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Economic stimulus package reported from elite perspective
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Media scholars have long argued that mainstream journalism reports public affairs from within parameters established by elite power.
When major legislation or government policy is up for debate, the argument goes, reporters focus more on the impact such legislation will have on policymakers than the effect that may be felt by the general public.
One indication that this argument may be correct can be found in today's front-page story in the Washington Post.
The story, "Senate Lacks Votes to Pass Stimulus," reports that the Democratic majority in the Senate does not have the 60 votes needed to stop a Republican attempt to block the $900 billion measure unless major changes are made in the bill.
In the second paragraph of the story, the Post reports that "the legislation represents the first major test for President Obama and an expanded Democratic Congress, both of which have made economic recovery the cornerstone of their new political mandate."
In other words, rather than focusing on regular people and the impact that congressional gridlock will have on the unemployed, housing foreclosures and other problems real citizens are facing, the Post framed this story as a power struggle between elites in Washington -- namely, Republicans and Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
To the Post and most other Washington reporters, the question to ask is, how will this legislation impact Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress in their fight against the Republican minority. A major question that goes unaddressed is, how are ordinary Americans doing while elites in Washington fight.
This is not to say that the American press ignores average people. There have been several stories in the Post and other publications that have explained how the recession is affecting workers, homeowners and others. In fact, the Post ran an interesting piece last week on foreclosures in the Washington, DC, region.
But the majority of news reports in American newspapers and television stations come from an elite perspective. This has been documented as far back as the 1970s, when media scholar Leon Sigal wrote in his book Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking that reporters rely heavily on government officials for most of their stories about public affairs. Sigal's study has been supported by other scholarship throughout the past 30 years.
The press needs to do a better job of recognizing this problem and to broaden the perspective from which these Washington stories are told. The stimulus package has much more to do with the economy at large than the political bickering in the capital.
