• Home
• Voting & Democracy
  • Go Vote
  • N.C. Voter Guide
  • VoterRadio.com
• Research & Publications
  • Follow the Money
  • NCCVE Research
• Multimedia
  • The Voter Update Podcast
• For the Media
  • News Releases
  • Media Advisories
  • Contact NCCVE
• About Us
  • Board of Directors
  • Staff
  • Contribute to NCCVE
  • Contact Us
• Search

Nov. 12, 2007

What Drives Coverage in the Race for the White House?

By Chris Heagarty

RALEIGH - A recent Harvard study found that the Democratic presidential candidates received more positive coverage than the Republican candidates during the first five months of the year. Documented evidence of liberal media bias?

For many talk radio hosts, that’s as far as their analysis went. While it is true the Democrats got more positive coverage, only 35 percent of the stories about Democrats were positive, hardly a ringing endorsement. Republicans fared even worse, with only 26 percent of the stories about their campaigns being positive.  A bigger story might be why is there so little positive news?

The study found that the disparity of positive coverage between Democrats and Republicans was generated mostly by two factors: the fall of John McCain and the rise of Barack Obama.

A year ago, McCain was seen as the front-runner and presumptive nominee for the Republicans. Yet five months later, whether the result of bad campaign management or dissatisfaction among party activists over some of his votes, he was trailing rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney in the polls and, most notably, in fundraising. Reporters pounced on McCain as they tried to figure out what went wrong for the respected war hero.

Meanwhile, Democrat Barack Obama created a rock-star presence that catapulted him over former vice presidential nominee John Edwards and a host of senior senators and governors in the eyes of the media.  Obama was cast as a fresh face for voters fed up with politics as usual.  But what separates him from several other potential “fresh faces” is the fact that he has been able to take on the Democratic front-runner and presumed nominee, Hillary Clinton, and almost match her in the fundraising game.

Speaking of Clinton, she has not benefited from any positive reporting imbalance, generating negative stories 38 percent of the time, compared to positive stories only 27 percent of the time.  Like McCain, Clinton has learned that along with the front-runner’s spotlight comes a huge bullseye.  It is easy to generate negative stories when rival campaigns, feeling they have to tear down the front-runners in order to raise themselves up, are happy to feed gossip and criticism to reporters.

So, one part of the equation is that there is an unhealthy surplus of negative campaign news. The second part is that media exposure is a scarce commodity.

There are only so many column inches in a newspaper and fewer are reserved for political news than ever before. Likewise, while there may be more television and radio news outlets, and more in-your-face talk shows, there is less actual political news coverage. 

News about campaigns is often no more than who is ahead in the polls or in fundraising.  With limited exposure to parcel out, media outlets end up restricting voters’ access to candidate information by only reporting on the candidates they deem to be “newsworthy.”

Admittedly, we can’t promise equal time to every person with an itch to run for office. We can, however, do a better job at connecting qualified, competent candidates to voters hungry for a real choice.

Democrats and Republicans alike, not to mention independents or members of smaller parties, are getting cheated out of important information they need to select the next man or woman who will govern our nation and guide it through a particularly rough spot in history.  Some media outlets provide free airtime to candidates, sponsor candidate forums or publish candidate-written profiles in printed voter guides, and these public-service efforts should be commended.

Ultimately, our next president should be selected based upon the issues and values that are important to us as a nation, not because we ran out of room before having to print the Sudoku puzzle and “Marmaduke.”

Chris Heagarty is the Robert Morgan Senior Research Fellow with the N.C. Center for Voter Education, a Raleigh-based nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving elections in North Carolina.