Protest, television, newspapers, and the public: Who influences whom?

This study analyzes three related questions: To what extent does TV influence its audience, the newspapers, and the tactics of public pressure groups based on the existence and availability of TV in general? The study is based on a 52‐day national TV strike in Israel in late 1987, with the following aspects investigated: the change in traffic accident and public protest frequency during the strike period; the change in number of articles and photos found in the newspapers; the coverage of all Israeli media regarding public protests over an extended period of time; and less quantitatively, the effect of public service announcements (PSAs) on traffic accident rates over the years. The findings indicate the following: PSAs seem to have an impact on traffic accidents; newspapers do change their product to a limited extent when TV is not available to the public; and most interestingly, despite the fact that TV does a far worse job of covering protest events, the public’s erroneous perception of TV’s importance has a significant impact on public pressure group behavior.