A big part of the way you receive information has to do with not only gatekeeping, like we discussed last week, but also framing. According to McQuail, “framing is a way of giving some overall interpretations to isolated items of fact” (379). Sometimes a newspaper presents a story a certain way that they don’t get their intended point across. For example after running an article entitled For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk, on Thursday February 21, 2008 the New York Times encountered a lot of angry readers because they felt that it was unfair to Senator McCain. In the article the Times claims that many people were concerned about his relationship with a female lobbyist during his first run for president in 2000. It claimed that some of his top advisors were “convinced the relationship romantic.” The paper received so many comments and letters that three days later the public editor wrote an editorial entitled, What That McCain Article Didn’t Say. It stated that the executive editor of the times said “the article about John McCain that appeared in Thursday’s paper was about a man nearly felled by scandal who rebuilt himself as a fighter against corruption but is still ‘careless about appearances, careless about his reputation, and that’s a pretty important thing to know about somebody who wants to be president of the United States’.” But that’s not what a lot of people took away from the article. A lot of people saw it as an article about a sex scandal with a few other things mixed in.
Like McQuail says, “when information is supplied to news media by sources (as much often is), then it arrives with a built-in frame that suits the purpose of the source and is unlikely to be purely objective” (379). The intention of the article was to show that although it may look like Senator McCain has rebuilt himself that might not be entirely true. But a lot of people saw it as a biased article against him. They felt that his relationship with this woman shouldn’t have been the one of the main focuses of the article. The Times claims they weren’t trying to allege that McCain had an affair, but that the point of the story was “that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career.” A lot of readers felt that it wasn’t the Times’ place to talk about this relationship and that they were just trying to plant ideas in people’s minds.
This is an example how a newspaper can frame an issue a certain way and people don’t get the full story, or the story doesn’t come across the way it would have if it was presented by another source. Now here are my questions for you: 1) How effective do you think framing is in planting ideas in people’s heads? 2) Do you think that the New York Times did the right thing by beginning their article by talking about Senator McCain’s relationship with this female lobbyist? 3) Do you think that the candidate’s personal lives are any of our business?
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The article in The New York Times is a perfect example of the use of framing and the effects it has on the audience. In McQuail’s reader he state that, “frames highlight some bits of information about an item that is the subject of a communication, thereby elevating them in salience” (392). Therefore by highlighting the adultery scandal with female lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, the article is framed in the direction that John McCain has problems with ethics. The author is clearly trying to portray McCain in a negative aspect. In Journalism when constructing news pieces your taught to present the topic and the main ideas first going from most to least prevalent. In the article the author begins by stating his topic in the title “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.”
This is the author introducing the main idea and framing that McCain’s “Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” Then the article opens with three paragraphs on the issue of the supposed affair. The next two and half paragraphs then bring up negative scandals in McCain’s career. After that the rest of the article brings up more positive occurrences in the Senator’s political career. In a journalistic view, the author is highlighting the more negative parts of McCain’s career and framing the piece as being in opposition towards the Republican Presidential Candidate.
The article’s frame was presented exactly the way the author intended it to be and the attempt to appease the readers in the follow up article was an attempt to save face. It’s not a question of if the New York Times did the right thing by beginning their article by talking about Senator McCain’s relationship with this female lobbyist. That was their main evidence in the question of McCain’s ethics. Even though they didn’t have sources of who these “top advisors,” but I guess with source confidentiality they don’t need to reveal these names. But as a Media Studies scholar (I love acting like I’m actually someone with importance) I can’t help but be critical.
As for candidates personal lives being any of our business, I believe it’s not. But as media has flourished and news has tag teamed it, we find that getting into celebrities personal lives has great importance to us. We feed on what they do in their personal lives. It has allowed for the regular people of the world, like most of you, to bring celebrities down to earth, and it makes them more personable. For Presidential candidates this is very important. I mean I know I don’t want some robot running our country; I want to make sure they are people and have lives outside dictatorship (joking). By getting into their personal lives it allows me an opportunity to attempt to connect/relate with them.
The NY Times article is a great example of framing because it utilizes sketchy details to totally thrash McCain’s political efforts. The author knows that by highlighting the idea that the politician may have engaged in an adulterous relationship its going to make him out to be a person who is lacking in morality and ethics- defiantly not a plus for someone on the political scene. It’s clear that the article is an open attack on McCain.
I believe that framing is incredibly effective. Unless you are an expert on a particular subject how are you to know whether or not something is the truth. Let’s face it, the majority of people get their news from one or two sources at best, and generally speaking those two sources (because of the reader’s, watcher’s or, listener’s personal preferences) maintain similar political or social stances. Thus, if both of those sources present the same skewed opinion about a person place or event it’s be safe to say that the consumer’s mentality is going to be effected by the media’s influence. Think about the Clinton affair. So many sources reported on it bashing Clinton for sleeping with the ugly intern, calling him a party boy ect…ect… Now anytime anyone mentions the name Clinton it turns into an immediate joke. I’m not saying Billy boy was right for what he did… but come on…Kids these days know who Monica is but don’t have a clue what Clinton’s administration did for this country.
