By: Ryan Foley
After Weiner resigned from Congress in disgrace and spent several months in exile, he and his wife began to plot his return back to public life. The couple decided it would be necessary to grant an interview to a reporter from a reputable publication that would run a profile of the two detailing the scandal and how they have been reckoning in the aftermath. By addressing the scandal head-on and presenting himself as a transformed man, Weiner reasoned that the public would be able to move on from his sexting scandal and again view him as a serious political figure. A deal was struck with Jonathan Van Meter from the New York Times Magazine. Van Meter spent several hours with the couple, both individually and together, over the course of several interviews. On April 10, 2012 the Times ran an 8,000-word profile highly sympathetic to the couple, six months before the New York City mayoral primary. The article received widespread attention and caused many to reconsider Weiner’s future. In many respects, then, Weiner successfully shifted public opinion surrounding his public persona and thereby increased his chances in his subsequent bid for New York City mayor, as the Framing Theory illustrates.
Framing Theory holds that the mass media has a large role in affecting how the general public views any given issue or figure. The way the media characterized a story, then, colors the public’s opinion of that story. Because Van Meter characterized Weiner as a changed man searching for redemption, the narrative surrounding Weiner began to shift. The public was able to start to see beyond his scandal, and was reminded of the promising politician that once was. Suddenly, Weiner’s mayoral run did not seem so far fetched. Weiner, then, by manipulating Van Meter through inaccurately portraying himself as a reformed figure, brilliantly utilized the Times profile as a means to frame the terms in which he would be discussed—shifting his narrative from that of a disgraced politician to one of redemption. This is an example of public relations because it involved Weiner harnessing a media outlet to disseminate preferred information about him to interested publics, thus serving to rehabilitate his image and increase his prospect in future political endeavors.
As we know from subsequent events, however, Weiner was unable to sustain his carefully crafted narrative as new allegations of his salacious online activity began to immerge. Van Meter and the Times did not come out looking much better. It became clear that the former congressman had duped them into writing and publishing a not entirely accurate portrayal. This example strikes a cautionary note, then, as it illustrates the downside of the power of the media—despite the fact that the media has the unique ability to shape public opinion through their framing of a story, their characterizations are not always accurate.
