The Media, the President, and Public Opinion

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Drug Issue, 1984-1991

William J. Gonzenbach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136485824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Using a broadened conceptualization of agenda setting, this volume's objective is to examine the drug issue from mid-1984 to mid-1991 to determine how drug-related issues and events -- both real and fabricated -- and the primary agendas drove the issue over time. Based on this objective, four questions are posed:
* How did the media structure interpretations of drug issues and events?
* How did the president structure public relations interpretations and presentations of issue and event information over time?
* What were the interactions of the drug-issue agendas, the president's public relations agendas, the media, and the public, while controlling the policy agenda and a real-world measure of the severity of the drug problem?
* How did the relationships of these agendas differ during the Reagan and Bush presidencies? These questions were addressed with detailed content analyses of the media agenda over time, the presidential public relations agenda over time, and a multivariate ARIMA analysis of the time series agendas. No previous studies to date have addressed and modeled these agendas simultaneously with ARIMA modeling methods.

Chapter 1

The Drug Issue: Its History, Events, and Issue Type

The road to determine how the media and president have structured interpretations and presentations of drug issue and event information over time and the relationships of the primary drug-issue agendas over time needs to begin by addressing some basic questions. First, what are the key historical pieces that comprised the drug issue from mid-1984 to mid-1991? Second, what do theoretical investigations tell us about the media’s treatment of the drug issue and which theoretical model is best suited to examine this issue over time? Third, how are issues and events defined and measured in agenda setting? Fourth, are there different categorizations of issue types that will theoretically lead to differences in agenda-setting effects? This chapter addresses these four questions as a prelude to this book’s primary objectives.

THE HISTORY OF THE DRUG ISSUE: 1984–1991

Survey data from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan indicate that drug usage actually decreased in 1981; however, the large-scale introduction of crack cocaine in 1985, with its increased purity and low price, led to an increased concern and fear (Johnston, 1989). As an example, total emergency-room mentions of cocaine from the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s Warning Network (DAWN) rose dramatically in the second half of the 1980s (Adams, Blanken, Ferguson, & Kopstein, 1990). Given the impact of crack cocaine, it may be fair to say that the United States did have a drug crisis beginning in 1985, if one accounts for the addictive potential of cocaine, the increasingly dangerous form of crack cocaine, the rapidly increasing rate of casualties, the increased availability and decreasing price of cocaine, and the degree of penetration of cocaine use into the younger population. As Johnston (1989) concluded, “It was admittedly a qualitatively different drug crisis than the one that existed in 1980…marijuana use had especially declined, and use of amphetamines and barbiturates was also down—but more people were at risk of addiction and overdose reactions because of what they were using and how they were using it” (p. 109).

The government had begun to address the drug issue long before the advent of crack cocaine in 1985. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) research from the 1970s and early 1980s indicated that public awareness of the dangers of drug abuse was very low. In 1982, NIDA began to design the “Just Say No” campaign, the objective being to present a drug-free life as the healthy norm for teenagers (Lachter & Forman, 1989). The campaign was formally organized in 1984 and launched in 1985, with the help of Nancy Reagan. The “Just Say No” campaign helped her emerge from a rough start in the White House. By January 1985, she had made 14 antidrug speeches and made appearances supporting the “Just Say No” campaign on PBS’ “The Chemical People,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and the family-targeted situation comedy “Diffrent Strokes” (After a Rough, 1985).

Although NIDA and Nancy Reagan focused their attention on the youth of America beginning in 1984, the media’s major focus concerning drugs was on the drug-related escapades of auto maker John deLorean, who attempted and failed to use a large drug deal to save his failing car company. As an example, The New York Times and the national television networks featured 16 stories in July and 42 in August of 1984 about deLorean.

