Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
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Extra! May/June 2008
Fair Study: TV’s Low-Cal Campaign Coverage
How 385 stories can tell you next to nothing about whom to vote for
The second-tier candidates, they get angry. They think that the press doesn’t focus on them, spends too much time talking about the front-runners in the debates, in the coverage day by day. But we say to them, "Well, make your mark. Start showing some growth. Start showing some resonance with the populace and you’ll get the same kind of coverage." They’ll say: "Wait a minute. How do we get resonance if we’re not covered?" It's an important issue that we have to keep examining, our own behavior.
—Tim Russert (NBC Nightly News, 1/3/08)
Coverage in the early phase of a presidential campaign is critical, since many voters are still weighing their choices and making decisions at this point. As FAIR pointed out 16 years ago (Extra!, 6/92):
To see how this year’s coverage was shaping up, FAIR studied primary election coverage on the nightly broadcast network newscasts (ABC World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News) in the six weeks leading up to February 5, often referred to this year as “Super-Duper Tuesday,” when 24 states held primaries or caucuses.
We coded each story according to seven news frames—Issues, Campaign Analysis/Strategy, Biography, News, Polls/Voter Mood, Human Interest/Local Color and Media/Advertising—noting the frame that dominated the segment, as well as any other frames that were included. (Many stories, especially “Campaign Notebook”–style pieces, touched on a number of different frames in a short period of time.)
From December 26, 2007, until February 5, 2008, the three nightly newscasts aired a total of 385 news stories about the election. This averages out to more than nine news stories on the election per night on network TV. With that kind of saturation, you’d think that the coverage would not only touch on the horse race and polling, but would shed light on policy platforms, economic plans, foreign policy goals and other substantive differences among what was then a wide-open field of candidates. You’d think that, after viewing or reading 385 news stories, you’d come away well-informed and ready to participate in a democracy.
But, unfortunately, you’d be wrong.
Campaign Analysis/Strategy
Campaign Analysis/Strategy dominated the coverage FAIR examined, appearing in 333 of the 385 stories overall (86 percent). It was the dominant frame in 252 stories (65 percent), and it was the only frame in 79 stories (20 percent). In other words, one in five stories in this sample touched only on the “how” of getting elected.
It’s not that campaign coverage should be devoid of analysis and strategic concerns; who’s ahead and why is of legitimate concern to voters, and this type of story can be informative and illuminating. But the emphasis on this type of reportage mostly provides news consumers with a lot of insignificant “insights,” like the January 2 CBS story “Hillary Clinton Needs Supporters to Show Up to Caucus.” So which candidates didn’t need their supporters to caucus?
A January 3 ABC report titled “Campaign Expectations: Democrats and Republicans” was another example of strategy coverage run amok. “No one is confidently predicting victory” in Iowa, John Edwards “needs momentum,” Barack Obama’s campaign is “confident that they can compete,” and, most enlightening, “Hillary Clinton would certainly prefer to win in Iowa tonight.”
Issues
“Voters say they would like to see more coverage of the candidates’ positions on the issues and less coverage of which candidate is leading in the latest polls,” the Pew Research Center (3/6/08) found. “More than three-quarters of the public (78 percent) would like to see more coverage of the candidates’ positions on domestic issues and 74 percent would like to see more coverage of foreign policy positions.”
At first glance, our findings would indicate that voters were getting what they wanted, with issues being present in 41 percent of the stories, a higher percentage than polling (31 percent). But FAIR found that mentioning issues didn’t mean they were substantively discussed. Issues were the dominant frame in just 5 percent of stories; in other words, only about one story in 20 was mainly about what candidates proposed to do if elected.
The leading media issues in this period of the campaign were the economy, the Iraq War and immigration. This dovetails, in the first two cases at least, with contemporaneous polling, which found Iraq and the economy were the most important issues to voters of both major parties (AP, 1/12/08).
But when these issues were present in a story, they were more often than not referred to in passing, usually in relation to polling. Rare was the story that actually explained where a particular candidate stood on the economy, the war or anything else.
Indeed, even when an issue such as the economy was the dominant frame of a story, it was seldom seriously examined. Instead, the networks focused on the political strategy behind courting voters concerned about the economy, reporting that “Mike Huckabee sounds like a populist” (CBS, 1/10/08) and “John McCain is trying tough love” (ABC, 1/12/08).
