The Power of Television Coverage

Stephanie Greco Larson opens this section with a chapter on social movements and the media, saying "social movements try to use the mass media to broaden the scope of conflict" (145). She goes on to discuss the different ways social movements are executed and the impact media has on its success. Larson mentions that social movements are not important news coverage She then makes an interesting point saying that "an ideological explanation for why social movements do not get the kind of coverage they seek is that their goals are critical of the values held by the mainstream media" (147). She also mentions the "issue attention cycle" which she says helps explain the changes in coverage. "There is an inevitable cycle of attention paid to issues in the media and by the public....the public's interest is stimulated by the media's alarmed discovery of a problem. Enthusiasm in the public and the press for finding a solution to the problem is intense and short lived, lasting until they grow discouraged and bored and move on to another problem. When social movements organize events that are considered newsworthy (during the discovery and euphoria phases), they have a better chance of getting coverage" (150).


In the next chapter, she moves into the impact of the media on the civil rights movement."Research into news coverage of particular civil rights events reveals a messier version of the media-civil rights movement relationship than which has been mythologized. Systemic content analysis of national and local media illustrates that actions seen today as unambigiously right or wrong were not presented that way at the time. While some coverage promoted black activists' goals and actions, much of the news ignored, criticized or even demonized them...Not only did the parallel and mainstream press differ, but so did national and local coverage. At times, the three major national news magazines, Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and the World Report interpreted events differently" (152). Larson talks about the importance media held in the civil rights movement because TV was able to put faces and pictures to the stories heard round the nation and got the word out about the injustices experienced by African Americans. She said that with these images "it forced Congress to act".


In the chapter entitled "Native Americans, Chicanos, and Asian Americans", Larson claims that "media coverage of other racial minority groups movements is not remembered according to a particular conventional wisdom" (178). She makes an interesting point that other than the civil rights movement, Americans don't realize there were other social movements involving minorities. Discussing the Native American movement, Larson talks about the stereotypes that played into news coverage, as news depicted Native Americans as "militant"and how they also typically avoided any events that took place on reservations (179). The biggest event in the movement was the Battle at Wounded Knee. This event had the most coverage, Larson saying that "it received more coverage during the first week than Indian activism had received in a decade" (182).The media portrayed the Indians as violent, categorizing the group into one blanket stereotype. Larson mentions next that not much is known about the Chicano movement, because there was not enough coverage of the event. And the same was said of the hispanic movement, that little coverage was given. She wraps up talking about the dramatic love of the media and how they will focus on the events that bring more drama or put some twist on them to make them more dramatic.