This paper was originally a term paper for Betsy Cohn's course in "Public Opinion, Propaganda, and the Mass Media" (Political Science 242) in partial fulfillment of a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies at Goucher College.

I have put it on the web, because, to my knowledge, it is the only comprehensive analysis of the entire Time story, and the sequence of events surrounding it, from a perspective of "media analysis" -- i.e. how the media works. It is not a detailed study of the Rimm Study, nor of the Communications Decency Act, nor even of specific textual flaws of the Time story. There are many articles available which focus on these areas, and you can find a lot of them (the ones I found useful) in the Bibliography. I am deeply indebted to the authors of these articles for providing me with much of the source material for this paper.

This paper seeks to show the Time story as an example of the mainstream newsmedia in action. The characteristic weaknesses and blind spots which undermine this Time story are not exclusive to this case alone -- rather, they are endemic problems for Time and news outlets like it.

I have left the text as it stood when I turned it in in Spring 1997, which means that some time-sensitive information is not longer accurate. To rectify this (at least partially), I have created a New Developments page. But I'll only vouch for the accuracy of the items contained herein as of Spring 1997.

I hope to fully hyperlink the text sometime in the near future, but for now, please refer all questions of my quotational accuracy :) to the Bibliography, which contains hyperlinks to all of the sources which I know to exist online.

You are advised to view this page (and any other anywhere really) with Netscape/Explorer 3.0 or better. If you're still puttering around with 1.0 or 2.0 versions, you're missing the web, folks. Conversely, I believe that these pages will display reasonably well for those who are stuck on text-only browsers. It's a matter of all of the visual codes flying over text-only browser's heads, whereas with 1.0/2.0 visual browsers, some of it does and some of it don't, and it makes for problems.

You are also advised to view this page (and any other anywhere really) with your default font set at 11pt (Windows ["small" size on IE]) or 13pt (Mac) (Unless visually impaired). The fonts display differently on the two (I know, I use both), and theyre way too big on Win95 and way too small on Mac. Compromise, folks! There, don't we all feel better?

I welcome comments and/or criticisms of the paper, or of anything on this website. Please send me email at mrjester@fledge.watson.org. If your response is thought provoking (whether pro-me or anti-me :) I'll certainly post it.

- J. Jester (aka Jer Welter)
- 29 Mar 1998