Take ABC’s January 14 report, “It’s the Economy; Close Race,” for example. “The economy has emerged as the overwhelming issue,” anchor Charles Gibson began. “All the Republicans are saying they’ll try to create new jobs. But can they?”
The set-up seemed to promise an examination of the candidates’ economic plans. Instead, the segment offered mostly platitudes, like “Michigan’s best days are ahead of them” (McCain) and “I will not rest until Michigan has come back” (Romney).
Interestingly, halfway through the piece, reporter John Berman bemoaned the prevalence of platitudes, saying: “While the candidates are overflowing with sympathy for Michigan, they are not overflowing with specifics.”
While Berman may have been correct that the candidates weren’t offering up many specifics on the campaign trail, they all had economic plans readily available on their websites. Rather than just reporting relatively meaningless statements, ABC could have done voters a favor by reporting just how the Republicans planned to help the economy. Some of their plans were quite extreme, such as Mike Huckabee’s proposal to “replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax,” which he detailed on his website.
A few stories did attempt to lay out at least the barest details of economic policy positions, such as a January11 NBC report that noted Clinton’s plan for “$70 billion in housing and energy assistance for low-income home owners,” and reported that Rudy Giuliani “proposed lowering corporate tax rates and capital gains taxes, costing trillions.” CBS’s “Republicans and Democrats Differ on Tax Issues” (1/10/08) was also notable; it was one of the few stories in the sample where you’d even find the terms “deficit,” “payroll deductions” and “minimum wage.” But overall, the networks failed to provide more than sketchy details of the candidates’ economic positions, despite the economy being raised as an issue in 91 stories.
Nevertheless, compared to the coverage of other prominent issues, coverage on the economy was by far the most informative. How the press dealt with the candidates and the Iraq War was even more vapid.
Though the Iraq War had largely disappeared from the news during this time frame, often replaced by incessant campaign coverage (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 12/15/07), polls continued to show the war as one of the most important issues on voters’ minds (AP, 1/12/08). But the network newscasts’ treatment of the war’s role in the campaign largely centered on personal conflict and, again, political strategy, not actual plans the candidates may have had about our military occupation there.
During a campaign appearance on his wife’s behalf on January 7, Bill Clinton uttered a sentence that ended up dominating the Democratic primary—or at least the coverage—for weeks. Referring to Obama’s claim to have been against the Iraq War from the beginning, the former president said (NBC, 1/8/08): “Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”
NBC (1/13/08) reported that Bill Clinton “used the dismissive term” to “attack Barack Obama’s positioning on the war,” and that he “challenged Obama’s anti-war credentials” (1/21/08). But despite the fact that the remark popped up 17 times in the next four weeks as the Bill Clinton vs. Barack Obama media story took off, the networks did remarkably little to put it in context.
“The point I was trying to make is there’s really no difference between his voting record and Hillary’s on Iraq,” Clinton was quoted (ABC, 1/12/08) as saying on an unnamed “black talk radio” show. It’s an interesting suggestion, one that might have served as a jumping-off point to really compare not only Hillary Clinton’s and Obama’s voting records, but their plans for Iraq if elected. Yet ABC decided instead to punt and let Clinton’s assertion stand alone.
In fact, we didn’t learn much about any of the Democratic candidates’ positions on the war. We learned that Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the use of force in 2002, which Obama criticized her for (CBS, 2/1/08); we learned that Dennis Kucinich was “an outspoken critic of the war,” but not until after he withdrew from the race (NBC, 1/24/08); and we also learned that Obama thinks Pakistan “pose[s] a greater danger to world security . . . than Iraq ever did” (NBC, 12/27/07), which gave us a little insight into his foreign policy, but no concrete information.
Remarkably, in the 55 stories that raised the Iraq War as an issue, the networks made no mention of any of the Democrats’ plans for troop withdrawal or their stances on the troop “surge.” Both of those topics, however, provided much fodder for the coverage of the leading Republican candidates.
John McCain is “surging in part because the ‘surge’ in Iraq, which he has long supported, has shown signs of success,” ABC reported on January 2. The “progress in Iraq . . . put new life into the John McCain campaign,” CBS reported (1/29/08).
