The Mass Media And Public Policy Innovation

The period from1890to1920was considered as a critical turn in American history. Just as H.S.Kanmager, a celebrated American scholar, once said in his book American Spirit,1890s was the dividing crest between the epoch of agricultural America and that of modern America. It was during the stage that the country was transformed from an agricultural society into an industrial one, and became more modern capitalist. The period, therefore, saw profound reforms in such aspects as politics, economy, society and culture. In other words, there was, in America, a rapid development of economy, great changes in political and social structures, making the period ’American Progressive Era’. At that time, America had gone through decades of the Industrial Civilization, with enormous wealth gathered, and also with a number of social problems and conflicts accumulated, like market disorder, severe conflict between the employer and the employee, the huge gulf between the rich and the poor and social morality in chaos, etc. Also in the period, there was also a remarkable development of the news media, the so-called ’The Fourth Power’, hence initiating’Muckraking Movement’ which made a hit in the world and served as the powerful impetus for the then American government in its policy innovation and social administration.What the Americans faced during’Progressive Era’ is quite similar to what we have now, all in a period transmitting from agricultural society to industrial one, and having many headache problems (such as unbalance between economic and social developments, severe corruption and the need of clean and honest administration) though they had rapid developments of society and economy. With such consideration, the present author will try to analyze the role of the mass media in promoting the reform of the government and policy innovation in the American ’Progressive Era’, with purpose of gaining some lessons, thus giving reference to the public policy innovation and governmental administration of our country.The paper has five parts. The first part is the introduction, which presents the background, the theoretical and practical significance, literature review of the present study, and the definitions of relevant concepts as well as the theoretical rationale are also presented in this part. The second part is an analysis of the mass media and’Muckraking Movement’ in the ’Progressive Era’. Specifically, the analysis covers the reasons and influences of them in three respects:the background of the ’Progressive Era’, the development of the mass media and the rise of’Muckraking Movement’. The third part, based on’Muckraking Movement’, is the analysis of the effect of the media on the process of public policy. That is, how the social problems eventually became governmental agenda with the force from the media; how the American government responded to’Muckraking Movement’and which policy innovations were made. The fourth part aims at shedding some light to the present Chinese government from the lessons learning from’Muckraking Movement’in three aspects:the mature mass media is the important impetus for policy innovation; the positive effect of mass media for policy innovation depends on the freedom of press; the media press, policy innovation and social progress are closely related. This is reason why the mass media plays a positive role in policy innovation. The fifth part is the conclusion, consisting of the major findings of the present paper.