PBS Ain't So Different: Public Broadcasting, Election Frames, and Democratic Empowerment

Critics often complain that network television election coverage is too short, too superficial, and too focused on "horse race" and strategy. As a result, television news viewers are believed to have an inadequate basis for making intelligent democratic electoral choices. Short, fast-moving, episodic stories and dramatic images convey news frames that fail to inform and empower citizens wishing to make the sort of thoughtful, issue-based choices valued by democratic theorists. Many of these critics laud Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) coverage for its greater story length, use of knowledgeable experts, focus on substantive issues, and lack of dramatic imagery. However, our research shows that despite many differences in the structure of PBS stories, its election news frames are surprisingly similar to those of the oft-criticized commercial networks. Our analysis of ten story frames appearing in PBS and ABC evening news coverage of the 1996 presidential election reveals that public and commercial stories were dominated by horse-race and strategy frames to the exclusion of frames that focus on the prospective and retrospective consequences of candidates' actions and proposals. Our analysis shows that PBS coverage is more comparable to network news coverage than is widely believed, and we suggest that, like network television, PBS frames election news in terms that are disempowering to democratic processes.