Press Corps Losing Readers And Credibility

There has come along lately a circlet of studies that forms quite a noose around the neck of the national political press. To many this would seem but a just desert — if only campaign coverage as currently practiced didn’t have an asphyxiating effect on democracy as well.

The question asked by our first study is: What do voters want to know about candidates? Ken Dautrich, director of the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut, did surveys in 1996 and 1999 examining the level of interest in various campaign news categories.

“The data depict a striking finding: The American electorate is hungry for news and information that allow it to evaluate the substance of presidential candidacies on the basis of issue positions and on the likely consequences of electing a particular candidate to office.”

We in the press have heard this “give me the meat” message before. We think we know better. People may call for substance, but they relish the juicy stuff. Dautrich has an answer for this. “News provided outside (the above) parameters, while perhaps entertaining, is viewed as `nonsense’ in the words of our focus group participants.”

If readers want what logic would indicate they’d need — meaningful information to base a vote on — survey two shows this is precisely what the press doesn’t provide. A group here called the Project for Excellence in Journalism did a content study of campaign 2000 coverage so far.

“The news media are offering the American public a fine education in campaign tactics but telling them little about matters that actually will affect them as citizens. … The press has provided only scant reporting on the candidates’ backgrounds, records, or ideas.” A paltry 13 percent of stories provided news that helps voters understand what would be the effect of a given candidate’s election. Over 80 percent “focused on … changes in tactics, who has more money, or internal organizational problems.”

Voters want nourishment. The press gives them junk food. Which leads exactly where you’d expect: A September study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the public is sick of the way the media covers politics. Worse, they opt out of the process as a result.

“Americans are showing signs of disaffection with a presidential campaign that is just beginning. The public thinks the press and large campaign contributors are having too much influence on who gets nominated.” The response of a public that rates political coverage as fair or poor “is to tune out. Few are paying close attention to campaign news, while at the same time an increasing number of people think the press is overcovering the campaign.”

A surfeit of coverage, much of it nonsense, is driving people away from the electoral process: Here is the press’ gift to democracy.

But are we heeding these sad tidings? We not only dismiss the counsel; we bray over our power. Recent coverage and commentary all but credit the press with choosing the winner in New Hampshire. To read some columnists, we were responsible for John McCain’s victory — not McCain’s phenomenal accessibility to the public, and its resultant enthusiasm for him. Not, for that matter, George W. Bush’s opposite tack of relative inaccessibility.

No, we in the press did it. And on and on we’ll go, strutting our stuff and sneering. You may learn little about what Hillary Rodham Clinton would do as a senator from New York, but you’ll know precisely the degree of blondness of her hair, whether she introduces her husband at a given event and exactly how her campaign formulates a response to Rudy Giuliani’s latest broadside.

Meanwhile, the burgeoning world of information provides more and more ways for voters to inform themselves. Take the Net’s www.heritage.org/issues — the Heritage Foundation’s thoughts on everything from education to national defense. Or www.aei.org/governing — a fine series of transcripts on how each of the four leading candidates would govern.

Looking elsewhere is just what people are doing, as a fourth study — released Feb. 5 — shows. In this one, again by Pew, only 31 percent of respondents said newspapers are their main source of campaign news — quite a drop from the 48 percent of 1996. The networks too were down — to 24 percent, from 39 percent. The Net, though still just 6 percent, tripled its figure of four years ago.

The press, which often sees itself as caught between soulless financial pressures and noble journalistic principles, seems in fact to be failing spectacularly on both fronts: Driving away readers, and dampening civic engagement at the same time.

Quite a record.