Here We Go Again: Presidential Elections and the National Media

by MARY E. STUCKEY

Perspectives on Political Science, Spring 2000 v29 i9 p99

Research and commentary on the influence of the media in presidential elections have become a minor cottage industry. The consensus is clear: The media are responsible for the weakening of the national political parties and the increase in the influence of journalists as compared with that of professional politicians. The media thus have contributed to the shallowness of political discourse, the undue attention to image over substance, and the impoverishment of our national politics generally. Like the asteroid in Deep Impact or the aliens in Independence Day, the media are looming "out there," threatening the destruction of civilization as we know it, and their window of opportunity opens with regularity, every four years. Every four years, too, scholars and pundits appear--usually on national media--warning us that the polity cannot long sustain the anticipated damage. Miraculously, we survive another election cycle and struggle on.

This is, of course, hyperbole. But public discourse about the media tends toward the apocalyptic, and the media are convenient scapegoats for our myriad ills. Academic discourse is little better, often bringing judgment as well as analysis to the task. There are three main areas of academic research on media influence in presidential campaigns: the structural aspects of campaigns and the media's influence on those structures; the relative power of the media; and the content of campaign communication. In all three areas the studies tend to be pessimistic and, in my view, based on common misperceptions about political communication in general and campaign communication in particular.(1)

The most important of the misperceptions are that in political campaigns the media matter more than anything else; that we have fallen from grace since a Golden Age of political communication; that television is both different and separate from the culture; and that voters are passive, imprisoned victims of television. All of these views have a grain of truth; this essay is by no means a defense of the media. It is, however, an effort to put campaign media coverage into a larger context. I will discuss trends in mediated campaigns, question the general understanding of how the media operate, and consider what we can expect in the next election.

COVERING PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

The media in the United States are businesses and follow the dictates of business practice. This means that the media will perform in predictable ways and follow routines of news gathering, production, and presentation. Successful political campaigns are generally those that understand and use media routines and derive themes that resonate through them. Media routines are not neutral; they have clear and often deleterious effects on campaigns and on politics in general.

Campaigns are important elements of political coverage in the media. During an election year campaign news constitutes between 13 percent (in newspapers) and 15 percent (on television) of news stories,(2) and its content and style are remarkably uniform.(3) The uniformity is the product of routines and incentives that demand exciting, dramatic events, change within a thematic context, and stories that can be presented in a "balanced" and "objective" manner. Thus coverage of complicated issues and events often is reduced to easily dramatized conflicts between personalities, and "both sides" receive equal time and roughly equal coverage.

Candidates, of course, play to the routines, and coverage is a major, if not the major, consideration of the contemporary campaign. Nearly everything a candidate does is geared toward the media, especially television. Not only have appearances on Larry King and other talk shows and televised town hall meetings become standard, but personal appearances are orchestrated with television in mind. Failure to respect deadlines and the need for interesting visuals and fresh news is certain to relegate a candidate to the status of also-ran.

It is also problematic, however, for a candidate to engage in too much news management. Events that are seen as too orchestrated, contrived, or unrealistic receive little air time. Political conventions are a prime example. When policy was actually made on convention floors, when controversy was possible, the conventions received gavel-to-gavel coverage. But the more the parties tried to control conventions--to present precise, clearly defined images to the public through the media--the less coverage they received. Now, with competition from cable television, the networks cannot risk losing their audience; they cover key speeches and summaries of events but leave the bulk of the convention to cable channels such as C-SPAN.

The need for candidates to court the media is directly related to a phenomenon most often associated with the ascendancy of television: the weakening of political parties. The media have, in many ways, replaced the parties as sources of political information, providers of political ideology, and winnowers of candidates.(4) Through both news and entertainment forums, the media exert a powerful influence on the national agenda and on how issues are understood and framed.(5) Although there is much research that confirms that influence, there is also good evidence that the media have little influence on people's positions on the issues. That is, the media tell us what to think about but not what to think.

