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

Help From The Federal Election Commission

"I contacted the Federal Election Commission and obtained the names of the people who have run for U. S. Senate and the House of Representative in my state in the last eight years. Most of the names that I was given I had never heard of. This leads me to believe that these candidates for office were not publicly known, which is the fault of the media.

I believe that the media is directly responsible for who is elected and who isn't. I interviewed ten adults and asked them if they could tell me about some of the candidates that I had uncovered. In most cases the adults I interviewed hadn't even heard of some of the candidates.

In the future, I believe the media needs to inform the public about all of the candidates for an office." OK

"I contacted the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and obtained a list of names of statewide candidates who ran for national office since 1984. I revised this list to local candidates from three surrounding Congressional Districts and distributed copies to a variety of ten registered voters over the age of thirty. I had them check the names which they recognized.

Since the media is responsible for giving us information on the candidates, (I) decided that this survey would be a good indicator of how good the media coverage was. My survey showed that of candidates for the National House, the Republicans were recognized two to one over the Democrats, and the Independent party had 50 percent recognition.

The next part of my survey was for the candidates for National Senate. The results of this part showed a greater than two to one recognition of Republicans to Democrats. There was no third party recognition. In each of the first two parts of my survey, the incumbents were recognized three to one over the challengers. My reasoning for this, and the greater recognition of the Republican candidates, is because I live in Cumberland County (Pennsylvania), a predominantly Republican area.

The third section of my survey was for the recognition of Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. All the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates were recognized and the only third party recognition came from Ross Perot, James Stockdale and one person recognized Andre Marrou.

With the information from this survey I concluded that the media focuses primarily on the Republican and Democratic parties and may not be fair in its coverage of third party candidates.

We also expect that the media is fair to all candidates and is not biased toward a particular political party. I made an investigation to see how fair the press really is.

I started by going through two newspapers, the Harrisburg Sunday Patriot News and the Carlisle Sentinel, and in eleven random articles counted the number of times the candidates' names were mentioned and noted in a positive or negative connotation. Each of these articles included all of the major candidates for that particular national congressional or presidential race.

In the presidential articles, George Bush's name appeared sixty-one times to Clinton's fifty-one and Perot's thirty-six. Clinton's name was mentioned more times positively than Perot's or Bush's. Bush had his name mentioned many more times negatively than either Clinton or Perot. In my analysis of the articles, even though Bush's name was mentioned more, he was beat up by the media. . .

In the senatorial articles I read, once again the incumbent, Arlen Specter, had his name mentioned more times than the challenger, Lynn Yeakel. These articles showed no real bias toward either candidate. . .

In the sole national House of Representatives article I could find about all of the candidates, the incumbents' names were mentioned three to one over the challengers'.

I conducted an interview with Fred Burgess, an editor at the Carlisle Sentinel. He told me that the incumbents' names would be mentioned more just because they are incumbents and there is more to say about them and more to criticize. Mr. Burgess also said that newspapers try to be fair to the candidates, but sometimes it is human nature to favor a candidate when writing an article. He told me that 95 percent of the letters to the editor are printed and, along with editorials, are usually critical of incumbents..." PA

"In October 1992, by surveying articles printed in two newspapers in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area, The Patriot and The Sentinel, I discovered that Bill Clinton's name was printed an average of 12.2 times in any given article. President George Bush and Texas billionaire Ross Perot, his competitors', names were each printed an average of 11.7 and 5.3 times respectively. While these figures may not be true of the rest of Pennsylvania, or even the country, it proves that name recognition may play a very significant role in national elections." PA