Molotch helped introduce the social construction framework to the study of news media. Whereas news accounts had been treated, however critically, as "failed" representations of a presumed reality, Molotch and Marilyn Lester held that every account is a product of the social organization that goes into its production. In founding papers in the sociology of the mass media, Molotch and Lester applied the insights of ethnomethodology to the Santa Barbara oil spill and the way it was covered. They argued for an approach to the mass media which does not look for reality, but for practices of those having the power to determine the experience of others.