Abstract
In-depth interviews with eight political reporters who covered the 2002 gubernatorial campaigns in California and Wisconsin finds reporters produced little coverage of even the most serious third-party candidates because they define the campaign almost exclusively as a contest between the Democrats and Republicans.
Keywords
Dissent has rarely had a friend in the news media. For most of American history, groups that have challenged conventional norms have had trouble getting a sympathetic ear from the press, 1 which often delegitimizes groups that seriously challenge the status quo. 2 Such news coverage hurts a movement’s ability to recruit new members, and it makes it more difficult for groups to amplify their message to the public. 3
One form of dissent that has traditionally received scant news coverage is the third-party candidate. Since the 1960s, studies have shown that news organizations ignore candidates who run for political office from outside the Democratic and Republican establishment. 4 Third-party candidates are unlikely to generate much media attention because reporters see no reason to cover candidates who have little chance of winning the horse race; 5 do not value third-party candidates for the issues they raise; 6 and do not have the resources to cover every nominee. 7
The studies that have examined why third-party candidates who are ignored have reached these conclusions either through a limited number of short interviews with journalists on the campaign trail or, in most cases, by looking at the content of the newspaper. 8 No studies have used extensive, long interviews to ask political reporters why they give less coverage to third parties. In addition, the literature on third parties and the press focuses almost exclusively on presidential politics—an arena where no minor-party candidate has been successful.
This study fills the gap in the literature in two ways. First, it focuses on gubernatorial politics rather than presidential contests; and second, it uses in-depth interviews with political journalists who have experience covering state campaigns involving serious third-party contenders. Understanding why minor parties are ignored is important because third-party candidates have played an instrumental role in American politics, raising issues that the major parties have ignored, 9 pushing for and winning policy innovations 10 and serving as barometers of the public’s discontent. 11 Focusing on gubernatorial campaigns is warranted because minor parties have been able to win public office at the state level, where 14 governors since 1900 have been either independents or members of smaller parties. 12 The study also provides insight into how the journalistic mindset influences the news frames reporters use when constructing stories about elections.
Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
Journalists play a vital role in American political campaigns. Because the world of politics is often “out of reach” to the citizenry in that most people have no direct contact with the candidates, 13 the main conduit through which citizens have traditionally received information about public affairs is the mass media. 14 But the press is more than just a neutral channel that links the public to electoral politics. The press can set the nation’s political agenda, 15 organize elections by determining which candidates are the most viable, 16 shape candidate images through the use of news frames, 17 and act as “guardians of political norms” by legitimizing important political institutions. 18
By emphasizing certain characteristics of a candidate, the news media make those characteristics more significant to the public. This effect, known as attributive agenda setting, is based on the notion that the news media frame political issues and prime the public in how it should feel about those issues.
19
As Weaver put it:
By making certain issues, candidates, and characteristics of candidates more salient, the media can contribute significantly to the construction of a perceived reality that voters rely upon in making decisions about whether to vote and for whom to vote
20
The dominant frame that reporters use to characterize campaigns is the horse race. Journalists focus on each candidates’ political strategy, momentum, organizational and financial strength, expectations, support in public opinion polls and political endorsements—all at the expense of public policy issues. 21 This news coverage undermines other ways of viewing campaigns, which are seen by some scholars as key moments in which elected leaders must reconnect with their constituents, 22 citizens learn about the issues and choices before them 23 and democratic institutions and values are legitimized. 24
The contest framework may impact election results. Studies have found that voters are primed to cast their ballots for candidates whom they perceive to be leading in surveys, 25 a phenomenon that Ansolabehere and Iyengar say is a distortion of democracy because it leads voters to “choose between the candidates on the basis of what other people think.” 26 This is particularly true of third-party candidates, Lang and Lang concluded, because voters often practice “tactical voting” in which they do not cast a ballot for a minor-party because polls say the candidate cannot win. 27
The media bias against third parties is well documented, particularly at the presidential level. 28 Zaller said third parties face a chicken-and-egg dilemma: they do not receive news coverage because reporters view them as losers, but they may be losing elections because they do not receive news coverage. 29
Under his “Rule of Anticipated Importance,” Zaller argues that reporters will only expend limited journalistic resources on stories they believe will carry importance in the future. Reporters ignore certain presidential candidates, Zaller said, because they believe news consumers are not interested in candidates who will have little consequence in their lives; reporters avoid undermining their own credibility by promoting weak candidates who eventually fade from public importance; and journalists operate in a competitive environment in which a reporter’s status is based on his or her ability to accurately assess which candidates have long-term viability. 30