We should not exaggerate the power of the media. Voters rely on many sources for their political information, including peers and family,(6) and they process mediated information in a variety of ways, all of which lessen the media's ability to force an agenda on an unwilling public.(7) In addition, political parties remain the best predictors of the national vote and of individual voters' political preferences. Parties in the United States have always been weak, and the fact that they are further weakened may not be disastrous. Finally, the weakness of political parties is not solely the fault of the media. Structural developments, such as the reforms of the McGovern-Fraser Commission in 1968 and the growth of primaries, also contributed. It remains true, nevertheless, that in the absence of strong and popular parties the media fill the void.

But they do not fill that void particularly well. As Thomas Patterson insightfully notes:

   The proper organization of electoral opinion requires an institution with
   certain characteristics. It must be capable of seeing the larger
   picture--of looking at the world as a whole and not in small pieces. It
   must have incentives that cause it to identify and organize those interests
   that are making demands for policy representation. And it must be
   accountable for its choices, so that the public can reward it when
   satisfied and force amendments when dissatisfied. The press has none of
   these characteristics. The media has its special strengths, but they do not
   include these strengths.(8)

The weakening of the political parties as organizing entities has led to the rise of candidate-centered campaigns.(9) Candidate-centered campaigns have contributed to the fragmentation and lack of coherence that characterize our national politics and that make politics more difficult for citizens to understand. The more confusing politics becomes, the more necessary the media become as interpreters. The cycle is self-perpetuating.

In the absence of strong partisan leaders, journalists and pundits have become the voice of political authority. The Sunday morning talk shows and other venues of political chat used to devote their time to interviews and discussions with political actors; they now include analysis by journalists. Commentators often interview one another in the effort to derive political understanding. The point used to be exclusively to cover political events; now, journalists' tendency to become part of those events is a matter of increasing concern.(10) The self-referential tendency of the media, disturbing in all political contexts, is particularly important in campaigns, where voter information tends to be limited (especially in the early stages) and commentary has correspondingly greater effects. In 1992, for example, Bill Clinton was the undeclared winner of what political consultant-turned-commentator Paul Begala dubbed the "pundit primary."(11) Clinton benefited in numerous ways from the media's attention, not least in his ability to raise money, which was accompanied by a drop in the fund-raising potential of his rivals.

The media do more than fill an information void, however. As the Clinton example indicates, they have also supplanted the political parties as winnowers and kingmakers. Surely the current frenzy over George W. Bush, like those over Jimmy Carter and Colin Powell, would be unlikely in a campaign dominated by parties rather than journalists. Coverage of candidates such as Joe Biden and Gary Hart has contributed to the process by removing candidates from contention, often before primary voters have an opportunity to express their preferences.

The winnowing phenomenon is most apparent in "front-loading": the disproportionate coverage of early primaries.(12) As of June 1999 the electorally meaningless straw polls in Iowa were touted as the first salvo in the campaign wars, and their impact on the campaigns of Elizabeth Dole and Pat Buchanan was considered all but definitive. The airing of such a conclusion long before most voters even start to pay attention to the upcoming election would be laughable were the consequences not so serious.

A major instrument of media kingmaking is coverage of polls. A candidate's position in the polls becomes the definitive marker of success or failure. Certainly, the polls affected Elizabeth Dole's ability to garner funds and attention before this year's primaries. Polls not only influence the fates of particular candidates but have policy implications as well. Negative coverage of George Bush's ability to "get it" surely had an effect on the election of 1992, as did coverage of the ineptness of the Carter administration in 1980.

Polls, as Kathleen Frankovic says, "not only sample public opinion, they define it."(13) Long an integral part of political coverage, polls are now more necessary to the media than ever before(14) and are thought to create rather than merely report public opinion. They are thought to determine the nature and extent of candidate coverage.(15) Yet polls also underline the importance of public opinion and in so doing may actually increase voter interest and involvement in campaigns.(16)

It is largely because of polling, but also because of the visual nature of television, that modern campaigning is thought to further debase political discourse. Despite the evidence that most presidential candidates make policy-oriented promises and, if elected, try to keep them,(17) scholars and pundits insist on the hollowness of candidate appeals, the shallowness of the candidates themselves, and the emptiness of political discourse.(18)

Thus the very existence of the media is considered to have an impact on the ways in which political communication takes place,(19) an impact that is not necessarily positive if one wants a rational, well-informed electorate interested in issue-based information as a basis for its decisions.(20) By that standard, American election communication is poor. The question is whether such a standard is appropriate or realistic for political practice.

