Bureau, Wire Reporters Write More Balanced Stories

Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 2004 by Fico, Frederick, Freedman, Eric

A comparison of news stories about Michigan gubernatorial races in 1998 and 2002 shows the challenger received more attention than the incumbent in 1998, while neither dominated the news in 2002.

Candidates in elections attempt to promote the agenda of issues and personal qualities they think will lead to success. They attempt to get this agenda covered by the news media so they can effectively mobilize their supporters and persuade undecided voters. Candidates do this in ways that include issuing position papers, giving speeches, holding rallies and participating in debates.

The normative assumption of democracy is that voters have access to and consider the competing claims of candidates in making electoral decisions. Much candidate information comes through news media coverage of campaigns, although voters also get information directly from partisan sources through political advertising, direct mail and door-to-door canvassing. Correspondingly, the normative assumption for news organizations covering an election is that they report partisan claims fairly and impartially. However, the qualities and activities of candidates can draw journalistic attention differentially. And coverage may also vary as a result of differences in news organizations and in the qualities of reporters.

This study therefore explores factors that are both extrinsic and intrinsic to news organization election coverage. Outside the control of the news media are candidate characteristics, including their incumbency or challenger status and the differential way in which they can "create news." But characteristics of the news organizations and their reporters will also influence election coverage, including the priorities of editors and the qualities of reporters.

Theoretical Framework

Shoemaker and Reese posit that news content is the product of influences at five levels, with each higher level constraining lower-level influences.1 At the societal level, factors such as ideology constrain what the media can do, while legal political arrangements and other institutions provide the context within which media organizations must operate. Media organization goals and resources will limit the number of personnel and how they are deployed and govern their routines. Within the news organization, editorial authority distributes rewards and sanctions that reinforce the routines, norms and values that reporters follow. And finally, the personal characteristics of the individual journalists will influence how they recognize news values, search for sources and write their stories.

Incumbency Influence on Election Coverage

At the societal level, the media respond to the operation of the political process in covering elections, including the incumbency or challenger status of contenders and the differential attention they can command. In a benchmark study of media coverage of congressional elections, Clarke and Evans noted that incumbents were likely to get favorable press attention emphasizing their strengths, while challenger coverage emphasized their weaknesses.2 Clarke and Evans explained this finding by citing incumbents' routine access to the press, the increasing saliency of incumbency as party identification has declined and the ability of incumbents to render newsworthy service to their districts.

In a study to extend that research, however, Fico et. al. suggested that incumbency advantages vary with the level of the election.3 Noting research by Miller that found press attention varying with the size of the constituency an official served, Fico et al. suggested that coverage of higher-level elections might differ from coverage of more local ones.4 Studying a U.S. presidential race, a U.S. Senate race, 18 congressional races and 18 statehouse races in Michigan, they found predicted incumbency advantages in press coverage at the congressional and statehouse levels, but not for the U.S. Senate and presidential races.

Indeed, studies have found challengers getting the advantage in these higher-visibility elections. Fico and Cote found in studies of coverage of elections for governor in Michigan in 1994 and 1998 that stories gave much more space and attention to the Democratic challengers than to the Republican incumbent.5 A study of 1996 elections found that Republican challengers for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. presidency were given more story space and attention than their Democratic incumbent opponents.6

However, studying network coverage of the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, Lowry and Shidler tested the notion that incumbents get more critical attention than do challengers because incumbents' track records provide targets for criticism.7 Their data, they concluded, were more consistent with an interpretation of network liberal bias against Republican candidates, whether incumbents or challengers.

Certainly blatant political bias by news media organizations and personnel is possible. But it also is plausible that reporters give challengers more attention than they give incumbents in high-level elections because of the importance of the office, especially if the views and experiences of challengers are less known to the public. Challengers also may get more attention because they deliberately shape their campaigns to match news values for activity and drama, resulting in more coverage. However, when Fico and Cote asked reporters following the 1994 governor's election to assess their own coverage, reporters did not cite such a rationale for their greater attention to the challenger in that race.