Media and business elites: still in conflict? - Statistical Data Included

Our findings suggest that every group would like blacks to exercise somewhat more influence over American life than they now do. Media and Hollywood elites rank the current influence of blacks relatively low (3.2 and 3.1 points, respectively), and business executives believe that blacks have slightly below average influence in American life, ranking the group 3.6 on the scale. While business leaders advocate a slight increase in black power to about the midpoint of the influence scale, both journalists and the creators of television and movies would like black influence to increase at least one point on the scale. When asked to rate their perceptions of the power of other underrepresented groups, the ratings follow a similar pattern.

Although the responses of business elites indicate that they would like religious leaders to have somewhat more influence over American life, journalists and television and movie elites would prefer religious influence to decrease. This is not surprising given their relative lack of religious commitment.

Social and political attitudes and behavior

When asked about their parents' voting behavior, a majority of respondents in all three groups remember them voting Democratic. A slim majority of the parents of business leaders are perceived by their children as having voted for Democratic candidates (51.9 percent of fathers and 55.7 percent of mothers), compared with more than three of five parents of journalists (62.8 percent of fathers and 61.8 percent of mothers) and parents of Hollywood elites (60.2 percent of fathers and 69.5 percent of mothers). As we shall see, businessmen have moved to the right of their parents, perhaps because of their social mobility, while journalists and TV/motion picture elites have moved sharply to the left. Thus the children of the various elite groups are further apart politically than were their parents.

More than two of three business leaders (67.5 percent) identify with the Republican party, whereas a majority of media elites (53.2 percent) and almost two of three Hollywood elites (62.5 percent) are Democrats. The distinctions sharpen further when comparing the groups' presidential voting behavior. Business leaders overwhelmingly supported George Bush in 1988, when almost nine of ten (88.1 percent) cast Republican ballots. Although support for Bush diminished in 1992, he still carried the vote of three-quarters of the business elite. Voting patterns among the cultural elites are quite the opposite. Three-quarters of elite journalists (76.1 percent) and seven of ten Hollywood elites (69.8 percent) voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988, and even larger percentages (91.3 percent of journalists and 82.7 percent of the movie and television sample) cast ballots for Bill Clinton in 1992.

The vast differences in the partisan identification and voting behavior of economic and cultural elites reflect the three groups' very different perspectives on social and political issues. One way of gauging ideology is through "factor analysis," a statistical technique that measures the extent to which groups of responses to political and social questions "cluster" together in a coherent fashion and explain correlations between variables. Results of a factor analysis of over 30 opinion questions asked in the survey produced two strong factors. We labeled these two clusters of responses (or factors) "the Political Liberalism Index" and "the Social Liberalism Index." [4]