Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns

6. Issues, Biography, and Chaff

6 Issues, Biography, and Chaff A number of recent studies have shown that election coverage often lacks the kind of substantive political discussion people need to make informed decisions. Rather than reporting on the candidates’ positions on the issues or the experience they bring to a job, news accounts are far more likely to reduce an election to a game, telling voters who is ahead or behind or reporting on the candidates’ strategies or movements (e.g., King 1990; Patterson 1991). In short, the media tend to treat an election more like a horse race than a job interview. Generally speaking, women fare more poorly than men in this regard. Women candidates get more horse-race coverage and less reporting on the issues, and the press paints them as less viable than competing men candidates.InastudyofnewspapercoverageofSenateracesbetween1982 and 1986, Kim Kahn and Edie Goldenberg (1991) found that the coverage of women candidates focused “more on their viability and less on their issue positions . . . [and their] viability coverage was more negative than that of their male counterparts” (180). In a similar study, Kahn (1994) examined media coverage of women running in forty-seven statewide campaigns. She found the press was more likely to characterize women as less viable than competing men and more likely to emphasize “their unlikely chances of victory” (154). In a third study, Kahn (1996) found the media reported the absence of financial resources more frequently for women than for men. Scarce resources were discussed in 10 percent of women’s Senate races and 5 percent of men’s. issues, biography, and chaff 117 In order to assess the effects of the different coverage that men and women garner, Kahn (1992) conducted an experiment in which she modeled prototypical articles for men and women in U.S. Senate races.Then regardless of which prototype was used, the gender of the candidate in the article was altered. She found that when subjects read an article employing “male incumbent” coverage (i.e., coverage prototypical of men candidates), the candidate—male or female—was perceived to be more viable, a stronger leader, and better able to deal with military issues. Such a candidate was also considered more likely to win the seat. The prototypical “female incumbent” coverage led the subjects to believe that the candidate was more compassionate and better able to deal with health issues. These findings are not purely hypothetical. We know that the public generally believes that the campaign trail is harder for women than for men. The 1994 National Women’s Political Caucus survey found that two-thirds of the respondents thought it was harder for women than men to get elected (Newman 1994). Similarly, the Greenberg-Lake study concluded that voters identified women of either party as less likely to win even when they planned to vote for the woman (cited by Jamieson 1995). In an experiment in 1981, Virginia Sapiro had subjects read a campaign speech. In one condition the candidate was identified as Joan; in the other condition, as John. When subjects were asked to identify the likelihood that the candidate would win, 64 percent of men and 61 percent of women identified John as “very” or “somewhat” (Sapiro 1981, 74) likely to win, whereas Joan received these designations from only 49 percent of men and 45 percent of women. Even though people tend to believe that women have a harder time winning, research shows that women candidates raise amounts of money comparable to those of men and win as often as men do. However, many fewer women than men run.As noted in the introduction to the present book, women account for only about 8 percent of candidates for the U.S. House and Senate (see Newman 1994; Seltzer, Newman, and Leighton 1997). One of the greatest impediments to garnering equal representation is the paucity of women candidates. If the press presents women as less likely to win, this could deter women from running. The belief that women make weaker candidates may also account for the fact that women incumbents are more likely to be challenged than are men incumbents. In elections for the U.S. House, 94 percent of women representatives and 86 percent of men representatives were challenged (Seltzer, Newman, and Leighton 1997). In this chapter I look at three types of substantive coverage: those 118 women for president focusing on issues (policy stands and legislative proposals), biographical information (anything...