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MEDIA COVERAGE DURING THE 2012 AND 2016 ELECTIONS

MEDIA COVERAGE DURING THE 2012 AND 2016 ELECTIONS

Greta Gage

JOUR 3796
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MEDIA COVERAGE DURING THE 2012 AND 2016 ELECTIONS

The United States prides itself on many facets of a democracy including its

electoral process and press, but in recent years, Americans have become less trusting

of the media and reinforce their beliefs by surrounding themselves with people and

media that say what they want to hear. However, the American electoral process and

media differ from the idealistic expectations of normative democratic theory. The

media’s coverage of elections focuses heavily on the horse race aspects of political

campaigns, including polling and strategy, which doesn’t inform the electorate on

critical information they need to make informed decisions about who they will vote

for. The two most recent elections, 2012 and 2016, have been shaped by the

criticisms of the press brought through new media, many of the criticisms and

similarities have stayed the same even though the elections were quite different.

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

The coverage of both the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections by the media

carried many similarities in terms of the style of coverage, but they each had

differences that distinguished each campaign from the other. The 2012 presidential

campaign was dominated by discussion of the social media use of the candidates

because at the time social media was still a relatively new tool to political campaigns.

After President Obama was elected for his second term there was a lot of discussion in

the media about how Obama “dominated” his opponent, Mitt Romney, on social

media. However, when it came to traditional forms of media, most of the coverage

was focused on the horse race aspects of political campaigns instead of focusing on

the policy stances of each candidate.

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MEDIA COVERAGE DURING THE 2012 AND 2016 ELECTIONS

The largest criticism from the 2012 campaign was that the media was biased

towards one candidate over the other. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that

the coverage of President Obama was slightly more positive than negative (19% to

15%), and coverage of the Romney campaign was more negative than positive (38% to

30%). However, a majority of the articles written about both candidates had mixed

tones (51% for Obama and 47% for Romney). When Pew broke down the stories into

non-horse-race coverage and horse race coverage, the non-horse-race coverage

stories were balanced in their tone for both candidates. The bias towards each

candidate really depended on which network was covering the campaigns. For

example, Fox News had significantly more negative stories about President Obama

than any other network while it had significantly more positive stories about Mitt

Romney. While the opposite was true for MSNBC, CNN also displayed bias in favor of

Obama. Even with these biases, Pew’s research found that the coverage was relatively

balanced.

The media coverage for the 2016 election came with many criticisms. One of

the major criticisms of the press in this election was that they spent very little time

covering the candidates’ policy plans instead of the horse race. Media Matters found

that ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News spent only

32 minutes covering issues. Most of the coverage of this election was about the polls

that ended up being much different than the actual election results. In the aftermath

of the election, the media is facing additional scrutiny in a time when a record low of
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MEDIA COVERAGE DURING THE 2012 AND 2016 ELECTIONS

32% of Americans have either a great deal or fair amount of faith in the media

(Gallup). During the campaign, Americans criticized the press for their perceived bias,

staunch liberals criticized the media for being too corporatist while conservatives

criticize the press for being too liberal or even call them liars.

This year there was less coverage on how one campaign “dominated” in their

use of social media, but the media still covered the way campaigns used social media.

Frequently, these were in situations where the campaigns released a statement or

insult towards the other candidate. Because social media has been a campaign tool

for two elections, it is much more established as a tool for campaigns to use and is

therefore the reason for less coverage of how they use it and more of what do the

campaigns say on social media. Everything about the coverage of the 2016 election

contributed to the spectacle feel of this campaign season instead of a more

traditional, less dramatic, election season like 2012.

Even though there are many differences between the 2012 and 2016 elections

there were still a lot of similarities in the way the media covered the elections. The

largest similarity was the focus on the horse race aspects of political campaigns.

Besides discussing traditional political campaign strategy, the media heavily focused

on polling and what the candidates said on social media throughout the campaign. But

the press also spent a significant amount of time covering the scandals and gaffes of

the presidential campaign. In 2012, it biggest scandals were Mitt Romney’s “binders
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full of women” and “47 percent” comments while in 2016 Hillary Clinton’s email

server and Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tape drove the scandal coverage.

