Media and the 2004 Election

Today’s modern mass media reach hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and

throughout the world through television, radio,

newspapers, magazines, books, film and the

Internet. The American news media inform

their audiences about the candidates, their

positions on the issues, opinion polls, political

debates and conventions, and political 

advertisements. The news media provide a

watchdog mechanism for the public, work as a

liaison between the public and its leaders, and

influence candidate images and reputations.

Among the various mass media, television

is the most important provider of election

media coverage. According to CNN, by 2000,

98 percent of all American households owned a minimum of one television set.

Television has become the dominant source of political news for the American public. 

The Campaign Trail

The way television media cover candidates has changed dramatically. In the

past media coverage of presidential candidates restricted itself mostly to candidates’

official duties and activities. Now candidates invite reporters to experience the daily

Inside This Issue:

• Media and the 2004 

Election. . . . . . . . . . . . . . page1

• Presidential Election Media

Coverage: An Interview with

John King . . . . . . . . . . . . page 1

• Campaign Highlight: 

Monitoring Media Coverage

of Elections . . . . . . . . . . . page 5

FAST FACTS:

✔ There will be 15,000 press 

passes given out for the 2004

Democratic National Convention.

Election

FOCUS

May 21, 2004 U.S. Department of State ISSUE 1 • NO 11 

In a recent interview, John King,

CNN’s senior White House correspondent, spoke with Washington File staff

writer Darlisa Crawford about his role in

reporting on U.S. presidential activities

in an election year. King has covered

four U.S. presidential elections for a

number of news organizations, including CNN and The Associated Press. 

Q: What is the most 

important role of the media

in a presidential election?

King: The most important role is to

objectively observe and report on the

positions the candidates take in the

election, and hopefully as well to report

fairly on what the voters view as the

Presidential Election Media Coverage:

An Interview with John King

(continued on page 3)

(continued on page 2)

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President Bush responds to reporters

during a press conference in the 

White House Briefing Room. Monday

July 8, 2002. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.
ELECTION FOCUS 2004

2 ELECTION FOCUS 2004

life of the campaign trail, personalizing

the candidates to a greater degree than

before. Interviews with candidates in

their homes or in the studio, and televised dinners with the candidates and

local families provide the public information about the issues and candidates

in a more personal manner. 

The Hearst-Argyle television 

network received the University of

Southern California-Annenberg

School’s Walter Cronkite Award for

Excellence in Television Political

Journalism for coverage of the 2000

and 2002 elections. Hearst-Argyle’s

political programming consisted of 200

cumulative hours on local, state and

national campaigns. Currently, the network provides viewers “truth checks”

of political advertisements and web

sites dedicated to political information.

During the 2004 primary season, a

one-hour special, On the Campaign

Trail, offered profiles on the private

lives of Democratic presidential candidates. For example, it showed Senator

Joseph Lieberman doing his laundry,

General Wesley Clark’s exercise routine and Senator John Edwards riding a

campaign bus with his two children. 

The American public’s appetite for

campaign coverage intensifies with each

election year and the media’s embrace of

new technologies. Traditionally, candidates have used buses on the campaign

trail. In recent years, as election coverage has expanded, CNN and ABC News

have introduced their own high-technology buses equipped with mobile

television studios and news bureaus on

the campaign trail. CNN’s bus is called

“Election Express.” ABC News recently

started using three similar vehicles.

“We have devoted a lot of effort to

get people to understand that the buses

aren’t a gimmick.” ABC News political

director Mark Helprin said. “They

allow us to do better journalism.”

The New York Times recently

commented on how technology is

reshaping the work of correspondents

and the media’s coverage of campaigns. “Campaign reporters, like war

correspondents, are not necessarily

gadget geeks. But the rapacious 24-

hour news cycle has forced them onto

the cutting edge to do their jobs better

-- or at least faster. The equipment is

even altering the shape of the correspondent’s day, which now includes

scrolling in the morning through The

Note, an online political briefing from

ABC News, and checking one another’s Web sites at night, trying all the

while to get a jump on everyone else.”

Political Advertisements

“Political advertising is now the

major means by which candidates for

the presidency communicate their messages to voters,” wrote Dr. Kathleen

Hall Jamieson, Dean of the Annenberg

School for Communication at the

University of Pennsylvania and

Director of the Annenberg Public

Policy Center. “As a conduit of this

advertising, television attracts both

more candidate dollars and more audience attention than radio or print.” 