The supposed success of the troop “surge” became a lens through which to view the McCain turnaround, but his plans for what happens next weren’t covered. Rather, his “ownership” of the war issue in the media left viewers with very little specific information.
As for troop withdrawal, it became a point of contention between Romney and McCain, with McCain accusing Romney of supporting a “timetable,” Romney denying he did, McCain saying Romney “should apologize to U.S. troops” (NBC, 1/26/08) and Romney firing back that McCain should apologize for distorting his original remarks (ABC, 1/28/08). Like Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” comment, the back-and-forth generated lots of heat but little light in the press.
The day-to-day reporting from the trail wasn’t the only campaign coverage lacking in its discussion and presentation of issues. Reports from candidate debates, which have the potential to shed light on the issues and policy differences discussed, instead presented the debates as sport.
We learned that Clinton “really came out and hammered Barack Obama pretty hard” in a New Hampshire debate (NBC, 1/13/08); that the two resumed “a verbal brawl” on January 21 in a “downright rancorous” (ABC, 1/22/08) debate in South Carolina that “got very personal, very rough very quickly” (NBC, 1/22/08); weeks later at a Los Angeles debate, they “were on their best behavior” (ABC, 2/1/08), a spectacle of which NBC (2/1/08) said “Miss Manners would have been proud,” replete with “gentlemanly chair holding” and “friendly elbow hugs.”
On the other side of the aisle, we learned that the Romney campaign was “trying to turn the withering attacks”—later referred to in the same piece as a “gang-tackle”—from a January 5 New Hampshire debate “into a political positive” (ABC, 1/6/08); that the Republican confab on January 24 was “gentlemanly” (NBC, 1/25/08); and that Romney and McCain “squared off in a testy exchange” (CBS, 1/31/08) filled with “colorful combat” (NBC, 1/31/08) on January 30 in California.
What was lacking from the debate coverage was the substantive policy arguments that were often discussed, such as the small—but important—differences among the Clinton, Edwards and Obama healthcare proposals.
Names and numbers
We also wanted to see how much coverage was given to the various candidates—and non-candidates—by the evening network newscasts. To do so, we counted how many times each candidate appeared on World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. An appearance was tallied each time a candidate was mentioned, had a soundbite or interview, or had a campaign ad included in the newscast.
(Click here for text version of the chart.)
FAIR found the candidates were put into a relatively clear three-tier system by the networks; we’ll call them high-, medium- and low-visibility candidates. Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney fell in the high-visibility category; John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson fell in the medium-visibility category; and Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul and Bill Richardson fell in the low-visibility category. (Some candidates, including Democrat Mike Gravel and Republican Duncan Hunter, received no coverage at all during the study period.)
The coverage of low-visibility candidates was scant, ranging from seven to 22 appearances. The case of Kucinich was typical: He appeared only seven times, with four of those reporting on his exiting the race. Which leaves us to wonder: Why report on someone dropping out if you never acknowledged he was running in the first place?
Republican Ron Paul is another interesting example from the low-visibility category. He appeared only 10 times over the six-week period, even though he raised extraordinary amounts of cash, which is typically a strong predictor of media attention. More significantly, Paul performed well, despite being banned from a Fox News debate in New Hampshire (Boston Globe, 12/29/07) and neglected by the press. He finished 6 percentage points ahead of Rudy Giuliani—and only 3 behind McCain—in the Iowa caucuses, came out ahead of Fred Thompson in the New Hampshire primary and finished second—behind Romney—in the Nevada caucuses.
So what did the networks deign to tell their audiences about Paul? Not much, really. ABC reported that he was a “libertarian,” without explaining what that might entail (12/30/07); that women at a famous Nevada brothel were “pimping for Paul” (1/19/08); that he was “battling it out for second” in Nevada (1/19/08); and that his supporters helped propel Mike Huckabee to victory in West Virginia (2/5/08).
CBS reported (2/5/08) that Paul was leading Huckabee in a New Hampshire poll; and noted (1/4/08) that he “tapped into the digital world most successfully, raising more than $6 million from online supporters in one day in December,” before adding “he doesn’t have a single delegate.”
NBC mentioned him just once (2/1/08), as one of the last four candidates remaining in the GOP race, in a piece about how the Republican base was coping with McCain’s status as front-runner.
