ABC's "Person of the Week": American values in television news

Journalism and Mass Communication Quaterly

Volumn 75, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 487-499

  Larson, Stephanie Greco ^a   Bailey, Martha ^a  

^a SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY EDWARDSVILLE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039502486     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769909807500305     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (NY: Longman, 1988), 26.
2. Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion; Dianne Rucinski, "Personalized Bias in News: The Potency of the Particular?" Communication Research 19 (February 1992): 91-108; Gayle Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (NY: The Free Press, 1978).
3. Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion; Dianne Rucinski, "Personalized Bias in News: The Potency of the Particular?" Communication Research 19 (February 1992): 91-108; Gayle Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (NY: The Free Press, 1978).
4. Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion; Dianne Rucinski, "Personalized Bias in News: The Potency of the Particular?" Communication Research 19 (February 1992): 91-108; Gayle Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (NY: The Free Press, 1978).
5. Richard M. Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves: On Culture and Politics in the United States (CA: University of California Press, 1984).
6. Leon V. Sigel, Reporters and Officials: The Organization of Reality (NY: Longman, 1973).
7. Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media. 2d ed. (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1993) talks about elites. Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Evening News, Newsweek, and Time (NY: Pantheon Books, 1973) calls them "knowns." Rucinski, "Personalized Bias in News," 91-108 discusses other literature on this point.
8. Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media. 2d ed. (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1993) talks about elites. Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Evening News, Newsweek, and Time (NY: Pantheon Books, 1973) calls them "knowns." Rucinski, "Personalized Bias in News," 91-108 discusses other literature on this point.
9. Gans, Deciding What's News.
10. Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics. 5h ed. (DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1997).
11. Parenti, Inventing Reality.
12. William J. Drummond, "About Face, From Alliance to Alienation: Blacks and the News Media," The American Enterprise 1 (July/August 1990): 22-29; Ishmael Reed, "Turning Out Network Bias," News York Times, 9 April 1991, sec. A, p. 25.
13. William J. Drummond, "About Face, From Alliance to Alienation: Blacks and the News Media," The American Enterprise 1 (July/August 1990): 22-29; Ishmael Reed, "Turning Out Network Bias," News York Times, 9 April 1991, sec. A, p. 25.
14. J. Fred MacDonald, Blacks and White TV: African Americans in Television Since 1948 (IL: Nelson Hall, Inc., 1992), 260.
15. Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White Separate, Hostile, Unequal (NY: Ballantine Books, 1992).
16. David H. Weaver, "Women as Journalists," in Women, Media, and Politics, ed. Pippa Norris (DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1997).
17. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (NY: Crown Publishers, 1991).
18. Andrea Blum, Julie Harrison, Barbara Ess, and Gail Vachon, WACSTATS: The Facts about Women (NY: The New Press, 1993); Edwin Diamond, "New-Girl Network," New York Magazine, 10 June 1991, 20-21; James Warren, "Survey Finds News Still Has Male Face," Chicago Tribune, 8 April 1992, sec. 3, p. 4.
19. Andrea Blum, Julie Harrison, Barbara Ess, and Gail Vachon, WACSTATS: The Facts about Women (NY: The New Press, 1993); Edwin Diamond, "New-Girl Network," New York Magazine, 10 June 1991, 20-21; James Warren, "Survey Finds News Still Has Male Face," Chicago Tribune, 8 April 1992, sec. 3, p. 4.
20. Andrea Blum, Julie Harrison, Barbara Ess, and Gail Vachon, WACSTATS: The Facts about Women (NY: The New Press, 1993); Edwin Diamond, "New-Girl Network," New York Magazine, 10 June 1991, 20-21; James Warren, "Survey Finds News Still Has Male Face," Chicago Tribune, 8 April 1992, sec. 3, p. 4.
21. Gillian Dyer, "Women and Television: An Overview" in Women's Studies: Essential Readings, ed. Stevi Jackson (NY: New York University Press, 1993), 492-3.
