R&L 2008 Election Blog

The Media’s Rush to Push Hillary Clinton Offstage

By Elizabeth A. Skewes

Yes, it’s been a long nomination season for the Democrats. And with Hillary Clinton’s victory in West Virginia, it’s likely to continue, at least until early June.

And yes, the drawn-out battle between Clinton and Barack Obama for the presidential nomination may make it harder for the eventual nominee to gear up for the fall campaign against Republican nominee John McCain. After all, he’s been the de facto party nominee since Super Tuesday in February, so he’s been able to fundraise and focus on the fall election.

But does that really mean Clinton should drop out of the race to make the path to the White House easier for Obama, as some Democrats have argued? And more to the point, have the media made it harder for Clinton to succeed in this contest by focusing so much attention on the calls for Clinton to make a graceful exit?

The answer to the first question is one for the partisans to debate, although Time magazine this week declared Obama the winner … so clearly the contest must be over.

But it’s the second question that is the more interesting one. Since late February, news organizations—often citing “Obama supporters” or “leading Democrats”—have been talking about the idea that Clinton should drop her bid for the nomination so that Democrats can rally behind Obama.

Even with nearly 1,200 delegates still at stake and 16 nominating contests to go before the March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont, the media weren’t wondering whether Clinton could pull it off, but how soon she should exit the race.

And, as research has shown, how the media cast an election can have a significant impact on how news consumers perceive it. The repetition of the message across media markets – the Boston Globe on Feb. 28 talking about leading Democrats urging Clinton to drop out, the Washington Times on March 22 saying Clinton is being advised to drop her bid, Tribune News Service on March 28, the Wall Street Journal on March 29 – inevitably has had an impact.

The media have long had a role in the nomination process. Thomas Patterson, in Out of Order, argues that the road to the White House now runs through the nation’s newsrooms, and getting traction in the media early on in the election—even before the primaries begin—is critical to fundraising and poll ratings. Just ask John Edwards.

But in this year’s election, the media seem to be expanding their influence beyond the pre-primary season and into the nomination itself. Now this may be an artifact of a close contest. The 2004 race didn’t see the media pushing anyone to leave the race, but Bush was an incumbent president, and Kerry was the last person still standing after Super Tuesday.

Still, there seems to be a rush to push Clinton offstage, to “tidy up” the race so that there’s one Democrat and one Republican, and so that the narrative can fall into familiar rhythms again. But democracy is messy, and even though it’s inconvenient for the press, perhaps we should simply let the process work the way it’s designed to and let the voters decide.

Elizabeth A. Skewes is assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the author of Message Control: How News is Made on the Presidential Campaign Trail.

Political Dialogue in the 2008 Campaign—More of the Same?

By Carl R. Ramey

In a New York Times Op-Ed this week, Elizabeth Edwards, fresh off the campaign trail herself, blames America’s mass media for debasing the political dialogue in this year’s presidential primaries. Her message, a common one, is that candidates have serious intentions, but they go unreported (or under-reported) because our media messengers are more enamored with campaign strategy, polling and personal peccadilloes. The implication is that if only our mass media would act more responsibly, treating issues more seriously and in greater depth, our political dialogue would be magically transformed.

For years, media critics and academic scholars have railed against the tendency of popular media to obsess over the horse-race element of political campaigns, while ignoring more important information about a candidates’ priorities, policies and principles. While the criticism is legitimate, it must be said that what is important to voters is not always conveyed or discerned by focusing on policy, to the exclusion of what candidates actually say and do. For example, who would argue that assessing Hillary Clinton’s integrity, Barack Obama’s authenticity and John McCain’s temperament are not at least as relevant as examining their positions on energy or the estate tax? And, such qualities are usually measured by weighing personal conduct.

Nevertheless, fundamental changes have occurred that threaten the health of our political dialogue as never before. First, the media environment of 2008 is fully 24/7, with the information flow virtually endless and the noise level wildly amplified. It is a YouTube and cell phone video world where every candidate’ s action or reaction is subject to instant viewing and analysis. Second, the contemporary proliferation of media sources competing to hold onto highly fragmented audiences and advertisers significantly dilutes political content on many outlets. Mushrooming media sources chasing the same political stories with reduced staff and dwindling revenues simply runs counter to producing serious journalism. Third, the different ways in which modern political campaigns are conducted, combined with the different ways American audiences now obtain political information, vastly complicate the problem.

Yes, commercial television, cable networks and radio talk shows continue to minimize meaningful discussions of serious public issues. But we should not delude ourselves into thinking that, if only those media sources would allow more time for serious discussions, our political dialogue would suddenly be uplifted. That is because, even if popular media could be reformed in this fashion, little would change unless the tendencies and habits of both political candidates and American audiences were also to change, a likelihood of near herculean proportions.

The sad truth is that political candidates and their handlers typically prefer the slick, shallow and safe sound-bite over extended, in-depth conversations. And, like McCain, Clinton and Obama in the current campaign, they repeatedly pander to the electorate—shifting positions on trade, jobs and tax relief, depending on what primary contest is at stake—instead of addressing issues directly; believing, perhaps legitimately, that revealing too many uncomfortable specifics might represent political suicide. For example, even though Obama has the weight of evidence on his side in opposing a gas tax holiday this summer, he could easily be “buried” with the issue by Clinton and McCain, both of whom are supporting the idea by ignoring facts and appealing to voters’ momentary distress.

Another sad truth is that, despite more in-depth coverage of political issues by leading national newspapers, weekly news magazines, public issue periodicals and public broadcasting—all of which are experiencing losses not gains—most Americans seem to prefer the speeded-up, less reflective, headline treatment of those issues found on commercial TV, cable and the Internet. Younger Americans, particularly, look to the Internet and satirical news features like the “Daily Show” for a quick political fix.

If, as critics claim, our dominant mass media are largely to blame for the deterioration of our political dialogue, why do the more serious media outlets—and there are still many—not attract more stable audiences, catching at least a few of the readers and viewers retreating from the political pabulum served by commercial television, cable and talk radio? Part of the problem is that, even as we are threatened from the outside world as never before, we live in a society where the dominant lifestyles have become less compatible with the mission of serious newspapers, magazines and broadcast journalism. In short, the problem of an increasingly dysfunctional political dialogue goes deeper than just indicting some of our most prominent, pernicious media sources.

Carl R. Ramey is a retired communications lawyer and the author of Mass Media Unleashed: How Washington Policymakers Shortchanged the American Public (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)