Critical review of Frank Esser's Dimensions of Political News Cultures

Frank Esser, Dimensions of Political News Cultures: Sound Bite and Image Bite News in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, The International Journal of Press/Politics October 2008 13: 401-428.

Professor Frank Esser’s 2008 study into the length of sound and image bites in broadcasting in four western democracies forms the statistical basis of an analysis of media coverage in those nations during political election campaigns. This enables him to assess the value of multiple hypotheses made about media and political cultures involved in these countries. Primarily it seeks to test Patterson’s (1993: 74-5) assertion that candidates in countries like the USA have become ‘voiceless’ due to the decline of their verbal input into election coverage and as well as Bucy and Grabe’s (2007) theory that image is becoming increasingly important in political and journalistic cultures due to it subconscious impact upon audiences.

Ultimately this allows Esser to make conclusions about the levels and manner of journalistic intervention in the broadcasting of election campaigns. In professional journalism, the media structure influences the extent of journalistic interventionism in the political structure. This model asserts that interventionism occurs when public opinion is distrustful of political institutions. Media that has achieved a high status of independence, especially from political control, is more likely to be interventionist. Consequently interventionist reports are made up of sound bites of politicians that tend to be rather short whereas those from the journalists tend to be longer. High interventionism in an election campaign also leads to “a smaller amount of election news coverage in general.” Journalists as opposed to politicians or the subject being enabling them to “increase their influence, authority, and prestige.”

The statistical basis of the study was compiled by a multinational team of ‘coders’  categorising material from Germany, France, the UK and the USA in order to calculate the time amounts that feature in tables dedicated to things like news situations and images bites. At times it is missing a miscellaneous option, meaning answers can seem oddly specific and limited especially when it comes to news that is regarded as anti-candidate, where apparently you can only use television editing to be rude in three ways. The quantitative nature of the study also can lead to ambiguities as to the significance of terms such as ‘interventionist’, although this is defined as a time in which a journalist makes professional interpretations it does not state whether this means the news is biased, objective or impartial. Qualitative information is provided in the form of context on occasions, usually to explain exceptions and national uniqueness.

By mapping the television news in these countries, Esser reaches the conclusion that the French media is the most deferential (and ‘civilised’) towards politicians, giving politicians a greater voice and responding more favourably to their attempts to manage the news so they can prepare for a situation. British and German media’s tendency for interpretation in news reports leads to a moderately interventionist broadcasting culture, with the British media being more cooperative to politician’s attempts to manage the news despite using it as a platform to challenge politicians and put them on the defensive. Esser interprets findings about US news culture, with its briefer sound bites, as vindicating Zaller’s theory that high levels of news management leads to a more sceptical and hostile media because the media’s desire for independence. However Esser refutes the suggestion that this means US media is exclusively about confrontational campaigning when it comes to sound bites, noting that there is still ample ‘substance’ within them, which leads him conclude that the US just get to the point quicker.

The study does limit itself to a western-centric analysis and bases its conclusions upon two of the largest channels in those nations, excluding News International channels such as Fox News and Sky News which could have led to a more nuanced view of contemporary western broadcasting. As a result Esser encounters only one exception (Germany’s RTL channel) to his conclusion that organisational differences between market-oriented and public interest-oriented newsrooms do little to determine sound bite usage in news as opposed to national differences.

Bibliography

Bucy, Erik P., and Maria Elisabeth Grabe (2007) ‘Taking Television Seriously: A Sound and Image BiteAnalysis of Presidential Campaign Coverage, 1992–2004’, Journal of Communication 57(4), pp.652–75.
Frank Esser (2008) ‘Dimensions of Political News Cultures: Sound Bite and Image Bite News in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol.13, pp.401-428.
Patterson,Thomas E. (1993) Out of Order,  NewYork: Knopf.