PERSPECTIVE ON THE MEDIA : Good Intentions Lost in Negatives : The press, seeing itself as the permanent opposition, feels most comfortable trafficking in campaign sleaze.

This was supposed to be the year of media redemption for the sins of 1988. Responding to widespread criticism, the networks promised to present serious, substantive and less-obtrusive campaign coverage in 1992. What went wrong?

Campaign journalism has long been attacked for telling us more about who wins and how than what the winner stands for. But in 1988 journalists became character cops in addition to horse-race handicappers and inside-dopesters. Instead of refereeing the fight they tried to knock out most of the contenders; the process degenerated into a series of embarrassing, media-driven campaign controversies. Call the roll: Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Dan Quayle. George Bush vs. Dan Rather. Attack ads recycled as news. The public was angry at the candidates and their handlers, but mostly at the media.

In a series of Op-Eds and internal memos, the networks and the prestige press resolved to do better. 1992 coverage would be serious, even-handed, focused on substance rather than style, featuring scrutiny of the candidates’ messages rather than their private lives. In 1991 the networks began running long profiles of the Democratic candidates, leaving in quotes as long as 40 seconds. (In 1988 the average sound bite lasted 9 seconds.)

Then the 1992 race began in earnest and the high-minded approach went out the window. Six weeks before the New Hampshire primary, the media anointed Bill Clinton as front-runner, with cover stories in Time and the New Republic along with stepped-up television coverage. Then the hapless Clinton managed to combine the foibles of Hart and Quayle into his own “character issue.” Even as the cheers turned to catcalls, the Clinton soap opera held onto the spotlight long enough to keep the public from learning much about his opponents. According to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the three major network evening newscasts gave Clinton more coverage than all of his rivals combined.

Now Paul Tsongas has emerged from the debris as the latest beneficiary of a media boomlet. The same study identifies Tsongas as the only candidate to receive high marks on the evening news for both his personal qualities and his electability--a winning ticket in the media momentum sweepstakes. Journalists prize unlikely candidates who tell voters what they don’t want to hear, and Tsongas has become the John Anderson of 1992. But he didn’t get the full bounce from his New Hampshire victory because journalists still didn’t take him seriously as a national candidate.

In the Republican race, Bush was pummeled for not living up to expectations in New Hampshire, a cardinal sin in the race for good press. The coverage was driven by inaccurate early exit polls that inflated Buchanan’s totals. The numbers were eventually corrected, but the story line of a beleaguered President proved too enticing for hungry reporters to drop. Although Buchanan will not win the nomination, he has taken the lead in the expectations race, a standard defined by journalists rather than voters.

Thus, the media are back in the thick of the action, creating and destroying front-runners, substituting their own expectations for delegate counts in calling the race, holding up the candidates’ dirty linen to the cameras and generally acting very much as they did four years ago.

Why did the skein of good intentions unravel so rapidly? Because the follies of ’92 were preordained by the structure and culture of campaign journalism.

When the nominating process shifted from a party-based system to public primaries--essentially a media-based system--journalists ceased to be spectators and began acting as both referees and players. They were under pressure to structure a fluid and often chaotic sequence of events into a coherent story. Hence the rush to judgment, the urge to sort out the field into front-runners, serious contenders and dark horses before a single vote is cast. Another result is the expectations game, which gauges the “meaning” of each contest in terms of news generated rather than votes cast or delegates won. Candidates who finish better than expected gain momentum, the holy grail of media politics.

If the structure of campaigns in the media age accounts for the rapid rise of Bill Clinton, the culture of journalism explains his fall. Journalists legitimize their enhanced political role by casting themselves as the permanent opposition, protecting the public by attacking the powerful. The standard is not balanced reporting but compensatory reporting, which props up underdogs and topples top dogs. This also means that incumbents can expect no quarter. Even the storm of criticism that broke over Clinton cannot match the steady rain of disapproval that George Bush has endured. Although the Center for Media and Public Affairs study finds that Clinton has received the most negative television coverage among the Democrats, Bush has gotten by far the worst press of any candidate. As the ultimate front-runner, he can expect more of the same. And journalists should expect a response in the Spiro Agnew tradition.

Finally, scandals involving private misconduct will continue to be a growth industry. The recent history of political reporting tracks the unveiling of once-private material to public view--candidate finances, medical histories, school records, alcohol and drug use, sexual peccadilloes and draft records. Once a taboo is broken, there will always be a reporter ready to defend the public’s right to know some private embarrassment, also a handy justification for the journalist’s right to use the story.

Despite growing public disaffection and continued breast-beating by editorial writers, campaign journalism will continue to feature the expectations game, front-runner bashing, negativism and tabloid titillation, because the professional rewards outweigh the penalties for covering campaigns in this way. What serves the interest of individual journalists may not be in the interest of journalism, just as modern media campaigns may interest the public without serving the public interest.