The Myth of the Outside Strategy: Mass Media News Coverage of Interest Groups

The ability of interest groups to make their views heard is a central tenet of pluralist views of American politics. Despite consensus about the importance of news coverage to interest groups pursuing “outside strategies,” however, little work has examined the ability of ordinary groups to make news. I argue that the best predictor of an interest group's ability to use the mass media as a political tool is the level of organizational resources (money, members, staff, etc.) it enjoys. Through an investigation of the quantity and quality of news coverage received by a sample of 244 interest groups, I show that uneven distribution of resources leads to heavy concentration of news on the largest and wealthiest groups as well as to important differences in how the media portray group actions. I conclude that the outside strategy is more a romantic myth than an accurate portrayal of the American system.