CAMPAIGNS IN CONTEXT

The crucial point made by critics of the media's role in national elections is that media influence matters more than anything else in determining the outcome. But the evidence to the contrary is considerable. In an analysis of the 1980 campaign, for instance, journalist and former speechwriter Jeff Greenfield shattered various myths about election coverage. He concluded that "television and the media made almost no difference in the outcome of the 1980 presidential campaign. The victory of Ronald Reagan was a political victory, a party victory, and victory of more coherent--not necessarily correct, but more coherent--ideas, better expressed, more connected with the reality of their lives, as Americans saw it, than those of Reagan's principal opponent, a victory vastly aided by a better-funded, better-organized, more confident and united party."(21) In Greenfield's view, although the campaign was transmitted through the media it was the campaign, not its mediation, that determined the outcome.

Yet the myth of media dominance is still very much with us and still hampers our understanding of elections. No campaign can succeed without the media, just as no campaign can succeed without organization, money, some semblance of issue positions, and various other factors. But the media are not the sole determinant of campaign success. They may not even be the primary determinant. That we often talk as if they were is a reflection of the self-referential nature of election coverage (which tends to place media at the center of campaigns), not of the actual processes of campaigns and elections.

Voters have myriad important resources. They choose which information they are exposed to, and they process the information in their own way.(22) Predispositions, the opinions of peers, social status, race, gender, and other demographic considerations are significant indicators of how people will receive mediated information.(23) Voter indifference to the media may also be an important filter; there is considerable evidence that voters differ with the media on which issues are important, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal being the most important recent example.

In at least one area, voters are influenced by the media without agreeing with them. We know that voters dislike negative campaigning but that it works.(24) However, negative campaigning does not simply turn voters against the candidate criticized: it may turn them against the electoral process as a whole.(25)

The assumption that the media have contributed to the demise of substantive political communication in campaigns is based, however implicitly, on the notion that there was a Golden Age of political discourse, followed by a long, downhill slide. That view is most notable in Roderick Hart's work, in which he urges citizens to "just say `No'" to television,(26) but it is prominent throughout media research.(27) The problem is that in its simplest form, the view is not accurate. Not only is it difficult to make clear distinctions between "symbol" and "substance," but campaign communication has always relied on image and has often been trivial, prurient, and downright shallow. There was little substance in campaigns based on torchlight parades, whiskey jugs in the shape of log cabins, or slogans such as "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

Moreover, negative campaigning is not a recent phenomenon. Although it is often said to be new,(28) or at least qualitatively different in recent times,(29) there is considerable evidence that "going negative" is an old practice and has long involved personalization, distortion, and misinterpretation of issues. In 1864, for example, a variety of racist themes were conflated in accusations that Republicans advocated marriages between blacks and whites, which would "be of infinite service to the Irish." Democrats labeled Abraham Lincoln "the widowmaker" and referred to him as "Abraham Africanus the First," implying that he was "tainted" with "negro blood."(30) By comparison, the claims concerning Grover Cleveland's illegitimate child and Jimmy Carter's alleged "meanness" seem minor.

Furthermore, the assumption that television has demeaned and trivialized politics ignores the connections between television and popular culture. It also implies that voters are somehow dupes, incapable of recognizing the efforts to manipulate them that are so obvious to scholars and media critics. Hence the image of voters trapped in "news prison," unable to break free of the media's ideological and informational chains (or doing so only with great difficulty).(31) As media critic Bonnie Dow notes in a different context,

   viewers are likely to interpret television according to the dominant codes
   available to them as members of American society and as consumers of
   American media. This perspective assumes that viewers outside the white,
   middle-class, heterosexual "mainstream" to whom television always presumes
   it is speaking still understand the "rules" for preferred readings, even as
   they might work to deconstruct them.(32)

Voters, in other words, may know little about American politics, about the prevailing issues, or about the processes of campaigns. But they are not naive. That voter turnout continues to decline is perhaps evidence of that. Voters may watch Jerry Springer, and they may vote for Jesse Venture, but it is at least possible that in doing so they are responding to the trivialization of politics by politicians and those who cover them. What does not matter may as well be entertaining.

