Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ph.D.
Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School of Communication. University of Pennsylvania.  The Annenberg Public Policy Center administers, among other things, Political Fact Check, a nonprofit organization which examines the accuracy of U.S. political advertising.

The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists and the Stories That Shape the Political World, by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Review by Alexander Stille in The New York Times, 14 January 2003

The press both covers events and, in choosing what to report and how to report it, shapes their outcome," Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman write in their book "The Press Effect." The authors, the director and associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, respectively, try to prove their point by closely analyzing the way the press handled the 2000 election campaign, the Florida vote controversy that followed and response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Too often, they argue, the press organizes facts into preconceived "frames" or "narratives," which then harden into the way the public sees those events. For example, during the 2000 election campaign, the press decided that the fundamental characteristic of Vice President Al Gore was that he was wooden with a weakness for making up stories to make himself look better. The frame around George W. Bush was whether he was smart enough or experienced enough to be president. Any missteps by Gore were seen as signs of dishonesty, while Bush's verbal miscues were presented as raising questions about his acuity or preparedness.

The authors show that Gore's statement that he had played an important role in the legislation that brought about the Internet (an ordinary, more or less factual piece of political bragging) was quickly transformed into the absurd claim that he had "invented" the Internet, which was then repeated endlessly by journalists who never bothered to check the original quote. But because experience can be remedied while deceitfulness cannot, the authors argue, "the dominant press frame in the 2000 election hurt Gore more than Bush."

Perhaps the book's strongest example of the press influencing events is its handling of the disputed 2000 vote in Florida in which the networks first called the state of Florida for Gore, then called it and the election itself for Bush, only to retract that less than two hours later.

Millions of people went to bed thinking that Bush had won, only to wake up to a contested election. This created, Jamieson and Waldman write, the presumption that Bush had effectively won the election and that Gore was challenging the legitimacy of that victory. This played into the hands of Republicans who tried to portray Gore as a sore loser who was dividing the country.

But the relationship between press and public opinion may be more complex than the book's thesis suggests. As the authors note, many news organizations that expressed a somewhat critical reading of the Bush administration's handling of the Sept. 11 tragedy softened their coverage after being bombarded with angry faxes and calls from viewers and readers. And while the frames used to define Bush and Gore during the campaign may have been crude caricatures of both men, they were not entirely press inventions. They were also shorthand ways of expressing genuine uneasiness that many voters felt with Bush's lack of foreign policy experience and Gore's authenticity

In the end the biggest problem with "The Press Effect" is that it doesn't really attempt a structural analysis of the media in an era of television politics and corporate media. It assumes that the decisions made by individual journalists or broadcasts shape the way we see. But this focus on the professionalism of the individual journalist is itself just a "frame" and one that tends to preclude a more systemic understanding of why the press works as it does.

It is hard not to notice that many of the most egregious examples of bad journalism the authors cite were produced on television news. In an effort to seem objective and evenhanded, they avoid distinguishing between broadcast and print media, referring instead to a single "press effect." Even if one quarrels with their thesis, there is much to be learned from the book's point-by-point analysis and their appeal for higher standards in journalism.

Other Books by Jamieson: Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership (Oxford UP, 1995).  Dirty Politics (Oxford Press, 1992).  Electing the President, 2000: The Insiders' View (2001).  Election Studies: What's Their Use? (2000).  Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking (1990).  Everything You Think You Know about Politics... and Why You're Wrong (2000).  The Interplay of Influence: With InfoTrac College Edition (2001). Partisan Media (Cambridge U Press).  The Presidential Campaign of 2000 and the Foundations of Party Politics (Cambridge U Press).  Presidential Debates: The Challenge of Creating an Informed Electorate (with David S. Birdsell, Oxford UP, 1990). Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good  (with Joseph N. Cappella, Oxford UP, 1997).  Her most recent books are unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (Random House 2007, written with Brooks Jackson), and Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Oxford 2008, written with Joseph N. Cappella), Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words. University of Chicago Press, 2008; Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella,The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Messages Shaped the 2008 Election (released in 2010 by Oxford University Press, and co-authored with Kate Kenski and Bruce Hardy).

Awards, Fellowships, Grants: 

Other Jamieson Web Resources:

*Michael Delli Carpini took over as Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication when Jamieson retired and moved to direct the Public Policy Center.

Created 27 July 2000.  Revised 20 August 2010
Gloria Floren, Letters Department, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive, Oceanside, California 92056.
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