ABSTRACT
     While substantial attention has been dedicated to the relationships between politics and the media in the US, little attention is paid to the interaction of the media with the unelected side of government -- public administration. Even less attention is given to those relationships outside the United States. This report summarizes the available, but limited, knowledge about international and comparative reporter-administrator relationships. It seeks to identify whether trends regarding American media-administration relationships are also occurring internationally. The Americanization of press coverage of government al bureaucracies appears to be strongest in developed democracies, but is apparent also in Eastern Europe. However, the dearth of knowledge about these relationships around the world needs to be overcome. SICA members are encouraged to write about media coverage of public administration in their countries.

BACKGROUND
     The study of government has demonstrated a fascination with the reporter-politician relationship, both regarding coverage of candidates, campaigns and elections as well as coverage of elected officials once they are in office (Alger, 1998; Gans, 1998; Nimmo & Newsome, 1997; Nye, 1997; Jacobs & Shapiro, 1996; Lipset, 1996, pp. 285-7; Patterson, 1996a; Patterson, 1996b).
     However, there is a startling absence of comparable attention to the relationship between the administrative side of government and the news media, both in the US and internationally. In 1968, Hiebert noted that there were very few studies of the public information function within US federal administrative agencies or research that would be relevant to public information activities by US state and local agencies (p. 6). Since then, little has changed. McKerns (1985) noted that the focus of the government-media literature "has been largely myopic, i.e. the primary focus has been on the relationship at the federal level and between the president and the news media in particular" (p. xx). According to Martin (1989), the study of agency relations with the press "is one of the more dramatic examples of a subject from which Public Administration has borrowed only a scattering of the available literature" (p. 149). Nimmo and Swanson (1990) summed up research in political communications by noting that "even more rare are analyses of bureaucratic communication" (p. 28). According to Garnett, all aspects of communication, whether internal or external, "have been underemphasized in public administration practice and scholarship relative to its importance to the enterprise of public administration" (1997, p. 6).
     Similarly, comparative and development administration pays little attention to media issues. For example, administrative-media relations are not addressed in the overviews edited by Rowat (1988), Dwivedi and Henderson (1990), Garcia-Zamor and Khator (1994), Baker (1994), Heady (1996) and Hyden (1997). A contributing factor to this omission is the limited ability to draw generalizations between the wide variety of the governmental and media systems of contemporary nation-states (Rogers, 1997, pp. 35-39; Grunig, 1997, pp. 270-271; Lenn, 1996, p. 441). Attempting to generalize about developing countries, Smith (1996) observed that journalists play an important role in the development of a local civil society that is essential for the emergence of sustainable local democracy in tandem with an effective administrative infrastructure (p. 166). However, he did not analyze ways that reporters covered local administration in developing countries.
     In addition, when the literature of media studies focuses on government instead of on elections, it tends to focus on the roles of elected officials, politics and public policy making. Little separate attention is paid to the non-elected side of government, the bureaucracy. For example, Asante's (1997) comprehensive overview of the literature did not identify a separate sub-field regarding media coverage of public administration in his review of the government-press connection (pp. 11-49). A review of reports about political communication in France concluded that "communication from public authorities for nonpolitical reasons…is another subject left aside by scholars" (Cayrol and Mercier, 1998, p. 397).

MEDIA COVERAGE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION FIRST WORLD NATIONS
     An assessment of trends in media coverage of American public administration concluded that it has been diminishing quantitatively. Further, the reduced coverage has been assuming a greater negative tone, with reporters often framing their stories with archetypal story lines, such as 'wasteful bureaucrats,' 'citizen victimized by bureaucracy,' and 'agency ignoring real needs' (Lee, 1999).
     These patterns are spreading to other countries. Negrine and Papathanassopoulos (1996) reported on the Americanization of political communications throughout the world. "Indeed, as television becomes the main source of information for most people, the fact that its own development has been greatly influenced by the U.S. experience increases the connections between practices in the United States and elsewhere" (p. 53; also Patterson, 1998).
     Several reports by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggest that the trends regarding US media coverage of public administration are also occurring in other First World countries. OECD consists of 29 of the most advanced nations economically, which have a free-market economic system and a democratic political system.
     At its "Ministerial Symposium on the Future of Public Service" representatives expressed concern about pressures from the media for rapid responses to problems. "The part played by the media, clearly vital to the functioning of democracy and oversight of administrative action, can be disruptive if decision-makers are subjected to permanent inquisition" (OECD, 1996).
     A year later OECD issued a public management paper (Washington, 1997) noting general trends in media coverage similar to ones occurring in the US, including a tone which is increasingly cynical, superficial and sensationalist. This negative trend was compounded in OECD nations by a media focus on scandal, real or fabricated crises and policy failure. Another trend in media coverage is a sense of urgency and expectation of immediate response that has the effect of skewing policy agendas and decision-making. However, "what is urgent is not always what is most important" (p. 30).
     One of the responses recommended by OECD parallels a response undertaken by American practitioners: "many countries are also stepping up the proactive dissemination…of government information to the public." For example, "many governments are putting a wide variety of material for public consumption on the Internet" (p. 35).