This is not to say that the media do not have important effects on campaigns, only that we need to be more careful in analyzing those effects. It is likely, for instance, as Greenfield argues, that the content and nature of media coverage contribute to voter apathy.(33) The reluctance of pundits to believe what candidates say, their pervasive (if entirely reasonable) cynicism, their unwillingness to attribute political action to motives that transcend the purely opportunistic, and their fascination with the "game" of politics strip the voters, as Greenfield says, of reasons to care about election outcomes.

In times of stronger partisanship, voters could determine the stakes of an election through the simple referent of party identification. It now falls to the media to explain the differences among candidates and the implications of the differences for voters. But the media singularly fail to do so, focusing instead on style, tactics, and strategy, and on issues as they reflect style, tactics, and strategy.

INTO THE FUTURE

In general, we can expect the media to continue to act in ways that ensure audiences, ratings, and profits. When the audience for the highly regarded PBS News Hour exceeds that of the Jerry Springer Show and when viewers demand issue-laden content, political candidates will respond with that sort of information. Until then, we will have dramatization, personalization, emphasis on the "horse race," and overall trivialization of electoral processes.

The upcoming election will bring more stories on how Al Gore's reaction to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal affects his chances of winning.(34) on whether George W. Bush will be hurt politically by his sister-in-law's "shopping spree,"(35) on when the election can safely be considered "over."(36) We can also expect a plethora of stories on how the media are too powerful, too determinative, and too likely to focus on the wrong things. Much of this coverage can be safely ignored. And from the evidence of past elections, voters will indeed ignore most of it.

The media do matter. But they matter within a specific context; without due attention to that context, their roles will not be properly understood. The most important role that the media occupy is that of winnower, for they have tremendous influence on the viability of campaigns, especially early in the process. This is particularly important when one examines the media's current tendency--new this year--to equate fund-raising with political success, especially in the primaries. Despite evidence that campaigns are not bought and that money does not guarantee success (examples are the campaigns of John Connally and Michael Huffington), the media's equation of fund-raising and political viability is disturbing.

The media not only influence who will survive to the election, but also which issues the election will turn on. Agenda setting is a complicated business, however, for the media and the candidates focus on the issues that seem to resonate with voters. Popular discussions of media influence often overlook that reciprocity.

Media influence relies on standardization, or "pack journalism," the tendency of all media sources to cover a story in the same way. Media standardization may be threatened by the growth of the Internet, which is radically decentralized, and which many expect to exert increasing influence in future campaigns.(37) But most people who use the Internet for news seem to choose electronic access to mainstream news sources. That is, instead of reading the New York Times or watching NBC, they use the Times Web page or log on to MSNBC. Thus the sources of news remain substantially the same. Moreover, people who use the Internet as a news source seem to be adding it to their other sources. They are not exchanging the New York Times for news. corn; they are adding news.com to the Times. Thus people who are already information rich, who follow politics consistently, and who are likely to participate have even more information, and it is more current. Those who are indifferent or only marginally interested in politics are unlikely to become more interested simply because they have a computer; if they use the Internet, it will be to pursue other subjects that interest them, not to become more aware of politics. Finally, there is considerable overlap between the Internet and mainstream news. As Matt Drudge and the tabloids have made clear, what appears first in an "illegitimate" venue is quickly reported in the mainstream media. There is no evidence that the process will improve coverage of the issues.

In sum, the future of campaigns looks very much like the past. Substantive information is out there for those who seek it; the candidates will dedicate themselves to mediated campaigns; and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth (especially in the mainstream media) about the debasement of our politics. There will also be considerable speculation on the impact of new communication technologies. The upcoming election will be much like those in the past: Fewer people will vote; they will be disproportionately middle-aged, middle-class, white, and educated; and the media will be blamed for the downward spiral as we wait to be rescued by a president or presidential candidate who can save the world a la Bill Pullman. It will be a long wait.

