Making a Difference: Covering Campaign ’96

 in Spring 1997  tagged Elections


Spring 1997

Making a Difference: Covering Campaign ’96


BY DEBORAH POTTER

Director, Poynter Election Project



For several years, The Poynter Institute has actively encouraged journalists to change the way they cover campaigns — to do a better job of helping citizens make informed decisions in a democratic society.


Last year, we decided to study campaign coverage, to see if news organizations that promised reform actually delivered, and to find out if citizens were any better served.


Working with Philip Meyer of the University of North Carolina, Poynter studied news organizations in 20 cities, large and small, from Maine to Oregon, Illinois to Texas. We first asked journalists to describe their plans for covering the election. If they said they were more likely than not to take the following seven steps, we described them as “citizen-based:”


  • Sponsor one or more public forums on issues.

  • Use polls to determine the issues your coverage will focus on.

  • Conduct focus groups with voters to establish their concerns.

  • Form citizen panels to consult at different stages of the campaign.

  • Seek questions from readers/ viewers for use when interviewing candidates.

  • Base reporting largely on issues developed through citizen contact.

  • Provide information to help citizens get involved in the political process in ways other than voting.


We’re still looking at local TV coverage, but when we compared the 10 newspapers that scored highest on the citizen-based scale with the group that scored lowest, we found significant differences.


Newspapers with a high intent to practice citizen-based journalism had content that was noticeably different:

  • More stories mainly devoted to explanation of specific policy issues.


  • Fewer stories containing any mention of horse-race polls.


In counties where newspapers had a high intent to practice citizen-based journalism, citizens surveyed had significantly:

  • More trust in the media.

  • More knowledge about candidate stands on issues.


But in all areas the people who knew the most about candidates’ issue positions also were most aware of their standings in horse-race polls. Meyer says that polls seem to help voters focus on where candidates stand on the issues rather than distract them from the substance of the campaign, “just as being able to see the scoreboard keeps you interested in a basketball game.”


Citizen-based journalism also seems to affect the journalists themselves. In newsrooms with a high intent to take this approach, journalists reported there was more advance planning and discussion and greater satisfaction with the coverage.


We did not find any significant connection between intent to practice citizen-based journalism and trust in government or political participation.


And we found that newspaper intentions predicted differences among citizens better than content did.


It may be that our content analysis was flawed. But it seems to us more likely that citizen-based journalism involves a cultural change that affects a newspaper’s relationship to its community, lessening mistrust of the news media and helping citizens learn information they need to exercise their responsibilities in a democratic society.


We don’t know how that happens, but we’d like to find out. We hope our work will be a first step toward learning the answer.

Contact Deborah Potter via Poynter, 801 Third St. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. Phone: (813) 821-9494. E-mail: dpotter@poynter.org.