By 1980 the 60-second political

advertisement or “spot” had replaced

the half-hour broadcast speech, delivered by presidential candidates since

1952. The standard length of a political

spot in 2004 is 30 seconds. According

to Jamieson, the spot ad is the most

used and the most viewed of all available forms of advertising. 

Political spots create name recognition, ask questions a candidate views as

central to the election, personalize current issues, communicate a candidate’s

talents and agendas for the future, and

attack a candidate’s opponent’s perceived

fatal flaws. Some political scholars suggest that political advertisements provide

the electorate with more information

than network news because of voters’

tendencies to watch 30-second political

advertisements that reinforce existing

dispositions. 

“If I had a choice between watching what you typically see in news

about campaigns and typical ads, I

would watch the typical ad,” said

Jamieson. “ And I’d watch it back to

back, so I’d watch both candidates’

advertising because in the give and

take of advertising, you’re likely to get

more policy content than you are in the

typical newscast—too much of the

news about campaigns tells us about

the tactics, and the game, and the polls,

and who’s ahead and why, and too little

about what these people have promised

and what these people have done.”

The Center for Media and Public

Affairs, a nonpartisan research and educational organization, reported that the

cost of political advertisements on television, the third highest source of ad

revenues for the industry, has more than

(continued from page 1)

The U.S. Department of State is pleased to present its election coverage newsletter, Election Focus 2004. The 

newsletter will provide non-partisan coverage of the U.S. election process, featuring articles, interviews, public opinion

polls, and other information on the presidential primaries, debates, conventions and campaign activities of the major 

presidential candidates.

Election Focus 2004 is produced by the Democracy and Human Rights team in the Bureau of International Information

Programs.

— BUREAU OF —

INTERNATIONAL 

INFORMATION

PROGRAMS

THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Washington, DC 20547
quadrupled since 1982. Candidates

spent more than $1 billion on political

advertisements in the 2002 election

cycle. Alliance for Better Campaigns, a

public interest group that seeks to

improve U.S. elections by promoting

campaigns in which the most useful

information reaches the greatest number

of citizens, has concluded that ad prices

at 40 stations around the country

increased by more than 50 percent in the

two months before the 2002 elections. 

According to TNS Media

Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis

Group data, the Bush-Cheney campaign

has spent approximately $56.7 million

to broadcast 13 spots on television stations in 100 markets of battleground

states. The research concludes that 63

percent or $36 million has been spent to

air seven “negative” ads. 

In recent months, a number of taxexempt political organizations, known

as “527 groups” after a provision in

the tax code, have been formed to raise

money in support of issues that play to

Senator Kerry’s advantage. By law,

these groups work independently from

the Kerry campaign. (Supporters of

President Bush have also organized

such groups to a significantly lesser

extent.) According to USA today, 527

groups, such as MoveOn.org Voter

Fund and The Media Fund, have spent

approximately $30 million on television advertisements. University of

Missouri-Columbia data reported that

an estimated 84 percent of the statements in those 527 groups’ 50 spots

have been attacks targeted at President

Bush. These spots combined with the

Kerry campaign’s five negative ads

that have aired on cable channels total

more than $40 million spent on negative advertising to date. 

“There’s an interesting synergy in

politics that occurs because the press

focuses on attack in advertising,”

remarked Jamieson. “As a result, the

consultant, knowing that the press is

going to focus more closely on the

attack ad is more likely to carefully

document the attack ad. So the level of

inaccuracy in the attack ad is actually,

on average, lower than it is in the contrast ad or the advocacy ad.”

There are several types of political

ads: negative ads—ads that are “as

much or more about your opponent

than you”, biographic and vision ads—

”ads that describe or emphasize the

candidate’s life or ‘vision’ for

America”, issue ads—”ads that discuss

one or more specific issues and the

candidate’s proposals about them” and

trust ads—”ads that seek to convince

voters that the candidate is someone

they can trust to lead them during 

challenging times.” 

Tailored spots for specific local

regions are also evident. For example,

a recent series of Bush-Cheney campaign ads made mention of specific

weapons systems—supposedly

opposed by Kerry. The Arizona version

mentioned Apache helicopters,

Tomahawk cruise missiles and F-18

aircraft “all built here in Arizona.”

Arizona was among nine states that

carried different state-specific versions

of the same spot.

CNN reported that some of the

527 groups advertised anti-Bush spots

in 38 markets of the 39 markets the

Kerry campaign targeted and 15 markets of the 41 markets the Bush-Cheney

campaign targeted, according to the

Republican National Committee.

