While the newspaper op-ed page, the Sunday morning political talk
shows on television, and the evening cable-news television lineup
have an obvious and growing influence in American politics and
political communication, social scientists and media scholars tend
to be broadly critical of the rise of organized punditry during the
20th century without ever providing a close empirical analysis.
What is the nature of the contemporary space of opinion? How has it
developed historically? What kinds of people speak in this space?
What styles of writing and speech do they use? What types of
authority and expertise do they draw on? And what impact do their
commentaries have on public debate?
To describe and analyze this complex space of news media, Ronald
Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley rely on enormous samples of opinion
collected from newspapers and television shows during the first
years of the last two Presidential administrations. They also
employ biographical data on authors of opinion to connect specific
argument styles to specific types of authors, and examine the
distribution of authors and argument types across different
formats. The result is a close mapping that reveals a massive
expansion and differentiation of the opinion space. It tells a
complex story of shifting intersections between journalism,
politics, the academy, and the new sector of think tanks. It also
reveals a proliferation of genres and forms of opinion; not only
have the people who speak within the space of opinion become more
diverse over time, but the formats of opinion-claims to authority,
styles of speech, and modes of addressing publics-have also become
more varied. Though Jacobs and Townsley find many changes, they
also find continuities. Despite public anxieties, the project of
objective journalism is alive and well, thriving in the older, more
traditional formats, and if anything, the proliferation of newer
formats has resulted in an intensified commitment (by some) to core
journalistic values as clear points of difference that offer
competing logics of distinction and professional justification. But
the current moment does represent a real challenge as more and
different shows compete to narrate politics in the most compelling,
authoritative, and influential manner.
By providing the first systematic study of media opinion and news
commentary, The Space of Opinion will fill an important gap on
research about media, politics, and the civil society and will
attract readers in a number of disciplines, including sociology,
communication, media studies, and political science.
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