NOTES

My thanks to John M. Murphy and Mark Rozell, whose input strengthened this essay. Any remaining errors are mine alone.

(1.) I would include much of my own work in this category.

(2.) Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1987), 244.

(3.) Judy Trent and Robert Friedenberg, Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices, 2d ed. (New York: Praeger, 1991), 91-92.

(4.) Anthony Broh, "Polls, Pols, and Parties," Journal of Politics 45 (1983): 732-44.

(5.) On agenda setting, see Shanto Iyengar, "Television News and Citizens' Explanations of National Affairs," American Political Science Review 81 (1987): 815-31; and Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). On framing, see Robert Entman, "Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm," Journal of Communication 43 (1993): 51-58; Doris Graber, "Framing Election News Broadcasts: News Context and Its Impact on the 1984 Presidential Election," Social Science Quarterly 68 (1987): 552-68; and Henry Kenski, "From Agenda Setting to Priming and Framing: Reflections on Theory and Method," in The Theory and Practice of Political Communication Research, ed. Mary Stuckey (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 67-83.

(6.) Doris Graber, Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide (New York: Longman, 1984); Marion Just et al., Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and Media in a Presidential Election (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

(7.) Diana Owen, Media Messages in American Presidential Elections (New York: Greenwood, 1996).

(8.) Thomas Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Knopf, 1993), 36.

(9.) Scott Keeter, "The Illusion of Intimacy: Television and the Role of Candidate Personal Qualities in Voter Choice," Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): 344-58.

(10.) The most glaring example of this in recent times is the relationship between Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff and Linda Tripp. Michael Isikoff, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, (New York: Crown, 1999), 58-60, 168.

(11.) Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, Mad as Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box, 1992 (New York: Warner Books, 1993), 103.

(12.) David Castle, "Media Coverage of Presidential Primaries," American Politics Quarterly 19 (1991): 33-42.

(13.) Kathleen Frankovic, "Public Opinion and Polling," in The Politics of News, the News of Politics, ed. Doris Graber, Daniel McQuail, and Pippa Norris (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1988), 150-70.

(14.) Frankovic, "Public Opinion," 156; Owen, Media Messages. 89.

(15.) Owen, Media Messages.

(16.) Frankovic, "Public Opinion," 167.

(17.) Jeffrey Fishel, Presidents and Promises (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1985).

(18.) Roderick P. Hart, Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Roderick P. Hart, The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of American Political Speechmaking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

(19.) Mary Stuckey, The President as Interpreter-in-Chief (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1991).

(20.) Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age.

(21.) Jeff Greenfield, The Real Campaign: How the Media Missed the Story of the 1980 Campaign (New York: Summit Books, 1982), 15.

(22.) G. Garramone, "Motivation and Selective Attention to Political Information Formats," Journalism Quarterly 62 (1985), 37-44.

(23.) Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

(24.) Michael Pfau and Henry Kenski, Attack Politics: Strategy and Defense (New York: Praeger, 1990).

(25.) Larry Sabato, Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1991).

(26.) Hart, Seducing America.

(27.) Robert Entman, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age; Joshua Meyrowitz, "Visible and Invisible Candidates: A Case Study in `Competing Logics' of Campaign Coverage," Political Communication 11 (1994): 145-64; W. L. Rivers, The Other Government: Power and the Washington Media (New York: Universe Books, 1982); Sabato, Feeding Frenzy.

(28.) Sabato, Feeding Frenzy.

(29.) Jamieson, Dirty Politics.

(30.) J. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 789-90.

(31.) Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York: Longman, 1988).

(32.) Bonnie Dow, Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women's Movement since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 18.

(33.) Greenfield, Real Campaign, 27.

(34.) Paul Gigot, "Gore's Theme: Boredom is an Aphrodisiac," Commercial Appeal, 24 June 1999, A9.

(35.) J. Bragg, "Jeb Bush Says Wife's Spree Is `Our Business,'" Commercial Appeal, 24 June 1999, A6.

(36.) M. Means, "Where's the Beef?" Commercial Appeal, 25 June 1999, A14.

(37.) Thomas Benson, "Desktop Demos: New Communication Technologies and the Future of the Rhetorical Presidency," in Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996).