In his analysis of the 1980 presidential election, Stovall concluded that independent John Anderson received less news coverage than President Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan because journalists tend to “value third parties for what they contribute to the debate on the campaign itself, not the issues raised in the campaign.” 31 Robinson and Sheehan found that reporters will only take third-party candidates seriously when those politicians originally came from a major party. 32 Pirch reported that minor-party candidates will get on the news media’s agenda only if they are hard to label ideologically, take unique but mainstream political positions, appeal to a broad audience and are likely to affect the election outcome. 33 Meyrowitz did not look at third-party candidates specifically, but his short interviews with national reporters covering the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary found that journalists ignore minor candidates within a major party because news organizations do not have the resources to cover every presidential contender. 34
Cultural studies theorists argue that the mainstream media protect the existing power structure by sidelining voices that threaten the political and economic system. 35 Hall made the link between hegemony and the mass media through the concept of “encoding” – the idea that media organizations construct reality by giving meaning to events through the use of certain codes or news frames. 36 Although the media do not intentionally choose to support a dominant ideology, Hall says, it nevertheless operates within boundaries that reflect elite opinion. 37 Wicker maintains that “objective journalism favors the Establishment, while Hallin 38 found that reporters determine which viewpoints are deviant based on the consensus of top policymakers, 39 and Graber said mainstream political institutions are routinely legitimized by the news media while outside groups are marginalized. 40 Rachlin said reporters are socialized by the same cultural forces that shape society. 41 In addition, reporters rely on official government sources for most of their information about public affairs. 42 These official spokespersons are not only used by reporters to counter the opinions of those who challenge the system, they also are often considered the authoritative sources of the “objective” and “factual” information that establishes the context of the debate. 43
The studies presented here all address the issue of third parties and the press at the national level. The only studies that examine how the press covers third-party candidates for governor were content analyses by Kirch, who concluded that third-party gubernatorial candidates receive less coverage than do Democrats and Republicans, 44 and Frith, who showed that Jesse Ventura was taken more seriously during his 1998 Minnesota governor’s race than was Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2003 California election. 45 Frith’s analysis focused on Ventura and Schwarzenegger as celebrity candidates and had little to do with third-party politics.
Research Questions
Based on the literature, this study seeks to answer the following questions:
RQ1
Do reporters cover third-party gubernatorial candidates differently for the practical reasons outlined by Zaller, or do reporters ignore minor-party contenders because they are predisposed to accept a Democrat-Republican paradigm, as cultural studies theorists would posit?
RQ2
How do state political reporters define the term “campaign” and how does this definition drive news coverage?
RQ3
What criteria do state reporters use to decide whether to cover a third-party gubernatorial candidate?
Method
In-depth interviews were conducted with eight political reporters who covered the 2002 gubernatorial campaigns in California and Wisconsin. These campaigns were chosen because they featured third-party candidates who received at least 5 percent of the vote—the threshold used by the federal government to determine major party status in the next election. [The 2002 gubernatorial campaigns were the most recent elections that included viable third-party candidates at the time that this study was completed in 2008 as part of the investigator’s dissertation research.] The California race involved Democratic incumbent Gray Davis, who won with 47.3 percent of the vote, Republican Bill Simon, who received 42.4 percent, and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo with 5.3 percent. In Wisconsin, Democrat Jim Doyle finished first with 45 percent of the vote, followed by Republican Scott McCallum at 41 percent and Libertarian Ed Thompson with 10 percent. The California election was of particular interest because the two major-party candidates were highly unpopular, ostensibly giving Camejo an opening. The Wisconsin race included a well-known Libertarian who was the brother of former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
The five California and three Wisconsin reporters were chosen because they worked for the largest newspapers in their respective state capitals as well as the state’s other major cities or city, they were their newspaper’s primary political reporters in 2002 and they had experience writing about gubernatorial campaigns. The reporters from California included Mark Z. Barabak of the Los Angeles Times, John Marelius of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle, Margaret Talev of the McClatchy Group and formerly of the LA Times, and Kevin Yamamura of the Sacramento Bee. In Wisconsin, Steven Walters of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was interviewed along with two reporters from Madison: David W. Callender of The Capital Times and Scott Milfred of the Wisconsin State Journal.
