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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Beyond The Party-Group Continuum: Massachusetts Interest Groups In The 1980s, John C. Berg
Beyond The Party-Group Continuum: Massachusetts Interest Groups In The 1980s, John C. Berg
New England Journal of Public Policy
Studies in the 1960s determined that Massachusetts had strong parties and weak interest groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, as the Republican Party shrank, party competition declined, conflict with the Democratic Party grew, and interest groups gained more importance — and probably will remain important despite the Republican gains of 1990. However, group conflict and citizen mobilization, including increased use of the initiative and referendum, create a situation of interest-centered conflict rather than interest-group dominance as traditionally conceived. This article, based on a 1987 survey of state legislators and legislative aides, plus a summary of recent Massachusetts political history, assesses …
Media Images Of Boston's Black Community, Kirk A. Johnson
Media Images Of Boston's Black Community, Kirk A. Johnson
William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications
In their efforts to report on the forces that affect Boston's racial climate, the local media have typically focused on the more obvious institutional actors: businesses, city hall, school boards, churches, the courts, neighborhood groups. Rarely have the media themselves been subjected to the same scrutiny. This study represents one such effort It is an analysis of the images of Boston's black community that are conveyed through the local news media. It asks the question: If a Bostonian relied solely on the local news for information about local blacks, 1) what impressions would he or she be left with, and …
Media Images And Racial Stereotyping, Kirk A. Johnson
Media Images And Racial Stereotyping, Kirk A. Johnson
Trotter Review
To better understand how the local media portray Boston's black community, I monitored news reports from a sample of newspapers and radio and television stations for one month during the summer of 1986. I noted the roles blacks played, the activities blacks were shown to be engaged in, and the events that brought blacks into the news. By comparing the portrayal of blacks in Boston's major media with portrayals in the black media, I sought to understand the criteria that reporters and editors use to judge the newsworthiness of items relating to the black community, and to determine whether (and …
Boston School Desegregation: The Fallowness Of Common Ground, Robert A. Dentler
Boston School Desegregation: The Fallowness Of Common Ground, Robert A. Dentler
Trotter Review
This essay scrutinizes the book by J Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, to assess whether it presents a valid and reliable account of the issues, people, and events it chronicles. The substantive core of the book is shown to be the politics of Boston public school desegregation. The parts played by the three families in this event are dramatically portrayed but cannot be corroborated and are not interpreted. The parts played by five major policy leaders, when tested against other evidence, are found to be distorted, questionable legends woven in …
Editor [Submitted To A Boston Daily], Mary Helen Washington
Editor [Submitted To A Boston Daily], Mary Helen Washington
Trotter Review
Many people in the black community (I among them) strongly object to the "Frontline" documentary, "Street Cop," which was shown on Channel 2 on March 31. But I have even stronger objections to Ed Siegel's review of "Street Cop," which commends the show as "street smart" and dismisses all the serious criticisms of the show from the black community as "not convincing." I am not exactly sure why "street smart" has such a sterling quality for Siegel, but it is disturbing that such a criterion would take precedent over the criticisms that the program stereotypes blacks and Hispanics and misrepresents …
"Street Cop" Is Not Street-Smart, Kirk A. Johnson
"Street Cop" Is Not Street-Smart, Kirk A. Johnson
Trotter Review
"Frontline," the award-winnnng WGBH-TV series, is airing a nationally televised special on the war against street drugs. The show, called "Street Cop," takes viewers to Boston's inner city for fifty minutes of heart-pumping violence. We see the police take a sledgehammer to an apartment door in search of drugs as the women and children inside scream in wide-eyed terror. We watch police officers wrestle a young man to the pavement over a suspected drug deal, and we feel the tension mount during a domestic argument until in the confusion a woman is arrested for throwing what an officer thought was …
Cable Television In Massachusetts, Padraig O'Malley
Cable Television In Massachusetts, Padraig O'Malley
John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications
Today the electromagnetic spectrum is crowded with signal traffic used for just about every conceivable communications purpose, ranging from standard navigational time signals at the Very Low Frequency band to satellite communications at the Superhigh Frequency band. Between these two frequency extremes there are five other frequency bands — Low Frequency, Medium Frequency, High Frequency, Very High Frequency, and Ultra High Frequency — each of which can accommodate only a limited number of uses, and each of which is better suited for some uses than for others. Because the spectrum was, like oil, once believed to be in almost unlimited …