Book Notes

Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott (eds.), Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 352 pp.

Political polls have an unmistakable place in electoral politics today. Public sentiment, as measured by these polls, not only commands the attention of candidates and parties, but also engages the public's demand for "horse-race" coverage of election news and political affairs. Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott are committed to the notion that polls can edify and enhance the democratic process and set out to specify how citizens might better consume poll data and might better discriminate between various poll methodologies. The substantive essays focus especially on media coverage of polls in the 1996 elections and during the course of debate over the Contract with America. They examine a praiseworthy diversity of polling methods, from media polls, push polls, and exit polls to deliberative polls and election forecasting. This volume is chock-full of interesting and informative insights for academics and pollsters, but none are too technical or theoretical to dissuade the well-motivated general reader.

Michael W. Traugott and Paul J. Lavrakas, The Voter's Guide to Election Polls, 2nd Edition (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 182 pp.

This companion volume of sorts to Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy (above) sets out with the modest, if invaluable, ambition to provide a primer to political polling. The chapters are organized around basic questions about polling that confused citizens might ask: why polls are conducted; how survey sampling and methodology works; how media organizations, political candidates, and interest groups use poll data; how poll results can be consumed judiciously. This is a clearly written, accessibly presented, indispensable resource for students of elections and concerned citizens alike.

Stephen Coleman (ed.), Televised Election Debates: International Perspectives (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 211 pp.

This timely collection of essays considers the role of televised debates upon democratic elections. The volume covers a broad range of perspectives, from normative to empirical considerations of whether such debates are desirable and how they might be improved upon. The topic is examined in multiple contexts: Australia, Israel, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Of special note, the contributors not only represent the standard lineup of academics, but also include television producers and elected politicians.

Brian McNair, Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 2000), 204 pp.

In this lively and provocative offering, Brian McNair challenges the prevailing view that a dreadful crisis faces political public spheres as a result of rapidly changing media technologies and journalistic practices. Commentators charge that rising trends like tabloids, infotainment, spin and sound bites, and media mergers are dumbing down media content toward a frighteningly antidemocratic lowest common denominator. McNair rejects the idea that there is a choke hold on reasoned debate and informed deliberation. He counters that such moral panic stems from a long-standing elitist distrust of mass participation in political decision making. The bulk of this book is based on extensive textual analysis and in-depth interviews with journalists, editors, and documentary makers, and the core chapters examine these themes in news coverage, media interviews, political punditry, public access media, and "spin-doctoring."

Colin Sparks and John Tulloch (eds.), Tabloid Tales: Global Debates Over Media Standards (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 315 pp.

Most people, especially those of us who examine press and politics as a professional matter, take a dim if not altogether condescending view of tabloids as a form of journalism. Much like McNair's Journalism and Democracy, Tabloid Tales is determined to take seriously such a novel mass medium, rather than dismiss it with highbrow exception. This collection of essays does a splendid job of situating the influence of tabloids in comparative context across historical periods, cultural contexts, and national boundaries (Britain, the United States, Germany, Hungary, Mexico, and Japan). The contributors show nicely the extent to which tabloids have influenced conventional journalistic form and...