Bush Coverage: Straight News or Media Coronation?

In the race for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, Gov. George W. Bush’s lopsided share of press coverage may have already rendered next year’s GOP primaries all but meaningless, according to a host of media observers and news executives.

Indeed, experts said, the media’s key effect on the race so far may have been to help drive several candidates out of the contest for lack of attention--including Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who withdrew on Wednesday. And the coverage, focusing largely on Bush’s huge lead in the polls and his fund-raising prowess, raises troubling questions about the responsibilities of the press in a presidential election.

“Three perfectly reasonable Republican candidates--Dan Quayle, Lamar Alexander and John Kasich--were forced to drop out of the race because they couldn’t command the media attention that Bush is getting, and their campaign funds dried up,” said Mark Halperin, political editor for ABC-TV. Dole’s experience is somewhat different, he said, because she started with more media star power. But media interest dropped when she had trouble raising money.

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Halperin said: “If you keep saying that George W. Bush is invincible, it will come to pass, and that can be hugely unfair to his political rivals.”

For the Republicans who remain in the race, it may be impossible to close the vast media gap--making fund-raising difficult and the results of next year’s primaries a foregone conclusion, said Jim Carey, a professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Bush Coverage ‘Has Eclipsed Everyone Else’

“This could be a campaign where the first act is also the last act, because the heavy coverage given Bush has eclipsed everyone else in the race,” he said. “The media like to say, ‘We’ll give the most coverage only to those likely to win,’ but then it turns out they win because we give them the most exposure.”

While front-runners always receive more media attention than less popular candidates, Bush is an extraordinary example. Polls show he is more than 40 points ahead of his nearest competitor and he is receiving more coverage than all the other Republicans combined.

During the first nine months of 1999, Bush’s share of campaign coverage was overwhelming: The three networks devoted 68 minutes of air time--the bulk of it during the summer--to stories about the GOP race, and Bush was featured in 40 minutes--or 59%--of the total, according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors TV network news.

As for print media, a computer search of campaign stories published in four major newspapers (the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today) and three newsmagazines (Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report) during this calendar year shows that Bush was featured in 825--or 50.3%--of 1,640 stories. A total of 815 stories were published on the remaining Republican candidates, of whom there were nine earlier in the year.

The Los Angeles Times alone has published a similar proportion, with 154 stories about Bush and 159 on other Republican candidates.

Lately, the media spotlight has shone even less frequently on second-tier Republicans, as coverage focuses on a tightening battle in the Democratic primary. Unlike coverage of the Republicans, coverage of the Democratic candidates has been nearly even. The Tyndall Report found Vice President Al Gore’s campaign garnered 17 minutes of network news coverage in the first nine months of 1999, compared with 16 for former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

“The role of journalists is not just to tell us who’s going to win the race,” said Jim Naureckas, editor of Extra, a media watchdog magazine. “It’s to stimulate debate, and if you’re a Republican candidate this year, other than George W. Bush, you haven’t had much of a chance to be heard in the media.”

Gary Bauer’s campaign, for example, has struggled from its inception to get major coverage. Jeff Bell, a senior consultant to Bauer, concedes that the media must focus on Bush’s emergence as a political front-runner but said its conclusion that the race is over has done a disservice to his candidate and also to voters.

“It takes a toll on us, for sure, because our key issues don’t get covered,” Bell said. “If voters keep hearing that Bush has got it wrapped up, they’ll never get a chance to understand the important differences between candidates.”

Yet this underscores a key question for news executives: How much does the public want or need to know about something like Bauer’s new budget proposals, given limited media time and space, as opposed to Bush’s meteoric rise?

Opinions differ widely. Some editors say they have an obligation to focus on the GOP front-runner.

“For us, his huge lead is itself news, and it would be ridiculous not to accept this political fact of life,” said Leonard Downie, executive editor of the Washington Post. “He deserves this scrutiny now, because if he does wrap up the nomination so early, people need to know who he is.”

Yet others believe the media have broader responsibilities. “We owe it to readers to do a better job of covering problems and issues,” said Robert Rosenthal, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “And I think what we’ve seen with the Bush coverage is a good example of the media feeding off each other at a time when the public really isn’t paying a damn bit of attention to the race. From what I see and hear, journalists are talking to each other now--rather than to the public.”

Al Ortiz, executive producer of the CBS Evening News, conceded that it is “troubling” to focus so much on polls and money. But he said if Bush’s fund-raising advantage puts his eventual Democratic opponent in a hole months before the campaign begins, these subjects become a legitimate topic of inquiry.

At the Los Angeles Times, Editor Michael Parks said: “We have a double duty: to focus on the issues of the campaign and how it is being waged, and to examine the candidates--first of all the front-runners. If George W. Bush stands a good chance of nomination and election, people should know who he is and what he stands for.”

Sprint in Polls Has No Precedent

Few dispute that the Bush phenomenon is a significant news story. Never before has a presidential candidate in an open field raced so far ahead of his rivals so fast. In the latest national poll, Bush led his nearest Republican rival by 44 percentage points.

“The news business loves good stories, period,” said David Doss, executive producer of the NBC Evening News. “We worry about issues of fairness, but in this case, Bush is huge. When something is this unprecedented, you cover it in depth.”

Historically, it’s not unusual for the media to pay significant attention to front-runners in presidential campaigns. But 1999 is unique: For months, the handful of reporters following other candidates was dwarfed by the army tracking Bush.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post devoted a seven-part series to Bush, probing his political roots and personal evolution. Bush has also been the subject of extensive stories in the Los Angeles Times exploring his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War and his record as a prolific fund-raiser in Texas. Last week, a USA Today story said Bush seemed to have the nomination “wrapped up.”

Some critics, with an eye on history, caution that even the biggest juggernaut can break down. In 1972, a Time magazine cover asked: “Can Anybody Stop Ed Muskie?” referring to the Democratic front-runner. Someone did--and George S. McGovern won the nomination. “I’m not saying that this will happen again, but the media has a public responsibility in an election year,” said Bryce Nelson, professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC. “It can’t just join in a political coronation.”

Some observers suggest that an issues-oriented approach--instead of a political focus--might guarantee a more evenhanded mix of stories.

“In the year 2000, what are going to be the fateful issues for the country?” Carey asked. “Not the political horse race going on, but the things that matter to ordinary people? If you try to find out where everybody stands, you have a real shot at equalizing the range of political coverage.”

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Times researchers Massie Ritsch and John Tyrrell contributed to this story.