News outlets have a lot of responsibilities, especially during campaigns. In addition to playing the "watchdog" role (exposing wrongdoing, often on the part of public officials or elites) and providing a method for candidates to get their own word out about themselves, the media has to (carefully) direct voters to what it thinks is the right choice. Thomas E. Patterson traces this third responsibility back to the 1968 presidential race, after which the party institutions gave up the right to nominate their candidates, and primary votes started to become commonplace. At that point, the floodgates opened, so to speak. Anyone and everyone could make a bid at the presidency, but how were those bids supposed to reach voters' ears? The media, Patterson, claims, stepped into that role – a constructive role that is fundamentally political – even though it was not set up to do so.
Now, on top of all that moral and political responsibility, the media has taken on a public health one.
And it clearly doesn't help when this already overloaded, overworked, financially decimated media structure is battling a president that defies every piece of advice the media gives.
COVID has already massively impacted the 2020 presidential race. The primaries, for example, saw big changes in voting. Not only has the crisis altered when and how we vote (more mail-in ballots have been cast in most states), but voting itself has become a hot-button partisan issue. And the media, for the most part, has tried to weather the storm and handle it all. Unfortunately, newspapers simply haven't been able to keep up with the race and provide sufficient information about the candidates. Just take a look at the New York Times' political section from May 10. None of the featured stories are about anything but the pandemic, and only one is about the presidential race at all.
 |
| New York Times "Politics" page from May 10 Source: https://www.nytimes.com/ |
So what happens next?
Effects on Political Information in the Media
Well, we have to think about this from two perspectives. 1) What happens to the sources of political information (traditionally, the media) and 2) what happens to the receptors of that information (the voters)? Let's attack the former question first. Patterson was correct in claiming that the media – in theory a non-partisan institution – should have no stake in telling voters who to vote for. Not only is there the problem of overloading, but the media can't be held politically responsible in the way that a political institution (like the parties) can: through elections.
However, just from simple observation, it's pretty clear that the parties haven't really stepped up. Biden hasn't received any extra support and has especially struggled to find a voice with the media all wrapped up in COVID-related matters. The Tara Reade scandal has been the only time he's made headlines in months, really. Trump has found a way to fill the platform vacuum, but it's certainly not ideal. His coronavirus press briefings – before Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany took them over – became his campaign stage.
 |
| Sources: https://www.abc27.com/ and https://www.dallasnews.com/ |
Looking at newspaper headlines doesn't make the situation much more promising. Unlike Biden, Trump certainly hasn't suffered low headline appearances (but has he ever, really?), but nearly all of his headlines are coronavirus-related. There's no discussion of other policy. At first glance, the candidates look like they are on totally different levels. A search of the names "Trump" and "Biden" in headlines and opening paragraphs from USAToday (which allsides.com rated as centrist) spanning March 15-May 11 found Trump to have close to 4x the amount of headline appearances as his competitor. Take out the words "coronavirus" and "COVID," however, and the picture starts to look a lot more even. Trump's team even admitted that the briefings weren't helping him politically, further indicating the low level of real political information that's getting out to the American public.
|
 |
| Headline/First Par. Frequency: Search Term “Trump,” not “corona” or “COVID” Source: Factiva custom search + personal annotations |
Overall, it's clear that headlines dealing with candidate policy (outside COVID) are really scarce. For the media, this means that a primary responsibility – that of directing voters – has already been left by the wayside, and in an election year no less. As the pandemic calms down, will things – albeit probably slowly – go back to normal? Or will we see a media structure that has forever lost its political directives?
The question we might really want to ask, however, is what does this loss of information mean for us, the voters?
Effects on Voters and Voter Turnout
Lower levels of voter information on candidates, which is a near certainty given the shortfalls of the media, typically lead to lower voter turnout. We've already seen low turnout in Illinois cities, but much of that turnout is attributed to confusion on how to vote. I assume that by the general election, we'll have lived with this virus long enough to have infrastructure in place to prepare for a respectable turnout. How respectable will that turnout actually be, though? Germany, which held regional elections on March 15 (granted, towards the beginning of the pandemic), posted higher voter turnout than normal. France, however, which held some local elections on the same day, posted historic lows. So the jury's still out, and we'll just have to wait and see.
[Read Delli Carpini, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (esp. ch. 1 & 6)]
Interestingly, Patterson claims that voters normally suffer less-than-ideal political information due to how that information flows. The voters' problem, like the media's, "is one of overload." Not only do we simply have too many candidates to choose from for nominee, but by the general election, we've been subjected (and candidates have had to endure) almost two years of campaigning. How are voters expected to stay interested and engaged for that long, especially when the vast majority aren't that interested to begin with?