In February 1985, President Reagan focused part of his State of the Union speech on the drug issue. In line with his minimized government involvement theme, he focused on the elements of care and treatment of addicts by concerned volunteers; however, directly after the speech, U. S. Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique Camarena Salazar was kidnapped and killed by drug lords in Mexico. The event helped aim the spotlight of the media. The networks and The New York Times featured 88 stories on the event during February, March, and April of 1985, and the event focused President Reagan’s attention on relations with Mexico concerning drug importation. In mid-1985, the media’s eye was also drawn to the use of drugs by celebrities, as baseball stars Denny McLain and Joe Pepitone faced drug arrests and British authorities arrested actor Stacy Keach for possession of a controlled substance. Organized crime also entered the media’s spotlight in September 1985 as authorities in New York cracked the “pizza connection,” a $1.6 billion heroin ring concealed in New York pizzerias. However, a conversation between political activist Jesse Jackson and A. M. Rosenthal, executive director of The New York Times, in the fall of 1985 may have been the most important drug-related event of the drug-issues history in the 1980s. Jackson met with Rosenthal to discuss the devastating, destructive forces of drugs, especially cocaine and crack cocaine, on the minority community. Subsequently, The Times assigned a reporter to cover drug-related stories full time and, on November 29, 1985, published its first front-page story on crack, a new form of inexpensive cocaine just beginning to enter the United States (Kerr, 1986; McCombs, Einsiedel, & Weaver, 1991).

The Times’ leadership role and this article set off a barrage of coverage of the drug issue beginning with a Newsweek cover story in March 1986, features by The Times in April about the wide-spread sale of crack, and simultaneous publication on May 18, 1986, of features about drugs in all three of New York City’s major newspapers (McCombs et al., 1991). The newspaper coverage also set the agenda for television, which capped the “‘grand finale’ in this 6-month barrage of drug coverage during 1986” (p. 44) with specials about cocaine on both NBC and CBS in September, including a CBS documentary entitled “48 Hours on Crack Street,” which aired on September 2, and NBC’s “Cocaine Country,” which aired on September 5. On September 23, PBS’ “McNeil/Lehrer News Hour” also featured a 22-minute segment on whether the drug problem was hyped by the media (Reese & Danielian, 1989).

The media coverage of the issue in 1986 was also driven by several political and nonpolitical events. To counter increasing cocaine use among older teenagers and young adults, NIDA developed a multimedia program called “Cocaine, The Big Lie,” which was implemented in two phases, the first in April 1986 and the second in Spring 1988. Needham Harper Worldwide produced 13 public service announcements for the first phase, which aired 1,500 to 2,500 times per month within 75 local television markets, according to the Broadcast Advertisers Report, Inc. (Lachter & Forman, 1989). The second phase of “The Big Lie” program, which began in Spring 1988, targeted messages to high school and college students as well as to families and friends of users.

In early 1986 President Reagan began to focus on the issue of drug testing for government employees, which culminated in 124 stories in The Times and network news between July and September of 1986. This testing focus was also picked up by the business community, as exemplified by the 30 stories in The Times and network news about corporate drug testing in March 1986.

A major drug story of 1986 was the death of Len Bias, a basketball star from the University of Maryland, who died from a crack cocaine overdose in June of that year. The tragedy captured the attention of The Times and the networks, which presented 62 stories about Bias in June and July. Bias’ death, combined with the spread of crack cocaine and President Reagan’s war on drugs, which began in August 1986, heightened the attention on the issue, culminating in Congressional passage of the $1.7 billion Omnibus Drug Bill in December 1986.

In his war on drugs, Reagan turned to the use of the military to combat the importation of drugs, as exemplified by the nearly 60 stories about the use of the military to stop drugs presented by The Times and the networks between July and October of 1986 and an increased focus on the use of U.S. drug enforcement agencies to assist this effort. The events of the summer of 1986 also focused the media’s attention on public opinion about the drug issue, as suggested by the 14 stories in September by The Times and networks about public opinion concerning the drug issue. The percentage of American adults considering drugs to be “the most important problem facing the country” rose from 1–3% to about 10–15% during this time (see Fig. 5.12).

The escalation of attention by the media and President Reagan faded in 1987, and The Times suggested in March 1987 that Reagan’s war had “fizzled.” Conversely, President Reagan claimed, “The tide of the battle has turned, and we are beginning to win the crusade for a drug-free America” (Lichter & Lichter, 1989, p. 2).

