IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v427y1976i1p104-113.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

American Politics and the Press: A View from Abroad

Author

Listed:
  • John Midgley

    (William Hulme's Grammar School, Manchester, and Trinity College, Cambridge)

Abstract

Among several peculiarities of the American political system, that of popular participation in the selection of candidates offers a safeguard against, or remedy for, estrangement between the political establishment and the electorate that European countries generally do not enjoy. It also adds length and complexity to the political cam paigns and affects the mode of press coverage. Estrange ment is not rendered impossible, it is made capable of being corrected without an overturning or reconstruction of the entire system. The discovery that such an estrangement had begun to arise led to the recognition of the "Washing ton issue" as an element in the campaign of 1976. In that discovery, the press was impelled to play a part by its realization, beginning in 1968, that the press itself had become dangerously out of touch with the state of mind of a substantial section of the American public. Its attempts to get back in touch led it to identify "Washington" as an issue. The system of attaching political reporters for extended periods to particular campaign beats, a response to the singular characteristics of American political cam paigns, carries dangers of undue dependence on political per sonages, on the one hand, and of avoidable isolation from the general public mind, on the other. A more flexible arrangement is suggested.

Suggested Citation

  • John Midgley, 1976. "American Politics and the Press: A View from Abroad," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 427(1), pages 104-113, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:427:y:1976:i:1:p:104-113
    DOI: 10.1177/000271627642700112
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271627642700112
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/000271627642700112?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:427:y:1976:i:1:p:104-113. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.