The interviews were conducted between June 24 and July 11, 2007. All except one interview was conducted in person, with the eighth done via e-mail. The in-person interviews lasted 60 to 90 minutes and were digitally recorded. The reporter from the San Diego Union-Tribune was interviewed by e-mail because he said he did not have time for either a telephone or an in-person interview, and no other reporters at the newspaper were available. Although an e-mail interview does not yield the same quality of data that an in-person interview can produce, the investigator made a judgment call and determined that it would be better to have some comments from Marelius than to have none at all.
The study considered the fact that some reporters might have trouble remembering their campaign coverage from five years ago. Each reporter was asked about this problem, and each agreed that their memories of the 2002 campaign were strong enough to discuss it in detail. 46 In addition, while this study did raise questions about specific events of the 2002 campaigns, most of the questions were designed to measure the reporters’ attitudes toward campaigns and viable third-party gubernatorial contenders in general. The 2002 election was used more as a starting point to identify political reporters who had experience covering races that involved serious minor parties.
Another challenge of the study was to determine how many subjects to interview because texts on qualitative methods are vague on sample size. McCracken recommends that investigators interview about eight subjects
47
while Patton says
. . . there are no rules for sample size in qualitative inquiry, and sample size depends on what you want to know, the purpose of the inquiry, what’s at stake, what will be useful, what will have credibility, and what can be done with available time and resources.
48
The literature review found that studies using in-depth interviews vary widely in the number of subjects questioned. For example, Holohan interviewed 16 journalists for her study on coverage of Haiti, 49 Deuze interviewed 14 editors for his analysis of tabloid newspapers, 50 and Lee conducted 20 interviews in a study of journalistic deception. 51 Other studies came up with such numbers as 21, 28, 47, 133 and 162 interviews. 52
Given such uncertainty in qualitative analysis, this study sought to interview a sufficient number of journalists so as to gain what Seidman calls as wide a perspective as possible “so that others outside the sample might have a chance to connect to the experiences of those in it.” 53 One method this study used to determine whether enough subjects had been interviewed was to watch for the saturation effect—that is, the point at which the researcher begins to hear the same information repeatedly. 54 The eight interviews conducted for this study met that standard. The journalists came from different newspapers from two distinct regions of the country so that some variety of perspective was built into the study. However, because all the subjects came from one subgroup of the profession (the political reporter), they had similar pressures and attitudes about campaigns so that eight interviews would be sufficient to gain an understanding of how journalists operate when covering gubernatorial campaigns involving third-party candidates.
Written transcripts of the interviews were produced and analyzed. The investigator read all eight answers to the same question, making note of language use and themes. Key quotations that summarized the dominant viewpoints of the text were highlighted as were minority viewpoints provided by only one or two reporters. Key quotations were entered into a Word document so that the responses of each reporter to the same question could be compared side by side. This process was helpful in identifying common patterns and attitudes that surfaced from the interviews.
Findings
The in-depth interviews identified five possible explanations for why even the most serious third-party gubernatorial candidates receive scant coverage in the press.
First, the interviews suggest that while campaign journalists see their role as helping inform the public so that citizens can make educated decisions at the ballot box, reporters ultimately define those responsibilities within the parameters established by the two major parties. More specifically, political journalists rely on institutions dominated by the Democrats and Republicans to tell them which issues and candidates are important and newsworthy.
