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Soviet and American News: Week of Intensive Interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ellen Mickiewicz  and
Gregory Haley
Ellen Mickiewicz
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science at Emory University
Gregory Haley
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science at Emory University
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Extract

In 1940, there were only 400 television sets in the Soviet Union. By 1950, there were 10,000; a decade later, some 4.8 million. Then in the five years between 1965 and 1970, the availability of television sets more than doubled, and by 1976, Soviet industry was producing 7 million sets annually. In 1960, only 5 percent of the Soviet population could watch television, but by 1986 that figure had risen to 93 percent, and television signals could be received in more than 86 percent of the territory of the U.S.S.R. Nearly all the households that are unable to receive television are in sparsely settled rural areas, mainly Siberia.

Although television is a relative newcomer to the Soviet media system, it has exerted an enormous effect on leisure time use. It has also reoriented patterns of information acquisition. Of the events in the world abroad covered by the Soviet media 86 percent are known to people through television, 77 percent through the newspaper, and 62 percent from radio.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 214 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1987

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References

The first author wishes to thank the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation for support of this research, which forms part of a larger project.

1. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 1922–1972 (Moscow, 1972), p. 314.

2. Sredstva massovoi informatsii ipropagandy (Moscow, 1984), p. 3.

3. “Tekhnika televideniia i radioveshchaniia v 12-i piatiletke,” Govorit i pokazyvaet Moskva, 1May 1986, p. 19. In the United States, 98 percent of all households have at least one television set.

4. See Ellen Propper Mickiewicz, Media and the Russian Public, chap. 3, “Television and theDisplacement of Time and Values.” The patterns of leisure time use and the changes they haveundergone since the introduction of television are remarkably similar to those in the west.

5. Iushkiavichius, G., “Televidenie i radioveshchanie v novykh usloviiakh,” Radio, no. 10 (1985), p. 1.Google Scholar

6. T. F. Iakovleva, “Obespechenie vzaimosviazi khoziaistvennykh organizatsionnykh zadach vperspektivnykh planakh ideologicheskoi raboty, Voprosy teorii i metodov ideologicheskoi raboty, vol.13 (Moscow, 1981), p. 60. Since Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary the changes in televisionprogramming have been numerous, and many are dramatic departures from the past. The presentstudy is concerned with international news on Vremia during a period of high Soviet and UnitedStates interaction. For a summary of recent changes in the broad spectrum of Soviet televisionbroadcasting, see Mickiewicz, Ellen, “The Soviets Are Seeing More, Including News of the U.S.,” The New York Times, 22 February 1987, pp. 29, 34.Google Scholar

7. Larson, James F., Television's Window on the World: International Affairs Coverage on the U.S. Networks (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1984), p. 7 Google Scholar.

8. For a discussion of this and other models of media effects, see McLeod, Jack M. and Becker, Lee B., “Testing the Validity of Gratification Measures through Political Effects Analysis,” in The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research, ed. Blumlerand Elihu Katz, Jay G. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1974)Google Scholar.

9. Robinson, Michael J. and Sheehan, Margaret A., Over the Wire and On TF (New York: RussellSage, 1983, p. 12 Google Scholar.

10. See, for example, Andrew Semmel, “The Elite Press, Foreign News, and Public Opinion,” paper prepared for delivery at the International Studies Association Annual Meeting, 21–24 March1979, Toronto.

11. See Mickiewicz, Ellen, “Policy Issues in the Soviet Media System, ” The Soviet Union in the 1980s, ed. Hoffmann, Erik P. (New York: Academy of Political Science, 1984)Google Scholar.

12. See, for example, Westin, Av, Newswatch (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982 Google Scholar. For adiscussion of the trend on CBS toward personalization of the news and developing stories outside theNew York-Washington axis, see Michael Massing, “Sauterizing the News,” Columbia Journalism Review, March-April 1986.

13. Because of the priorities of the fall football season, ABC does not broadcast its regularevening news on Saturday. Therefore, for that day we have only the CBS news. CBS, on the otherhand, does not broadcast a regular evening news edition on Sunday.

14. For a discussion of the theory of the “newsworthy,” see Mickiewicz, “Political Communicationand the Soviet Media System,” Media and the Russian Public, pp. 34–65.

15. This attitude is not true in other media: for example, some of the most popular films concernthe work, portrayed as heroic, of Soviet spies (often in World War II).

16. For a recent breakdown of the figures, see Elaine Sciolino, “Report Shows US Was Outvotedin the UN Through Most of 1985,” The New York Times, 4 July 1986, p. 4.

17. A good discussion of this narrative unity and the European practice of presenting unconnectednews bites is found in Hallin, Daniel C. and Mancini, Paolo, “Speaking of the President,” Theory and Society 13 (1984): 829–850 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.