Beyond Ideology

Beyond Ideology addresses the predominance of television news. As we saw during the September 11 terrorist attack, the news serves a historic and important role. The nightly evening news broadcasts continue to be critical in the mind of leaders, academics and concerned citizens. This work assesses the fairness of the news coverage, prior to 9/11, over a span of almost two decades related to ten national and international issues. A critical concern: Did the television news broadcasts slant the coverage, or is the charge of bias simply based on partisan accusations? This research attempts to rise above partisanship, that is, go beyond ideology in order to focus on cultural influences, if any, that may exist in the network newsrooms. This cultural bias, if it exists, may have been a pattern prior to, and following, September 11.

Specifically, the purpose of this qualitative study is to reinterpret previous research about the ideology of the leading national news media through Aaron Wildavsky's (1987, 1991) cultural theory. In applying Wildavsky's cultural theory, this study will reconceptualize and reinterpret previous media studies to ascertain the specific type of culture the media primarily reflects. Through this analysis, a better understanding of media culture may be developed in order to explain the proper constitutional role of the press. A fundamental goal of this study is not necessarily to expose biases, but, more profoundly, to identify the perspectives or more distinctly, the culture that informs journalists' understanding.