22. S. Elizabeth Bird, For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); Dana L. Cloud, "Operation Desert Comfort," in Seeing Through the Media: The Persian Gulf War, ed. Susan Jeffords and Lauren Rabinovitz (NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
23. S. Elizabeth Bird, For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); Dana L. Cloud, "Operation Desert Comfort," in Seeing Through the Media: The Persian Gulf War, ed. Susan Jeffords and Lauren Rabinovitz (NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
24. Richard Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America (IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), xxiii.
25. John Fiske, Television Culture (NY: Routledge, 1987) discusses the use of media to reinforce dominant ideologies. We are not asserting here that the values identified in this literature and our coding scheme are exclusively American.
26. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, "Myth, Chronicle, and Story: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News," in Media, Myths, and Narratives: Television and the Press, ed. James W. Carey (NY: Sage, 1988), 67; Calvin F. Exoo, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (NY: Basic Books, 1988); Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
27. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, "Myth, Chronicle, and Story: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News," in Media, Myths, and Narratives: Television and the Press, ed. James W. Carey (NY: Sage, 1988), 67; Calvin F. Exoo, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (NY: Basic Books, 1988); Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
28. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, "Myth, Chronicle, and Story: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News," in Media, Myths, and Narratives: Television and the Press, ed. James W. Carey (NY: Sage, 1988), 67; Calvin F. Exoo, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (NY: Basic Books, 1988); Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
29. James Combs, Polpop: Politics and Popular Culture in America (OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1984),
30. Bird, For Enquiring Minds; Ray B. Browne, "Hero with 2000 Faces," in The Hero in Transition, ed. Ray B. Browne and Marshall W. Fishwick (OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1983); Combs, Polpop; John A. Hague, American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-century Perspectives (CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).
31. Bird, For Enquiring Minds; Ray B. Browne, "Hero with 2000 Faces," in The Hero in Transition, ed. Ray B. Browne and Marshall W. Fishwick (OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1983); Combs, Polpop; John A. Hague, American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-century Perspectives (CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).
32. Bird, For Enquiring Minds; Ray B. Browne, "Hero with 2000 Faces," in The Hero in Transition, ed. Ray B. Browne and Marshall W. Fishwick (OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1983); Combs, Polpop; John A. Hague, American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-century Perspectives (CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).
33. Bird, For Enquiring Minds; Ray B. Browne, "Hero with 2000 Faces," in The Hero in Transition, ed. Ray B. Browne and Marshall W. Fishwick (OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1983); Combs, Polpop; John A. Hague, American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-century Perspectives (CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).
34. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images (NY: Basic Books, 1990);
35. and C. F. Exoo, Democracy Upside Down: Public Opinion and Cultural Hegemony in the United States (NY: Praeger, 1987) use the first phrase, and
36. Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis, Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream (CO: Westview Press, 1992) use the second.
37. Combs, Polpop.
38. Bird and Dardenne, "Myth, Chronicle, and Story;" Michael Parenti, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1994).
39. Hague, American Character and Culture in a Changing World.
40. Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
41. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News; Gans, Deciding What's News; Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology (NY: Praeger, 1991).
42. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News; Gans, Deciding What's News; Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology (NY: Praeger, 1991).
43. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News; Gans, Deciding What's News; Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology (NY: Praeger, 1991).
44. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Exoo, Democracy Upside Down; Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
45. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Exoo, Democracy Upside Down; Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
46. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Exoo, Democracy Upside Down; Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
47. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News, 138, and generally Jhally and Lewis, Enlightened Racism and Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
48. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News, 138, and generally Jhally and Lewis, Enlightened Racism and Merelman, Making Something of Ourselves.
49. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News.
50. Gans, Deciding What's News, uses different labels for these values than
51. Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News. Gans calls patriotism, "ethnocentrism," and competition, "altruistic democracy. "
52. Exoo, Democracy Upside Down does not use the term "patriotism," but does talk about the need to support institutions of power.
