Chapter Four: The Media
Broadcast television, radio news, and the mainstream newspapers and newsmagazines have enormous influence on the presidential election process. These pillars of the traditional media are still the sources from which the majority of Americans get most of their news and information about the candidates, the issues, and the election.
In recent years, however, Americans have become increasingly disenchanted with the traditional media and their dominant role in American politics. The public’s distrust of traditional institutions—together with the advent of new technologies—has opened the door to new ways for voters to get their election information. From radio talk shows to the Internet and twenty-four-hour cable news channels, the “new media”—some of which are no longer that new anymore—offer a wide and growing assortment of options for tuning in, and are becoming increasingly popular as election information resources.
Over the last several years, blogs, viral marketing, e-mail outreach, and other vehicles for online information sharing have virtually changed the definition of “media” by democratizing the process and allowing everyday citizens to shape the making of the news. This has had an undeniable impact on the way campaigns are run. Increasingly, candidates, supporters, voters and the media from all over the world are able to respond instantaneously and cheaply to events as they happen. The concept of the “news cycle” has been eroded, while presidential campaigns have had to develop quicker, more flexible communications strategies.
Some of the nontraditional media, like C-SPAN and candidate Web sites, offer information directly from the candidates and campaigns. Others, such as talk radio, offer mostly opinion.
The Media under Fire: What’s Wrong with Today’s Election Coverage?
Because of their huge influence on the process, the news media often come under fire for how they cover elections. Among the criticisms from voters and politicians alike:
• The media focus too little on the issues and too much on personalities and the horse-race aspects of elections—who’s ahead and who’s behind.
• The media have become obsessed with covering—and uncovering—scandals and embarrassing stories involving the nation’s elected leaders and candidates for office.
• An entire “talk industry” has developed, with politics as its central focus. On cable news channels and radio talk shows, journalists, former government officials, and others routinely offer their analysis and opinions of the latest political goings-on. The discussions aren’t necessarily designed to inform, but rather to draw viewers and listeners in so that advertisers will buy time on their shows. Often, this is best done by focusing on scandals and controversies.
• Broadcasters especially face the added charge that their political coverage rarely delves beneath the surface of the issues and instead relies on short “sound-bite” quotes that allow the candidates to avoid saying anything of substance. In 1968, the average television sound bite for a candidate was more than forty seconds. In 2000, it was less than eight seconds. Newspapers also have drastically reduced the length of quotations from candidates.
• Too much of the news on television is not really news at all—it’s “soft news” about health and lifestyles, celebrities and scandals. News about important national and international issues, including electoral politics, gets shortchanged. Aside from the content of the news coverage, critics also point out that the TV networks and newspapers have greatly reduced the amount of coverage devoted to elections. On the network evening newscasts, time devoted to elections in 2000 was down nearly half from its 1992 level.
The New Media: Expanding Election Coverage
Since the early 1990s, several new forms of media have entered the picture for voters who had become wary of the dominant role of the mainstream press in the nation’s political life. The 1992 presidential election was the first to witness the rise as a political force of the “new media”—a catchall term that came to include everything from talk shows on TV and radio to cable television and the Internet.
Several of the new media allowed more direct interaction between the candidate and voters than newspapers or TV news, which typically have reporters mediating between the candidate and the audience, interpreting events. In the 1990s, Don Imus’s irreverent, nationally syndicated radio program became a required stop for national politicians seeking to connect with voters. However, since Imus lost his high-profile program after making offensive on-air comments in 2007, that probably won’t be true in 2008. Larry King, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly are just a few of the others who have become media stars with real political impact.
For the candidates and their campaigns, the new media offer an overwhelming number of ways to tailor messages and appeals to specific voter groups—for example, by appearing on Black Entertainment Television, by connecting with Limbaugh’s thirteen million reliably conservative listeners, or by reaching out to younger voters on MTV.
New Media = More Choices for Voters
It is true that the new media offer voters choices besides the major newspapers and the broadcast networks, which almost used to have a lock on what the American people knew and when they knew it. But these new media actually differ greatly among themselves.