Second, the interviews indicate that state reporters, like national political reporters, define the term “campaign” almost exclusively as a contest. Such a definition establishes a journalistic mindset that immediately favors candidates from the two major parties at the expense of dissent, which is seen as less newsworthy because it is unlikely to prevail on Election Day.
Third, reporters accept the hegemony of the two-party system. While reporters sometimes ruminate over whether they should “challenge the system,” the interviews suggest that journalists often knowingly operate within the existing political structure. When they talk about objectivity, they are talking about impartial coverage for Democrats and Republicans—and not necessarily for third-party contenders.
Fourth, according to the interviews, news organizations have an economic incentive to narrow the field of candidates to make campaign coverage more manageable. The political journalists interviewed for this study said they were forced to limit coverage because they were either the only ones covering the campaign or because of limited budgets and news holes.
The political journalists interviewed for this study said they were forced to limit coverage because they were either the only ones covering the campaign or because of limited budgets and news holes.
Finally, the interviews conducted for this study suggest that the 2002 third-party candidates in California and Wisconsin had trouble getting news media attention because they could not meet the criteria that the eight reporters identified as their main way to determine which candidates were serious enough to cover.
How Reporters Perceive Their Role
All eight reporters articulated some notion that their role is to provide readers with objective, substantive information that voters can use at the ballot box. However, it appears from the interviews that reporters unconsciously defined their role as informer within boundaries established by the Democrats and Republicans. They did not say this explicitly, but their bias came through in subtle ways when journalists explained which sources they turn to for political information. The interviews indicate that most of what state journalists know about politics comes from observing and talking to institutions and people that are dominated by the two major parties.
Two reporters said explicitly that they know which subjects are important to cover in a gubernatorial campaign by being around Democratic and Republican legislative leaders. All the reporters interviewed said they receive many story ideas from the “Democratic” and “Republican” campaign committees. None of the reporters said that they turn to the Greens or Libertarians for ideas.
When asked who she typically contacts during a campaign, Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle said: “The chairman of the state Democratic Party” 55 as well as “Democratic Party fundraisers, the precinct workers, [and] major labor people on the Democratic side….” 56 Steven Walters of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel said he talks to “the local Democratic and Republican chairmen and chairwomen.” 57
When reporters discussed the independent sources or non-campaign officials they seek out for “neutral” information, they indicated that many of these people come from within the two-party structure. Walters said he sometimes tries to get the opinion of special interest groups, citing the Wisconsin Realtors as an example—a group, he said, that “generally back(s) Republicans.” 58 Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times cited the Service Employees International Union as an example of a non-campaign source that he has tapped—an organization that has donated millions to the Democrats and Republicans over the years.
Campaign as Contest
The interviews suggest that state political reporters view campaigns almost exclusively as a game between two campaigns. In fact, the notion that a campaign is a “contest” was emphasized by seven of the eight political journalists who were interviewed. This contest paradigm was articulated in both the overt definitions reporters gave for the term “campaign” as well as the unconscious manner in which reporters talked about elections. This tendency to see campaigns mostly as a competition makes third-party candidates inherently less newsworthy because they are typically far behind in polls.
Margaret Talev of the McClatchy Group said a campaign is “the organization that a candidate puts together to win a race.” 59 John Marelius of the San Diego Union-Tribune put it this way: “A campaign is the process … of candidates making their cases to the voters;” 60 and David Callender of Madison’s Capital Times defined the term as “actively seeking election to a political office.” 61
In answering questions about their daily routines during the election season, the reporters focused on elements of a campaign that directly pertain to the competition, such as fundraising, political strategy, polls and political advertisements. When Barabak was trying to recall some of the political stories he had written over the years, the first two he mentioned dealt with campaign financing and advertising. Talev said that in the final weeks of a campaign she will “check with TV stations about ad buys” 62 and access “campaign finance [forms] online.” 63 In all eight interviews, reporters mentioned “campaign officials” first when asked who they are most likely to contact during a typical day on the campaign trail. Put another way, the first type of source the reporters thought to talk about were those whose main function is to help win the contest.
