The Elections in Israel 1999

13. Struggles Over the Electoral Agenda: The Elections of 1996 and 1999

13 Struggles Over the Electoral Agenda The Elections of 1996 and 1999 Gabriel Weimann and Gadi Wolfsfeld One of the important aspects of modern politics is the struggle over the news media. The news media serve as the central arena for antagonists to promote their political positions and preferred images (Wolfsfeld 1997). This contest becomes especially intensive during election campaigns as each candidate and/or political party attempts to dominate the media agenda. Candidates want to pull their opponents onto the political battlefield where they have the greatest advantages. Clinton’s team in 1992, for example, was convinced that the secret to success was to keep the campaign focused on the economy (Arterton 1993). The now famous slogan written at campaign headquarters read, It’s the Economy Stupid.Bush,ontheotherhand,wouldhavepreferredthattheelectionbeabout foreign affairs and personal integrity. The content analyses of election news carried out by M. Just and her colleagues (1996) shows that Clinton was largely successful: the 1992 election was thought to be a referendum on the economy. The news media however, often develop their own agenda that has little to do with the topics being promoted by the candidates. This phenomenon is especially well-known with regard to the media’s tendency to take a cynical view of election campaigns by focusing on strategies, scandals, internal conflicts, and polls rather than on substantive issues (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999; Patterson 1993; Just et al. 1996). The news media can also exhibit an independent agenda with regard to substance. P. Norris and her colleagues found that in the 1997 campaign in Britain “the party and news agendas remained worlds apart (1999, 181).” While many of the political parties were talking about welfare, the economy , and education, little of this could be found in news about the election. 269 The authors thanks Asher Arian who worked with them on this project and the Israel Democracy Institute which provided the funds. There is also increasing evidence that this struggle over the election agenda can have an important impact on voting choices. J. R. Zaller’s work (1992) on priming is especially convincing in this area of research. Zaller argues that many citizens have conflicting “considerations” about public issues. The opinions they express vary in accordance with the ideas that are the most salient to them. Changes in the political environment serve to bring different considerations to the fore and this can have an important influence on how people relate to political issues and candidates. This chapter attempts to examine the competition over the election news agenda using two election campaigns in Israel. The goal of the project was to better understand the factors that lead to success and failure in these contests. There are three major models that are often put forward in this area. The most common factor cited by candidates and their advisors is political bias. The charge is that the news media prefer one candidate to another and this preference is reflected in the quantity and quality of news coverage given. In Israel, as in many countries, it is almost always the right-wing camp that accuses the news media of giving preference to left-wing candidates and issues . The conventional wisdom among political activists and journalists is that very few Israeli journalists vote for right-wing candidates and parties (Wolfsfeld 1997). The same charges were also made in the ’96 and ’99 elections. The press was said to prefer Prime Minister Shimon Peres in 1996, and Ehud Barak in the 1999 campaign. The antagonism between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli press was especially pronounced during the 1999 campaign. The peek of this tension took place in the final days of the campaign when Netanyahu appeared to be inciting his followers against the press. The candidate charged that the media were against him, that the press was “scared” that he was going to win. The scene of Netanyahu stirring up his crowd of followers with the chant “they are scared” was one of the most dramatic moments of the campaign. It is notable that no countercharges about media bias were made by the more leftist candidate in either election. A second possible model would emphasize the advantages enjoyed by incumbents . The correlation between political power and power over the news media is one of the central axioms in the field of political communication (Bennett 1983; Entman 1989; Gans 1979; Molotch and Lester 1974; Peletz and Entman 1981; Reese, Grant, and Danielian 1994...