Noel King Poverty

The public’s image of people living in poverty didn’t just change overnight. There were certain things that happened over the past several decades that evolved the “poor people” stigma over time. The presidents’ viewpoints were one strong contributing factor to the change. When Johnson gave his State of the Union Address in 1964 with such a strong mindset to overcome the issue of poverty, everyone seemed to agree with his idea. The public wanted poverty to decrease and for the government to step in to aid people that were already living in poverty and set up safety nets to protect people from slipping below the poverty line. Noel King, who is a reporter on wealth and poverty for a national broadcast radio program in Los Angeles called, “Marketplace” points out in his article, “American

King does offer an explanation to this in his article saying, “Because of the stigma attached to poverty, elected officials throughout US history have seen risk in aligning themselves with the poor.” So the way the media portrays poverty and the way the public reacts to the portrayal, people of power (including the president) will not align themselves with the poor due to that image. In Max Rose and Frank R. Baumgartner’s article, “Framing the Poor: Media Coverage and U.S. Poverty Policy, 1960-2008.”, people can read about the research done on 5 different credited newspapers from across the country between the years of 1960 to 2007, and it shows that stories on poverty peaked in 1960 and declined from there. The highest popularity of poverty stories was during the time that Johnson declared a war on poverty and most of the nation was ready to do something about it. Noel King points out that since then, most presidents haven't shown initiative regarding poverty therefore public interest has declined with