The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2008. (3d ed.) Stephen J. Farnsworth and Robert Lichter. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. 246 pp.
The conclusion I draw from this updated edition of the classic work by Stephen Farnsworth and Robert Lichter, both of George Mason University, is that the free-to-air U.S. television networks long ago reneged on the deal implied but ill-articulated by the 1936 Communications Act that, in return for free access to publicly owned spectrum, these advertising-driven operations would deliver a news product that served citizenship and democracy.
There is no evidence that network television has gained from its dedication to mediocrity: The networks converted a 26-percentage-point advantage over cable in 1992 to a 20% deficit in 2008, and they remain inept in attracting younger viewers. Yet the three evening newscasts continue to draw an overall audience of 25 million, so their miserable performance is a matter of great concern.
The authors’ content analysis shows that media coverage of presidential elections is wretchedly inadequate and generally getting worse. The principal shortcomings are well known to readers of earlier editions: “horse-race” framing prevails over substance. There are significant problems of negativity, accuracy, and fairness. There is declining attention to candidates and excessive attention to the journalists who cover them—we hear much more from the reporters who, by 1992, were setting the tone of a story about 80% of the time, and failing to integrate the concerns and views of ordinary citizens. In 2008, two-thirds of all speaking time was allocated to journalists, with the remainder split between presidential and vice presidential candidates and other on-air sources. Apart from reporters, barely any independent or nonpartisan individuals are heard.
The networks compare unfavorably to many other media, notably PBS. The authors say that the “single most troubling finding” is the “massive chasm between what the campaigns say … and what citizens learn about those campaigns from the networks.” The vested interests themselves—the candidates and campaigns—manage to do a better job than the networks in responding to citizen demand for quality information. All candidates are framed by the media, and these simple media-created frames, however injudiciously constructed, tend to endure throughout campaigns in place of matters of substance: in effect, simple, often silly, frames reduce sweat for lazy journalists.
Over time, audiences have been told more and more about who is ahead in the polls and who is behind, rather than where candidates stand on the issues. Viewers consequently appear to know more about the races than about the issues. Even the principles of polling seem poorly understood by many journalists so that the one thing that newscasts do concentrate on, the contest, is often based on unreliable evidence. Viewers tend to support in greater numbers the candidate who reporters say is winning. A band-wagon effect makes it easier for the candidates who hold a lead to keep that lead, although sometimes front-runners attract more media scrutiny, which may turn negative. The authors could predict whether a candidate’s fortunes would rise and fall based on what was said about him or her on network newscasts shortly before polls. Policy-orientation is also trumped by scandals that frequently have no relationship to issues of policy substance, and few media outlets today adequately scrutinize claims of scandal before airing them.
The average length of time that presidential candidates speak in their own words on network television is 7.8 seconds (up to 8.9 seconds in 2008), one-quarter to one-third of the amount of time most advertisers buy from the networks to make a simple pitch in favor of their products. In 2008, only 35% of coverage was dedicated to policy issues (only 14% in coverage of primaries). Cumulative television speaking time for presidential candidates across a two-month campaign dropped 40% from 168 minutes in 1992 to 98 minutes in 2000. In 2000, the authors calculate that a viewer watching his or her favorite network’s evening program every single night would have heard Gore make his case in his own words for less than eighteen minutes, and Bush for fourteen minutes. This helps explain the increasing tendency of candidates to bypass the evening news in favor of talk shows, and also to take their campaigns online.
The authors note that absurdity is nearly reached “when it is possible to hear more from a candidate during one night with a late-night comedian than from a month of television newscasts.” The manner of reporting further dumbs down the content: reporters like conflict, so candidates give them conflict—anything to stay on screen (because candidates who don’t stay on screens don’t win). Network news tends to present primary and general elections as far more negative and far less issue-oriented than they actually are. This appears to give rise to increasing citizen dissatisfaction with candidates and cynicism, but citizens are even more dissatisfied with the journalists.
Over the six presidential elections covered in The Nightly News Nightmare, the authors found few instances where the networks did a better job than other news sources. The PBS NewsHour devoted 31% more air-time to election news in 2000 than the three networks combined; only 24% of PBS airtime went to journalists (one-third the level of reporter discourse on the networks), total speaking time for candidates was doubled, and sound-bites were nearly seven times longer. NewsHour “gave voters reasons why they should support one or the other candidate, while the commercial networks gave them reasons to oppose both,” Farnsworth and Lichter report. Further, PBS was more thorough, substantive, and positive in tone.
The authors propose remedies. But remedies are infinite. None is likely in practice, however, so long as an advertising-driven model of infotainment endures that is ruled by greed, profit, and foolishness, whose journalists are complicit, in a society whose elites care little or nothing about any form of democracy that is more than a shell for plutocratic interest.
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT
Bowling Green State University