At the end of the primary season, John McCain complained that the mainstream media were not giving him a fair shake compared with Barack Obama. How times have changed! This fall, the Republican Presidential ticket has attracted almost twice as much nightly news coverage as its Democratic rivals.
Chalk that up to the Palin Effect. McCain's running mate Sarah Palin has been every bit the media phenomenon this fall that Obama was this spring. Joe Biden, by contrast, has been all-but invisible.
This is a reversal of priorities of the primary season. During the spring, the broadcast networks' weekday nightly newscasts treated Republican John McCain as roughly half as newsworthy as Democrat Barack Obama. In the eight weeks of campaign coverage since the end of the Republican National Convention, that ratio has been reversed: McCain received slightly more airtime than Obama; but the McCain ticket was roughly twice as newsworthy as the Obama ticket.
At Tyndall Report, we have monitored how the nightly newscasts have covered each Presidential cycle since 1988. Overall Campaign '08 has been more newsworthy than any of its predecessors (3533 min since the New Year v 2292 in '04; 1984 in '00; 1783 in '96; 2912 in '92; 2872 in '88). Yet all of its preeminence derives from the explosion of coverage during the extended primary season this winter and spring. This fall's Wall Street woes helped break that winning streak.
In the eight weeks of the campaign season since the end of the Republican National Convention, Campaign '08 has been heavily covered, accounting for 39% of the entire newshole of the three broadcast networks' weekday nightly newscasts (872 min out of 2251). Yet the General Election period was not head-and-shoulders more newsworthy compared with the same eight week period in previous years (872 min v 752 in '04, 566 in '00, 445 in '96, 937 in '92, 744 in '88).
The crisis in the financial industry accounted for that relatively normal level of campaign coverage. It sucked some of the oxygen out of what was building up to be a record breaking campaign. During the same eight-week period, non-campaign-related economic coverage attracted a total of 626 minutes (28% of the newshole), meaning that fully two-thirds of the entire news agenda this fall has been taken up with either the campaign or the economy. The federal bailout of the financial industry received a total of 242 minutes; the action on Wall Street accounted for 127.
The networks disagreed about which of the two stories should dominate. Katie Couric's CBS Evening News treated the campaign as much more newsworthy than the economy (372 min v 172); ABC World News (237 v 230) and NBC Nightly News (263 v 224) treated the two stories as more or less equally newsworthy.
As for the candidates themselves, more than half of the coverage this fall (475 min or 54%) has been on their activities on the stump, including one-on-one interviews with the network anchors. Other types of campaign journalism on the nightly news include issues reporting (137 min), the debates (60 min for the Presidentials, 26 for the Veeps), the horse race (44 min on poll results) and the contests in the several states (40 min).
When it comes to candidate coverage, the Republicans have had no problem obtaining exposure. John McCain attracted a little more airtime than Barack Obama (191 min v 164; during the primary season their ratio was 203 min v 389) but the phenomenon of the fall has been the bottom half of the GOP ticket. Sarah Palin (112 min) attracted almost as much attention as a Presidential contender whereas Joe Biden (8 min) has been a virtual non-entity. Add the two halves of the ticket together, and the GOP has been treated as almost twice as newsworthy (303 min v 172) as the Dems.
The McCain campaign's celebrity taunts against Obama this summer grew out of protests against the mainstream news media for treating Obama as their darling, refusing to grant McCain equal attention. Whether or not his decision to nominate the Governor Of Alaska as his running mate helped his prospects of winning the election, it certainly helped his ticket win the race for minutes of airtime.