Newspaper effects on policy preferences

Abstract

Abstract This research offers clear evidence that what is pre-sented in the media influences the policy preferences of the American public. More important, it reconciles some earlier problems that led to an inability to determine the approximate relationships between television and newspaper information con-cerning policy. By correcting some methodological problems in earlier attempts to examine the impact of New York Times policy news, I am able to conclude that different actors or news sources do indeed have differential impacts on public opinion and that in both newspaper items and television broadcasts experts and commentators wield heavy influence. In "Presidents as Opinion Leaders: Some New Evidence, " Page and Shapiro attempted to examine to what extent and under what circum-stances various actors or news sources can affect the public's policy preferences through the media. They examined levels of public opinion on several specific policy issues at times Tl and T2 and New York Times media content between each pair of opinion survey dates. By coding media content and disaggregating the specific sources of policy news, they were able to correlate source messages with shifts in public opinion on a variety of issues, both foreign and domestic. They con-cluded that popular presidents did indeed appear to have substantial impacts on public opinion. Before controlling for presidential popular-ity, however, the researchers "were surprised to find little or no effects upon public opinion.... It appeared that neither presidents nor their administrations, nor any other source as reported in the Times had any significant impact upon public opinion " (Page and Shapiro 1984, pp. 651-52; emphasis added). While this work was interesting and suggestive, there was an impor-tant limitation to the research design. Opinion level at Tl was simply given; no attempt was made to examine factors that determined th