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David L. Altheide and Robert P. Snow,Media Worlds in the Postjournalism Era (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1991). All page numbers in parentheses refer to this book. Working individually and in tandem, Altheide and Snow have produced a substantial body of work in media studies. See, for example, David L. Altheide,Creating Reality: How TV News Distorts Events (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976),Media Power (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985); David L. Altheide and Robert P. Snow,Media Logic (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979); and Robert P. Snow,Media Culture (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1983).
See Robert E. Park, “News as a Form of Knowledge,”American Journal of Sociology 45 (1940):669–686 and Helen M. Hughes,News and the Human Interest Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940).
The issue of the impact of television news on American politics is much more complex thanMedia Worlds suggests. See, for example, Bruce Buchanan,The Citizen's Presidency (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1987); S. Iyengar, Mark D. Peters, and Donald Kinder, “Experimental Demonstrations of the ‘Not So Minimal’ Consequences of Television News Progress,”American Political Science Review 76 (1982):848–858; Thomas E. Patterson and Robert D. McClure,The Unseeing Eye: The Myth of Television Power in National Elections (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976); and John B. Robinson and Mark R. Levy,The Main Source: Learning from T.V. News (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986).
As Reuven Frank, former president of NBC News, has noted: “Every news story should, without any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display the attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising action and falling action, a beginning, a middle, and an end.” Quoted in Edward Epstein, “The Selection of Reality,”New Yorker, March 3, 1973, p. 41. On the logic and rhetoric of the melodrama, see John Cawelti,Adventure, Mystery, and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
Donald A. Ritchie,Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 2–3.
Frederic T. Smoller,The Six O'Clock Presidency: A Theory of Presidential Press Relations in the Age of Television (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. 3.
Dan Rather, “From Murrow to Mediocrity?”New York Times, March 10, 1985, p. 25.
Mark Hertsgaard,On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988), p. 143.
The Citizen's Presidency, p. 123.
The Citizen's Presidency, p. 123.
In fact, Ronald Reagan's participation in the war was limited to the propaganda front in Hollywood. On Reagan in World War II, see Lou Cannon,President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), pp. 485–490; Haynes Johnson,Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years (New York: Norton, 1991), pp. 45–46; and Gary Wills,Reagan's America: Innocents at Home (New York: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 162–170.
SeeOn Bended Knee, pp. 29–31.
SeeThe Six O'Clock Presidency, p. 103.
See Dick Kirschten, “Communications Reshuffling Intended to Help Reagan Do What He Does Best,”National Journal, January 28, 1984, pp. 154–157 and Steven R. Weisman, “The President and the Press: The Art of Controlled Access,”New York Times Magazine, October 14, 1984, p. 34.
SeeOn Bended Knee, p. 36.
SeeThe Six O'Clock Presidency, p. 104.
On Bended Knee, p. 26. The White House also arranged for television coverage of Reagan opening the International Games for the Disabled at the same time he had succeeded in persuading Congress to cut programs for the handicapped (p. 253). Michael Deaver's ghost-written account of his years at the White House, an otherwise execrable book, provides unintentionally illuminating anecdotes on the fabrication of presidential news. See Michael K. Deaver (with Mickey Herskowitz)Behind the Scenes (New York: William Morrow, 1987).
Donald T. Regan,For the Record (New York: Harcourt, 1988), p. 248.
Peggy Noonan,What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 262.
Neal Koch, “Everyone Has Advice for Murphy, Especially Real-Life TV Journalists,”New York Times, September 29, 1991, section 2, pp. 33–34.
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Oakes, G. Image and reality inMedia Worlds . Int J Polit Cult Soc 5, 439–463 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01423901
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01423901