ANALYSIS

Both elections had similar coverage mainly because of the nature of network

television and other forms of media. In both 2012 and 2016, the media focused

primarily on the horse race because the narratives about the front-runner of the

election and any scandals arise gain viewers and readers because those storylines are

dramatic. This also means the techniques of campaigns to get into the news hasn’t

changed either. But the reason there are differences is because every election is

different. The 2012 election featured an incumbent president who was fairly popular

versus a former governor, while the 2016 election was between a businessman and

reality TV star against a former Secretary of State. 2012 felt like a more traditional

campaign based on the way the candidates carried themselves, but in 2016 one of the

candidates had never been in politics until recently and set off to break the decorum

of election politics. The difference in the way the candidates behaved shaped their

campaigns which shaped the way the media covered their campaigns.

In both elections the media focused primarily on the horse race of politics and

didn’t cover the issues as much as they should have. The media informed the public,

in great detail, about every scandal each candidate ended up in, but very little about

where the candidates stood on the issues. However, the media did spend plenty of

time fact checking the statements of the candidates, primarily this duty fell to
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organizations that focus entirely on fact checking politicians, but occasionally

network television took on this role as well. This happened mostly after the debates,

and that was because the debates served as an opportunity for the candidates to

speak to the entire country instead of just their supporters. With the help of the

internet and 24-hour news networks, it is very easy to find information about the

candidates, but shifting through what information is accurate becomes more of a

challenge because it is easier than ever to curate information to a readers’ own bias.

With knowledge of the echo chamber effect that is very active in today’s political

media environment, journalists may have tried to cater the way they wrote articles

based on the political views of readers or even to their own views.

In 2016, it was clear that the media failed in their predictions of who would

become president. The polls and media predictions were saying that Hillary Clinton

would be the next president of the United States, even with a few days left of the

campaign season the Huffington Post placed Hillary Clinton at a 98% chance of winning

the presidency. In the end, Donald Trump won the presidency and shocked the media.

This is one of the dangers of playing into the horse race of politics so much. Based on

the Social Judgement Theory, poll participants may have lied to poll takers about who

they would be voting for because of their own fear of being judged for their political

views and this may have given inaccurate data in polls. Another piece that may have

contributed to this result was the fact that many major news organizations are in big

cities on the East or West Coasts (and those cities tend to be more liberal) the

journalists may have found themselves in an echo chamber of their own that said
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Hillary Clinton would be the next president. By ignoring other factors such as the size

of a candidates’ rally and how passionate their supporters were the media failed to

recognize their echo chamber.

One of the foundations of having an informed electorate is having a press that

informs the public about the candidates’ stances on issues and policy proposals.

Simply based on the lack of coverage on these important subjects, the media have not

been doing their job. It is the media’s responsibility to inform the public about the

issues and the candidates. While information regarding political scandals can be

useful to the electorate when it comes to judging candidate traits, it doesn’t help the

electorate deliberate about who they feel will do a better job making critical policy

decisions. To rebuild American trust in the press, members of the media will have to

analyze their own biases and desire for higher viewership because they are likely

preventing the media from providing better, more accurate information about

politicians. But it is important to note that the American people have to do their job

of being politically engaged by researching the candidate they believe in the most,

voting, and passing those values onto the next generation because the political

socialization of the people shapes how the media covers the election.
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REFERENCES

Boehlert, E. (2016, October 26). Study confirms network evening newscasts have
abandoned policy coverage for 2016 campaign. Retrieved November 17, 2016,
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evening-newscasts-have-abandoned-policy-coverage-2016-campaign/214120

Childress, S. (2016, July 12). Study: election coverage skewed by “journalistic bias”.
Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/
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Coverage of the Candidates by Media sector and cable outlet. (2012, November 01).
Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://www.journalism.org/2012/11/01/
coverage-candidates-media-sector-and-cable-outlet/

Hudak, J. (2016). Two views on media coverage of 2016. Retrieved November 17,
2016, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/08/29/two-views-on-
media-coverage-of-2016/

Jurkowirz, M., Mitchell, A., & Rosenstiel, T. (2012, November 2). Winning the media
campaign 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://
www.journalism.org/files/legacy/Winningthemediacampaign2012.pdf

LexisNexis (n.d.). U.S. presidential campaign tracker. Retrieved November 17, 2016,
from http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/newsdesk/presidential-
tracker.page
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Olmstead, K. (2013, March 17). The media and campaign 2012. Retrieved November
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Rutenberg, J. (2016). Criticism of the news media takes on a more sinister tone.
Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/
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Sanders, S. (2016, November 7). Social media's increasing role in the 2016 presidential
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Sides, J. (2013, October 14). Media coverage of the 2012 election was fair and
balanced after all. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from https://
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Swift, A. (2016, September 14). Americans' trust in mass media sinks to new low.
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