Study examines media coverage

Annenberg Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Annenberg Professor Joe Cappella led a presentation early Friday afternoon of a project examining the media's effect on candidates' public images. According to Jamieson and Cappella, the way the media portrays a candidate affects the constituents' cynicism about the candidates and how the constituents vote. Jamieson said she is going to submit this finding to the media and "plans to shift the way reporting is done." She said she would like to see a shift to issue-oriented coverage from strategy-oriented coverage that concentrates on the candidate's campaign progress. Several graduate students who had worked on the project presented their findings to the approximately 200 Annenberg graduate students and professors at the meeting. This information was previously presented in September at the American Political Science Organization Conference. The project consisted of showing a random group of 276 individuals different types of media about the underdogs in the Philadelphia mayoral race. Participants either viewed a segment of a television news broadcast or read newspaper articles. Each type of media had an issue-oriented and a strategy-oriented version. The subjects then completed a questionnaire about how much they recalled and the effect it had on their cynicism toward the candidates. Annenberg graduate student Fawn Johnson explained that strategy-oriented media affected the cynicism and found that the group exposed to this type of media was less likely to vote. According to Jamieson, this type of reporting raises the "sleaze factor" of the candidates and helps us relate them to "the men that we dated in college." Cappella said he hopes this substantiates "the belief that the way the media covers the material has a negative effect on people's cynicism and the way that they are voting." Annenberg graduate student Doug Battman said he found the study "fascinating."

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