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Prejudiced Press and the Election
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14883 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
2,405 Words |
| Author
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Brent H. Baker and Marc S. Ryan
Brent H. Baker is executive director of the Media Research
Center (MRC) and editor of its monthly newsletter, Media
Watch. Marc S. Ryan is the MRC's vice president for research
and Media Watch's associate editor. MRC media analyst Dorothy
Warner provided research for this article. |
Enthusiastic Republicans from across America Arrived in New Orleans to nominate George Bush as their candidate for president of the United States. But ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC were also enthusiastic--in picking up the cause of the Democrats and going on the attack against the values and policies supported by the GOP.
Media Research Center analysis of how the four major television networks covered the August convention found that reporters repeatedly portrayed the Republicans as extreme and on the fringe of the American political spectrum: in other words, simply out of tune with average Americans. How did they do this? By incessantly labeling convention-goers as conservative ideologues and attacking Republicans all they could--on issues including opposition to abortion, ERA, the plant closings bill, and the Civil Rights Restoration Act.
That's quite a different approach than the networks had taken in Atlanta a month earlier, when they fawned over the Democrats and their views. Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk could not have been happier. Thanks to the networks, his charade worked. Viewers at home saw presidential nominee Michael Dukakis portrayed as a competent manager and political moderate, not an ideological liberal. In fact, network anchors and reporters labeled Dukakis a moderate about as often as they tagged him liberal. The networks avoided substance as much as possible. Any controversies surrounding the Democrats and criticisms all but ignored. Instead, Dukakis ended up just where he wanted to be: holding down the middle ground between Jesse Jackson on the left and vice presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen on the right.
A good way to see which party the media favor is to review their reporting patterns in four areas: labeling, the ideology of those interviewed, the ideological agenda of the questions posed, and the way controversies in the two parties are highlighted or ignored. What emerges from analysis of the convention coverage is a clear double standard: The four major networks most Americans rely on for their news coddled the Democrats and condemned the views of Republicans.
Labeling
At the Democratic Convention, anchors, reporters, analysts, and commentators almost evenly split 86 labels they attached to the candidates, delegates, those in attendance, or Democrats in general: 52 percent of the labels were liberal ones, 48 percent moderate or conservative. But when it came to the Republican Convention,
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