Presidential Campaign Coverage

Report Outline
Impact of News Media on Elections
Changes in Press's Role in Politics
Today's Appraisals of Campaign Trends
Special Focus

Impact of News Media on Elections

Criticism of Early Primaries as Media Events

The press has been criticized for its presidential campaign coverage since the time of George Washington. This year is no exception. Indeed, the scrutiny of the news media—both broadcast and print—may be only slightly less intense than their scrutiny of the 1976 campaign. Many Americans see newspapers, magazines, radio and especially television as the primary power brokers in politics. It is the media, critics assert, that decide which candidates are to be taken seriously, how much and what kind of attention they receive, how their stands on the issues are publicized and what the early caucuses and primaries mean. The medium, as communications guru Marshall McLuhan proclaimed, is the message.

The message that seems to be coming across most clearly in this election year is that the media attached too much importance to the early caucuses and primaries. They became, it is said, “media events.” Steve Auslander commented editorially in The Arizom Daily Star on March 2 that it was a case “of the press tail wagging the candidate dog.” Interestingly, much of the criticism has been self-criticism, coming from political reporters, news executives and editorial writers who are mindful of the scorn they were subjected to for errors of judgment and emphasis in the 1972 campaign. That, year's political reporting stands accused, among other things (see p. 253), of underestimating the strength of George McGovern's candidacy until he toppled the favorite, Edmund S. Muskie, for the Democratic nomination. Many news organizations, now chastened, entered 1976 giving full coverage to almost all contenders and even to non-binding precinct caucuses.

Soon the media began hearing complaints that their coverage was not only extensive but excessive. Hours of broadcast time and reams of newspaper space were being devoted to the preferences of a relatively few voters in a handful of small states almost six months before the nominating conventions and nine or ten months before the general election. The Jan. 19 precinct caucuses in Iowa were illustrative. Six Democratic candidates—Birch Bayh, Jimmy Carter, Henry M. Jackson, Fred Harris, Sargent Shriver and Morris K. Udall—spent an average of 17 days each campaigning in the state and a total of at least $200,000 for media advertising.