Media Biases in Presidential Elections

Tessa J. Bennett

Spring 1999

Criticism of the U.S. press for its political coverage dates back as long ago as 1798. During a conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time and that of twenty aides could effect. For while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented."

Not only could Jefferson not respond to biased coverage, but he also might not have wanted to. Modern researchers cannot show that media bias affects elections; perhaps media were just as ineffectual in 1798. While providing voters with the information needed to make decisions, the media will obviously affect voting behavior because giving voters any information affects their decisions. However, providing information does not imply or prove that any biases in reporting affect votes substantially.

I presume the analysts who claim that there are liberal reporting biases during presidential elections believe those biases negatively affect votes. Liberal biases will creep into reporting over time, but it cannot be established via reliable or valid measures that those biases will sum over time and significantly affect voting behavior. When researchers find biases, they find vastly different things. If researchers obtain different results from the same data, the validity of their research can be questioned because they need not be measuring quite the same thing. Even if researchers find the same or similar results (their research is reliable) from their own data or data of others, their results are unimportant because they are invalid. If no proof can be made of biases’ effect on voting, there would be little reason to argue the point.

No one can persuasively claim media biases affect voting behavior for two reasons. First, it has not been proven that the media affect voting behavior modestly or greatly. Second, the biases that exist are so minimal that they need not affect votes substantially because journalists have to answer to their conservative corporate superiors and because the media depend on candidates for information to cover elections.

Before I discuss the latter reason (the former needs no further discussion), I must first detail the importance of the media in presidential elections. Unless that importance is established, we cannot argue that biases in either direction affect voting behavior. If media biases exist and affect voting behavior, the media’s role in presidential elections may need to be restructured to lessen its impact on voters. If biases exist but do not affect voting, the argument that the media are liberal and negatively affect voting is unimportant.

The media’s role in presidential elections is necessary and inevitable because voters want the media to provide them with the information needed to make decisions and candidates want the media to inform the public about their campaigns. While accommodating these needs, the media must strive for credibility to maintain "watchdog" role in the elections. I will consider voter and candidate dependence on the media separately.

Voters may rely on the media to simplify and interpret candidates’ characteristics, issue positions, and prospects during presidential elections. If voters did not have the media supplying election coverage, it is probable that significantly fewer citizens would vote because many would not want to take the time to seek the information needed to make decisions. Citizens might choose to vote anyway with less information, which could lead to electing presidents on even less cognitive bases than at present. Many factors influence voting behavior, including party identification, but factors such as the increased number of state primaries and the media’s "agenda setting" position give media the most important role of providing citizens with the information needed to make decisions.

Studies of U.S. voting behavior have repeatedly found that many voters base their decisions primarily on party identification. However, partisan labels have become less relevant as voting cues because of a lack of party cohesion at the national level. Because many voters no longer rely on party labels, they must rely on other cues. If the media are supplying the public with cues such as for whom they should vote, and the media are liberally biased, shouldn’t more liberals and more liberal liberals be elected? Because truly liberal presidents are neither elected nor nominated often, even by Democrats, "…either the press is not so powerful, or it is not so biased."

Because voters rely heavily on the media for information during general presidential elections in which only two or three candidates are involved, one might expect voters to rely even more on the media if more candidates are involved and more information is circulated, such as during primary elections. The growth in the number of primaries and changes in party rules since 1968 have opened up the selection process to a large number of unknown candidates without strong initial party backing. The mass media can serve as a resource for information about candidates and their seriousness for running in the election. Without the media, voters might find weeding through information and looking for serious candidates even more cumbersome and either stop looking for information and vote based solely on party/candidate name or cease voting altogether. Media biases may affect primaries in the same way they affect presidential elections, but the focus here is the latter.

Absence of a single overriding issue or a list of issues might make it difficult for voters to differentiate among candidates. The media as an "agenda setter" can provide information on the issues voters should follow and simplify and interpret candidate’s positions on those issues. By deciding what to cover, the media might control what people believe to be the important issues of the day. By describing candidates’ positions on issues, the media might indirectly suggest to voters which candidates they should consider supporting. The latter two points may seem to contradict my thesis, but the effect the media have on voting has not been proven and that effect does not imply nor prove a negative effect on voting behavior. All those points prove is the media provide information for voters, much because the voters want the media to do so, not that the information affects how the voters react.

Because media are at the center of presidential campaigns, candidates flood the media with messages and images. Whether through disinterest or hostility to politics, many voters insulate themselves from persuasive messages coming from politicians. Campaigners, to account for the insulation of voters from politicians, turn to the press with its preexisting, extensive, and credible communication links to the electorate. Party decline, the increase in primaries, and the 1974 Federal Election Campaign have increased candidate reliance on the media for coverage of their campaigns, making the media’s role stronger in presidential elections.