And in an election year in which the media is failing to give us the information we normally get (which is low to begin with), the effects are further exacerbated.
Maybe it's best if we look back at how United States voter turnout has looked in the past when dealing with a crisis. Like way back. Like 1848. Why 1848, you ask? Well, for one, it was an election year following on the heels of a nationwide crisis: the Mexican-American War. Out of a crisis, people generally drift towards a safe candidate – somebody "tried and true." Americans in 1848 found this safety in Gen. Zachary Taylor, an esteemed commander during the war. We might see his parallel in Biden. The sitting president at the time – James K. Polk – was, like Trump, a "dark horse" and took strong stands on controversial issues (such as starting a war). Fanfare was relatively low leading up to the election, and policy was not center-stage.
 |
| Propaganda from 1848 Presidential Race Source: HistoricalFindings |
This looks a lot like our situation. I'm not saying people aren't talking about the election, but the fervor is certainly lower than four years ago, and our tendency to place personality over policy hasn't changed. Like us, voters in 1848 weren't concerned so much with what values each candidate stood for, but who they were.
With everyone distracted by the virus and accustomed to the Trump antics we weren't so accustomed to in 2016, things are shaping up similarly to 1848. Granted, there are a lot of differences (no slavery, no war, no Texas), but Taylor's victory over Lewis Cass might give us some insight as to what will happen in (hopefully) November. Taylor was a safe bet, but he took office from a firecracker. Could we see the same?
[Read Whitehouse Info. on Polk + "How COVID-19 could affect the Presidential Election" (end of article)]
Voter turnout in 1848 took a slight dip from surrounding years but remained extremely high: some of the highest in the nation's history, in fact, with almost 73% of the Voting Age Population (VAP) casting a ballot. We could only hope for such a percentage. For reference, our turnout in 2016 was 55.7%.
 |
| VAP Turnout in All U.S. Elections Source: http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present |
Effects on How We Vote and Other Remarks
The critical difference I see between the effects of coronavirus and the Mexican-Anerican War lies in the fact (yes, the fact) that our crisis will not be fully over by election day. It will remain an issue, and perhaps the only real issue of import for voters. In fact, it's really the only political issue we're seeing debated at all.
So perhaps the election will change our behavior. Perhaps it will make America issue-oriented again (maybe that should be Trump's slogan). But it would be a single issue, and nations aren't run around single issues. Right now, voters have to search hard if they want to find information on policy outside of COVID, which is exactly the opposite of what should happen. Responsibility needs to be taken off voters' backs.
As it stands, this election is shaping up to be a bit of a circus. All the problems with regard to both the media's function and voter responsibility are only being exaggerated, and the already-wobbly stilts on which the media-politics relationship was resting are being worn away quickly.
This was very informative and touched on an interesting and increasingly relevant topic. It was very interesting to look at the differences in media exposure between the two candidates when broken down to Covid related and non-Covid related exposure. I became concerned with the problem you outlined at the end about voters not having the necessary information on the candidates to vote. What do you see as a possible solution to this?
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is a solution. I honestly think this will be one of the worst elections in our country's history in terms of voter knowledge. Unless COVID passes quickly (which it won't, especially given how we're handling it), the media will not let go of nonstop coronavirus coverage. Corona has become our politics. All political discussion – at least from what I've observed – is now filtered through a lens of COVID-19 (and not necessarily, as many people think, the other way around).
DeleteThe flip side to that (which isn't my personal opinion) is that coronavirus could actually be a good thing because it will shorten the campaign to just a few months or weeks, like in many European countries. This would mean voters don't have to pay attention to candidates for as long, which would certainly be a good thing. However, I just don't know if we'll return to normality – or something better – by election time.
I really enjoyed reading your article as it was very informative and interesting topic that you chose. I loved how you broke down the virus into related and non related expose, looking into the media exposure between the two candidates. I also thought it was great how you broke your article down into sections, and I particularly thought the one about the effects on voters and voter turn-outs was interesting. You mentioned France and what they did during this pandemic, so one question I have is, do you think other countries are handling voting better than the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I didn't look super closely into the voting processes that other countries have adopted. I was more looking for hints of how voter turnout would be affected. However, from what I've read, I think it's pretty hard to do worse than what some of the states – especially Wisconsin – did for primaries. There's been a lot of variability in how we've done voting with the pandemic, and there's a good chance we do something totally new for the general election. I think a high voter turnout serves as decent evidence that a country did a good job and gave people clear and easy voting access, so I imagine France has done better than, say, Illinois, in implementing good voting procedure.
Delete