By the People: Election 2004 . Savvy Voter

"Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

View News Critically

There are many sources and varieties of television news. The major networks all mount national evening news programs, as do local stations across the nation. Cable and satellite TV provide abundant 24-hour news. Political talk and interview shows are popular fare on many channels and can be watched every day of the week. All of these forms are important sources of political information, but here we will focus on the evening news.

While news programs differ from one another, they have much in common. An awareness of the common elements can help improve viewers' understanding of political news programming. After framing the viewing experience in terms of program format, we will consider the amount of time devoted to direct quotation from newsmakers, the use of visuals, and the balance between horserace and substantive coverage. Each category will conclude with a list of questions that will help you to get the most out of the evening news.

Format
A program's format is the basic organizational pattern for specific topics addressed on the show. Formats endure from week to week, and with some modifications, from season to season, while the news itself varies from day to day. Format largely shapes what can be covered on a show. It also shapes how campaigns put their messages together in an effort to get them on the air. Make no mistake; campaigns understand that news is important. Though they cannot control coverage, they can tailor their messages to make it more likely that the news report is what they want voters to hear and see.

Local and national evening news formats look very much alike, with 30-60 minute time slots, an anchor or anchors introducing news segments and sometimes narrating news items themselves, brief stories of 1-3 minutes, and regular nightly features. A production team consisting of producers, editors and reporters is responsible for putting news segments together; candidates and campaigns have no direct influence over what gets covered, what gets aired, or how a story is presented to the public.

The large number of short stories on the evening news leaves little time for in-depth coverage of political issues. These shows present information in highly synoptic form, implicitly encouraging campaigns to produce quotable "sound-bites" to encapsulate the message a politician wants to push for that day. Coverage is usually presented as an objective account of the day's activities, even if the reporter covering a story offers an assessment such as "This was a difficult day for Candidate X."

Though local and national coverage is similar in form, there are some important differences. Because they address a single media market, local programs can tailor their programming for viewers in a particular area. For the same reason, their audiences are substantially smaller than are audiences for national network news. A candidate who wants to reach a national audience would have to patch together coverage on dozens of local programs to reach the same number of people who would see a single segment of one of the network news programs.

Despite the size mismatch, campaigns have begun to target local news programs as effective vehicles for circulating messages. First, just as the shows themselves are tailored for a local audience, so too candidates can tailor their messages for that same audience. Second, many politicians feel that the locals offer them "easier" interviews than do members of the national press corps. Third, local news offers a campaign a second chance to draw attention to issues that have already been covered by national outlets, which are typically unwilling to cover an issue - an announcement about a new tax proposal, for example - after the first story. This is frustrating for campaigns that cannot get continuing coverage of a complex policy issue even when a large percentage of voters may know nothing about it.

Direct Quotation
Evening news programs provide very little news in the language of politicians themselves. An average sound bite lasts less than ten seconds, providing little opportunity for a candidate to frame in his or her own words the kind of nuance they would like to present to the public. Typically, the details of policy positions are summarized by the reporters working a story and often shown on screen in bullet form. This approach saves time - consider that a two-minute segment consists of less than 250 words, equal to roughly the first three paragraphs of this short article - and it offers the journalist the chance to provide corroborating or contradictory information from supportive, neutral or opposing sources. The disadvantage is that politicians' messages are filtered rather than presented directly.

Questions to Ask: Does the report tell me the candidate's position on the policy being covered? Am I listening to the campaign's description of a proposal or a journalist's summary of a proposal? What additional information has the program provided me to allow me to assess the soundness of the proposal? What sources other than the sponsoring candidates or parties were consulted?

Visuals
Television is a visual medium in which images work alongside of and frequently outweigh words in conveying the meaning of a story. Footage of a nervous candidate stumbling in a press conference can overwhelm otherwise positive messages about a new policy announcement. Campaigns, keenly aware of the power of visuals, often try quite literally to position candidates for the cameras. During Ronald Reagan's tightly scripted reelection campaign in 1984, journalists were rarely given the opportunity to photograph the President except against backdrops of red white and blue bunting or adoring crowds of supporters.

Questions to Ask: Do the images match the verbal text of the story? Can I tell if the images I am seeing are spontaneous or staged? Are different candidates being treated differently in visual terms; that is, am I seeing exclusively staged images of one candidate and spontaneous images of another?

Horserace versus Substance
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of campaign stories. "Substance" stories cover policy proposals and major campaign decisions such as the selection of a running mate. "Horserace" stories cover the ebb and flow of a campaign's political fortunes, focusing on strategic concerns. Horserace reporting often overwhelms substantive reporting on the evening news, partly for reasons embedded in the format. Once a policy is announced and covered, it is no longer "news," even though a candidate may be spending all of every day trying to explain it to voters. The electoral struggle, on the other hand, is a constant source of news as campaigns air new advertisements, release new polls, and shift tactics to cope with new opportunities and challenges. The constant drumbeat of horserace coverage tends to boost viewer cynicism about elections, apparently confirming that "it's all about politics" rather than matters of state.

Questions to Ask: Is the story I'm watching a horserace story or a substantive story? Does the station I rely on for the news air more horserace stories or substantive stories?

Flashpoints U.S.A with Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill: Truth or Lies
Flashpoints tackles the question of media consolidation and whether or not consolidation is affecting what news gets covered and how.

Columbia Journalism Review: The Campaign Desk
The Columbia Journalism Review is a kind of "trade paper" for journalists. This site was created as a place for those journalists to evaluate how the news organizations were doing on campaign coverage.

This essay was written by David Birdsell, Professor School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York

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