This study examines press independence from the government in the 2009 national health care debate. Through a content analysis examining source expressions, or the words journalists attribute to various people in the news, the study captures the essence of the discourse represented in the news about the debate. This paper also outlines a distinction between various types of autonomy, and offers a new conceptualization of independence. Procedural autonomy, which is autonomy in journalistic norms and routines, does not necessarily result in content autonomy, which is autonomy of viewpoints expressed in the news. In other words, if non-governmental sources say substantially similar things to governmental sources, then the news content is not independent from government influence. This study determines, therefore, whether there is a substantial difference among the various viewpoints expressed by different types of news sources. Using as its framework the indexing theory, which posits that journalists will tie the range of news discourse the governmental elite opinion, this study determines whether some discourse falls outside the range of elite opinion. The results indicate that while the press did heavily focus on governmental elite debate in the health care debate, they made a moderate effort to bring in non-governmental voices and views. Despite this, however, those voices did not represent substantially different views. The exceptions to this rule were experts and, at least in the contentious months of late summer, popular voices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04142010-124602 |
| Date | 16 April 2010 |
| Creators | Barnidge, Matthew Holt |
| Contributors | Scholl, Rosanne, Lawrence, Regina, Kurpius, David |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04142010-124602/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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