MEDIA COVERAGE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: JAPAN
     While Japan is similar to the US as a democratic and economically advanced nation, media coverage of the bureaucracy is significantly different. Notwithstanding its modern media institutions on par with the US, Japan's media gives much greater coverage to the administrative state than US media. According to Krauss (1996), Japanese television has an "exceptionally large percentage of stories related to the bureaucracy and its advisory councils (together occupying 36 percent in the Japanese sample versus only 2 percent for mentions of bureaucracy in the American sample)" (p. 99). While US media is executive-centered and input oriented, Japanese media is bureaucracy-centered and output oriented. Krauss concludes that "the portrayal of politics and government, particularly the administrative state, is one of the most important and seemingly distinctive aspects of the content of NHK television news compared to American network news" (p. 102).
     This significant difference can be partly attributed to general cultural factors, but Freeman (1996) attributes it largely to the prevalence of press clubs in Japan. These press-based information cartels limit competition between reporters from different media outlets who are assigned to the same beat. Furthermore, most assignments are institution-based, normally corresponding to major administrative departments. Press clubs have the effect of giving bureaucrats the ability to assert control and define their own agendas.
     One similarity between US and Japanese media trends is that "saturation television news coverage in Japan of bizarre events easily rivals its American counterparts" (Pharr, 1997, p. 136) which can have the effect of slowly crowding out the current extensive coverage of bureaucracy.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: EASTERN EUROPE
     According to O'Neill (1993), the criticism of the Americanization of television coverage of government news in Eastern Europe characterized such coverage as too aggressive, critical, reckless and sensational (p. 155). He concluded that "however much these trends may vary from country to country, they are travelling in the same general direction: toward various degrees of mediacracy, in which TV politics replaces old patterns of governance…and instant public emotions override reflection and deliberation in the making of policy" (p. 156).
     A newspaper reporter from Germany who was assigned to cover southeastern Europe noted that "because of a journalist's constraints always to cover 'headline-news', important background stories on subjects like public administration reform never or seldom are written" (Rub, 1996, p. 47).
     Kimble (1998) suggested that in the successor states to the Soviet Union, which had previously been dominated by an administrative apparatus, the emergence of market economies, personal freedoms and democracy meant "government is becoming irrelevant." This observation suggests that diminished media coverage of the bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union reflected evolving citizen perceptions of which institutions had now become important in their lives and which no longer were.

SUMMARY
     There is only a limited amount of published reports regarding media coverage of public administration outside the US. This prevents those who are interested in international, comparative and development administration from being able to learn about trends, developments and differences. From the limited research that is available, it appears that the trend regarding press coverage of bureaucracy in the US - a reduction in quantity and increasingly negative in quality -- is occurring in other countries as well. This is most noticeable in First World nations, which are economically, socially and politically at levels comparable to the United States.
     Media coverage of government is an important aspect of international and comparative public administration. It is too important for practitioners and academics to ignore. SICA members are encouraged to write about their observations and experiences regarding media coverage of administration in different countries, regions and continents. These reports would enhance our knowledge about what trends are occurring in the reporter-administrator relationship worldwide.

The research for this review was funded in part by a Scholar Access Grant from the Joint Center for International Studies of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Milwaukee. A slightly different version appeared in Political Communication Report 10:1 (Autumn 1999) 2-4. (PCR is the joint bulletin of the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association and the Political Communication Division of the International Communication Association.)

Mordecai Lee is an Assistant Professor of Governmental Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He also serves as the Coordinator of the University of Wisconsin-Extension Governmental Affairs Consortium. He is author of "Public relations is public administration," The Public Manager, 27:4 (Winter 1998-99) 49-52 and "Reporters and bureaucrats: Public relations counter-strategies by public administrators in an era of media disinterest in government," Public Relations Review 25:4 (Winter 1999) 451-463.

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