Party decline has forced politicians to rely more heavily on news coverage for three reasons. First, voters used to rely on party labels to aid their voting choices, and now, because of party decline, politicians have to communicate their information to even larger segment of less partisan or nonpartisan voters. Second, campaign organizations are unable to develop the needed financial and volunteer resources without relying on the media. Third, politicians need the media to reach beyond a tight circle of identifiable party leaders to political activists because those party leaders are not as influential due to party decline.

Many more state parties now hold primaries than caucuses or conventions; the increased number of primaries has complicated the task of securing a presidential nomination if for no other reason than the number of votes involved. Candidates use the media to provide voters with information about their campaigns and their seriousness about running in the elections.

The 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act, designed to democratize the impact of money in elections, has caused fundraising to consume much more time and money. Politicians see a direct relationship between their success at fundraising and their treatment by the media; campaigns rely on the media to reach a large pool of small contributors because the news is cheaper than advertisement or letters. The finance law has not only restricted individual contributions to one campaign, but also the amount candidates can spend. Campaigners must turn to the media to reach their supporters or lose.

Thus, media’s role in presidential elections is very important for both candidates and voters. It is necessary to look at media’s impact on voting because if the media have a negative impact, that role may need to be changed or lessened, if possible, to make voters’ decisions more salient. If the media do not affect voting, the argument that the media are liberal and negatively influencing voters is unimportant. I move now to examine the media’s effect on voting behavior, showing that biases, if any, are minimal and need not affect voter behavior significantly.

The media’s effects on voting behavior have not been proven, so only hypotheses can be argued. Even if one could show media biases affected votes, they must be minimal. Media outlets have to answer to corporate superiors and depend on candidates for information to cover the elections; both would leave only minimal biases that do not affect votes significantly. Also, citizens are not mere sponges for views expressed in the press; even when they perceive the most obtrusive messages of a campaign, people are capable of weighing and counterarguing their meaning.

Citizens can generally look at coverage of a campaign and determine if the coverage is biased or unbelievable. Upon doing so, voters are able to make a decision whether they should believe such information. "There is considerable public skepticism about the veracity and credibility of the news media, which bolsters resistance to messages perceived as biased." Influences might arise, but they would be minimal, with no significant effect on votes.

Most reporters are more liberal than the general American electorate, but the media are owned by conservative individuals who balance the liberal reporting of journalists when determining what is presented to the public. A weak liberal reporting bias might remain after information is passed through corporate superiors, but it would not be strong enough to affect voting behavior substantially. News organizations have discovered through marketing research that being manipulated by politicians often makes the media, not the politician, look bad. For this reason, media outlets, because they do not want to look bad, will not favor or be manipulated by candidates.

To rise in the world of journalism, journalists must accept a definition of news that depends on the views of their superiors. Journalists would not be considered credible nor keep their jobs for long if they were to critique the existing order and what their superiors hold as truth. They can expose enough wrongdoings to illustrate their watchdog position, and critique the existing order enough as to not be found conservatively biased, but not enough to be liberally biased, nor enough to affect voting behavior substantially.

The left-of-center political ideologies of reporters and conservative ideologies of corporate ownership determine what is reported and should balance out biases in reporting. However, that balance is unnecessary because the bottom line is capturing the attention of the largest possible audience. Most media are privately owned businesses operating in a competitive capitalist economic order; the political views of the decision-makers should be washed out by the goal to capture the largest possible audience and profits. Journalists’ perspectives help to fill in the blanks where economic and organizational factors miss outlining in the news, but their perspectives cannot have a significant effect on voting because they are limited in what they can say. Biases will be minimal, with minimal effects.

The media’s lack of independence from candidates should leave only minimal biases because reporters need candidates to tell them about their campaigns. If a reporter does not have a good rapport with a candidate, he or she might not get the information needed to cover the election. Reporters could risk their positions if the media outlet employing them loses ratings because another outlet was covering the election more thoroughly.

The press has no choice but to cover presidential elections because they are the most widely followed elections and because they attract the largest audiences. The job of a reporter is to get the inside scoop on all events, so reporters must obtain and maintain a good rapport with candidates in order to get that information. This reciprocal influence and dependence on one another between the media and candidates should balance out any biases in reporting. If any biases remain, they would be so minimal that they would not affect votes greatly.

The media are a necessary and inevitable aspect of presidential elections. The media are voters’ primary resource for candidate name, platform, and issue positions. The media are needed by voters to simplify the abundance of information presented during elections and needed by candidates to provide voters with their platforms and positions. There are reciprocal influences between candidates and reporters on what information is presented to the public, resulting in minimal, if any, biases in reporting that do not substantially affect voting behavior. The liberal partisanship of reporters and conservative partisanship of media outlet owners should eliminate most, if not all, biases that may arise in reporting; any slight biases that remain could not affect votes greatly. Because it has not been proven that any presentation of elections by the media affect voting behavior significantly, it cannot be proven that any reporting biases affect voter behavior substantially.

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