What Influences the News Coverage that Candidates
Receive on Issues?
A Look at Health Care Coverage in the 2004 Presidential
Election
Introduction
Introduction | Background | Expectations | Data | Results | Conclusions
In the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, each of the major candidates presented, with varying degrees of depth, a plan to reform various problems apparent in the nation’s health care system. But after formulating a hypothetical policy designed to improve our system through insurance expansion and reform, each of the candidates for the nomination was faced with the task of publicizing his specific proposal, and in doing so convince the public that his proposal was more cost-efficient, practical, and generally comprehensive than those of his rivals. In order to best convey the strength of his proposal to the general voting public, each Democratic candidate relied heavily on the media to achieve that goal.
As in nearly all political scenarios, the media acted as an intermediary between
the politicians and the people, supplying the connection between the output
of information from the respective campaign offices and the input of information
into the minds of the voters. But to what extent do the media actually fulfill
that role? How faithful is the media to a candidate’s publicity attempts
in its reporting to the American public? Using the health care reform proposals
of John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and Wesley Clark as
a case study, this paper will attempt to supply to its reader a general understanding
of the media’s role in politics, as well as to explain the extent to
which candidates’ efforts to attain a positive image of their proposed
policy initiatives through the media are successful.
This paper will address a number of issues that concern the three-way interaction
among politicians, citizens and the media, both in the theoretical sense and
the specific question of how well the candidates were able to dictate coverage
of their health care proposals. On the applied level, this paper will touch on
whether these attempts at coverage (for the purposes of this paper we will primarily
utilize candidate’s press releases as their mechanism for drawing favorable
coverage from the media) were successful. Or in other words, whether the media
were able to bridge the selected output of information from the campaigns (selected
in the sense that it was an issue that the candidate in question chose to present
on a given day, as opposed to posed questions in campaign formats such as debates
or press conferences) and the input of information to the voting public. In addition,
this paper will address some of the broader, more macro level factors that can
influence coverage on health care, such as particularities of the topic itself.
Introduction | Background | Expectations | Data | Results | Conclusions
By Phil Grant
© Davidson College, 2004, Department of Political Science,
Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035
Send comments, questions, and suggestions to Patrick Sellers
Created: 4/27/2004. Last updated: 5/2/2004.