Chapter Three:
The News Media and Nonmarket Issues
True/False Questions:
1) The news media plays an important role in the identification of nonmarket issues.
2) Although the news media plays an important role in a democracy, its exposure of
nonmarket business issues is minimal.
3) The media has a responsibility to report the world as it sees it whether or not it is
unbiased and accurate.
4) Edmund Burke called reporters the “Fourth Estate” (the fourth branch of
government) and the editors and journalists the “officeholders” of the institution.”
5) Media coverage can raise concerns about the policies and practices of firms
6) Media coverage can increase the costs of collective nonmarket action.
7) The theory of news media coverage and treatment uses the organization as the
unit of analysis.
8) One form treatment can take is a straightforward presentation of facts and
description of events.
9) Assessing intrinsic audience interest in issues such as international trade policy
and product safety generally lies in the domain of measurement rather than
judgment.
10) The societal significance perspective views coverage and treatment as a reflection
of the news media’s perception of the importance of the issue to society.
11) Nike painfully learned the cost of its handling of overseas workers when couched
as a social significance perspective.
12) In combining the two theories of intrinsic audience interest and social
significance, treatment depends more on audience interest while coverage
depends more on social significance.
13) The theory of media coverage and treatment gives extensive coverage to business
matters and moderate coverage to environmental issues and individual rights.
14) An issue is also more newsworthy if it has a degree of urgency or immediacy such
as linking the burning of the Amazon rainforests with global climate changes.
15) Celebrities are often used to bring attention to issues such as Meryl Streep and the
Alar issue.
16) Cost is no object for the media when obtaining information and producing a story.
17) Most news organizations are owned by for-profit companies where profit is a
primary objective.
18) Media decisions are made by the people who choose journalism as a career.
19) Some feel that because large organizations now own more organs of the media
that journalistic principles can be compromised by or dissipated by business
monetary needs.
20) The media covers every issue under the same criteria, which are treated under
controls and editorial standards.
21) There is no consensus on preferring less pollution to more pollution and there is
no agreement on how to deal with the issue.
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22) The public widely views the media as biased.
23) When the writer of a news story and the protagonists in the story disagree on
coverage, it can create a sense of bias from the protagonists’ point of view.
24) One of the six elements of an effective media strategy is “the medium is the
message.”
25) Media strategies guide interactions with the media and communications with
stakeholders and the public.
26) On many issues, especially the nonmarket ones, business invites coverage so that
the public knows what they are doing.
27) The publisher of a major newspaper stated three cardinal rules in terms of good
advice for media interviews: “Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Always remember the
first two.”
28) Under the Hewlett-Packard credo for dealing with the media is, “assume
everything you say is ‘on the record.’”
29) The subjects of news coverage at times perceive stories to be incomplete,
inaccurate, or unfair.
30) The First Amendment of the Constitution provides strong protection to the news
media.
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Multiple Choice Questions:
31) Which of the following roles does the news media play in nonmarket issues?
a) Identification of nonmarket issues
b) Nonmarket actions associated with the nonmarket issues
c) The progress of nonmarket issues through life cycles
d) All are media roles
32) Media coverage can do all but which of the following?
a) Alert the public to nonmarket issues
b) Raise concerns about the policies and practices of firms
c) Increase the costs of nonmarket actions by interests
d) Provide information
33) The National Resources Defense Council campaign on Alar used which of the
following media strategies?
a) The use of political entrepreneurship
b) Repetitious use of its message about Alar
c) The hiring of a communications firm to work with the media
d) All of the above were used
34) Because of the importance of the news media, firms and their managers must
_______which issues will attract media coverage and how the media will treat
them.
a) Create
b) Control
c) Anticipate
d) Announce
35) Treatment of information takes several forms. Which of the following is not
included?
a) A straightforward presentation of facts and description of events
b) Advocacy of a course of action
c) An interpretation of the facts and events
d) A biased assessment of the information
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36) Advocacy journalism is usually restricted to which page of the newspaper?
a) Editorial
b) Front
c) Business
d) Sunday insert
37) The Intrinsic Audience Interest Theory of news coverage is based on which of the
following premise(s)?
a) The news media organizations are owned by for non-profit firms
b) That coverage and treatment decisions are governed by revenue considerations
c) That coverage increases with audience interest
d) That the explanatory power of the theory comes primarily from the supply side
38) According to the intrinsic audience interest theory, the more proximate the
consequences, the ____ the audience interest.
a) Greater
b) Lesser
c) More constant
d) More unconnected
39) The societal significance perspective of news media coverage is based on which
of the following premise(s)?
