TV Spotlights Voter Opinions in Election Coverage : Media: Emphasis appears to reflect populist mood among public, talk-show appearances by presidential candidates.

For TV, 1992 has emerged as the year of the voter.

From formal “focus groups” of voters in three cities who comment on the presidential campaign for ABC News to post-debate, studio-audience interviews by NBC correspondent Bob Kur, who has been assigned to track “the voice of the people”; from Dan Rather on CBS interviewing a group of “uncommitteds” in Chicago’s Wrigley Field to Cable News Network measuring voters’ point-by-point reactions to the presidential debates, TV networks are giving new emphasis to the views of ordinary citizens.

Although broadcast executives and anchors are loath to say that they themselves might be perceived as part of the Washington-New York “elite,” the new emphasis appears to be reflective of the populist mood among voters that has even President Bush running against Washington and presidential candidates taking their case directly to callers on “Larry King Live.”

“Network anchors don’t sit behind desks all the time; but, rightly or wrongly, I think the mainstream press in general has been perceived this year by voters as part of the Establishment and part of the problem,” ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said in an interview. “It became obvious to me that we needed better representation of citizens’ views during the New Hampshire primary, when I noticed a considerable difference between what was on the press’ mind--Gennifer Flowers--and what was on the New Hampshire voters’ minds--the economy.”

“What we have seen in this year’s presidential campaign is the democratization of the political process,” said Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. “If there was a single, significant turn in the road in coverage, it was the marginalization of the traditional political press corps and the embrace of the talk-show host. The networks found themselves on the margin of a process that they once dominated, and I believe this has made them feel a real urgency about turning outside their coterie of analysts to better represent viewers.

“This campaign has been a humbling experience for the American press corps, principally television, but it’s ennobling to see voters having a more direct role in the process.”

To give ordinary citizens (a phrase now frequently linked with “as opposed to journalists”) more access to the political discourse during this campaign, ABC has been tracking the opinions of three “focus groups” of voters. Selected by ABC’s polling unit, the groups--in San Jose, New York City, and Charlotte, N.C.--have been interviewed several times throughout the campaign. After the first of the current series of presidential debates, they joined reporters, pundits and spin doctors in analyzing the candidates’ performance and discussing how their own voting plans might have been affected by it.

“The voters help us to give some name, face and personality to the extensive polling that we do,” Jennings said.

CBS and NBC have been following different small groups of voters during the campaign. After one of the debates, for example, voters in St. Louis watched the action for CBS and, on their own, producers say, made up Olympics-style ratings cards to rank the candidates’ performance on various subjects. The networks generally have focused on “uncommitted” voters in the campaign.

“Each of the several groups of voters we’ve had on has had a different ‘casting,’ ” said “CBS Evening News” executive producer Erik Sorenson. He said producers, for example, looked for voters from several different ethnic backgrounds and occupations in the small group interviewed by Rather in Chicago after last week’s debate.

Using informal “focus groups,” however, is not without pitfalls. “Focus groups are only as good as the people you have in them, and they can be deceptive in making you feel you’re close to ‘the people’ when, in fact, you’re only being close to 12 people,” observed Kalb. “The best ones are the ones in which the voters have been very carefully selected.”

Although voters demonstrated with their questions and comments during last week’s presidential debate that they can get the candidates to maintain a high tone, network executives said that it’s not enough just to have “vox populi” on the air. “I believe that the nightly newscasts have needed opening up to ordinary people,” said “NBC Nightly News” executive producer Steve Friedman. “But, in our post-debate coverage, for example, we viewed it as a tripartite thing, putting on what the campaigns said, what the pundits said and how it played with the people. Last week’s talk-show-style debate showed that ordinary citizens can ask great questions, but it can’t be all just ‘real people.’ Sometimes journalists can come along and ask the tough follow-up question that needs to be asked.”