The interviews suggest that reporters see voters mainly as the final measure of how well a candidate is performing in the game. This was best expressed by Barabak, who said he likes to talk to regular citizens so he can better determine which candidate may be winning. Barabak said he interviews voters in San Benito County, Calif., because the county has “almost a perfect track record” 64 of picking the winner of each gubernatorial election.
Finally, the contest paradigm that dominates the thinking of reporters is evident in how journalists discussed the role that public policy plays in a political campaign. In five of the eight interviews, reporters did not talk about issues or ideas when defining the term campaign until the investigator raised the subject with them first. In addition, when reporters were asked about the role that issues and ideas play in an election, they valued issues mostly in terms of how they might impact the contest. Scott Milfred of the Wisconsin State Journal, for instance, agreed that a campaign was “a contest of ideas,” 65 but he said that most candidates “package those ideas in extremely narrow and kind of cynical and hot button or sound bite ways” 66 to appeal to a certain audience. Walters said, “Yeah, it’s about issues, but it’s about issues that are ginned up and may or may not be valid.” 67
The main point here is that from their overt definitions of the term campaign to the manner in which they discuss voters and issues, the reporters interviewed for this study demonstrated a strong bias in favor of a contest paradigm when talking about elections. Under this definition of the term “campaign,” minor-party gubernatorial contenders are inherently less newsworthy in the eyes of journalists because they do not contribute anything meaningful to the one aspect of an election that is the central focus of the reporter: the contest.
Two-party Hegemony
The interviews suggest that reporters accept the hegemony of the two-party system as a natural part of American politics. If these interviews are any indication, reporters consider campaigns to be primarily two-person affairs. As the comments that follow indicate, part of this is simple practicality—reporters do not have the physical ability to cover everyone. But part of a reporter’s decision making is also ideological, as the two-party system has become deeply entrenched in the way reporters conceptualize politics.
In discussing his daily routine on the campaign trail, Walters said, “It’s a good day when handlers from both candidates are mad at me.” 68 Kevin Yamamura of the Sacramento Bee said he knows he has done a good job “if we had complaints on both sides.” 69 Talev said that a campaign is “a contest between two people,” 70 and Milfred demonstrated an unconscious acceptance of two-party hegemony when he said that he tries to push candidates to answer questions even in cases in which “neither campaign” 71 wants to talk about a particular issue.
Some reporters said they are aware that they may be helping to sustain the two-party system through their coverage. Talev summed up the feelings this way:
We really do have a two-party system, essentially. And the system perpetuates itself and I guess to some extent, we perpetuate it by covering it that way, but we also cover it that way ‘cause that’s the way it is. And, I guess, it’s a real question which is ‘should newspapers support the status quo’ or ‘should newspapers seek to shake up the status quo?’ But, primarily the way elections are covered, newspapers support the political status quo.
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Barabak indicated that reporters sometimes question whether they are perpetuating the existing power elite, but he said that because the United States operates as a two-party system, newspapers ultimately make the right decision for their readers when they limit their coverage only to those candidates who are likely to win. Barabak said:
It is really very difficult to decide who you cover and who you don’t because you realize you’re part of this self-perpetuating cycle: They’re not seen as legitimate, so they’re not covered. They’re not covered, so they’re not seen as legitimate. It’s very, very difficult…. But you have to make that choice….To my mind, you’re better serving readers if you give them more information on the people most likely to win than a little bit about everybody.
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Lack Resources
A lack of money is another reason political reporters gave to explain why third-party candidates are often ignored. Marinucci said that a newspaper like the San Francisco Chronicle does not have the financial resources to devote extensive coverage to every candidate. She said her newspaper will usually do a few pieces about a gubernatorial candidate from the Green or Libertarian parties just to let voters know they are on the ballot, but the organization cannot justify assigning a full-time reporter to cover a third-party contender exclusively. Barabak agreed, saying:
The thing I always come back to is a question of triage… Even the LA Times with all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men cannot devote equal resources to every candidate.