Barrett (1990) argued that, as in 1984, the drug issue did not play a major role in the presidential election of 1988. As an example, The Times and networks carried only 64 stories in 1988 specifically concerning the drug issue and the presidential election. However, a study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs that examined media coverage of drugs from January 25 through October 31, 1988, indicated (as does this study’s data) a sharp increase in coverage of the issue in the spring of 1988 (Lichter & Lichter, 1989). Lichter and Lichter suggested that during this time drug abuse became the subject of an ongoing policy debate in Washington, as an election debate waged throughout the country. In addition, public concern increased due to international disputes with Latin American nations like Panama, Mexico, and Colombia. In the spring of 1988, Reagan continued his rhetoric about enforcement, the use of the military, and international relations concerning drugs. During this time, the second phase of “Cocaine: The Big Lie” program took place, with public service messages being targeted to high-school and college students, as well as to families and friends of users.

In early 1988 the media spotlight also began to focus on the relationship between intravenous drug use and AIDS and the emerging voices of citizen groups protesting about the problems associated with drugs, as indicated by 37 articles in 1988 by The Times and the networks about these unofficial “voices” concerned about the drug problem. News about drugs in 1988 was preeminently news about cocaine; marijuana and hashish provided a strong secondary focus, especially after the Reagan administration’s zero-tolerance policy cast greater attention on recreational users. Drug users portrayed on the television news tended to be poor, inner-city Blacks addicted to crack cocaine or heroin and middle- or upper-class suburban White users of cocaine or marijuana. The debate over drugs was one of the top 10 topics covered on TV news during 1988, even after excluding reports that treated drugs in the context of other major stories, such as the election, Panama, and crime news (Lichter & Lichter, 1989).

After George Bush was elected president in November 1988, polls showed drugs were a major concern of the public during the first few months of his administration in 1989, with about 20–25% of American adults citing drugs as “the most important issue facing the country.” Congress had passed a law to establish an office to coordinate and intensify the federal drug effort. President Bush developed his war on drugs, especially in terms of the supply of drugs from Colombia, and appointed William Bennett, the former secretary of education, to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Although drug use actually decreased and leveled off in 1988 (Adams et al., 1990), Bennett immediately urged the President Bush to make drugs America’s “Number 1” priority and coaxed the President to address the American public about the seriousness of the problem on television (Barrett, 1990). Bush addressed the American public—with a bag of crack cocaine in hand—on September 5, 1989. The speech stirred both media interest and public attention. Public opinion polls after the speech indicated that almost two thirds of the American public considered drugs to be the country’s most important problem (“The Other War,” 1990). Television coverage of the issue increased from 2 to 12 drug stories per night; however, the media intensity began to diminish and within a month the networks were again averaging about 2 stories per night. The television coverage after President Bush’s television appearance on September 29 through June 1990 continued to have a heavy portrayal of Blacks using drugs. Only 32% of the drug-related visuals on television showed only Whites and 50% of the visuals showed only non-Whites, most of whom were Black (Lichter & Lichter, 1990).

In early 1990, federal surveys indicated that the casual consumption of drugs was down, as were emergency-room admissions and death rates from drug overdoses (Shannon, 1990). Drugs as a media event seemed to lose their appeal, as indicated by Fox Television’s decision to drop a special presentation, “City Under Siege,” in April 1990. Public consideration of drugs to be the country’s most important problem fell from a high of 66% in September 1988 to 25% in July 1990 (Barrett, 1990) and to around 10% in October 1990 (“The Other War,” 1990). The attention of the press, the president, and the public shifted to matters of economics and the Persian Gulf (Shannon, 1990). Many considered the problem to be a matter of poor, inner-city, Black residents. This “ghettoization” of the problem shifted its importance for the White majority, who no longer saw the problem to be dramatic or devastating (Barrett, 1990). In light of the serious problems of recession, taxes, and the Persian Gulf, the drug issue also seemed to become a difficult, no-win issue for President Bush, and thus he preferred to announce that “we are on the road to victory” and focus his attention elsewhere. Others speculated that the media were doing the same.

THE DRUG ISSUE AND AGENDA INFLUENCES OVER TIME

The rise and fall of the drug issue on the American agenda from 1984 to 1991 may not be as capricious as Barrett (1990) speculated. The history of the drug issue indicates that attention to it from mid-1984 to mid-1991 may have comprised a tangled web driven by information campaigns, the media agenda, the presidents’ public-relations agendas and the public’s perception of the issue. Sociological theory suggests that media and other elements of the community social system mutually influence each other over time regarding social issues and problems (K. A. Smith, 1987). Therefore, key issues to address are what theoretical investigations tell us about the media’s treatment of the drug issue and which theoretical model is best suited to examine this issue over time.