In terms of how the times began their article… First in foremost if you’re going to start your article with a section about an individual’s supposed affair, you’d better realize that everyone is going to think the article is about that affair and nothing else. Why even bother denying it? I just think the writers were being dicks. I mean give us a break! Does anyone really want to know what two old politicians are doing behind closed doors? How would any of us feel if people judged us based on our sexual habits and tried to make every aspect of our personal lives public? I think its nuts that these days our media sources get off on feeding us total garbage. Whatever happened to discretion? Politicians were having affairs 100 years ago but do you think the public had to hear about them? No. Because people then worried about what mattered, what the man was going to do for our country, not who he was doing from the committee.
Personal lives are personal lives, anyway you twist it. What happens behind closed doors should stay there unless those actions constitute some sort of crime. If they don’t, leave them where they lay.
I actually read that article from the New York Times when it first came out and I found it to be pretty controversial myself. First I thought it was weird that the article didn't have much to do with anything political. It was purely speculating the fact that there "might" be a romantic realtionship between McCain and Vicki Iseman and then people close to him were "convinced" that the realtionship was romantic. But there was no proof of anything.
I chose to look past the speculation about McCain's relationship with Vicki Iseman because I understood the actaul point of the article which Alexandra touched on. The article was meant to inform readers about a candidate who is careless about his reputation however that fact only became apparent once I re-read the article which is a practice that many people do not have time or patience for. Therefore, they would have completely missed the point all together while believing that McCain is having an affair during the election. Also, the article begins with the affair, so how could readers not think that the affair is the main focus? In my mind, this particular article was not news worthy, so the Times did not have a reason or the right to report it. However, I do think that we should be somewhat concerned about the personal lives of presidential candidates. I don't really follow politics, but I had to do some research on Ron Paul (who basically has no chance of winning, but is staying in to prove a point)and once I found out about his family values and morals, he became an extremely appealing candidate. However, if a candidate's personal life has nothing to do with the election it should be left out becuase it only stirrs up unnecessary controversy and misinforms the majority of readers.
To refer back to Alexandra's original post, I think that framing plays a huge role in planting ideas in people's heads. This can be proved through our last class session when we watched all of those irrelevent news stories that were put on air because it was a slow news gathering day or week. If I was not a communications major and unaware that the news tends to manipulate things, I would think that it is very important that I find out about a restaurant worker who broke his or her wrist. As McQuail states "Framing involves selection and salience...frames define problems, diagnose cures, make moral judgements, and suggest remedies" (378). If that doesn't sound like a persuasion technique, I don't know what does. Basically, the news tells us what to believe and how to interpret information. Those who are not critical of the news will fall right into this trap. They will be the people running around the grocery store frantically when they hear a snowy weather report on Channel 8.
sorry if im being repetitive, i have a massive headache from reading for my english class that i just couldnt read the other comments and i know my grammar and spelling are going to be bad in this post, again, i apologize
the whole idea of framing is that journalists present a story in a familiar frame of reference... its all about agenda setting and making the public believe that certain aspects of a story are the most important ones. framing is so important, because when you think about the structure of a newscast or the way articles are written, its obvious that the most sensational and attention grabbing issues are right at the beginning, even IF those are the things that are least likely to affect us.
now, i read that article in the nytimes about mccain and about a page in i thought, "well geez they just want to make him look bad". it didnt matter that they actually mentioned some of the positive things he had done, in my mind i saw a man who was involved in scandal after scandal and didnt care about his reputation.
by putting the information about mccains scandals right in the beginning of the article, the author is ensuring that the readers feel negatively about mccain from the beginning.
i generally dont care about politicians personal lives. as long as they arent drug addicts or child molesters or something ridiculous then who cares what it is that they do on their own time. then again, im someone who thinks politics is taken way too seriously and that politicans should lighten up (like huckabee on this weeks snl, the first new episode since the end of the strike).
Posted on behalf of Alyssa Jones:
The New York Times article is a great example of how if you frame a story a certain way then the intentions of the story is overshadowed by the methods in which the story is told. Framing is extremely important in planting ideas in people’s heads. If people think that Senator McCain can not even be faithful to his wife, then how is he going to be faithful to the country? It is a reasonable assumption for people to make because a commitment is a commitment, no matter if you make it to a significant other, or the country. It’s the same as people thinking Hillary Clinton would not make a good president because she can’t even keep her husband in check. Framing the story in a way where people will first question his personal morals and then his professional morals is in my opinion definitely a form of political slander disguised in the venire of a professional and respectable newspaper. It was not particularly object on The New York Times’ part.
I do believe that the candidate’s personal lives are the business of the public because basically being a representative of the public. In my opinion, a true statesman would have nothing to hide, but then again we do live in America. The morals of the candidates should definitely be put into question by anyone who had a valid foundation for such allegations. However, one can not simply inform when it comes to politics, which is where I think The New York Times went wrong. When an article is published that is hurting the reputation of one candidate that is not solely based on their professional records, it could be construed as a bias against said candidate. It is stated in McQuail that, “It is almost unavoidable for journalists to do this and in so doing to depart from pure ‘objectivity’ and to introduce some (unintended) bias” (379). Therefore the story that the New York Times wrote bout McCain should have perhaps been put into the editorial section, where a journalist can write how they truly feel without having to tap dance around ‘objectivity.’
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