THE IMPACT OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ON PUBLIC OPINION AND POLICYMAKING TARGETING TOXIC WASTE

This article reports the fourth in a continuing series of casestudies that explore the impact of news media investigativejournalism on the general public, policymakers, and public policy.The media disclosures in this field experiment had limited effectson the general public but were influential in changing the attitudesof policymakers. The study describes how changes in public policymakingresulted from collaboration between journalists and governmentofficials. The authors develop a model that is a beginning steptoward specifying the cond6itions under which media investigationsinfluence public attitudes and agendas.     

Uncovering Rape: The Watchdog Press and the Limits of Agenda Setting

This article reports the findings of the second in a seriesof field experiments on the agenda-setting effects of news mediainvestigative reports. The authors used a pretest-posttest quasi-experimentaldesign to assess the impact of a newspaper investigative seriesabout rape on a randomly selected group of Chicagoans and apurposive sample of policy makers. Unlike the first study, theseries had a minimal impact on public opinion and policy making,but affected profoundly the subsequent newspaper coverage ofrape.