Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Television News: A Critical Link between the Supreme Court and the American Public
- 2 The Supreme Court Beat: A View from the Press
- 3 Television News and the Supreme Court: Opportunities and Constraints
- 4 A Tale of Two Cases: Bakke and Webster
- 5 A Tale of Two Terms: The 1989 and 1994 Court Terms
- 6 “The Supreme Court Decided Today …” – or Did It?
- 7 Which Decisions Are Reported? It's the Issue, Stupid!
- 8 Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That's Fit to Air?
- Appendix: Schedule of Interviews
- Notes
- References
- Index
8 - Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That's Fit to Air?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Television News: A Critical Link between the Supreme Court and the American Public
- 2 The Supreme Court Beat: A View from the Press
- 3 Television News and the Supreme Court: Opportunities and Constraints
- 4 A Tale of Two Cases: Bakke and Webster
- 5 A Tale of Two Terms: The 1989 and 1994 Court Terms
- 6 “The Supreme Court Decided Today …” – or Did It?
- 7 Which Decisions Are Reported? It's the Issue, Stupid!
- 8 Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That's Fit to Air?
- Appendix: Schedule of Interviews
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
“Television … provides little more than a headline service for news … which mirrors the world like the curved mirrors at the county fair. Reality is reflected, but it seems badly out of shape and proportion.”
Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics“I think the network television coverage of the Supreme Court has atrophied to the point that it's not informing the public very much about what's going on.”
Fred Graham, former Supreme Court reporter for CBS News“Of course the news media can contribute to a more democratic society. The job of the press is to help produce a more informed electorate. A more informed citizenry will create a better and fuller democracy.”
Michael Schudson, The Power of the NewsOur inquiry began with the recognition that a democratic polity presupposes meaningful linkages between governmental institutions, the political elites who staff such institutions, and the mass public that is governed by these institutions. In the American context such linkages are most readily seen, perhaps, in the systematic operation of free and open elections that, the theory goes, make the institutions and the elites who govern through them “accountable” to the mass public. One key ingredient in this recipe for the democratic brew, of course, is the recognition that a free flow of meaningful information is critical for the mass public if their efforts at assessing governmental behavior and assuring accountability have any hope of being the product of informed and reasoned judgments.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Television News and the Supreme CourtAll the News that's Fit to Air?, pp. 230 - 244Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998