Harvard Kennedy School professors Nancy Gibbs and Thomas E. Patterson have long experience watching how the media cover American presidential campaigns. Rarely has the outlook been as unsettled as in this election season, with deepening polarization, an assassination attempt against former President Trump, and the withdrawal of President Biden from the race.
We asked Gibbs and Patterson to reflect on how news organizations are doing so far—and how coverage in the fast-changing worlds of traditional and social media is likely to affect the course of the election campaign over the next several months.
Gibbs, the former editor in chief of Time Magazine, is the Lombard Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School as well as the Edward R. Murrow Professor of the Practice of Press, Politics and Public Policy. Patterson is the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press and author of several books on political communication.
Q: The last time a U.S. presidential race unfolded in such frenzied circumstances was probably the 1968 election campaign. How do you compare media approaches to political coverage then and now?
Patterson: The feeding frenzies continue but now take place in different waters. The mainstream media, Fox News et. al. on the right, and MSNBC on the left, are feeding off a common set of facts but framing them differently. Vice President Kamala Harris’s elevation to the position of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has been the story of the week on all outlets but what’s being said about her on one has little resemblance to what’s being said on the others. Dueling realities have come to define today’s frenzies.
Q: It felt like TikTok was setting the media tone on the day President Biden pulled out of the race as Democratic nominee. Are social media channels now displacing mainstream media in setting the political agenda?
Gibbs: We’ve been living through the atomization of media for years now, as the gatekeepers of the 20th century have to compete with masses of digital competitors, and now content creators on platforms like TikTok. The research shows that for younger voters especially, individual influencers are more trusted on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok than journalists are. In this election, attention is still finite, but content is practically infinite—so while traditional journalists are still valuable, the competition they face for people’s time and attention is ferocious.
Patterson: Social media are increasingly important but it’s still the case that the mainstream media are the source of news for most people. Studies also show that most of the political “news” on social media originates with traditional media. It gets reshaped as it works its way through social media but usually starts with the work of reporters.
“The feeding frenzies continue but now take place in different waters. ... Dueling realities have come to define today’s frenzies.”
Thomas Patterson
Q: Even major news organizations are facing huge problems just keeping their audiences and staying afloat. What do these economic challenges mean for covering this election?
Gibbs: The disruption of the business model for journalism drives many of the troubling trends of recent years; the increase in clickbait, in partisan media, in echo chambers designed to maximize engagement as companies shift from an advertising-based model to a subscription model. But maybe most concerning is if reliable information increasingly becomes a luxury good: those able and willing to pay for the Wall Street Journal or New York Times will have vast amounts of information available to them, but for others, the vacuum will be filled by unreliable and often destructive information sources.
Patterson: I honestly don’t think that the business model has posed a large challenge to presidential election coverage. We don’t lack stories of those candidates. It’s the lower races where the economic challenge is being felt. Most local news outlets have fewer resources to devote to covering Senate, House, and state-level campaigns.
Q: How should news organizations follow up their breaking news coverage of the near-miss assassination attempt against former President Trump? Is there a risk of overplaying the threat of political violence? Or understating it?
Patterson: Political assassinations and near-misses are relatively rare in American politics and don’t fit a clear pattern. Some would-be assassins have been true believers, others have been loners or unhinged, and others have borne a personal grudge. We haven’t had a case of a copy-cat assassin, which might be the only risk to life of overplaying the latest one.
Q: There was intense coverage of whether President Biden should remain in the race—sometimes breathless minute-by-minute analysis of polls. Was this horse race coverage warranted so far ahead of the voting? And did Donald Trump escape similar scrutiny about his age and health?
Gibbs: I share many people’s concerns about journalists relying too heavily on polls and horse race coverage at the expense of deep reporting into the stakes and the policy implications of competing campaigns. But in this case, the coverage reflected concerns that voters had been sharing literally for years; Biden’s age was a constant subject of concern even among voters who strongly supported his policies. If anything, the coverage ran behind public opinion rather than ahead of it. And while Trump’s disapproval ratings have been consistently high, his age was not at the top of the list of concerns, compared with his lawlessness, his callousness, or his bigotry.
Q: With Kamala Harris suddenly all but ordained as the Democratic frontrunner after Biden’s withdrawal, how should reporters measure her candidacy and her campaign?
Gibbs: The same way they should cover all candidates: thoroughly, fairly, following the reporting wherever it takes them. Even voters who have a negative impression of Harris will often say they don’t know much about her or what she’s done. So there are a lot of blanks to be filled in.
“I’d like to see a much greater focus on topics that are relevant and useful to voters ... issues that affect people’s lives way more directly than who’s up, who’s down, who’s backchanneling campaign advice, who’s being frozen out.”
Nancy Gibbs
Q: What are journalists getting right during this surprising campaign and where are they failing their audiences?
Patterson: The failings are predictable. CBS’s Eric Severeid once compared election journalists to alcoholics, saying their regretted shortcomings in the last campaign are forgotten as soon as the wine of a new campaign touches their lips. Too many polls, too much horse race. That problem has only worsened as polling has expanded. Was the measure of Trump’s indictments truly whether they were hurting him in the polls? Are we to judge Harris truly by whether she surges or slips in the polls? Fitness for public office has long been underplayed, as have the issues of the campaign. Issues are not tissues, for disposal at campaign’s end. Studies repeatedly show that candidates keep most of their promises once in office. People need to know what those are, and what they imply for themselves and the nation. Moreover, the issues that do attract journalists often have nothing to do with governing. They are properly seen as campaign controversies, and little more. I’ve yet to see a compelling argument for why emails were the most heavily covered issue the last time a woman ran at the top of a major-party ticket [Editor's Note: Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016].
Q: What should the media be focusing on in the months ahead?
Gibbs: I’d like to see a much greater focus on topics that are relevant and useful to voters: between caring for young children or elderly parents, accessing and affording health care, managing the risks and rewards that AI poses, the challenge of building guardrails around platforms and tech companies that operate with impunity—these are all issues that affect people’s lives way more directly than who’s up, who’s down, who’s back-channeling campaign advice, who’s being frozen out, and all the other standard narratives of political coverage.
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Banner image: Reporters wait for the arrival of the White House Press Secretary in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images