Overview

The most definitive report ever on verdict effects, this book gives striking new evidence that media assessments of presidential debates sway voters. The authors conducted 2,350 surveys and extensive analysis of news reports to scrutinize the post-debate news of 1988. They also examined the effects of the attack ads used by Bush and Dukakis. They found that the news media consistently downplay debate content and instead emphasize their own views on candidate performance--media verdicts influence voters as much as the debates themselves. Extensive content analyses and more than 2,350 surveys were conducted to analyze media verdicts on the 1988 debates. The verdicts on Bush, Dukakis, Quayle, and Bentsen announced in post-debate newscasts are compared with those from debates in 1984, 1980 and 1976. The study finds that the news media consistently downplay debate content and instead emphasize their own views on candidate performance. These media verdicts influence voters as much as the debates themselves. The study also examines the effects of attack ads used by Bush and Dukakis, and finds that they backfired--network news probably rebroadcast more excerpts of attack ads in 1988 than ever before. Television journalists, the essays in this book show, have become increasingly less interested in how the debates served the information needs of the voters and increasingly more preoccupied with how they affected the ambitions of the candidates. A noticeable trend in 1988 was as the fall debates went on, voters' beliefs that further debates would be helpful to them went down. Another finding of the study deals with a huge tactical error that the League of Women Voters committed by simultaneously announcing its withdrawal and blasting the format and ground rules imposed on it by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Also, the spin doctors who continually spouted insider information during the 1988 campaign gained more legitimacy and impact than ever before--and had a very strong effect on American public affairs journalism. This intriguing book, which also provides policy recommendations for the debates, their sponsors, and the news media, is useful to journalists, researchers, and civic groups concerned with elections, government, campaign reform, and communications.

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9780275937584

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Reviews

?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 ""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 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

Author Information

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.

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