Photo by Brian Snyder/Newsmakers
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Through A Glass Darkly
The American public experiences the presidential campaign through the lens of the mass media. But is this lens a crystal-clear window on the political world, or a warped prism, refracting biases and distortions? MediaChannel affiliates look at how the campaigns and the candidates are portrayed by the press, and how the objects of coverage try to manage that portrayal. The findings are grim: Journalists are controlled by handlers and operatives, the political culture is run by and for specialists, Americans are losing interest in election news that's perceived as biased and boring, and the news media focus on strategies and tactics rather than issues. So what to do? Some writers suggest Republican candidate John McCain's decision to bypass his handlers and deal directly with the press is a step in the right direction. The new Media Studies Journal offers a series of proposals for journalists seeking to improve their election coverage. Sinking ratings and circulation numbers may be the public's indictment of the media, but anemic voter turnout will be a reflection of the failure of the whole campaign process.
-Aliza Dichter, "Election Coverage" editor
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By The Numbers
Through quantitative content analysis, international media-monitoring group Media Tenor looks at how the current presidential candidates are covered in the U.S.
news media. In this first of a series of special reports for MediaChannel, the studies reveal that TV network NBC and newsmagazine Time spend more time on policy issues, while the ABC network and Newsweek magazine typically devote more space to the horserace nature of the campaign. Media Tenor also dives into the online underground of political junkies to look at which candidates are getting the most mentions in Internet newsgroups.
From Media Tenor, February 3 2000
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Covering The Campaigns, Not The Candidates
Tales of fundraising and campaign tactics dominate U.S. election coverage, according to a new study. Issues that would likely concern voting citizens—the political records of presidential candidates, their policy proposals, character issues—are glaringly absent from the news. Analyzing campaign coverage from five major U.S. newspapers and five TV networks, the Project for Excellence in Journalism finds it's not portrayed as a horserace but rather "a massive chess game of calculation and calibration in which little seems spontaneous or genuine."
From Project for Excellence in Journalism, February 1 2000
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Many Sources, Plenty Bias
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press looked at where Americans get their campaign news and how much they trust those sources. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and local and network TV all ranked lower as sources of campaign news than they did during the last presidential elections in 1996. As cable TV and the Internet have become more frequent sources of coverage, perceived political bias in the media has dropped slightly in the past decade. However, with 69 percent of respondents finding a "fair amount" of political bias in news coverage (not heavily weighted towards either party), the report concludes, "American voters are hard to reach and hard to move."
From Pew Center for The People and the Press, February 5 2000
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Gore: Object Of Disaffection
Forget about partisan bias, Robert Parry finds that U.S. campaign reporters have a specific anti-Gore bias. Several misquoted statements by the Vice President have saturated the national media where they've been used as evidence that he's an outright—and sloppy—liar. But Parry points to evidence that these quotes were significantly mangled and that the corrections, when printed, were buried. Who can claim objective coverage when this presidential candidate meets the press to the sound of booing and hisses?
From The Media Consortium, February 1 2000
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Press Defanged
As a foreign correspondent covering the U.S. elections, David Smith has found that there is an elaborate mechanism designed to keep meaningful journalism out of the campaign process. Between spin doctors and press handlers, pre-scripted interviews and staged handshakings behind rope lines, the press is actively discouraged, even threatened away, from asking tough questions. As the political contest will likely be dominated by high-priced TV ads, Smith suggests that Senator John McCain's willingness to actually
interact with reporters may be his biggest asset.
From Guardian Unlimited, February 7 2000
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Politics In A Bubble
The whole political campaign process—the road trips, the primaries, the debates and the media, media, media—may mean little or nothing to the people it's supposed to serve. (A recent poll finds 60% of the public call the campaign "boring".) So says Jonathan Schell, who sees the U.S. campaigns as taking place entirely within—and for—a specialized political class consisting of pollsters, pundits, and, of course, the media.
From The Nation, February 7 2000
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AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE
MEDIA.
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NEW SOLUTIONS
Critics and journalists weigh in on how to improve election coverage for 2000 in the latest issue of Media Studies Journal. |
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