Among Americans who turn to the Internet for news, three Web sites dominate the field: MSNBC, Yahoo, and CNN. Other frequently visited sites are Google, AOL, and FOX News. It is worth noting that many of the Web news outlets are directly connected to the old media. Time Warner owns CNN. MSNBC, which is linked to NBC, often airs programming that is considered too specialized for the broadcast network. And Web sites directly linked to the TV networks and major newspapers—such as ABC, the New York Times, and USA Today—also get lots of hits.
The cable news networks—FOX, CNN, and MSNBC—feature a great deal of commentary and opinion on their cable programming. Much of this commentary is far more critical than that found on the broadcast networks and gives voters a wider range of opinion on policy debates and elections. FOX in particular is known for its distinctly conservative approach to both news and commentary.
But the distinction between cable and broadcast programming is shrinking. CNN, for example, went through a makeover in 2002 and began offering much less hard news and much more talk and soft-news features.
There is no question, though, that C-SPAN, which has expanded to two outlets in many markets, does provide unfiltered coverage not only of Congress, but also of presidential campaign events. The rise of C-SPAN and the World Wide Web has allowed Americans to witness for themselves such events as candidate stump speeches, press conferences, and congressional policy debates—events that were previously interpreted for the public by the press.
At a time when the national TV news programs, newspapers, and weekly newsmagazines are giving the public shorter and shorter candidate sound bites, the new media have offered a more direct link to the candidates and more choices for public debate. The new media often allow the public to go deeper into the substance of
election-year politics than the old media formats permit.
A new media presence that has gotten lots of attention in recent years is blogs, short for weblogs and known collectively as the blogosphere. Though they are much talked about, blogs actually have a relatively small reach in comparison to the major Web sites or more traditional media. According to the Pew Center on People and Press, just 4 percent of Americans in 2006 said they regularly read online blogs where people discuss news events, though for people 18 to 24, that figure increased to 9 percent. About the same numbers of Republicans, Democrats, and independents read news blogs regularly. While liberal and progressive blogs undoubtedly play a role in sharing information on the left side of the political spectrum, their impact is still relatively small compared to conservative outlets, such as talk radio and FOX News.
The appeal of the new media lies not only in their content, but also in their 24/7 availability. The Internet in particular allows users to access the latest news whenever it is convenient for them, rather than at a set broadcast or printing time. For many, the convenience is as big a draw as the source of the information.
How to Decipher the Polls
During a presidential election race, the news media often become fixated not on the candidates’ ideas or their campaigning, but on the latest poll results. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you sort through all the numbers:
• Who sponsored the poll? Special-interest organizations often sponsor polls that are designed to place their issues at the top of the list of voters’ concerns. For example, in 2006, Children Now, a California pro-education group, commissioned a poll showing that most respondents wanted better-trained teachers and schools with higher standards. Nobody was surprised by the results.
• Who was surveyed? Was it all adults or just likely voters? All parents or parents of school-age kids? Such factors can have a dramatic impact on poll results.
• How were the questions worded? The exact wording of survey questions also can skew the results. For example, if people are asked what issues are important and then are given a list of just five issues to choose from, there’s a real possibility that key issues will be left out.
• When was the survey conducted? A poll is a snapshot of people’s opinions at a specific time. If one candidate is getting favorable attention in the news during the week of the poll, then the numbers are likely to reflect it.
• What is the margin of error? Typically, a reputable poll has a margin of error of 5 percent or less. Translation: If the margin of error is 5 percent and one candidate is ahead in the poll by 5 percent, then it’s just as likely that the race is a dead heat.
The most important thing to remember about polls, however, is this: The only poll that matters is the official one on Election Day. There’s no telling what will happen until the people vote.
From the book, Choosing the President 20008: A Citizen’s Guide to the Electoral Process.Copyright 2008 by the League of Women Voters
Used by permission of Globe Pequot Press, www.globepequot.com