“I would expect Bush’s ‘positive’

percentage (of ads) to go up some and

Kerry’s ‘negative’ percentage to rise a

bit,” said University of MissouriColumbia communications professor

William Benoit. “But Kerry’s only

likely to go really negative if he gets

well behind in the polls.” ■

WWW.USEMBASSY.DE/USA 3

ELECTION FOCUS 2004

biggest issues; often Washington is

focused on things that in small town

America are not as relevant and we

should be careful not to take Washington’s

perspective as the country’s perspective.

Q: How do you balance 

the media’s role on elections

and its responsibility to

the public?

King: I think that they are the same

thing. One of the troubling trends in

our business in part because of where

I work (24-hour cable) is that there are

a lot of “shout shows,” people screaming at each other on television. There

is a lot more opinion on the air as part

of what is framed as mainstream journalism. We are supposed to drive the

middle of the road and not pick sides,

to be objective. That’s what I have to

try to do every day. So, you are serving the public by telling them what’s

going on. You are serving the public

by telling them what the president is

doing, why the president might be

doing that, where is he today, what

does Senator Kerry say about what the

president says. Bring it all together

and just tell. Tell what they say. Don’t

try to tell people what to do. Don’t try

to influence people. That’s not our job.

Our job is to share information and do

it to the best that we can.

Q: How do you identify 

election stories and 

election issues for your

news stories?

King: It varies widely. Sometimes

what the president focuses on is the

focus of my story on any given day

and sometimes it will be what Senator

(continued from page 1)

Presidential Election Media

Coverage: An Interview with

John King
ELECTION FOCUS 2004

4 ELECTION FOCUS 2004

Kerry or whoever the challenger in

any given election brings up. I like to

go to communities and ask "normal

people," as I call them, what they

think. In most cases the issues are fairly obvious; this year the war on

terrorism and in Iraq and the economy

are the dominant themes. But we

should also look for smaller "niche"

issues that could be important in certain key areas. The debate over trade

and "outsourcing," for example, is a

subset of the economic debate that is

very important in many of the major

presidential battleground states.

Q: How has the Internet

influenced coverage of this

presidential election and 

the race in general?

King: Technology allows the media

to communicate more conveniently

with people. To those people that use 

it anyway, it is more convenient. You

send an email instead of writing a 

card. You send money on the Internet

instead of going to a fundraiser or

answering a direct mail pledge, but

some of it is new money. How much of

it is new money? They will study that

after the election and figure that out.

I think that you can overrate the

Internet. Largely it is a way to communicate to the people that you

already have with you. It’s a campaign

club. Instead of coming into your living room, you meet them on the

Internet. You communicate with likeminded people more than you get new

people, I think. However, for the small

percentage of undecided voters, that

ten percent, if they are looking to do

research on candidates, it is much more

accessible now. You can get it so easily

that I think that helps both campaigns. 

Q: What has been the most

significant change in presidential election media coverage?

King: Live television and the cable

news networks are the most substantial

changes in the last 20 years. Candidates

are now trying to drive the coverage

throughout the day, for better or worse.

There are more platforms for campaign surrogates and other interested

parties to air their views. From an

information standpoint, it is a great

blessing, but it can also be "loud" and

crowded, if you will. But more information is always preferable to less.

Q: How does this presidential

election differ from the elections that you have covered

in the past?

King: This is the first one where the

United States actually has 100,000 plus

troops overseas, some of them getting

shot at every day. So the United States

is in the middle of a real war. If my

memory is right, some of this stuff was

going on in Kosovo, but it wasn’t like

this. Kosovo was in the air. So you have

kids on the ground getting shot at every

day, people questioning whether it was

right or wrong to go to war in the first

place, and you have sort of an “iffy”

economy. So you’ve got two big things.

Most elections are about one big thing.

You are lucky if the election is about

one big thing because that gives you

something to write about. So this is a

challenging time and of course it’s the

election after the last one in 2000 when

the country was split right down the

middle. The courts decided the election.

You have an incredibly polarized public.

Today 45 percent of the people are

going to vote for Bush and 45 percent

of the people are going to vote against

him. That’s just done. There is almost

nothing that can happen, even though

there are still seven months to the election. There is almost nothing that can

happen to change those people’s

minds. That is how polarized the country is. It is very strange to have that

dynamic in which you’ve got two huge

things, a war and an economy. You also

have a completely polarized country in

which they are going to spend hundreds

of millions of dollars over about 10 to

12 percent of the American people.

