It is often noted that the public is frustrated with the news media. But what do American voters really think about how the media present political information? While studies have examined how the news shapes opinions as well as what people respond to and remember, this is the first book to provide an in-depth analysis of how voters use and evaluate the news media in political elections and the impact these trends have on their use of the news.

Kenneth Dautrich and Thomas H. Hartley performed a four-wave national panel survey of voters during the 1996 presidential campaign. They found...

In light of recent frustrations with the press over its increasingly sensationalistic coverage of the news, no liberty is more vulnerable to the vagaries of the current political climate than is "freedom of the press." By considering public opinion data from two original surveys (1997 and 1999) on free press rights against the backdrop of modern First Amendment jurisprudence, this study offers new and original insights into the nature of popular support for these rights.

Findings from the high-profile John S. and James L. Knight Foundation-sponsored surveys of over 100,000 high school students in 2004 and 2006 provided a wake-up call to those interested in preserving the future of free expression rights in America. These studies documented the current lack of appreciation for free expression rights among the nation's high school students, and thus raised serious questions about the vitality of those rights as this generation reaches adulthood. In The Future of the First Amendment, the scholars who conducted the Knight studies identify a number of important...