Drug Peddlers: How Four Presidents Attempted to Influence Media and Public Concern on the Drug Issue

How an Elite-Engineered Moral Panic Led to the U.S. War on Iraq

“…Logistic regression analysis of public opinion leading up to the invasion revealed that shifts in the U.S. public's level of support for war on Iraq directly mirrored presidential policy rhetoric. The findings support the primacy of the U.S. president as a source of ideology (rhetoric) and as an agenda setter (Kieve 1994;Hawdon 2001;Johnson et al 2004;Druckman and Holmes 2004;Bligh et al 2004;Gershkoff and Kushner 2005) because other sources and tones of rhetoric were not associated with support for invading Iraq once the impact of quotes from President Bush was taken into account. Together, the results of this study support a conclusion that the Bush administration engineered a moral panic over Iraq after 9/11 with the assistance of the U.S. news media.…”

“…A one unit increase in articles with quotes by President Bush increases the log odds of support by .04. Given the power of the U.S. President as an agenda setter in society (Reinarman and Levine 1989;Hawdon 2001;Johnson et al 2004), it was hypothesized that nonadministration sources would have negligible influences on public opinion, net of the effects of presidential rhetoric. Table 8 shows the logistic regression results for ''support invasion'' and the number of articles with quotes from two different sources: (1) President Bush and (2) non-administration sources.…”

“…This study has two main elements: a content analysis of newspaper coverage to examine whether there were changes over time in the volume and/or tone of presidential rhetoric concerning Iraq/Saddam Hussein, and the use of survey data to examine changes in public opinion that may be associated with such rhetoric (see Beckett 1994;Hawdon 2001;Johnson et al 2004;Druckman and Holmes 2004;Gershkoff and Kushner 2005). In order to determine any pre-existing trends in presidential policy rhetoric regarding Iraq, a base period was established by examining articles published during the 18 months immediately preceding and leading up to the attacks of September 11, 2001 (phase I).…”

“…In summary, the literature suggests that the relationship between political elites and the news media is reciprocal or mutually beneficial (Lang and Lang 1983;Kellner 1990;Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994;Altheide 2002), which is consistent with moral panic processes. Significantly, the existing body of research demonstrates that political elites (especially presidents) and the news media play prominent roles in the construction of social problems and moral panics and, as a result, in the generation and shaping of public concern and policy preferences regarding those issues or problems (Reinarman and Levine 1989;Beckett 1994;Gonzenbach 1996;Welch 2000;Hawdon 2001;Johnson et al 2004;Rothe and Muzzatti 2004;Druckman and Holmes 2004;Gershkoff and Kushner 2005). Finally, there is an emerging literature on state crime (Kauzlarich et al 2003;Kramer et al 2005;Rothe and Friedrichs 2006;Michalowski and Kramer 2006;Bonn 2010) which both informs and encompasses the current study.…”

Does America spend enough on addiction treatment? Results from public opinion surveys

“…Political leaders may support popular interventions as a means to reelection or public approval, regardless of whether those programs are effective (Peters, 2004). Support for drug abuse rehabilitation is influenced by perceptions of the nature of substance abuse, the effectiveness of treatment, and the beneficiaries of rehabilitation, in addition to the perspectives of the media and of politicians (Blendon & Young, 1998;Johnson, Wanta, & Boudreau, 2004;Timberlake, Lock, & Rasinski, 2003). Timberlake et al concluded that policy attitudes (defined as the perception of policy effectiveness and beliefs about whether willpower plays a role in addiction) strongly predicted support for drug control spending.…”