Recent studies about the drug issue suggest patterns in media coverage over time that may be correlated to the trends in public opinion. A study of national media coverage of the drug issue between 1983 and 1987 indicated “a classic pattern: There was a slow initial increase in overall media attention, followed by a shift in emphasis to subject matters of broader interest. Then, interest in drugs increased sharply, peaked, and declined.” The emergence of the drug issue differed from other issues “because the national issue was subjected to strong public information campaigns from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and was exploited to some extent by politicians in 1986 as national elections approached” (Merriam, 1989, p. 21). These influences were accentuated by other events, most specifically the death of Len Bias in June 1986. “Bias’ death posed an almost media-perfect example of the dangers of drug overdose…. Concern for his death matched closely with the concerns national media and government leaders were seeking to present” (p. 21). The issue declined after Bias’ death and President Reagan’s war on drugs (August-October, 1986). The impetus for a reemergence of the issue could have come from the arrival of new drug types or from increased emphasis on drugs from national leaders, both of which did occur (Merriam, 1989).

This change in media emphasis for an issue and its relationship to public attention over time has been examined by several researchers. The natural-history model suggests that social problems progress through historical stages in time once they have been defined as a public issue through mass-media coverage (Downs, 1972). The public-arena model examines the competition among many social problems and their elements as they compete for newspaper column inches and broadcast time (Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988). This model, like the natural-history model, has trouble accounting for issues that remain on the media’s agenda for long periods of time (Rogers et al., 1991). The ecology of news perspective suggests that certain public issues will persist in mass media coverage over relatively long periods of time through the interplay of journalistic and nonjournalistic actors (Molotch, Protess, & Gordon, 1987); however, the researchers did not demonstrate this with cases of prolonged mass-media coverage of public issues (Rogers et al., 1991). The agenda-setting model provides the best way to examine the relationships of agendas concerning an issue and the pattern of an issue over time because it subsumes both natural-history models and public-arena models of public-issue development and relies on both the idea of cyclical change in attention to issues and the idea of competition between issues as a determinant of change.

THE ROLE OF EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF AN ISSUE

Another primary question that must be addressed in any agenda-setting study is “What is an issue?” Agenda-setting research has studied a wide range of issues, but little care has been given to defining exactly what an issue is (Rogers & Dealing, 1988). An important way to conceptualize an issue is by distinguishing issues from events. An event is defined as discrete happenings that are limited by space and time, and an issue is defined as involving cumulative news coverage of a series of related events that fit together in a broad category (Shaw, 1977). Rogers and Dearing (1988) concluded that “events are specific components of issues” (p. 566). As an example, the drug-related death in 1986 of college athlete Len Bias was a news event that helped put the drug issue on the national agenda, even though total drug use in the American public was declining during the period.

This distinction between issues and events is the foundation for determining how new information affects the restructuring of the media’s agenda over time. If journalists do not have new information about an issue, news coverage will stop. This new information, or event information as it is referred to in this book, is necessary for news gatekeepers to consider an “old” issue newsworthy, and the new information must allow journalists to restructure the issue in a new light. When the frequency of monthly media coverage of an issue is plotted over time, the plot is usually a recurring (and sometimes exponential in growth) cycle, with each cycle, or portion of the cycle, representing a restructuring of the issue via event information: “The over-time content of the medi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Drug Issue: Its History, Events, and Issue Type
• 2 Measuring Agendas and Agenda Relationships Over Time
• 3 Conceptual Considerations and Measures
• 4 The Media’s Structuring of the Drug Issue
• 5 Presidential Public Relations, Federal Expenditures, Real-World Cues, and Public Opinion
• 6 ARIMA Modeling and Analysis of the Drug Issue Agendas
• 7 The Drug Issue, 1984–1991: Conclusions and Implications
• Appendix A: Summary of Public Opinion Surveys
• Appendix B: ARIMA Modeling and Analysis
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index