There was an additional politician who stood out in the low-visibility category: New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Despite consistently denying he had any intention of running, the networks couldn’t stop themselves from reading the tea leaves, resulting in 21 Bloomberg appearances, more than all but one of the other low-visibility candidates. ABC, CBS and NBC were likely following the lead of the agenda-setting New York Times, which spilled an extraordinary amount of ink on the will-he-or-won’t-he drama of a potential Bloomberg run (CJR.org, 2/28/08).
Medium-visibility candidates John Edwards and Mike Huckabee both played similar roles in the coverage: the third wheel. Despite Huckabee’s Iowa victory and Edwards’ second-place finish there, the networks never really caught on, preferring to stick with the front-runners they’d chosen (though they did have to discard a few “chosen ones,” like Thompson and Giuliani—Extra!, 3–4/08). Huckabee had 503 appearances, while Edwards clocked in with 392.
Edwards received the most coverage at two junctures: in the run-up to Iowa and when he and his wife “finally gave up their quest” (NBC, 1/30/08) on January 30. In the middle, there was little discussion of Edwards, except the occasional story wondering if he should drop out (NBC, 1/18/08; ABC, 1/26/08) and dismissive personal details: e.g., he was a “millionaire trial lawyer” (CBS, 1/30/08) who “once spent more than 400 bucks on a hairstylist” (CBS, 1/23/08).
Typical of the coverage of Edwards was a December 31, 2007 report from CBS. After leading the report by noting “the latest poll shows John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a statistical dead heat” (getting 24, 23, and 22 percent, respectively), anchor Harry Smith tossed to reporter Jim Axelrod, who said, “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in a dog fight.” The piece then detailed those two campaigns for the next 298 words, with no mention of Edwards until the last line, when he was called “the Democrat who may well have the most momentum right now.”
In the high-visibility category, there was little difference between the four candidates’ total tallies, with Romney (904), McCain (931), Clinton (992) and Obama (1,204) all relatively close to one another, especially when compared with the rest of the field. The average number of appearances for a high-visibility candidate (1,008) is more than three times as many as the average number for medium-visibility candidates (299), and a whopping 72 times as many as the average number for low-visibility candidates (14). While the number of candidate appearances will of course fluctuate in relation to performance, the disparity found here is appalling.
Lost Opportunity
As has been noted many times before, the early stage in the campaign is no time to limit the public’s exposure to any particular candidates, no matter what the polls—often driven by exposure in the first place—are saying. This should be a time when the American people are introduced to all of the candidates, and, more importantly, all of their ideas about how to run the country.
Unfortunately, this study shows that, yet again, this didn’t occur on network TV news.
As FAIR noted in 1992 (Extra!, 6/92), the ideas covered in a primary campaign are often more significant than the candidates: “The primary and caucus season is a chance to generate awareness and discussion of questions that matter. The reduction of this process to a winner-take-all horse-race represents a lost opportunity for public education and for the discourse and debate vital to democracy.”
In this 2008 primary season, at least on network TV news, the press dropped the ball again. Considering all of the pressing issues facing the country, from the Iraq War to expanding executive power to an ongoing financial crisis, this was truly another opportunity lost.
Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to Rep. Ron Paul dropping out of the race on March 6. While he did release a video on that date declaring that "victory in the conventional political sense is unavailable in the presidential race," he was still campaigning as of May 20.
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Elections
Elections/2008
June 17, 2008
More Hear Negative News About Michelle Obama than Cindy McCain
Coverage of the Candidates' Wives
Summary of Findings
With the major party nominations now settled, the images of the candidates' wives are coming into sharper focus. While opinions about Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama are mostly positive, Mrs. Obama has emerged as the more high profile and controversial spouse.
More Americans have heard a lot about Michelle Obama than Cindy McCain, and Mrs. Obama has received much more media coverage than Mrs. McCain. However, somewhat more of those who have heard about Mrs. Obama say the coverage of her has been mostly negative rather than mostly positive (by 26% to 21%); by comparsion, 31% of those who have heard about Mrs. McCain say coverage of her has been mostly positive while just 7% say it has been generally negative.
