ABSTRACT
Joshua Meyrowitz, a professor of communications at the University of New Hampshire, wrote an article for the March/April 1992 Columbia Journalism Review on the media blackout of Larry Agran, the former mayor of Irvine, California, who ran for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination on a “peace dividend now” platform. Meyrowitz reported that national media in effect “airbrushed” Agran out of the campaign: He was often excised from reports of forums in which he participated with the “major candidates.” Some photographers asked him to stand off to the side so that they could crop him out of published photos. When Agran at one point passed Jerry Brown in New Hampshire opinion polls, with 4 percent naming him as their choice versus 3 percent for Brown, ABC News ignored Agran and reported Brown’s standing. 1
