Primetime Pundits

How Cable News Covers Social Issues

By: Lynn Letukas

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Paperback | 29 August 2016

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194 Pages

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15.3 x 22.7 x 1.4

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Despite the central role of punditry in our contemporary media environment, research has been slow to examine punditry on cable news. Deregulation, the advent of cable television, and the rise of a twenty-four hour news cycle have dramatically transformed the structure and content of news, paving the way for political pundits to come to the forefront. Cable news networks, in particular, have played a critical role in challenging the neutrality of traditional media through the development of opinion programs that made highly politicized and entertaining content central to their primetime coverage. Over the past three decades, these opinionated programs have become increasingly popular as a programming strategy for cable news producers seeking to develop novel programming to target niche audiences. The pundits who pontificate on these programs have come to dominate our national political dialogue, and play a significant role in setting the public agenda and influencing public opinion in the United States. Punditry and pundits lie at the heart of programming and network changes that have evolved over the past thirty years. Primetime Pundits: How Cable News Covers Social Issues explores the ascent of punditry and offers new models for understanding how social issues are covered—not just by pundits, but also in the larger changing media landscape.

Industry Reviews

Primetime Pundits provides a careful, scholarly, and generally reliable guide to the confusing world of political punditry in the early twenty-first century. -- Eric Alterman, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Millions of people regularly watch cable news pundits, yet little attention has been paid to their rising influence. Primetime Pundits, an original and thought-provoking book, remedies this gap. Expertly placing the claimsmaking of pundits in their social, political, and historical context, this fascinating and timely book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politicization of information through the media. -- Rebecca Tiger, Middlebury College
Primetime Pundits deftly explores how opinion, outrage, and provocative moralizing have become accepted-expected, even-components of the modern news cycle and what this means for how news gets made and received by audiences. Letukas' analysis should resonate with anyone who harbors an interest in cable news, and is a must read for media scholars who study the social construction of news and how media content influences popular rhetoric about political and social issues. -- Brian Monahan, Marywood University, author of The Shock of the News

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