There was a time in the days before the Pentagon Papers and Watergate brought glory to the media when journalists viewed themselves by-and-large as ink-stained wretches with a job to do. At best, they fancied themselves a hard-working, hard-drinking lot like the characters of Charles MacArthur's well-known play The Front Page. Amazingly, there was an era when journalist rated just above sanitation worker in one survey that ranked the desirability of professions in the United States. In those days, not a single journalist was paid anything remotely like a million dollars.
Unquestionably, the media's position in society has changed radically. Today journalism is a prestige, glamour profession. The media elite is influential and rich. How, we may ask, did this change come about? Who exactly is today's journalist? What role do the powerful media play in shaping society?
A new, genuinely impressive sociological survey by Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter, and Linda S. Lichter explores the nature and character of today's media. Their book, The Media Elite, casts a cool, perceptive eye on surveys of 240 people who work for the national media: ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.
The questions these journalists were asked dealt with their backgrounds, voting habits, and attitudes on social issues. They also responded to psychological tests designed to disclose their motivations and biases. Content analyses of how the major news outlets covered three of the ongoing controversial issues of the past fifteen years were also done.
A Profile of the Media Elite
According to Rothman and the Lichters, the typical member of the media elite is an upper-middle-class, white, male college graduate earning $30,000-$50,000 a year. His parents are college graduates. Sixty-eight percent of the elite come from north-eastern or north-central cities and have little sympathy for small-town America. Few attend church or synagogue. Fifty-four percent consider themselves liberal politically. In short, considerable numbers of major journalists grew up at a distance from the social and cultural traditions of small-town middle Americans. The media elite are highly cosmopolitan with roots that are eastern, urban, upper-status, and secular.
Probably on the whole, the authors suggest, the media elite are aware of sharing values and interests. But it is "to be questioned whether the American people out there in heartland America, those people who elected Ronald Reagan to the presidency for two terms, are quite so conscious that those give them their nightly or morning news do not necessarily share their values."
The media differ from the American public most on the social issues that have become prominent since the 1960s: abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, AIDS. Then, how, we might ask, did this group become the media elite?
The Rise of the Media Elite
Rothman and the Lichters point out that a national media developed in America in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its rise
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