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Talev said newspapers also have limited news holes. With so many stories competing for space each day, she said, editors are forced to make decisions based on such factors as what will be the most important information to the largest possible audience. Unless readers express an increased demand for news about third-party candidates, she said, journalists have little incentive to devote limited space to them.
Reporter’s Criteria
During the interviews, the eight reporters were asked to identify the criteria they use to determine which candidates to cover. These criteria included the following: (1) is the candidate generating strong public interest, either in the polls or at public events, to make them a viable contender who can impact the race; (2) is the candidate raising issues that are resonating with the public; (3) does the candidate have strong name recognition or public prestige; (4) is the candidate campaigning seriously and trying to win; and (5) has the candidate raised substantial funds to compete effectively? All eight reporters mentioned at least one of these criteria and usually more during the interviews. Marelius summed up the feelings of all eight journalists when he said:
The most important criterion in determining how much coverage to give a third-party or independent candidate is whether the candidate has a chance to win or affect the outcome of the election in some meaningful way.
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Conclusion
The in-depth interviews conducted for this study provide an exploratory snapshot in time of how some state political reporters approach election campaigns involving third-party candidates. Like all qualitative research, however, the study’s findings should not be generalized to all journalists. While the interviews provide a richer, more human portrait of how reporters think than would a quantitative survey, the research presented here should be the starting point for additional inquiry into this important topic. Future studies could build off these findings with quantitative methods to capture the attitudes of a larger sample of state political reporters.
The study does teach a few lessons. In addressing RQ1, the interviews suggest that there are practical and ideological reasons to explain why third-party candidates receive less news coverage than do Democrats and Republicans at the state level. Reporters must deal with limited resources, a busy electorate and a political structure that makes it difficult for even serious minor-party contenders to compete. The interviews suggest that reporters are skeptical of third-party aspirants and do not want to cover candidates who are not taking the campaign seriously. This indicates that Zaller’s Rule of Anticipated Importance may be at work at the state level.
But there also appear to be ideological reasons to explain the coverage differences. In the language they used to discuss elections, reporters indicated that they view two-person campaigns as normal and multi-candidate races as odd. The journalistic practice of turning to major party sources for most of their story ideas is an indication that reporters accept the Democrats and Republicans as the natural holders of political power.
Like their counterparts who cover presidential elections, state political reporters see campaigns as a contest in which third-party candidates are inherently less newsworthy because they usually have little impact on the race. This conclusion addresses RQ2 and suggests that the contest paradigm is an ideology that helps reporters justify their decisions to exclude third parties from news coverage. This lends support to cultural studies theories about hegemony and raises several questions for future research: Would the coverage be different if reporters viewed campaigns more in terms of ideas and debate rather than exclusively as a contest? Would reporters be more inclined to cover minor-party contenders if they defined campaigns as public dialogues rather than a contest? Would a paradigm shift make third-party candidates more newsworthy?
The qualitative interviews conducted here indicate that the contest paradigm is deeply entrenched in the way reporters think and provides one ideological explanation for why third-party candidates are covered differently from Democrats and Republicans. The contest paradigm in which reporters view campaigns also supports Zaller’s theory in that journalists refrain from covering third-party gubernatorial candidates because they do not anticipate that those candidates will have future consequence on the election.
The long interviews answered RQ3 by identifying five criteria reporters use to guide their coverage decisions at the state level. These criteria need further testing before they can be generalized to a broader population of political reporters. However, as a starting point, the criteria identified by the eight journalists who participated in this study provide a lesson for both third-party candidates and political journalists. For those who would challenge “the system” via the Green, Libertarian or other minor party, the criteria provide alternative candidates with a road map for how they might traverse the challenging media landscape before them and work their way onto the news agenda. As for journalism, these results should make reporters pause and take stock. The interviews revealed some inherent biases that raise questions about the concept of objectivity and strongly suggest that reporters have allowed themselves to be co-opted by those in power. Political journalists should ask themselves whether they are serving democracy when they consistently ignore certain voices or frame them in ways that make them less relevant with the electorate.