www. an election 'wild card'
2004-09-28 14:58
Washington - When vice-president Al Gore squared off against George W Bush in their first televised debate of the hotly contested 2000 White House race, polls showed the Democrat a clear winner.
But after the press harped for days on Gore's "insufferable" sighs, head shakes and interruptions during the encounter, his poll numbers plunged and his chances for the presidency melted into the Florida haze.
"That's not a debate effect, that's a media effect," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Centre.
"The press ought not to change people's opinions about a debate that people haven't seen."
If television, newspapers and magazines have a key role reporting on elections here, questions have been raised whether they sometimes step over the line and become more players than observers in the political process.
How they choose to report on it
Amy Mitchell, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said the media's election-year influence has always been high but is now spreading through new channels such as the Internet.
"I don't think it's fair to say the press determines the election, or the press determines everything citizens know about it," Mitchell said.
"But absolutely it has a huge impact in the way they choose to report on it."
Studies have punctured the notion the media is simply a convenient conduit for the candidates to pass on their views and campaign attacks.
The Pew Research Centre looked at how notions about the character of Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry developed in the news media, advertising and late-night comedy programmes from March to June.
It found journalists were the source of these impressions 34% of the time, compared with 39% originating from the candidates or their surrogates and 11% from outside experts.
Internet: The new wild card
Forty-four percent of the judgements delivered by political reporters were not supported by any evidence and nine percent were attributed to someone else.
Only 42% were based on public statements or positions by the candidate.
The media has been particularly conspicuous this year.
It gave national prominence to a small, rearguard offensive against Kerry by a group of Vietnam swift boat veterans questioning his vaunted combat record.
Their ad ran in just three states, but dominated the campaign for weeks.
And the Internet is the new wild card, analysts said, with a proliferation of political web logs providing points of view and purported information with little means of verifying its accuracy or source.