The Elections in Israel 1996

12. Balance in Election Coverage

CHAPTER 12 Balance in Election Coverage ASHER ARIAN City University of New York and University of Haifa GABRIEL WEIMANN University of Haifa and GAOl WOLFSFELD The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Accusations about biased news coverage are ubiquitous features of election periods. Arguments over whether one candidate or party receives more or better coverage than another have become as much a ritual of the voting period as the bunting, the speeches, the rallies, the jingles, the political ads, and the public opinion polls. One side claims that it is being shortchanged, the journalists reply that the charge is nonsense, and the debate itself becomes a news story. At first glance, the issue might appear relatively simple, but upon reflection it is more complex. Unbiased coverage might mean that each candidate receives a proportional amount of time and space. Indeed, a good deal of the traditional research on this topic involved a simple counting to determine if one candidate received more coverage than the other (for a review see: McQuail1992, 225-26). This assumes that editors should simply assign reporters to cover each campaign and then carefully calibrate the coverage given to each. The problem in fact is more perplexing because numerical equality may not be the same as substantive appropriateness. Consider the dilemma of the editor whose business is producing news: some candidates are simply more newsworthy than others. It may not be unreasonable to give greater coverage to a candidate who also happens to be a sitting prime minister or president, especially if the actions of the office holder bear on the country's well-being or security. 295 296 Arian, Weimann, and WoIfsfeId The dilemma is how to reconcile the conflict between two principles : the principle of "newsworthiness" and the principle of "balance ." The news media can be seen as an arena where political actors compete for public attention (Wolfsfeld 1997). Those who are considered the most newsworthy are the ones granted the most coverage . The principle of balance, on the other hand, suggests that journalists should give equal coverage to all candidates regardless of their news appeal. A less severe notion of balance would claim that at least the "major" candidates/parties would receive the same amount of coverage. As pointed out by Semetko (1996), the norms for dealing with this dilemma tend to vary among countries. In Britain, for example, the BBC and ITN use what has been called a "stopwatching" approach where parties are given television coverage in accordance with their size in the Parliament (see also: Blumer et al. 1995). The same ratio that was used to give out free television time for election broadcasts is used as a guideline by broadcasters for allocating election coverage. In the United States, on the other hand, the principle of balance is less technical and based more on journalists' good intentions. News values remain an important element in story selection, but editors attempt to maintain balance between the major candidates over the longer term. Evidence reported by Just et al. (1996,253) suggests that good intentions are not enough. In 1992, for example, President Bush was much more likely to be mentioned in television news stories than Governor Clinton, and somewhat more likely to be seen. This did not however work to Bush's advantage, since he was also much more likely to receive negative coverage than was Clinton. Germany goes even further than the United States in emphasizing the principle of newsworthiness (Semetko 1996). The election campaign receives very little coverage on German television. Routine campaign events, which receive so much attention in other countries, are simply not considered news. Such events have to meet the same news standards as any other occurrence: something either unusual, dramatic , or unexpected has to happen in order to be covered. The consequences of such an approach are clear. Incumbents, who are always in a much better position to generate newsworthy events, receive more coverage than challengers. There is, then, no simple solution to this problem. If journalists go strictly by the criterion of newsworthiness they are given unfair level of access to incumbents. A decision to adopt the strict British model, on the other hand, means that citizens are exposed to a much greater number of pseudo-events (Boornstin 1961) in which election news become simply an alternative forum for political propaganda. Balance in Election Coverage 297 BALANCE AS A VARIABLE Israeli journalists must confront the same types...