-
4. Competing Novelties: How Newspapers Frame the Election Campaigns of Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans
- Temple University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Competing novelties How Newspapers Frame the Election Campaigns of Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans I n CHaPtEr 1, we argued that White candidates frequently construct political ads with potential for racist appeal. Further, we argued that the stereotypes and prejudices expressed and codified in those ads greatly influence the image that candidates of color project to the voting public. At that point, however, our assessment of race-based appeals extended only to the visibly produced but not yet broadcast advertising spot. The previous two chapters advanced us to that next milestone in this story: demonstrating that both racist appeals and racial appeals to Black authenticity influence not so much how potential voters evaluate candidates as their perception about which candidate they believe has appealed to race. We conclude this first portion of the book by taking a closer look at mass media coverage of these contests , which represent a different and critically influential dimension of the political communication process insofar as it involves and has a bearing on candidates of color. Up to this point we have measured the effects of race-based appeals in a relative vacuum, looking first at ad productions and then their potential effects in a laboratory setting. yet we are all aware that political life does not operate in such an isolated void. More than fifty years since Katz and lazarsfeld (1955) published their seminal Personal Influence, we understand more clearly in our contemporary age that many forms of personal and mediated communications influence public opinion about political issues and our perceptions of political candidates. At the same time that voters may be confronted with race-based appeals by political candidates or interest groups, we simultaneously engage in the stuff of everyday life. We go to work, interact Competing novelties 9 with co-workers, commiserate with friends and family, and daydream. We scan newspaper headlines, amuse ourselves with political cartoons, or take in the opinions of television talking heads who analyze the news of the day. each of these interactions with people and media sources can and does have a bearing on what happens between the time one is exposed to a race-based appeal and the time that one must make a concrete decision, such as voting. We are interested in one aspect of what occurs in the time in between. We examined candidates’ communications in the previous two chapters to better understand how race-based appeals might influence the racialized electoral playing field in which candidates of color compete. Consistent with our primary interest in how racialized communication affects the electoral hopes of candidates of color, we turn our attention in this chapter to investigating how the news media influences this process. In general, we seek to ascertain whether and to what degree news media impose racial frames in their reporting on election contests involving racial minorities. Further, we desire to understand how racially framed news coverage might serve the electoral interests of certain candidates or contribute to other candidates’ disadvantage. BLACk eLeCTeD offICIALs, BLACk CAnDIDATes, BLACk PoLITICs The scholarly story about the relationship between Black politicians and the American news media begins around 1980. The voting rights Act passed and took root among the American electorate fifteen years earlier, bearing its first substantive fruit at the beginning of the 1970s when African Americans began to be elected en masse (in relative terms) to the U.S. Congress. Conyers and Wallace (1976) surveyed members of this newly elected class of Black officials, inquiring into their motivations for seeking office and assessing their beliefs about who had helped or hurt them in their pursuit. An overwhelming number of Black elected officials at the time reported having no qualms with how the media treated them, many of them saying that the media provided a great deal of help rather than hindrance. Despite the fact that these officials expressed almost no contention with media reporting, a small study by Anju Chaudhary emerged in 1980 that served to add texture to their claims. Interested in how Black elected officials were portrayed in the news media, Chaudhary investigated whether Black elected officials receive equitable exposure in newspaper reporting compared with elected officials generally. She found, in fact, that Blacks received more coverage than Whites in terms of allotted space in newspapers . Despite finding that White elected officials received better placement and that Black officials received slightly more negative coverage, the report concluded that the news media displayed essentially no systematic bias when reporting on Black officeholders. [54.204...