The drumbeat has started. Government is in disrepute because of the media. If only the news were more positive, if only television drama and comedy presented government workers as more admirable, all would be well. The Ford Foundation is spending millions to educate Americans that "government" is not a four-letter word.
Ford is giving out awards to government workers, and funding research to improve the image of government. But it is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the problem faced by the image of government. Ford believes propaganda drives Americans perceptions. Change the image of government, says Ford, and Americans will love it. Now this may work in cases where Americans have no direct contact with events, such as wars in far away lands. But no amount of propganda can overcome personal experience. Contrary to Ford and the new propagandists, anti-government sentiment does not spring from media portrayals, but from the personal interactions of the American population with government agencies over the years. When a citizen has a bad experience waiting on line for his driver's license, he forms a far stronger impression than any television program can offer.
There is no better evidence for this argument than the case of the Post Office. Perhaps no agency has as bad a media image. The very term "postal" has become one to inspire fear and terror. Yet the reality is Postmaster Marvin Runyon turned the agency around -- he made customer service a priority, which made it possible to buy stamps with a credit card, for example -- and the public satisfaction with the agency reached its highest recorded levels in history.
One reason is competition from Federal Express and UPS, which goaded the Post Office to improve its performance in order to stay in business. Competition worked, mail delivery improved, and public satisfaction increased. Today the American public, in poll after poll, says it thinks the Post Office is doing a good job. Yet the media portrayal of postal workers is as negative as it ever was, as complaints about Newman on Seinfeld from Dr. S. Robert Lichter -- in a Ford Foundation-funded study -- reveal.
The research has been praised by columnist Mark Shields, who in a column entitled "Exemplars of Public Service," joins the mob accusing "Hollywood and New York prime-time TV writers and producers" who "paint government as intrusive, inept, and corrupt."
He sings the praises of a couple of firemen and teachers, neglecting to mention, for example, that "intrusive" FBI and police persecuted an innocent man, accusing him of bombing the Atlanta Olympics when he had only been trying to help. Shields seem to forget that it was a visiting tourist, not "inept" secret service agents, who wrestled an armed gunman firing an automatic weapon to the ground in front of the White House. Meanwhile, the police were cowering in their bulletproof guardhouses. Just the other day "inept" military map-readers targeted the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade for destruction. As for "corrupt" government officials, complaints about "corrupt" campaign donations have been a hobby-horse for Shields for years. None of these examples are figments of the imagination of biased screenwriters. (Mention of the Monica Lewinsky scandal is not needed to make this case).
Perhaps no media researcher in Washington is as well-respected as Lichter. He is a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University who has written a number of critical works, utilizing survey research and content analysis, with Smith College professor of sociology Stanley Rothman about what they call "the media elite". Studies from the Center for Media and Public Affairs (which he runs as a Mom-and-Pop research institute with his wife Linda, who holds a doctorate from Columbia) have been cited by liberals and conservatives alike in controversies over the depiction of religion, violence, and political bias.
Although he is a registered Democrat, Lichter has always been careful to maintain nonpartisan credibility, Lichter has shunned identification with direct political activity, unlike some more easily labelled practitioners of content analysis like the Media Research Center, Accuracy in Media, (both right of center) and Fairness in Accuracy in Reporting (left of center). His sociological research has been funded by diverse sources ranging from the conservative Olin Foundation, to the liberal Ford Foundation, to the Catholic Church. If anyone can be said to represent an Establishmentarian, respectable, social-science approach to media analysis, it is Lichter.
Content analysis, which is the speciality of the Center, was developed for studying propaganda. The techniques were used during World War II and the Cold War to decipher messages which may be found as subtexts in journalism or drama about other topics. By closely analyzing the content of a program, the messages can be enumerated, and presumably, counter propaganda can be produced to combat them.
Thus, the technique cannot and does not make any claims to analyzing the quality of a work -- it is quantitative and data based. It is a descriptive technique, not an aesthetic.
Recently, the Ford Foundation paid for the Center to conduct a study of television through the Council for Excellence in Government with the unimaginative but straightforward title: "Images of Government in TV Entertainment."
It found that television drama and comedy have a negative image of government workers -- except for teachers and law enforcement. Especially poorly depicted, per Lichter, are elected officials.
Of course there are many problems when scientists look at entertainment. They ignore basic distinctions, such as those between comedy and drama, for example. Comedy is based on confronting authority figures. Even the Father in Father Knows Best, the gentlest comedy imaginable -- did not know best! That was the source of the humor. Since government employees are often authority figures -- policemen, teachers, and so on -- it is only natural that they will be made fun of, for that is the essence of comedy: lo! how the mighty are fallen. It why one laughs at the pompous gentleman who slips on the bannana peel.
The unspoken assumption behind the work of Lichter and the Ford Foundation is that more positive portrayals of elected officials will increase public approval of this class. It won't. Especially when it comes to politicians. It is more than likely that the television programs reflect a distrust of politicians which is independent of their portrayal in the media. The normal experience of the American electorate with politicians has been one of broken promises.
In the report Lichter and his researcher contrast "negative" television portrayals of politicians with the "positive" perspective of Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," starring Jimmy Stewart. By using this as an example, Lichter gives his game away. Because in Frank Capra's film, Jimmy Stewart is the only honest person in the Senate. He filibusters alone until he loses his voice. He is outnumbered -- to use a social science statistic -- 99 to 1 by corrupt and dishonest politicians. In fact, when Capra screened the picture in Washington, the outraged political establishment of the time voiced strenuous objection.
What Lichter's study shows is a fundamental misunderstanding of media by the political class. They marvelled that Reagan had "teflon" or that Clinton's approval ratings kept going up without understanding that media must touch the hidden cord of human experience in order to work. Strident attacks did not work because they rang false, in the case of Reagan because the people liked his character and in the case of Clinton because the people liked his policies (until the Kosovo war).
Today, one out of five Americans works for the Federal government. Many more work for contractors, state and local governments. The people are intimately aware of how the government works and what it does. They elect politicians and know how political questions affect their lives whether on national issues like affirmative action and abortion or smaller zoning disputes at the local level.
For government agencies and elected officials to increase their approval with the American people, they must do as the Post Office did -- improve their performance. When American citizens experience first-hand better personal service in their interactions with civil servants and politicians, their opinion of them will improve. And comedies about "intrusive," "inept," and "corrupt" civil servants and politicians just won't seem as funny.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)