Overall, 78% of Americans have heard at least a little about Michelle Obama. Three-in-ten say they have heard a lot about Mrs. Obama, up from 21% just three weeks ago. By contrast, just 54% have heard at least a little about Cindy McCain, including only 9% who have heard a lot about her.
News coverage of Michelle Obama has far outweighed that of Cindy McCain. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's Campaign Coverage Index, from Jan. 1 through June 15 of this year, Obama appeared as a significant newsmaker in 102 stories. Cindy McCain has appeared in just 28 stories over this period1 . Coverage of Michelle Obama has increased dramatically in recent weeks - nearly half of the stories featuring her have appeared in the national news media since May 14.
In evaluating coverage of Mrs. Obama and Mrs. McCain, roughly half of those who have heard about each say what they have been hearing or reading about them has been a mixture of positive and negative news (49% say that about Michelle Obama vs. 53% for Cindy McCain). But significantly more say what they have been hearing about Mrs. Obama is negative than say that about Mrs. McCain (26% vs. 7%).
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they have been hearing mostly negative news about Michelle Obama. Among the Republicans who have heard at least a little about Mrs. Obama, 33% say most of what they have heard or read about her has been negative. Only 10% say most of the news about Obama has been positive. On balance, Democrats who have heard about Mrs. Obama say the news has been mostly positive (30% vs. 21% who say mostly negative).
There is no significant party gap in views of the coverage of Cindy McCain. Very few Republicans, Democrats or independents say most of the news about Mrs. McCain has been negative.
Overall Opinions of Candidates' Wives
According to a recent People-Press survey, voters' opinions of Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are largely favorable. However, Mrs. Obama gets slightly higher negative ratings than does Mrs. McCain: 22% of voters had an unfavorable view of Obama last month while 16% had an unfavorable view of McCain. [See "McCain's Negatives Mostly Political, Obama's More Personal" released May 29, 2008 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.]
Michelle Obama's unfavorable ratings are particularly high among Republicans. Nearly four-in-ten GOP voters (39%) have an unfavorable opinion of Obama. Democrats do not react nearly so negatively to Cindy McCain. Among Democratic voters, 26% have an unfavorable opinion of John McCain's wife. The good news for Michelle Obama is that Democrats are more enthusiastic about her than Republicans are about Cindy McCain. 65% of registered Democrats have a favorable view of Mrs. Obama. Fewer Republicans (54%) have a favorable opinion of Mrs. McCain.
About the News Interest Index
The News Interest Index is a weekly survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press aimed at gauging the public's interest in and reaction to major news events.
This project has been undertaken in conjunction with the Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index, an ongoing content analysis of the news. The News Coverage Index catalogues the news from top news organizations across five major sectors of the media: newspapers, network television, cable television, radio and the internet. Each week (from Sunday through Friday) PEJ will compile this data to identify the top stories for the week. The News Interest Index survey will collect data from Friday through Monday to gauge public interest in the most covered stories of the week.
Results for the weekly surveys are based on telephone interviews among a nationwide sample of approximately 1,000 adults, 18 years of age or older, conducted under the direction of ORC (Opinion Research Corporation). For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls, and that results based on subgroups will have larger margins of error.
For more information about the Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index, go to www.journalism.org.
About the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press is an independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward the press, politics and public policy issues. We are sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts and are one of eight projects that make up the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
The Center's purpose is to serve as a forum for ideas on the media and public policy through public opinion research. In this role it serves as an important information resource for political leaders, journalists, scholars, and public interest organizations. All of our current survey results are made available free of charge.
All of the Center's research and reports are collaborative products based on the input and analysis of the entire Center staff consisting of:
Andrew Kohut, Director
Scott Keeter, Director of Survey Research
Carroll Doherty and Michael Dimock, Associate Directors
Kim Parker, Senior Researcher
Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Robert Suls, Shawn Neidorf, Leah Christian and Jocelyn Kiley, Research
Associates
Kathleen Holzwart, Research Analyst
James Albrittain and Alec Tyson, Research Assistants
Notes
1 As defined in the Campaign Coverage Index, significant newsmaker means that at least 25 percent of the story is about that figure.
Candidates' Surrogates Sling Mud
Listen Now [7 min 55 sec]
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the National Governors Association in May. Getty Images
The Bryant Park Project, June 30, 2008 ·
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain had their surrogates working overtime on the Sunday talk shows, and both sides were on the attack.
