Tacit Consent: The American News Media and Minority Tyranny

http://www.morganweiland.us/2006/05/thesis-paper/

Building on my studies of the relationship between the American media and the government, I focused my senior thesis on the American media's coverage of the the lead-up to the War in Iraq.

I expanded upon existing academic models of public opinion formation by incorporating theories of minority tyranny to argue that the government—not the mass media—is the minority group with which public opinion formation begins. I empirically tested my hypothesis by comparing, using content analysis, the neoconservative rhetoric of President Bush's foreign policy-oriented speeches with New York Times articles pertaining to the same topic and from similar time periods.

I found that the media largely behaved as an uncritical conduit for the administration's perspective, supporting the model's causal link between the government and the mass media. Further, the findings serve to complicate the belief that there is a widespread liberal media bias, as The New York Times, perceived as centrist or leftist, is shown to have tactically and explicitly supported the Bush administration during the lead-up to the war.

My thesis received honors at Carleton, where I presented it both as a poster presentation and as a talk (see video above). Additionally, my thesis placed at two undergraduate political science conferences and was published as a result in both instances.

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