A paper by Dieter Buhl, spring 1990 fellow, examines how television from West Germany influenced political developments in East Germany in the 1980s. Buhl’s study suggests that television functioned on at least two levels leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall: it educated people, feeding information from the West into millions of East […]
A paper by Kiku Adatto, fall 1989 fellow, analyzes how televised news coverage of presidential campaigns has changed, and finds that sound bites have been steadily shrinking. The average sound bite, or block of uninterrupted speech, from a presidential candidate fell from 42.3 seconds in 1968 to only 9.8 seconds in 1988, writes Adatto. In
Sound Bite Democracy: Network Evening News Presidential Campaign Coverage, 1968 and 1988 Read More »
A paper by William Lanouette, spring-fall 1988 fellow, provides a case study on the role of the press in nuclear weapons policy. For more than a decade, pieces of a nationwide scandal had surfaced from the vast and sprawling system that produces the U.S’s nuclear weapons as health, safety and environmental stories in local papers
A speech delivered by author and philosopher Sissela Bok, on March 29, 1990, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, as part of the Shorenstein Center’s conference “School for Scandal: Lessons for the Politicians and the Press.” Bok addresses voters mistrust of and disillusionment with government, as well as an obsession with scandal. “At
School for Scandal Read More »
A paper by Lawrence K. Grossman, Visiting Stanton Lecturer, 1987-1988, explores why, despite a high volume of campaign coverage, voter turnout for the 1988 election was at its lowest point since 1924. Grossman argues that the problem is partly television, which distorts the political process through its “conventional mainstream bias,” its role as a medium
Reflections on Television’s Role in American Presidential Elections Read More »
A paper by Judith Lichtenberg, visiting assistant professor, spring 1988, asks why “the character question” has assumed such a central role in presidential politics. Lichtenberg analyzes why we place value on and how we measure “moral goodness, strength of will, judgement and leadership.” Concern with these elusive kinds of questions gives the press a special
The Politics of Character and the Character of Journalism Read More »
Dayton Duncan, spring 1989 fellow, reflects on his relationship with the media during the 1988 presidential campaign, when Duncan served as press secretary for Governor Michael Dukakis’s campaign. He critiques the excessive emphasis that the media placed on polling, the trend toward reporting on character in a way that can emphasize the inconsequential, and the
Press, Polls and the 1988 Campaign: An Insider’s Critique Read More »
The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is a Harvard Kennedy School research center dedicated to exploring and illuminating the intersection of press, politics and public policy in theory and practice. The Center strives to bridge the gap between journalists and scholars, and between them and the public.
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