Speaking on ABC's This Week, Minnesota Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty said, "I think Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope perhaps should be retitled 'The Audacity of Hypocrisy.' "
Meanwhile, over on CBS' Face the Nation, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a Democrat, said: "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
Clark's comment was a salvo fired at one of McCain's key strengths, said Politico.com's John Harris, noting that attacks on John McCain's war record have not had traction in the past.
"That's a pretty ... audacious statement to seemingly challenge what is John McCain's most impressive personal and political asset, which is his war service." Harris said that although there are many liberal bloggers who question McCain's military record, he notes that mainstream political attacks have backfired. "This has not been fertile ground for McCain's critics, for pretty obvious reasons," he said.
At the same time, Harris said, McCain's campaign has been falling behind in the message war. "Obama has been getting vastly more media coverage and has been driving the narrative for several months." Using Pawlenty, whose very presence on a Sunday show fuels vice presidential rumors, could be a way for McCain to enliven the contest, he said. "If McCain can use this vice presidential selection contest to produce a little drama and attract some attention for his campaign, that wouldn't be such a bad thing for him."
Democrats and Unity Drive the Campaign Narrative
Nearly one month after Barack Obama effectively claimed the Democratic nomination, the fallout from the party’s long, and at times bitter, primary fight dominated last week’s campaign narrative. With Obama and Hillary Clinton’s joint New Hampshire campaign appearance driving the coverage, the theme of divided Democrats—and efforts to unite them—accounted for nearly one-quarter (23%) of the campaign newshole for the week of June 23-29, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index. When you add in the seemingly uneasy relationship between Obama and Bill Clinton, speculation about the vice-presidential pick and the Denver convention, the chunk of election coverage related to the Democrats’ intra-party issues swells to 29%.
For the second week in a row, differences between Barack Obama and John McCain over energy policy played a major role in the campaign narrative, accounting for 12% of the newshole. No other specific issue came close to generating that level of attention. But combining energy with crime, Iraq, health care, the economy and national security lifts coverage of issue differences between the candidates to more than one-fifth (21%) of the week’s election coverage. In addition, the classic horserace theme of political strategy and polling filled another 10% of the newshole.
But with Hillary Clinton and Obama making their first public appearance together since their contest ended—and with the wounds not fully healed—their June 27 rally in tiny Unity, New Hampshire not only generated major headlines for Obama: Clinton, the ex-candidate who virtually disappeared from the news two weeks ago, managed to attract almost as much coverage last week as McCain.
In the few weeks since the general election campaign began in earnest, Obama has received significantly more coverage than his Republican rival. But from June 23-29, that gap widened to a 2-1 chasm. Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 82% of all the campaign stories compared with only 40% for McCain. At the same time, Hillary Clinton (32%) and Bill Clinton (8%) combined to equal McCain’s total.
Obama’s large lead over McCain last week in the contest for media exposure can be attributed to several factors. One, particularly evident during the week of the New Hampshire rally, was the amount of coverage devoted to Obama’s efforts to unite his party. (In contrast, the theme of McCain trying to rally the GOP faithful behind him attracted virtually no coverage last week, less than 1%).
At the same time, Obama has thus far generally proven to be more of a lightning rod for controversy and coverage than McCain. Last week, evangelical leader James Dobson’s attack on Obama for “distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible”—and Obama’s response that Dobson was “making stuff up”—generated enough attention to fill 6% of the newshole. Factor in other Obama-related controversies, including rumors about his religion and accusations that he is an elitist (a charge made by former George Bush adviser Karl Rove), and that category of coverage increases to 11%.
McCain was not controversy-free himself last week. Remarks by his aide, Charlie Black, that a terrorist attack on the U.S. would help the GOP candidate created a flap, but only generated about half as much news (3%) as the Dobson-Obama exchange.
It is difficult to predict at this point whether Obama will continue to regularly outpace McCain when it comes to quantity of coverage. But the last several weeks suggest that as a precedent-setting candidate who is the lesser known quantity to many Americans, Obama may spend more time in the glare of the media spotlight.
