News Coverage of Campaigns - Political Campaigns -The Messages and Their Analysis - William Benoit

News Coverage of Campaigns

reporters Many people tend to assume that voters learn about the presidential candidates, and their positions on the issues, from the news. The news does at times inform voters about candidates and their positions on the issues and about their qualifications for office. However, people learn much less from the news than they tend to believe. Several factors limit the importance of news as a source of political campaigns.

News Coverage of Presidential Campaigns is Decreasing
First, the presidential campaign is but one topic in the news among many (e.g., sports, entertainment, business). Unfortunately, the trend in recent years has been for the news to devote even less time to covering the presidential campaign than in the past. Between 1968-1988, the average length of a typical political news story decreased by about 20% (Hallin, 1992) and the number of political news stories dropped by 20% (Steele & Barnhurst, 1996). Farnsworth and Lichter (2003) show that network news coverage of presidential campaigns has declined over time. In 1988, 1116 minutes stories discussing the presidential campaign totaled 1116 minutes. By 2000, this had dropped to 805 minutes. Jamieson, Waldman, and Devitt (1998) reported newspaper coverage in 1996 was 40% less than in 1992. The new are devoting a steadily dwindling amount of time to coverage of the presidential campaign.

News Coverages Focuses on Horse Race rather than Issue Stands or Qualifications
Second, when the news media does cover the presidential campaign, it is notorious for its tendency to focus on “horse-race” coverage. Which candidate is campaigning in which state today? Who has received the most campaign contributions? Which candidate has received the most endorsements from people and organizations? Of course, the most popular horse-race question is Who is leading in the polls? Robinson and Sheehan (1983) analyzed television and newspaper coverage of the 1980 campaign from January through October, concluding that:

At every level, in every phase, during each and every month, CBS and UPI allocated more news space to competition between the candidates than to any other aspects of the campaign. . . . “Horse race” permeates almost everything the press does in covering elections and candidates. . . about five of every six campaign stories made some meaningful reference to the competition, but, by comparison, well over half of the same stories made no mention of issues. (p. 148)

This trend has continued in recent years. Farnsworth and Lichter (2003) reported that horse race coverage increased from 58% of network television stories in 1988 to 71% in 2000 (p. 51).

So, the news does not focus on reporting the candidates’ issue positions or qualifications for office. Who has raised the most money, who is ahead (in today’s poll), who received an endorsement today, who is leading or won in New Hampshire, are all news. The policy position a candidate announced two months ago is not news, even if few voters heard it or remember it. Even when the candidate offers new details on a policy position, that is often not considered “news.” Most people assume that the news informs them about who will make a better president, but what the news is best at is informing them about who is the most efficient campaigner.

Voters Learn More from Campaign Messages than from the News
As a result, the candidates’ campaign messages actually do a better job informing voters than the news. Lichter and Noyes (1995) reported that “voter knowledge does not increase from exposure to day-to-day TV coverage, and increases modestly with day-to-day newspaper reading. Voters do learn from TV coverage of live campaign events, such as convention speeches and debates” (p. 101). On the other hand, voters do know the candidates’ poll numbers. Farnsworth and Lichter (2003) reported that “Polls have repeatedly shown that voters have a very good idea which candidate is likely to win the presidency, but voters are less able to demonstrate their knowledge of issue stands” (p. 53). So, the candidates’ campaign discourse is an important source of information to voters about issues, more important than print or electronic news media.

It may be surprising, but messages from political candidates are the best places for voters to obtain information that distinguishes the candidates. Of course, candidate messages are inevitably biased and often vague. However, Popkin (1994) explained that “Campaign communications. . . increased the accuracy of voter perception; mis-perceptions were far more likely on issues that were peripheral to the campaign.” As the other sections of this web site make clear, political debates and political advertising emphasize policy (issues) more than character or image. Yes, that statement was correct: Presidential television spots discuss policy more than character. Clearly, political campaign communication—TV spots, speeches, pamphlets, presidential debates, interviews, and the like—are important sources of information about the candidates, about their character and policy stands.

News Coverage of Presidential Primary Campaigns
Fewer studies have investigated primary than general campaign coverage, but the results are consistent. Robinson and Sheehan’s study of the 1980 presidential campaign found an emphasis on horse race coverage in the primary as well as the general campaign phase. Brady (1989) analyzed UPI coverage of the 1984 presidential primary campaign. Only 16.3% of the lines in these stories concerned the candidates’ policy positions and 22.9% the candidate’s character and leadership ability. 20.9% discussed potential success of the candidates, 8.6% their supporters, 20% campaign events, and 11.2% attacks on opponents. Farnsworth and Lichter (2003) found that network television news coverage of horse race in the primary campaign increased from 49% to 78% from 1988 to 2000 (p. 59).

News Coverage of Non-Presidential Campaigns
Although most scholarship has focused on news coverage of the presidential campaign, some work has looked at coverage of other political races. As a rule, the lower the office, the less coverage. Kahn and Kenney (1999) analyzed newspaper coverage of U.S. Senate races from 1988-1992. They report that “on average, about 154 paragraphs about issues are published during a Senate campaign, with incumbents averaging 190 paragraphs, open candidates about 175, and challengers about 109” (p. 117). Issues are discussed more than character and horse race is less common, probably in part because fewer polls ask voters about these races.

News coverage varies by race: Kahn and Kenney (1999) identify several factors that influence the amount of newspaper coverage: closer receive more coverage, coverage tends to favor candidates endorsed by the paper, of course, and other the presence of campaigns can cut into Senate coverage. That is, there is more Senate race coverage in off-years than in presidential election years.

The Lear Center (2003) analyzed 7 weeks of the top rated half-hour evening news broadcasts on 122 stations in the top 50 U.S. media markets. They found that 56% of these programs contained no election stories. The average campaign story was 86 seconds in length. These stories were more likely to discuss campaign strategy (38%); issue (24%), horse race (9%), character (6%), and ad watch stories (3%) were less common. I would group these together into 47% campaign stories (strategy, horse race), 30% issue or character (issue, character), and 3% ad watch. Coverage of gubernatorial races (38%) was more frequently than stories about U.S. Senate (20%), U.S. House (7%), or local races (7%).

Television spots aired much more often than campaign stories (3.6 ads for each story) in these newscasts. More news programs featured at least one ad (82%) than featured at least one campaign story (44%); more programs included at least three spots (49%) than programs with at least three news stories (7%). There were 10066 broadcasts, 33% with issue, candidate, or ad watch stories (2462). This translates to 58.8 hours of campaign news stories that could help inform voters about the candidates and issues. On those programs 26860 ads were broadcast. Assuming these were 30 seconds long, this equals 223.8 hours of campaign ads, almost four times as much airtime devoted to ads as to stories about candidates and issues.

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