That’s whom they are fighting for. The

other people have made up their mind. 

Now it is not quite that simple in

the sense that there are 45 who are

with you no matter what and there are

45 who are against you no matter

what. Let’s assume you split what’s

left, the ten percent that’s left. Well

then who is going to win? The guy

who gets most of his 45 percent to

show up will win. That’s the nuts and

bolts of elections. Actually convincing

people don’t just be for me, be late to

work to vote for me. Harangue your

neighbor and get him or her to vote

for me. That stuff fascinates me.

Especially in an age where there is so

much competition with cable, noise,

radio noise, Internet noise, work noise,

the pace of life noise. 

Q: What is the greatest

advantage and disadvantage

in covering a presidential

election?

King: The great advantage of coverThe opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

“The great advantage 

of covering a presidential

election is getting to access

the candidates and a chance

to see how they hold up

under a very stressful and

demanding schedule.”

— John King
Americans rely heavily on the

mainstream media for information,

especially during election campaigns.

Consequently, these media organizations

have considerable influence on how

people think about the candidates and

the issues. This raises an important

question: Are the media presenting a

fair and balanced picture? A number

of non-governmental organizations

have been created to look into that

question.

Some of these organizations closely

monitor mainstream news coverage of

the electoral campaigns and advertise

their findings in an attempt to hold

news executives to higher standards of

coverage. The organizations advocate

standards of reporting that are democratic, truthful and issues-oriented.

They emphasize the media’s responsibility to educate voters about the

democratic process, devote more airtime to diverse political perspectives,

and provide more thorough coverage

of the issues and candidates on the

ballot. According to the polling organization Pew Research Center for the

People, forty-two percent of Americans

go to local TV news for their campaign

coverage. However, MediaTenor, a

global provider of international media

content analysis, reported that in

January 2004, less than 5 percent of

network reporting covered candidates’

positions on issues that matter to

Americans most. 

“Pre-election news coverage of 

the candidates has in many cases all

but disappeared,” says Paul Taylor,

chairman of the Alliance for Better

Campaigns, an organization that 

advocates improved media coverage 

of campaigns. “What little candidate

coverage that remains is devoted to

incumbents, by a margin of nearly five

to one, over challengers.”

Data from the Norman Lear

Center, a multidisciplinary research

and public policy center, revealed 

that the amount of election coverage

provided by the typical local television

station during the height of the 2000

presidential primary season was just

39 seconds a night, considerably 

shorter than the five-minute standard

advocated by a 1998 presidential 

advisory commission led by former

Vice President Al Gore. According to

The Center for Media and Public

Affairs, a nonpartisan research and

educational organization, the total

minutes of coverage of the 2002

midterm election on the national 

network news programs declined by

78 percent over the coverage those

networks devoted to the 1998 midterm

election. The less media coverage a

broadcaster dedicates to a political

race, the more candidates must rely 

on buying media time to get their 

message across to voters.

Currently each news organization

has its own rules for election coverage.

MediaChannel, a nonprofit, public

interest web site dedicated to global

media issues, and its affiliate advisors

are now drafting universal standards 

in collaboration with selected news

services. They are hoping that these

standards will eventually be adopted

by the industry as a whole. 

Media coverage is often the primary source of political information

for citizens. Therefore, the role of the

media in covering campaigns and elections is a critical element in the process

of electing a U.S. president. The

responsibility of the media to provide

accurate and sufficient information to

voters is paramount. Dr. Kathleen Hall

Jamieson, Dean of the Annenberg

School for Communication at the

University of Pennsylvania and

Director of the Annenberg Public

Policy Center concluded, “Reporters

should help the public make sense of

competing political arguments by

defining terms, filling in needed information, assessing the accuracy of the

evidence being offered, and relating the

claims and counterclaims to the probable impact of the proposed policies on

citizens and the country.” ■

WWW.USEMBASSY.DE/USA 5

ELECTION FOCUS 2004

ing a presidential election is getting to

access the candidates and a chance to

see how they hold up under a very

stressful and demanding schedule. You

also tend to see corners of the country

that you might never encounter otherwise. Whether it is the biggest cities or,

as the president did recently on his bus

tour, tiny rural farm towns, in those

places you see how people respond to

the candidates. In my view there is no

disadvantage; you are always tired and

sometimes lose track of the calendar or

what town you are in, but that is the

beauty of a long campaign. ■

Monitoring Media Coverage 

of Elections

Campaign★★Highlight

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.