During the primary season, the principal focus of the Campaign Coverage Index was on the competition for exposure among the candidates. That was measured by the number of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (at least 50% of the story). Now in the general election season, the CCI is also highlighting another facet of the coverage, the campaign storylines of the week, the specific themes that make up the campaign coverage. They are measured as a percentage of overall coverage, or newshole. We will continue to track the quantity of coverage generated by the leading candidates. The CCI is an addition to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, which tracks all the topics in the news and which will continue to appear at the bottom of the CCI.
For the week of June 23-29, coverage of the race for the White House filled 27% of the overall newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index—a minor increase from the previous week when it registered at 23%. The campaign was the No. 1 story in all five media sectors, but nowhere did it approach the amount of coverage (60% of the newshole) that it generated in the cable news universe. Even the radio sector, which routinely finishes closely behind cable in attention to the election, could not keep pace. It filled 26% of the airtime studied last week with news and commentary from the campaign trail.
The single biggest campaign event happened late last week, the Obama/Clinton rally in the tiny town that split its primary votes evenly between the two. “Arriving at a Place Called Unity,” was the caption that ran on page 1 of the June 28 New York Times. But only two days earlier, the paper ran a front-page story—headlined “Delicate Talks for 2 Democrats on Path to Unity”—suggesting that a full peace might not yet be at hand.
“With the help of one of Washington’s best-connected lawyers, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are negotiating a thicket of complicated issues,” the story reported. “Perhaps the thorniest question—what to do about Bill Clinton, who friends say continues to refight the bitter primary fight—has yet to be raised by either side, advisers said.”
The subject of Bill Clinton was a focus of discussion on Dan Abrams’ June 24 MSNBC show. And the former President’s terse statement saying that he “is obviously committed” to ensuring Obama’s election did not strike everyone as a full-throated endorsement of the presumptive nominee.
“He is making it so lukewarm,” ventured Abrams. “Just say ‘hey this guy… ought to be President. He’s great’…It’s politics. You don’t have to mean it. You don’t have to feel it all the time.”
If there’s been virtually no coverage of McCain’s need to unite the Republican Party lately, there was some attention paid to another potential problem for the Arizona Senator—the candidacy of former Republican Congressman from Georgia, Bob Barr.
“Some Republicans are worried that former GOP congressman Bob Barr—running as a Libertarian—could take key conservative votes away from John McCain,” declared an AP story posted on AOL News on June 23. That story went on to quote one pundit saying that “Bob could be the Ralph Nader of 2008.”
Meanwhile, the real Ralph Nader made a little news himself last week. In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, he accused Obama of failing to devote enough time to the economic exploitation of the underclass and of trying to “talk white” in the campaign.
And now, in the rest of the week’s news:The No. 2 story of the week behind the campaign was the widely condemned and disputed election in Zimbabwe, which accounted for 7% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. Coverage of that event was biggest in the more international-oriented online media sector, where it filled 12% of the newshole. Next came coverage of those still rising gas and oil prices, also at 7%, followed by the subject with which it is inextricably intertwined, the U.S. economy (at 5%). The fifth-biggest story last week was the Supreme Court decision to strike down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. That subject got the most coverage in the radio sector (9%) where it generated some buzz on the talk airwaves.
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Campaign Storylines of the Week
| Total Percent of Campaign Newshole | |
| Efforts to Unite the Democratic Party | 23.0% |
| Energy as an Issue | 11.8 |
| McCain v. Obama Polll/Electoral Strategy | 9.7 |
| James Dobson's Comments and Obama | 6.2 |
| Crimes/Gun Control as an Issue | 3.2 |
| McCain Strategist's Comments on Terror Attacks | 2.6 |
| Iraq War as an Issue | 2.4 |
| Role of Bill Clinton | 2.4 |
| Total Number of Campaign Stories = 333 | |
Top Overall Stories of the Week
| Rank | Story | Percent of Newshole |
| 1 | 2008 Campaign | 27% |
| 2 | Zimbabwe Elections | 7 |
| 3 | Gas/Oil Prices | 7 |
| 4 | U.S Economy | 5 |
| 5 | D.C. Handgun Ban | 5 |
| 6 | North Korea | 4 |
| 7 | Supreme Court Actions | 3 |
| 8 | George Carlin Dies | 2 |
| 9 | Midwest Weather and Flooding | 2 |
| 10 | California Wildfires | 2 |
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.
Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
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