Exciting new studies on media coverage of 2016 elections

Today, I want to talk about the studies of media coverage of the 2016 elections that are being published online (open access) by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. The first one, available here, studied media coverage before the primaries started, during the period of time known as the "invisible primary" in 2015, when candidates were laying the foundation of their campaigns. It estimated that Donald Trump received $55 million in free, largely favorable media coverage. While other candidates also received free, advertising-equivalent (that is, positive) media coverage, no other candidate approached Trump's level, the nearest being Jeb Bush at $36 million.

Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government is analyzing the media coverage of this campaign using content analysis, a research method that usually takes years to complete. I am so impressed and pleased that this is being published during the campaign. I hope it will have a corrective effect on the news media, who have not done the best job of informing the public about the candidates.

Patterson hired a firm to do the coding, which is the time-consuming part of content analysis and the thing that usually means it's years later when studies are released. This is true when the coding is done by humans, as was the case for this study. Computerized coding can speed things up, but for this type of analysis, was felt to be unreliable, Patterson writes.

Stories from CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post were analyzed in the first study (of the pre-primary period) to determine the major themes they contained and whether they were positive or negative in tone. The discovery that Trump's coverage was massive and also more positive in tone than that of other candidates, by far, was the main finding. Patterson comes up with some very interesting possible explanations for that positive coverage at a time when it would have been much more helpful to the democratic process if the news media had done its job of "vetting" the candidate who later ended up sweeping the primaries. 

The second study, available here, covers the first six months of 2016, during the actual primaries. It is equally compelling in its findings, providing excellent data that journalists should heed. It shows both the preponderance and the deficiencies of "horse race" coverage, which focuses obsessively on who is winning and losing the race at any given time, rather than the candidates' qualifications and their most important policy positions. As I like to put it in my lectures, it's a lot like sports coverage, focusing on who's winning and losing, strategies for winning, the many statistics (polls, primary election results and past election results) that provide data about these things, but ignoring the substantive information that voters really need to make decisions about who is fit to be president of the United States. 

So kudos to Professor Patterson and the firm he hired to do the coding -- Media Tenor. These studies are great and timely additions to the public debate, not only about the presidential elections, but also about what's wrong with journalism today.