INTEREST GROUPS AND THE MEDIA

Getting a message into the mass media is a form of outside lobbying that can be useful for interest groups in communicating information to the general public, as well as for simply legitimizing their perspective on an issue. While interest groups work to influence the public and policymakers in a variety of ways, working through the media can be an efficient and higly effective means of agenda-setting.

Interest groups can get their message in the media either by purchasing so-called 'advertorials' or through making news in some way. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. While paid media makes it easier to control the content, citizens tend to discount the legitimacy and veracity of paid messages. Earned media is the distinct opposite of paid media in these respects; while citizens are more likely to trust news reports than paid advertisements, the content of news media coverage is more difficult to control. Earned media coverage can help influence government decisions, but it may also backfire, with groups, positions and politicians sometimes not being covered in the best light.

The pitfalls of earned media notwithstanding, many interest groups try to advance their policy and political goals by working with journalists.

Despite popular press accusations of partisan bias in the media, any such bias is not the result of the intentional slanting of stories, but rather results from a much more subtle process in which journalists seek to obtain information with minimal costs and tell a clear and concise story. Interest group represenattives who understand this provide factual and timely information to journalists, while perhaps focusing on information that support their group's viewpoint. If groups can develop goodwill with journalists in this way, they are more likely to have their information used by journalists and, thereby, to have stories reported in a way that benefits their interests. In this sense, a lobbyist's relationship with the news media parallels his or her relationships with legislators. Providing services leads to goodwill and favourable treatment in subtle but important ways.

How might lobbying for policy preferences through earned media take place in practice? After all, the goal of interest groups is to translate their preferences into policy, not simply to gain news coverage. This could be done in two ways, one direct and one indirect. First consider the indirect process. An interest group presents information to a journalist, who records it, interprets it, folds it into a story, and present it to his or her readers. Citizens then consume this news, interpret it themselves, and either change their minds or (more likely) increase the salience of the issue at hand, potentially inspiring them to express their opinions to policymakers or evaluates candidates based on that issue. Threfore, this process by which interest groups may affect public policy through the media is indirect, complicated, and tenuous, requiring that journalists and citizens receive, accept, and sample the message that originated with the interest group. However, the media are an extremely important source of information about state politics and policy for citizens and if policymakers try to reflect the values and preferences of their constituents, then this indirect approach can be effective. Second, stories with an interest group's information may reach policymakers directly, since legislators (and other elected officials) are voracious consumers of the news.

Certainly policymakers are influenced by information that comes their way through the media. Interest groups provide decisionmaking cues to legislators directly, but the media is an important source of such cues.

Interest groups are important sources of information for journalists. A great deal of interest groups-journalist contacts is initiated by interest groups, but a significant amount is also initiated by journalists. The extent of the contact that journalists have with interest groups is influenced by the number of active interest groups and the overall importance of interest group power.