The Role of Media in Choosing Our Candidates for National Office: Student Projects

Magazines

"I gathered a random sampling of Newsweek, Time, and U..S. News and World Report magazines that were published during the election. I selected one magazine for each month from February 1992 (the start of the primaries) through November 1992 (the election) and examined all the articles relating to the presidential candidates. I recorded their subject material by classifying them as either national issues, political issues, campaign news, or biographical articles. I wanted to compare the percentage of articles about the candidates' views to the other amounts of news in each magazine.

I began my experiment picking a different magazine each month and scanned it for articles. I then proceeded to take notes on the articles, beginning with classifying them by their theme. I considered national issues to be items such as defense, economy, unemployment, or other issues that needed to be addressed by the candidates during the campaign.

Political issues were things the media turned into issues, such as Bill Clinton trying marijuana (but not inhaling) or George Bush threatening to drop Dan Quayle. All stories that have little bearing on our country.

Biographical and campaign news stores were articles that dealt with candidates' past and what their campaign is doing to win. These stories are all right as long as they are in moderation.

I then compiled the information, tallied the results, and wrote this essay.

Overall, I examined thirty-three different articles in my random sampling and only found five articles pertaining to issues facing our nation. That was only 15.2 percent! That number could have been much lower if it were not for the fact that I selected one magazine that had a special section devoted to national issues.

That still didn't explain why there were so few articles about national issues, especially in these times of economic troubles. I realize that the media presented political and campaign stories because the American public wanted to read about the mud-slinging; but still, doesn't the media have a responsibility to inform the public?

How did the media expect the American voter to make a responsible choice November 7 if he or she did not know how each candidate stood on important issues? " PA