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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Embedded Versus Behind-The-Lines Reporting On The 2003 Iraq War, Stephen D. Cooper May 2013

Embedded Versus Behind-The-Lines Reporting On The 2003 Iraq War, Stephen D. Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

A 2003 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that “Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove bias from their reports ... More than half—51%—say that the bias is ‘liberal,’ while 26% discerned a ‘conservative’ leaning. Fourteen percent felt neither phrase applied” (Harper, 2003). Now add to this that even some academicians are finally accepting the idea that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than the population as a whole. However, whether political or other biases (Hahn, 1998) affect news coverage …


Military Control Over War News: The Implications Of The Persian Gulf, Stephen D. Cooper May 2013

Military Control Over War News: The Implications Of The Persian Gulf, Stephen D. Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

News coverage of warfare poses a difficult problem for political systems with a free press, such as ours in the United States. In an era of high-tech weaponry and nearly instantaneous global communications, conflicts are inevitable between the obligation of the press to inform the general public, and the obligation of the military to successfully conduct war. The military’s controls over news-gathering during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War set off a controversy still smoldering during the Haiti occupation of 1994. This paper examines the legal, historical, and technological aspects of this issue.


News Media Objectivity: How Do We Ask The Questions?, Stephen D. Cooper May 2013

News Media Objectivity: How Do We Ask The Questions?, Stephen D. Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

There is a lively and often public debate in progress concerning the objectivity of the news media, or the lack of it Scholars have approached this topic from three distinct angles: content analysis, values, and the economics of the news industry. Their conclusions have varied markedly, apparently guided by their particular frames of reference. This article suggests that while we seem to have lost our fix on objectivity as a measurable attribute of news products, the news work routine of objectivity encourages fairness in our public discourse, and deserves attention in scholarly research.


Privacy And The News Media, Stephen D. Cooper May 2013

Privacy And The News Media, Stephen D. Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

The right of the public to know and the right of the individual to be let alone are inherently in conflict. The origins of these rights are quite different: the former derived from the First Amendment's protection of a free press, the latter in a law journal article published in the late nineteenth century. So, too, has the development of these ideas followed different paths: the former as Constitutional law, the latter as tort law. This article examines the relationship between privacy law and the press. A century ago two lawyers called for legal relief from aggressive newspaper reporters. At …


An Effect Of The Medium In News Stories: “The Pictures In Our Heads”, Stephen D. Cooper May 2013

An Effect Of The Medium In News Stories: “The Pictures In Our Heads”, Stephen D. Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

This study used an experimental design to test for a channel effect in news stories. Four television news stories were recorded off-air, then the narrations were transcribed to form a print news story containing the same words; the broadcast video and the print story were the two treatment levels. Subjects received the stories in one of the treatment levels, and were asked to judge the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of the actors named in the story. Logistic regressions could predict with substantial accuracy the medium in which subjects had received the story from these judgments, indicating a channel effect on their …


A Comparative Framing Analysis Of Embedded And Behind-The-Lines Reporting On The 2003 Iraq War, Jim A. Kuypers, Stephen D. Cooper Mar 2013

A Comparative Framing Analysis Of Embedded And Behind-The-Lines Reporting On The 2003 Iraq War, Jim A. Kuypers, Stephen D. Cooper

Stephen D. Cooper

Although a contested position, we believe that reporters and editors frame the news in a way that reflects their personal feelings and newsroom culture (Kuypers, 1997, 2002, 2005; Cooper, in press). Audiences usually receive their political news from only a few press sources; rarely do they read the original statements of those being reported upon.