Role and functions of news media in policy debates regarding taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages
Creators: name: Gesualdo, Nicole
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2019

description: The ways in which the news media contribute to public debate of policies in democratic societies have long been of interest to media scholars. The traditional conception of the news media’s role suggests that they play an important part in informing citizens about policy matters while providing an arena for public debate of policies. This conception has been challenged recently by the changing landscape of the news industry, changes in the way people get and process news, and the ideological polarization of the political system in the United States and other Western democracies—all of which increasingly place the news media in the role of moderator of policy debate. This dissertation seeks to explicate the role of news media in the scope, nature, and dynamics of policy debates that play out in public. This updated conception of the news media’s role goes beyond the traditional idea of journalists as gatekeepers who select the information and policy actors that are presented to the public to consider the part the news media play as legitimizers of policy proposals or positions. Of particular interest is exactly how journalists play this legitimizing role: that is, the range of strategies enacted by journalists and whether those strategies are driven by journalists themselves or by other policy actors who use news coverage for that purpose. This study assesses the legitimacy function in the news media alongside three other functions performed by journalists as moderators of policy debate: informing and engaging news audiences and representing the positions of policy actors. It does so by analyzing a case study of news coverage of a controversial issue: proposals to tax sugar-sweetened beverages in two U.S. cities, Philadelphia and Santa Fe. A total of 528 news reports and opinion pieces from 15 news organizations across national and local media were quantitatively analyzed for evidence of the functions that journalists perform as moderators of policy debate: information, engagement, and representation. Then, content and thematic analyses were performed to identify strategies used by journalists and other actors in news media coverage to confer or diminish legitimacy. Findings suggest that there are three specific strategies that news sources can use to confer or diminish legitimacy, which journalists as gatekeepers allow to play out in the news media; three strategies that journalists themselves can use to legitimize that are external to their gatekeeping role; and one strategy—the use of evidence—that can be pursued both by news sources and by journalists. This research suggests that journalists’ role as moderators of policy debate still hinges in part on the traditional gatekeeping function, but that journalists also play an active role in policy debate through other forms of practice, including finding and presenting evidence, story construction, fact-checking, and editorializing. These findings can advance theory and research into the changing role of the news media in public debate of policies, and they call for additional inquiry into the intentionality with which journalists perform their professional roles, specifically with regard to the legitimizing or delegitimizing of policy proposals, positions, and actors.