Paul Waldman

Newspaper Photographs and the 1996 Presidential Election: The Question of Bias.

This article presents results of a content analysis of photographs of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole appearing in five major newspapers during the last two months of the 1996 presidential campaign. Clinton is found to have received slightly better pictorial treatment, with the most substantial difference found in the Chicago Tribune, an editorially conservative paper. In addition, a week-by-week analysis finds that photos of the two candidates rose and fell together in favorability. Placing the current study in the context of previous content analyses, the authors reject the conclusion of “liberal bias” in the press coverage of presidential campaigns, arguing instead for the presence of a strategic bias benefiting the front-runner.

Mapping Campaign Discourse An Introduction

This article, which is a report of the Campaign Discourse Mapping Project, draws on the speeches, ads, and news of the 1960, 1980, 1988, 1992, and 1996 campaigns to debunk three widely held beliefs about presidential campaign discourse: that it has become more negative, that reporting on it has become more negative, and that there is little new from day to day in the stump speeches of the major party presidential condidates.

The Morning After: The Effect of the Network Call for Bush

By the weekend following the election of 2000, two possible frames were available to the press covering developments in Florida. In the first, Gore had won the popular vote and the outcome in the electoral college was uncertain. In the second, Bush was ahead in the vote in the state that would determine the results in the electoral college and, as such, the presumed victor until Gore proved otherwise. Elite discourse as revealed in Sunday morning talk shows eventually settled into the second frame, but not until the certification of the Florida vote by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Elite discourse was not, however, beneficial to Bush in the early weeks of the protest phase of the election.

Political Discussion in Primary States

Residents of Iowa and New Hampshire are exposed to a much more intense primary campaign than those in the rest of the country. One would therefore expect that those living in these two states would be more engaged with the primary election than residents of other states. Survey data indicate that while this proves to be true of those in New Hampshire, it does not appear to be the case in Iowa. While New Hampshire residents talked about politics more frequently than those in other states—and with greater frequency as their primary approached—Iowa residents discussed politics less often than those in states with primaries on Super Tuesday. The same result was obtained examining only survey respondents who rated themselves very likely to vote in their primary or caucus.