Table 7. Changes in Voters' Issue Awareness for Level of Exposure to Televised -29 awareness. However, the effects of television news, newspapers, and televised ads are unequal and occur among different groups of voters. Taken as a whole, our analyses result in two major findings. First, the impact of television news is, at best, very modest, while both newspapers and televised political ads have a clear impact on voters. Second, all three information sources show clear effects only in the absence of high exposure to one or both alternative sources. Of the two news sources, level of exposure to televised news has less impact than level of exposure to newspapers. Considering all voters, level of television news exposure is unrelated to changes in voters' issue awareness, while level of newspaper exposure is strongly related to such changes. Additionally, the magnitude of change is less among those with high television news exposure than among those with high newspaper exposure. Level of exposure to television news has a significant impact on issue awareness only when newspaper exposure is low. Then, high television news exposure voters show almost twice as much change as low television news exposure voters. However, the effects of high newspaper exposure under comparable conditions is even greater. When television news exposure is low, high newspaper readers show three times as great a gain as low newspaper readers. Also, the magnitude. of change for high newspaper readers is (+46.8), the largest gain shown in any of the tables. Across all voters, level of exposure to televised political advertising is clearly related to increased issue awareness. High advertising exposure voters show substantially more gain than those with low advertising exposure, and, if anything, the data underestimate televised advertising effects. However, on closer examination, the effects of televised ads are not evenly spread throughout the electorate. High advertising exposure has its greatest influence on the issue awareness of voters with low exposure to television news and newspapers. This fact gives added importance to televised ads as an information source. News exposure is highly stratified--voters attending to either television news or newspapers are also likely to attend to the other news source, and voters who ignore one of these news sources are likely to ignore the other. But exposure to televised political advertising is largely unrelated to news exposure--64 percent of the low newspaper readers and 59 percent of the low television news watchers have high advertising exposure. Consequently, televised ads have the important ability to reach the many voters with low exposure to these major news sources. -31 Section IV. TELEVISION AS A SOURCE OF VOTER INFORMATION The data indicate only the contributions made by television news, newspapers, and televised ads to voters' issue awareness. The data do not indicate "why" these three sources made these particular contributions. In this section, we want to present additional data and offer several observations that may account for media impact. Because this paper is concerned primarily with the television medium, the focus will be on television news and televised political advertising. Television News as an Information Source Television news had minimal impact upon voters' issue awareness primarily because it gave little coverage to candidates' issue positions. Except for coverage of the Paris peace talks and Watergate, television news was largely devoid of this type of content. For example, the average network gave only five minutes total coverage to George McGovern's stands on the pocketbook issues of inflation, unemployment, and taxes. The meager issue content of television news contrasts sharply with the more complete coverage newspapers gave candidate issue positions. Even alongside the content of televised political ads, television news had minimal issue content. Not only did television news give less time to the average issue than televised ads, but fewer issue positions were heavily covered on television news. Thus, the differences in voter impact between television news and the other sources reflect a simple fact: mass media audiences cannot learn information which the source does not include in its content. Television news starts with severe limitations as a source of voters' issue information. The words spoken in the audio channel of a television newscast will not fill the space on the front page of a newspaper. Since its coverage of candidates' issue positions necessarily occurs primarily through its audio channel, television news faces considerable difficulty providing extensive coverage of issue positions. This drawback is compounded by television news' apparent preference for campaign "hoopla" over campaign issues. Considering only news stories originating on the campaign trail, television seems more concerned with crowd size, voter enthusiasm, hecklers, motorcades, and candidate popularity than with what the candidates are saying. In coverage of stump campaigning during the 1972 general election, the average network spent only 38 percent of its news airtime on issue coverage. The major reason for this news approach seems apparent. Herbert Gans has noted that "TV will not ignore an important story that does not lend itself to filming, (but) above all, TV news must have a dramatic quality. This means action, people doing something, preferably involving disagreement, conflict or adventure." The considerable news time given campaign activity has an interesting and revealing effect on viewers. While some viewers probably prefer footage of campaign activities to reports of issue stands, there is a day-to-day sameness to campaign activity footage. On camera, crowds and rallies in Pittsburg look the same as those |