53. Hague, American Character and Culture in a Changing World.
54. Browne, "Hero with 2000 Faces" discusses unselfishness. Family allegiances are discussed by Campbell, 60 Minutes and the News;
55. and Exoo, Democracy Upside Down.
56. Mark Cormack, Ideology (MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992).
57. This is fewer than one for each week during this time period for two reasons. First, occasionally Vanderbilt fails to tape a show and this results in missing data. Second, sometimes ABC chooses not to do the Friday feature (usually during heavy news periods like the Gulf War).
58. Although we have discussed generally the "Person of the Week" selection procedures with a producer for World News Tonight, our study does not concern itself with the formal selection process. Instead, our focus is on the results of this procedure as presented to the audience - the people selected and the characteristics they embody.
59. Percentage of agreement between coders for each variable (in order of discussion): INDIV 100%, PEG 92%, REGION 89%, NATLY 94%, OCCUP 90%, SEX 100%, RACE 92%, KNOWN 98%, FIRST 97%, KIDS 98%, SOCIS 97%, UNSELF 95%, CAREWHO 94%, ONOWN 92%, CAPITAL 98%, BENYWHO 97%, PATRIOT 98%, WHYPAT 95%, INVENT 96%, INVWHAT 95%, GAMEWIN 96%, WHOBIG 100%, POPULIST 100%, HERO 94%, and ALGER 92%. The average agreement for all variables was 96%.
60. Disagreement in the coding was resolved by having the case coded again for that variable. If the disagreement continued after the third coding, the coders discussed the case and arrived at a decision together. For example, if Coder A noted that a "Person of the Week" was a "celebrity/known generally" and Coder B marked that the same "Person of the Week" was "known in a particular field," this disagreement would be resolved by having Coder A or B reread the index description and recode it. The time frame of this receding was such that decisions that were made during the first part of the process were unlikely to be remembered. Only if this recoding resulted in the "Person of the Week" being counted as an "unknown" would there be an explicit discussion of the case to resolve the disagreement. Otherwise the recoding would break the conflict between the original coding (in this example, by either determining that he/she was a celebrity or known in his/her field).
61. Fifteen segments were coded and compared to the results from index coding. Comparisons of these results indicate that the presence of heroism, unselfishness, acting "on own," and mentioning children were underestimated by the abstracts. However, in no cases were any American values coded as present in the index and absent from the video.
62. In some cases (about 4%), the sex of the "Person of the Week" was unclear.
63. Race/ethnicity was not always obvious. Approximately 16% of those selected were coded as "unknown" on this variable.
64. Eight percent were Europeans. Middle Easterners were the next frequent group, with citizens of Asian countries chosen the least often. In 4% of the cases, nationality was unclear or deemed not applicable, such as in the case of an entire town featured as "Person of the Week."
65. Apparently, despite the increased technological ease of broadcasting from other locations, news still magnifies the cities that Edward Epstein and Herbert Gans noted in their early studies of television news. Edward Epstein, News from Nowhere (NY: Random House, 1973),
66. and Gans, Deciding What's News .
67. Robert W. Clyde and James K. Buckalew, "Inter-Media Standardization: A Q-Analysis of News Editors," Journalism Quarterly 46 (spring 1969): 349-51.
68. Eighty percent of those recognized for inventing something were in the area of aesthetics or entertainment.
69. Hispanics and Asians are also under-represented since they make up only 4% of those chosen.
70. These percentages were based upon the total number of "unknowns" who were coded for the variables in question. The eight "unknowns" whose sex was unclear were omitted.
71. For PEG and nationality (NATLY) differences were significant at the .1 level.
72. For sports, the differences were 17 men (10%) and only 2 women (4%). For science, it was 14 men (8%) and one woman (2%).
73. Gans, Deciding What's News.
74. Jhally and Lewis, Enlightened Racism, 68.
75. Despite recent attention to how pollution intersects with race and class, there was not a demonstrated concern for environmental issues among blacks. In fact, whites were much more likely to be recognized for their work on environmental issues than blacks (5% compared to 0).