The current essay deals with crucial issues of media coverage during election campaigns. We put particular emphasis on the analysis of prominent media researchers works such as Thomas Patterson ‘Out of order’, which tackles some important problems concerning the role of Media in American elections and the book of Mazzoleni et al. The Media and Neo-Populism where Perot’s relationship with the press is described in a critical manner.
Patterson is very critical in his description of media coverage of American elections. The main characteristic of media coverage is lie and hypocrisy which though as Patterson claim do not affect genuine democracy to flourish in the United States. As Patterson claims, “the press makes such lies appear to be the norm”.
Media often overestimates the voter’s knowledge of candidates and their political platforms and, in this way, deviate them from the right choice: citizens are not “Aristotles who fill their time studying politics”.
Besides this, Patterson claims that a certain disconnection between reporters and journalists and candidates exists. Their actions are not coordinated, and it has a negative influence on election campaigns coverage and real credos of candidates’ presentation to the electorate. As Patterson claims, “Journalists are the problem here”. The bad image of candidates is often connected with media desire to gain profit from scandal information on their private life etc. Thus, Patterson ties this problem with a general deficiency of the American election system, which results in ‘watch dog’ journalism which in its turn is the product of candidates and media disconnection. These two forces are playing different games, and it results in poor conditions of election coverage. The information provided for the audience is often reduced to mere news without a proper overview of candidates’ platforms and electoral positions.
Patterson proposes his resolution to this electoral and media crisis. According to him, mass media should have responsibilities vis-à-vis electorates which can not be reduced to mere propaganda and news. Therefore, they should effectively cooperate both with civil organizations and political parties. As he notes, “The press is in the news business, and the news is simply not an adequate guide to political choice”.
In Media and Neopopulism, Mazzoleni et al. describe the case of the Ross Perot election campaign and its coverage by the press. Ross Perot was a candidate in the 1992 presidential elections in the United States with a political platform claiming the necessity of protectionism, rising taxes, and solving social issues. Being a billionaire, he hired the best PR specialists and was very successful in media coverage during the first month of the campaign. Perot managed to fill the vacuum of the electoral news while Democrats and Republicans were choosing their candidates on primaries and achieved significant ratings of electorate confidence. But as Mazzoleni et al. claim, it was a sea change in media coverage when the Press increased coverage of his business and personal background. For instance, in many reports, it was claimed that Perot was irritable and had authoritarian management styles. His public statements were also claimed to be rude and insulting to African-Americans. These developments resulted in a significant decrease in Perot’s public approval ratings which finally led to his failure to win presidential elections. This example shows that the role of Media in elections is increasingly important, and it can considerably affect electorate inclinations to vote for a particular candidate. As the authors suggest, it may have both positive and negative effects depending on the information covered by mass media. Hence, our analysis shows that media coverage plays an important but controversial role in elections which is exemplified by our references to Patterson and Mazzoleni et al.’s books.
References
Mazzoleni, Gianpietro, Stewart, Julianne, and Horsfield, Bruce. The Media and Neo-Populism. Westport, CT, Praeger Publishers, 2003.
Patterson, Thomas E. Out Of Order. Knopf; 1st ed edition, 1993