A Plague on Both Parties

Abstract

Last year's election night blunders by the networks highlight the extent to which the news media—and particularly television—have become major actors in presidential elections. This article employs a content analysis to examine how thorough, balanced, and substantive network news was in Campaign 2000 as compared with 1996, 1992, and 1988. Although the principal focus is on the broadcast networks, data on other news genres, as well as candidate discourse, are brought to bear on the research questions. The study finds little or no improvement in election coverage over time despite numerous reform efforts from inside and outside the newsroom. The amount of coverage has declined, along with the airtime available to candidates. Attention to the horse race increased sharply in 2000, but issue coverage did not. The tone of coverage has remained consistently negative, but Democrats sometimes fared better than Republicans. Media discourse was also less substantive and more negative than candidate discourse, and voters continued to give the media low marks for their performance. These findings call into question the effectiveness of recent efforts to make election news more useful to voters.