Significant shifts of polls suggest media’s failure

Ever since the public opinion polls came out after the first presidential debate, I’ve been trying to figure out why they almost universally showed such a significant rise in John Kerry’s fortunes.

I don’t just mean his rise in the horse race -- going from well behind President Bush to pulling almost even (and in a couple of polls, slightly ahead) on the “Whom would you vote for?” question. I mean the voters’ increased approval of Kerry on a wide variety of policy and character issues.

A Los Angeles Times Poll showed that on the matter of which candidate had the more detailed plan for the polices he would pursue if elected, Kerry went from nine points behind Bush before the first debate to four points ahead after the debate.

A Gallup Poll showed that Kerry cut 10 percentage points off Bush’s lead on the question of which candidate would “better handle” terrorism

According to a Newsweek poll, Kerry’s ratings improved significantly vis-a-vis Bush on personal likability, intelligence, being well informed, having strong leadership skills and being “trusted to make the right calls in an international crisis.”

Every other poll I saw showed similar seismic shifts, and I don’t think all these shifts can be attributed to Kerry’s having “won” the debate. After all, the men didn’t even debate the economy -- the topic of the first debate was foreign policy, which essentially meant Iraq -- and still, on the Gallup question of which man would “better handle” the economy, Kerry went from trailing Bush 51% to 45% the week before the debate to leading him 51% to 44% after the debate.

What I think happened in that first debate is that Americans had the chance to see (and evaluate) both men standing and speaking on their own, without the filter of handlers or the news media. Handlers, of course, are supposed to filter, indeed to spin, to obfuscate and exaggerate -- to make their candidates appear as attractive as possible and to make their opponents seem as unattractive as possible. That’s what they get paid to do.

But the news media are not supposed to obfuscate or exaggerate. They’re supposed to illuminate. They’re supposed to strip away the filters, counter the spin and give the voters as clear a picture as possible of who the candidates really are and what they really stand for.

What the post-debate shift in voters’ perceptions of Kerry ultimately tells me, much as I hate to say it, is that the news media have done a pretty poor job of campaign coverage. If Kerry can so dramatically change how people perceive him in just 90 minutes on television -- without benefit of any real knockout punches by him or serious blunders by Bush, without a genuine, confrontational debate format -- it suggests to me that the media hadn’t fulfilled their responsibility to tell voters what Kerry is really like, what he stands for, what he would do, who he is.

Too much Vietnam

Tom ROSENSTIEL, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, made a similar point when we spoke recently.

“What happened in the debates is a reflection of the failure of the news media,” he said. “The fact that the debates made such an impression is a result of the press not having done a good job of explaining who Kerry is.

“Some of that is Kerry’s fault. He hasn’t done a good job of explaining who he is. And it is harder for reporters to cover presidential campaigns now. The political consultants and spinners have become more sophisticated in their control of their candidates’ message and their manipulation of the press.

“But we bear some responsibility. The fact that the press’ job is harder is no excuse for the fact that we haven’t done better. A lot of people on both sides feel less satisfied with media coverage of this race than any that I can think of.”

The counter-argument, of course, is that the media did do their job well before the debate, but until the debate, the people weren’t paying attention.

Well, they may not have been paying as much attention, but they weren’t completely indifferent. Polls before the debates showed that most people had opinions on the candidates and their positions and personalities -- often strong opinions.

But the media were so busy chasing and covering and publishing and broadcasting stories on what the candidates did or didn’t do 30 or 35 years ago during the Vietnam War that they didn’t spend enough time examining what the candidates are doing (or not) now and what they propose to do (or not) in the next four years.

“Coverage that is not very distinct or clear or distinguished usually happens in campaigns with no great issues of the day,” Rosenstiel said. “But that’s not the case here. There are great issues, and there is no reason the coverage can’t be compelling. Voters are more engaged and more concerned than the press coverage reflects.”

The press, he said, has “engorged itself on the easy story and not on the things that seem to be compelling to voters.”

When Jim Lehrer, the moderator of the first debate, asked the candidates about some of these issues, they answered, and many people suddenly developed a whole new sense of what the candidates stood for.

It’s not as if Lehrer were an unrelenting inquisitor who took advantage of the format -- both candidates in front of him, alone, unable to dodge, with a nationwide audience looking on. He didn’t challenge the candidates when they said anything that didn’t square with reality or when they didn’t respond directly to his questions or went back to supplement their answers to earlier questions. He even essentially let them decide when to exercise the option of an extended debate on a given question -- if 30 seconds per candidate could be called an “extended debate” (or even a “debate”).

But he didn’t waste a lot of time on irrelevant trivia either -- and neither did the candidates, and the voting public was the ultimate beneficiary.

I think much the same thing happened in the second and third debates. Those seemed more even to me -- draws probably -- , and the polls didn’t show much shifting in voters’ perceptions after the second one. (Because of printing deadlines for Sunday Calendar, I’m writing this before the third-debate polls are in, but there were no major gaffes or coups by either candidate in that encounter, so I doubt that the voters’ sense of the men will change as dramatically as it did after the first debate.)

More than two weeks remain before election day, though, and perceptions about the candidates could shift again, independent of the debates -- perhaps if one of them makes a serious misstep on the campaign trail. Nah. Both men seem so risk-averse, so shielded by advisors and consultants and so wrapped in a protective cocoon that this is unlikely. The candidates’ reaction to more bad news from Iraq, gloomy economic news or -- God forbid -- another terrorist attack could, however, prompt voters to think anew about either man. But no matter what happens in the next two weeks -- or on election day -- I do think the lesson of the first debate is an embarrassing one for the news media.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.