Framing American Politics. Edited by Karen Callaghan and
Frauke Schnell. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. 264p.
$27.95.
The Mediated Presidency: Television News and Presidential
Governance. By Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 236p. $60.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.
Researchers generally agree that media frames are an outcome of what
Tim Cook (in Making Laws and Making News, 1989, 169) calls a
“negotiation of newsworthiness” between elites and reporters.
The idea is that each side to this exchange brings a set of resources to
bear on the framing of issues and events: Elites control access to
information; reporters control access to the news. Since neither can
exercise complete control over the process, the participants seem destined
to engage in a never-ending struggle. These two recent books buttress and
refine this proposition, and also challenge it in some important
respects.