print this pageFearless journalism is vital for holding policymakers accountable to enacting meaningful tax reform. Without it, the majority of citizens will remain ignorant of the implications of policy proposals. The Payback Project calls on journalists to fulfill their role as the Fourth Estate by consistently informing the public about tax policy proposals and their consequences. Journalists and advocates alike can support the cause by practicing media advocacy, the strategic use of mass media to further community organizers’ efforts to advance social or public health policies. This toolkit includes information to support writers in conducting media advocacy to keep tax justice on the public agenda.
Media Diffusion or Confusion? A Case Study
On September 17, 2012, Mother Jones leaked a video of Mitt Romney speaking to a private group of donors, in which Romney said of his opponent President Obama:
All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it…Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.[1]
Romney’s suggestion that the 47 percent who do not pay income taxes are “entitled” and content with being “victims” epitomizes how political rhetoric masks the finer points of tax policy. In essence, Romney’s argument was another instance of the conservative meme “Makers vs. Takers.”[2] The idea was introduced with the 2008 book by Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, called Makers and Takers: Why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic and envious, whine less…and even hug their children more often than liberals. In the years since its publication, conservative and progressive media outlets have perpetuated the meme, alternately defending candidates’ and politicians’ assertions or dismantling them.
As Derek Thompson, senior editor for The Atlantic, argues from the other side of the ideological divide:
First, if you live in the United States, you’re a Taker. It’s not the 47%. It’s the 100%. Government provides services and benefits that are impossible not to take, from national defense, to infrastructure, to food and drug safety…Second, if you work in the United States, you’re a Maker. It’s not the 15 million – that 10% households who owe more federal income taxes. It’s the 155 million – the labor force, not counting the millions of people who want but cannot find a job.[3]
The dichotomy between Romney’s and Thompson’s perspectives reveals a pattern in the diffusion of political rhetoric. Generally, a message designed to communicate an idea is introduced in a book or speech. The message then spreads through traditional media (TV, print, and radio) and converged (online) media. After some initial exposure captures their attention, contributors to converged media while watchdog media dissect and critique the message, pulling in readers with varying perspectives. Journalists and opinion-makers on both sides of the issue then contextualize the message, ultimately influencing the opinions of their readers. Along the way, fragments of policy analysis (and hearsay) reach the public. However, few citizens can fully grasp a complex system from the messages they receive in the news. As a consequence, there’s a gaping hole in the public’s knowledge of what constitutes a just tax system.
Closing the Knowledge Gap
More than 40 years of social science research reveals a gap in public policy knowledge, particularly among those with less education. Unfortunately, this gap causes uninformed citizens to become disenfranchised, often without being aware of it.[4] A textbook example can be found in West Virginia’s overwhelming support of President Trump versus Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. A relatively older population, 22 percent of the state’s residents depend on Medicare, and one in six residents are employed in the healthcare industry. However, the appeal of Trump’s apparent sympathy for protecting coal industry jobs, which account for less than five percent of the state’s employment, over preserving access to health insurance for citizens underscores how West Virginian voters responded more to cultural symbolism than their region’s actual needs.[5]
The paradox of less-educated populations voting for policies that do not serve their interests may be understood through the lens of the Knowledge Gap theory, which can be summarized in the hypothesis:
As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socio-economic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower status segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease.[6]
As the level of knowledge decreases, so does awareness about the implications of public policies. Less awareness translates into less power within the democracy for a growing number of citizens. When many of the advantages – and most of the income and assets – go to the top 1 percent of society, the contributions to society of the 99 percent are largely ignored. As cognitive linguist George Lakoff observed, all of this “needs to be in public discourse”.[7]
Questions for Media Advocates
Journalists and media advocates looking to further public discourse for tax justice can begin by asking politicians and policymakers these questions:
- How come after-inflation pay for middle-class, median wage families has increased for over 10 years?
- How do you know that employers will increase pay for employees when they get tax cuts?
- If tax cuts go to business owners, will the employees get more money or the shareholders?
- As employers hire foreign workers who can do the same work for less, what can employees do to stay competitive?
Resources
The Payback Project contains a free online book and an extensive resource library that includes downloadable PDFs covering a wide range of sources. For those interested in engaging in media advocacy for tax reform, check out the following resources:
- Berkeley Media Studies Group: http://www.bmsg.org/resources/media-advocacy-101
- Citizens for Tax Justice: http://www.ctj.org/
- Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy: https://itep.org/
- Tax Justice Advocacy: A Toolkit for Civil Society: https://taxjustice.somo.nl/
- Tax Justice Network: http://www.taxjustice.net/
References
Delli Carpini, M. X. & Keeter, S. (1991). Stability and change in the U.S. public’s knowledge of politics. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55(4), 583-612.
Delli Carpini, M. X. & Keeter, S. (1994). The public’s knowledge of politics. In Kennamer J.
David (Ed.) Public Opinion, The Press, and Public Policy (pp. 19-40). Westport:
Greenwood-Publishing-Group-Incorporated.
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51-58.
Grabe, M.E., Lang, A., Zhou, S. and Bolls, D. (2000). Cognitive access to negatively arousing news: An experimental investigation of the knowledge gap. Communication Research, 27(1), 3-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/009365000027001001
Hallahan, K. (1999). Seven models of framing: Implications for public relations. Journal of Public Relations Research, 11(3), 205-242.
Krugman, P. (2017, March 31). Coal country is a state of mind. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/coal-country-is-a-state-of-mind.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0
Lakoff, G. and Wehling, E. (2012). The little blue book: The essential guide to thinking and talking democratic. New York: Free Press.
Lee, H. and Yang, J. (2014). Political knowledge gaps among news consumers with different news media repertoires across multiple platforms. International Journal of Communication, 8, 597-617.
Tichenor, P. J., Donohue, G. A., & Olien, C. N. (1970). Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34, 159–170.
Tumulty, K. (2013, January 18). How Donald Trump came up with ‘Make America Great Again.’ The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-came-up-with-make-america-great-again/2017/01/17/fb6acf5e-dbf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.6e5924d2f56f
Zoch, L.M. & Molleda, J.C. (2009). Building a theoretical model of media relations using framing, information subsidies, and agenda-building. Public Relations Theory II (pp. 279-309). New York: Routledge.