Preface Introduction Study Design and Rationale Network Television News Coverage of the Debates, 1976 to 1988 Candidate Verdicts in Post-Debate Analysis Programs Journalists and the Idea of Presidential Debates The First Bush-Dukakis Debate: Face-To-Face Contact The Quayle-Bentsen Debate: A Verdict Effect? The Final Presidential Debate: October 13, 1988 Debates in the Eyes of the Audience The Audience Responds to "Attack" Ads Debates in the Context of the Rest of the Campaign Appendix Bibliography Index
This book provides new evidence that media assessments of presidential debates sway voters. The authors conducted 2,350 surveys and extensive analyses of news reports to during the 1988 campaign. They found that the news media influence voters as much as the debates themselves.
JAMES B. LEMERT is Profesor and Journalism Graduate Studies Director at the University of Oregon. He is the author of two previous books, Does Mass Communication Change Public Opinion After All? (1981) and Criticizing the Media: Empirical Approaches (1989), and dozens of research articles. Dr. Lemert teaches courses in public opinion, journalists' craft attitudes, and mass communication theory.
WILLIAM R. ELLIOTT is Associate Professor and Head of Graduate Studies in Journalism at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is the author of numerous journal articles and papers on media influences on the political process. Dr. Elliott teaches courses in mass communications theory, research methods, and theory construction.
JAMES M. BERNSTEIN is Assistant Professor of Journalism at Indiana University. He currently teaches courses in broadcast journalism, public opinion, and the media as social institutions. Dr. Bernstein's research interests include public opinion, political communication, and television and politics.
WILLIAM L. ROSENBERG is Associate Professor and Director of the Drexel University Survey Research Center. He has presented many papers and has authored numerous articles on politics and communication. In addition to serving as a media analyst during election campaigns, as well as a research consultant for local, state and national agencies, Dr. Rosenberg teaches courses in political communication, public opinion and propaganda, and research methods.
KARL J. NESTVOLD, Professor and Associate Dean, is Head of the Broadcast News Sequence, School of Journalism, University of Oregon. Dr. Nestvold's research interests include the FCC theory of diversity, television news and public affairs, broadcasting in Great Britain, and the Soviet Union's external information programs.
?No one ever lost money underestimating the American voter! False,
says this major study of presidential debates, whose dominant
message is more issues and less hoopla. Is that just a predictable
normative response? And do the media best understand the public's
real appetite? This study says "no" to these interesting and
difficult questions. Time-series methodology, even if "existing
analytical techniques somewhat restrict interpretation," do "locate
important changes in the ways our respondents rated the candidates
as debaters, judged their images, shifted their voting intentions,
and determined the importance of issues." The post-debate verdict
effect, they conclude, actually occurs, at least until overtaken by
another day, or by deeper pre-existing attitudes. A strategy for
future research is offered, including embedding some of the
variables of media coverage and commentary and analysis of the role
of TV producers, reporters, and other gatekeepers. This work serves
best as a model of the use of a battery of surveys to attack a
problem. It will not allay our sense of unease with some of the
common hypotheses. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate
students.?-Choice
"No one ever lost money underestimating the American voter! False,
says this major study of presidential debates, whose dominant
message is more issues and less hoopla. Is that just a predictable
normative response? And do the media best understand the public's
real appetite? This study says "no" to these interesting and
difficult questions. Time-series methodology, even if "existing
analytical techniques somewhat restrict interpretation," do "locate
important changes in the ways our respondents rated the candidates
as debaters, judged their images, shifted their voting intentions,
and determined the importance of issues." The post-debate verdict
effect, they conclude, actually occurs, at least until overtaken by
another day, or by deeper pre-existing attitudes. A strategy for
future research is offered, including embedding some of the
variables of media coverage and commentary and analysis of the role
of TV producers, reporters, and other gatekeepers. This work serves
best as a model of the use of a battery of surveys to attack a
problem. It will not allay our sense of unease with some of the
common hypotheses. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate
students."-Choice
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