In Medias Res

Nick Gillespie from the August/September 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

It is precisely this sort of attitude toward the public that S. Robert Lichter and Richard E. Noyes, political scientists at the Washington, D.C. based Center for Media and Public Affairs, dissect in Good Intentions Make Bad News. What Americans hate about campaign journalism is that journalists, under the righteous guise of "objective" reportage, feel a need to interject themselves into the electoral process by "explaining" and policing the claims of candidates. Ironically, this tendency obscures rather than clarifies and puts a greater distance between voters and politicians.

During the Reagan years, the authors argue, the press suffered a "crisis of confidence" because the president stayed hugely popular in the face of a highly antagonistic press. Lichter and Noyes convincingly document that Reagan got worse overall coverage than Nixon, Ford, or Carter.

Still, the press felt duped by a president who, note Lichter and Noyes, engaged in direct communication with voters (through weekly radio broadcasts, TV speeches, and political ads), kept his rhetoric and message consistent, and avoided confrontations with the press "when there was no benefit attached." By 1988, they write, "it had become conventional wisdom that President Reagan's political fortunes had been a function of blue smoke and mirrors."

The feeling of manipulation continued through the 1988 presidential victory of George Bush, which was widely attributed to, as Newsweek's Howard Fineman put it, "the Republicans' well-honed marketing skills, hardball tactics and skillful manipulation of 'hot-button' issues." Lichter and Noyes note, however, that such analyses are little more than the self-fulfilling prophecies of reporters who cared more about process than substance. Having focused mostly on Bush's and Dukakis's campaign tactics, journalists assumed that those tactics decided the race. "What this emphasis on the 'inside story' neglects," say Lichter and Noyes, "is the degree to which voters' perceptions (and ultimate choices) are structured by conditions external to (and even prior to) the campaign," such as inflation rates, gross domestic product, and so on.

In any case, after the 1988 election, they note, "traditional journalism was widely criticized for triviality and cowardice in its political reporting." Critics, including many journalists, held that Dukakis and especially Bush ran superficial and harshly negative campaigns--a contention which Lichter and Noyes greatly complicate (they also provide a fascinating analysis of the minimal effects of the various "Willie Horton" ads). Before the '92 elections, academics and journalists developed a series of "reforms," write Lichter and Noyes. "They would enforce fair campaign practices by supervising the candidates' speeches and advertisements and calling voters' attention to misleading claims or outright falsehoods."

Such "good intentions," however, came to naught. After performing a content analysis of how the national media covered the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections, Lichter and Noyes conclude that news coverage remained focused mostly on "horse- racism," "tabloid titillation," and "negativism" rather than issue-oriented stories; additionally, coverage became less balanced and "even more intrusive." For instance, in an attempt to increase "substance," the CBS Evening News instituted a policy in July 1992 decreeing a 30-second minimum for sound bites. Rather than boosting direct communication between candidates and voters, however, correspondents more often dropped the candidates' words altogether, summarizing and analyzing their comments instead. "Journalists," note Lichter and Noyes, "were either unwilling or unable to give up their role as campaign interpreters."

Other innovations had similar effects. Consider print and broadcast "ad watches," designed to tell voters when candidates were playing fast and loose with the truth. Unfortunately, there were virtually no instances of outright lying. Rather, the candidates, both in primaries and the general election, tended to raise normative questions in their ads, rather than empirical ones. The result was that reporters, under the guise of being objective, merely weighed in with opinions every bit as soft as the typical campaign ad. What's more, the press definitely took more shots at George Bush than Bill Clinton or Ross Perot, subjecting a disproportionate number of Bush ads to "analysis."

"Mixing news and commentary was hardly an unknown practice in the past," write Lichter and Noyes, "but it was treated as something to be avoided or explained away. The Campaign '92 reforms taught political reporters to regard it as a public service." But even as journalists tried to "wrest the campaign agenda from the politicians," voters responded to less-mediated forums with the candidates. Hence the popularity of alternative media forums, such as Larry King Live, Today, and other talk shows where candidates could at least engage in direct communication--and confrontation--with voters and rivals. Lichter and Noyes's content analysis shows that such exchanges, usually dismissed as puffery, often discussed substantial issues in greater depth and detail than similar items on news shows. Callers and hosts tended to focus on hard-core policy questions and put the candidates through their paces.

Lichter and Noyes note that journalists have learned little or nothing from the 1992 experience. Indeed, they cite a 1995 poll of national media journalists which asked why the public was angry with the press. Twenty-seven percent replied that tabloids had given the mainstream media a bad name, 22 percent said the public was just blaming the messenger, and 13 percent said the public was simply angry with all institutions. When asked whether the public's outrage was legitimate, only 22 percent offered an unqualified yes (29 percent gave an unqualified no).

The authors suggest the situation is unlikely to change. Current trends in media demand "a more intrusive and aggressive role for journalists--more mediation, at a time when the public desired more direct communication with their elected leaders." Still, Lichter and Noyes offer a series of somewhat obvious reforms: a greater focus on "hard news" and less on "soft-core commentary"; adoption of the "voters' agenda" (i.e., presentation of "basic" policy proposals); and "greater coverage of the campaign" (paying more attention to conventions, stump speeches, and other settings in which candidates actually deliver their platforms).

As pessimistic as they are, Lichter and Noyes put too much faith in the idea of a transparent media. They seem to recognize this themselves, asserting at one point that "the media's actions, and sometimes mere presence, cause significant changes in the electoral process....This kind of 'power' is not like money, but rather like gravity--its existence exerts a powerful tug on everything within its range."

Similarly, for the most part, they do not acknowledge the benefits of a shift away from "objective" reporting. Depending on the quality of analysis, such reporting can be a helpful corrective to the worst kind of blather politicians tend to utter in speeches, ads, and debates. And Lichter and Noyes don't really make room for different types of "news." Voters cer-tainly benefit from having access to a variety of information sources, ranging from largely unmediated forums such as C-SPAN, semi-objective outlets such as major newspapers, and highly analytical sources such as REASON.

Indeed, on some level, the authors sense that what really empowers voters is the ability to consider issues from a number of perspectives. "Change is coming," they write. "The dominant media of the next century will give voters more control over the information they receive, and thus more autonomy over the decisions they make."

Those days may already be upon us. Increasingly, people recognize that even as non- intrusive an outlet as C-SPAN mediates by directing our attention to one topic and not another. What both Good Intentions Make Bad News and Hot Air document, intentionally and not, is a powerful shift in American consciousness. That journalism--especially the "reputable" press--is more and more seen as inherently subjective and blinkered is all to the good. In a society where we are constantly offered competing visions of the good society and where our choices actually matter, the rising sense of caveat emptor--and caveat lector-- can only be beneficial.

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