1987/01/01 by David Protess, David L. Protess, Fay Lomax Cook +8 · 94 citations
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Business #Environmental health #Environmental planning #Environmental science #Law #Media Studies and Communication #Medicine #Political science #Politics #Public Relations and Crisis Communication #Public opinion #Public relations #Rhetoric and Communication Studies
paper · doi:10.1086/269027
published in Public Opinion Quarterly 51(2), 166 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 1987/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article reports the fourth in a continuing series of case studies that explore the impact of news media investigative journalism on the general public, policymakers, and public pol- icy. The media disclosures in this field experiment had limited effects on the general public but were influential in changing the attitudes of policymakers. The study describes how changes in public policymaking resulted from collaboration between journal- ists and government officials. The authors develop a model that is a beginning step toward specifying the conditions under which media investigations influence public attitudes and agendas. This article reports the fourth in a series of field experiments that test the agenda-setting hypothesis (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) for news