campaign and the treatment given this phenomenon by the television networks. (JMF)

The two articles in this document deal with the political influence of the press during political campaigns. The first article explores the findings of agenda-setting studies, especially those comparing the agenda-setting effects of television and newspapers, and concludes that, since newspapers are the most important source of public agendas,…

Reports on a study revealing that members of the Israeli Parliament elected after the 1973 Yom Kippur War showed a higher level of exposure to the news media, and a greater appreciation of the media's contribution to their knowledge of public opinion, than members elected before the war. (GW)

Finds no indication of bias in the coverage of the 1984 vice presidential candidate's finances, but does disclose some bias in the coverage of the political party conventions of that year. (FL)

Outlines five types of studies that seem most significant and discusses problems of and proposals for future news media research. (PD)

Print news media coverage of Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign was analyzed to determine whether publishers followed their roles as liberal, moderate, or conservative publications in their coverage. It was hypothesized that print media coverage would be similar across publications regardless of editorial slant, because of the dominance of…

Based on data gathered in a larger study of audience response to the debates held during the 1976 campaign for the presidency of the United States, a study examined the validity of uses and gratifications measures and explored how these measures were affected by differing levels of audience media activity. The data was drawn from telephone…

States that the system of local political journalism has become fragile and that steps should be taken to remediate the situation, such as developing tax incentives that invite television news, distributed in nonbroadcast form, to enter the arena of local political information. (DF)

Notes that while less than half of the radio stations in the United States have used the President's weekly radio broadcasts, they have nonetheless been widely covered by CBS, NBC, and the New York "Times." (FL)