|
<advertisement>
|
 |
 
|
|
media search: |
 |
politics
Why Voters Avoid the Story
by Andrew Kohut
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the
People & the Press, will write regularly for CJR
about public attitudes toward the media. He has served as president of The Gallup
Organization and the American Association of Public Opinion Research. In 1989
he founded Princeton Survey Research Associates, an attitude and opinion research
firm specializing in media, politics, and public policy studies.
The
first audience lesson of Campaign 2000 is as familiar as it is often disregarded.
The public readily ignores news coverage that it thinks is wrongheaded. This
instruction is not well-received by news organizations that tend to judge what
the general public wants by looking at marginal changes in cable news audiences,
tabloids, and other micro media.
So the pattern has started anew in this election cycle, with press attention focusing on whether George W. Bush ever used cocaine as the dominant political news in August after the Texas governor’s victory in the Iowa straw poll. Despite this, news interest in the presidential campaign, as measured by the Pew Research Center (PRC), declined between mid-July, when 53 percent of Americans said they were paying at least some attention to campaign news, to 46 percent in early September.
Fueled by discontent, triggered by a backlash of the Lewinsky story, Amer icans are avoiding, if not boycotting, news about the upcoming presidential election.
Remarkably, after nine months of coverage, half of Americans couldn’t name one Democratic candidate in a September PRC poll; 37 percent couldn’t name a Republican. This may not be too surprising given that less than half of Americans are paying some attention to campaign news.
And
in yet another indication of public disconnect, 28 percent say there’s simply
too much coverage of Campaign 2000, up ten points from July. Less than half
- 49 percent - say coverage is about right, the lowest the PRC has recorded
since we began asking this question back in 1987.
When asked to rate the job the news media are doing in covering the race for either the Democratic or Republican races for the presidential nominations, a scant 6 percent said excellent, while near majorities rated press performance as only fair or poor. Pew’s analysis of those results suggests that people turned off by the coverage tune it out. And they are most repelled by a focus on the private lives of politicians.
Increasingly, Americans are telling the media to back off of personal behavior. Off limits in covering candidates, according to majorities, are reports about past abortions, prescriptions for antidepressants, marijuana use, and extramarital affairs. Pluralities also say homosexuality should almost never be reported, as well as past psychiatric treatment and cocaine use as a young adult. Appropriate are stories about spousal abuse, income tax evasion, and lies about academic or military records.
Erosion of public support for the press’s role of watchdog is another disturbing consequence. Amazingly only a slim majority - 53 percent - values close media scrutiny of candidates. A growing number believes it is not worth it because it discourages good candidates. In 1987, 32 percent voiced this opinion; currently, 42 percent say that.
And these doubts cut across socio-economic and political lines. It doesn’t matter whether male or female, Demo crat or Republican, dropout or college graduate: people are increasingly saying that the press is too intrusive.
Moreover, while 62 percent say the voters themselves have too little influence in the nomination process, almost two-thirds (64 percent) say that news organizations wield too much power — again, the highest percentage Pew has recorded on this question. More people now perceive the press as having too much influence than did in 1992 during the Gennifer Flowers brouhaha or in 1987 when frontrunner Gary Hart was driven out of the presidential race.
Although
the public is increasingly critical of the way the press plays its watchdog
role, Americans don’t necessarily want the media to turn into a lapdog. When
asked to evaluate the coverage of various types of candidates, 30 percent of
the public say the press is too easy on frontrunners, a number that has doubled
since 1987. The public wants a critical press, but one that is more responsible
and less self-centered. A 59 percent majority of Pew survey respondents say
that news editors care more about the opinions of political insiders than about
their own audiences when deciding which stories to cover during an election!
The climate of public opinion about both press and politics, and about the way the two come together, is clearly at a low point. There are signs in the polls that the political impact of the impeachment scandal may fade. The same can’t be said for the press. In public attitudes, the legacy of Lewinsky coverage is all too apparent.