a) News media responds to its own perception of the significance of an issue to
the society
b) Coverage is a function of the news media perception as judged by the news
media
c) Income distribution and social tensions are high on the social significance
dimension
d) All the above are important premises
40) The special role that the media has in a democracy is what?
a) The duty of not taking sides
b) The duty of serving the people’s right to know
c) The duty of serve the government’s perceptive
d) The duty to print what they want
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41) The societal significance perspective of news media coverage assumes the
following roles, except:
a) Maintaining democracy
b) The First Amendment protects the news media in assuming its role in the
society
c) Informing citizens of unjust behavior
d) Protecting the government, the president and the Congress from themselves
42) Using the Audience Interest/Societal Significance continuum, which of the
following rates highest on both?
a) Poverty
b) Environmental protection
c) International trade
d) The economy
43) Which of the following makes an issue more newsworthy?
a) The degree of urgency
b) A celebrity being involved with an issue
c) If the issue contains controversy or conflict
d) All are correct answers
44) According to well-known journalist Edwin Newman, “What is news on television
often depends on_____________?”
a) What the editor wants covered
b) Where your reporters and cameramen are
c) What the month is
d) What you covered last
45) In the United States new media organizations are:
a) Primarily funded by the government.
b) For-profit companies.
c) Nonprofit entities.
d) Owned by foreign investors.
46) Journalist are generally perceived on which end of the political spectrum?
a) Liberal
b) Middle of the road moderates
c) Socialists
d) Conservatives
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47) Under what circumstances might the media adopt an advocacy approach?
a) When executives, producers, and correspondents all share the same view
b) When the public demands such as stance
c) When they cannot think of another way to get through to the public
d) When the First Amendment is enforced
48) Any citizen has recourse to the law in a case of media coverage by injecting the
law of defamation. Which of the following statements is not a valid interpretation
of the law?
a) It could be used in case of a false statement made to a third party that damage a
person’s reputation
b) Human beings and legal entities as corporations are considered persons
c) Slander and libel are forms of defamation
d) Only statements made in public are admitted as basis for legal action
49) The rationale for the standard enunciated in the New York v. Sullivan is based on
which of the following bases?
a) No exception to the right of all individuals to retain their rights to privacy
b) When individuals participate in “public” activities, they lose a degree of their
privateness
c) The publicness of a plaintiff may not pertain to private citizens who appear in
public
d) None of the above rationale is correct
50) Which early founder of democracy said the following: “Were it left to me to
decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers
without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter,”?
a) George Washington
b) John Adams
c) Thomas Jefferson
d) Benjamin Franklin
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Essay and Review Questions:
1) Write an essay outlining the role of the news media in market and nonmarket
issues. Give examples to explain each role focusing on the Alar episode.
2) Discuss and explain the theory of the news media using the variables of intrinsic
audience interest and societal significance. Use specific examples such as the
recent fraud in Corporate America and the coverage by the media.
3) As a private citizen, do you have any recourse in disputes with the media?
Explain such recourse, its limitations and problems. Use history, legal arguments
and facts in your analysis.
4) Give examples of the relationship between news media and the business sector.
Assess the effects of both on the society at large and its social fabric. Use the case
of Procter and Gamble and General Motors in your analysis.
5) What role does the news media play in our political system and what are its
constitutional foundations? Give examples and include court cases in your
analysis.
6) Discuss and critique the news media as an industry. What are the various roles
played by the participants in the news industry? How does management differ
from journalists in their perspectives on what constitutes the who, what, where,
and why of a story? Who and what controls the media in the 21st century and
why?
7) Identify and discuss the six elements of an effective media strategy. Use the case
of Illinois Power Company (A) for your analysis.
8) How would you assess Hewlett-Packard Corporation’s 12 guides for conducting a
media interview? List at least 6 of the guides and discuss how they might be
applied to a specific instance such as the Alar case.
9) What were the key media issues in the case of Procter and Gamble? What did you
think of each of the parties and how they handled themselves? Using the chapter
as a guide, what advice would you have given to Procter and Gamble? Be specific
in your responses.
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10) You are the editor of a major newspaper. Your reporters have just uncovered
damaging information on the handling of nuclear waste by the firm hired to move
the waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The President seems to be involved with
the firm in some illegal way. However, he is now in the Middle East nearing a
settlement on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. You are aware that publishing
anything damaging at this time about the President might set back if not totally
derail the peace conference in the Middle East. But what about your duty to the
people’s right to know? What would you do and why?