American President: LP

Media Survey Project: Television News Coverage of the Presidential Election
By Melan Jaich

Overview

In this project students have the opportunity to do their own field research, and at same time, develop a better understanding of the ways the broadcast media covers presidential campaigns. This lesson lends itself to an informed discussion of the effect the broadcast media have had on public opinion formation about candidates, issues, and parties.

Television is obviously now a key component in the flow of information to the public. In fact, voters now state that television news is their main source of news. How has this changed campaigns? Is the American public only looking for a telegenic candidate who is able to effectively handle television coverage? This assignment can get students thinking about the two-way relationship between television and presidential elections.

Objectives

Students will:

Analyze their own survey results based on their own observations

Collect, code, and organize their field scores

Assemble and prioritize survey results in a limited amount of time

Express conclusions in front of peers

Critically evaluate survey methods

Compare and assess quality of survey work generally in the class

Time Required

This lesson requires the students to view network news for five nights. It also requires four class periods. The first class period is the first day of the viewing cycle. At end of the five night viewing period, the lesson will take three more class periods for the activity and discussion.

Materials

Student record-keeping sheet

Initial Motivation

Ask students if they believe television influences social trends and public discourse. Initial discussion subjects could include fashion, food, children's names, and phrases we use in conversation, eventually leading to more substantive topics such as issues we care about and think are important. Some later topics could include the decline in newspaper readership, increased emphasis on TV news as an information source, increased voter apathy, a decline in party identification, "spin control" as a result of scandals, or the rise of "entertainment style" news shows.

Procedures

Students are required to watch the same national news program on five consecutive nights. Teachers should divide up the class equally and assign each group one of the major news shows, e.g., CBS with Dan Rather, NBC Nightly News, PBS News Hour, or ABC World News Tonight. While watching the news, students keep a record of each story related to the presidential campaign with a form provided by the teacher. This form is located at the end of this lesson plan. Each student should have five copies of this handout.

The form is basically a check-off sheet. It lists each category students should be watching for on the news. Categories include all of the candidates, the parties, issue stories, background stories, polls or public opinion reports, coverage of campaign financing, etc. Students should also record whether the story was positive (supportive), negative (critical) or neutral (no clear position).

Stories where both major party candidates are mentioned would be neutral (e.g., "Bush Attacks Gore"). Stories may also be scored in more than one category (e.g., "Bush Down in the Polls" could be both negative for Bush and a story on polls).

Students also record the date of the show, the network, and roughly the amount of time in minutes spent on each story. Students with tricky stories could note the focus of the report and ask the teacher or classmates for a ruling the next day.

After five days, the students take turns reporting their results with a tally kept on a board in front of the class. In the interest of time, teachers may want to group student reports by network or even assign groups to a particular national network (e.g., NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and CNN) in advance. Students grouped by network can then compare results and present a combined report.

The group reports can lead to a class discussion comparing and contrasting coverage among the national networks. The instructor leads a discussion of the results and in formulating overall conclusions about the depth of coverage of the campaigns on televisions, any differences in station coverage, campaign strategies, and political "spin." Discussion questions could include:

Why did some candidates receive more coverage that week?
Why do the major parties get most of the coverage?
Why does variation between channels exist?
Why are there differences between how students coded segments?
Do business or market constraints affect coverage?
Did coverage focus more on issues, personalities or parties?
Is coverage objective or biased?

Teachers can also tie coverage to the events of that particular week, especially if there has been some special event, revelation or issue that has spotlighted one party or candidate over another. Obviously, coverage of issues, third parties and marginal candidates should be covered.

For younger students, a teacher's summation of the results can focus on sheer frequency with more advanced students also considering the length of coverage. Teachers can lead the students in discussing whether frequency or length of coverage is more important to a campaign's successes. Students can also compare length of coverage to the candidate's standing in the race or the controversy surrounding a certain personality.

Assessment

Using the following rubric, students could be evaluated on:

Quality and quantity of survey results
Completeness of form
Oral presentation of results
Participation in the general discussion about peer conclusions
A follow-up paper assessing the importance of the media's role in campaigns

Melan Jaich teaches political communication and public speaking at the Polytechnic High School in Pasadena, California.

Media Survey Project: Television News Coverage of the Presidential Election

Media Survey Chart

Date

Network

Program

Story #1

Candidate Story

Issue Story

Background Story

Poll Story

Democrat

Foreign Policy

On a particular issue

About a certain issue

Republican

Domestic Policy

On the candidate

About a certain candidate

Both major parties

Personal Issues

Third party candidate

Overall Coverage:

negative

neutral

positive

Length of Coverage: ________ minutes

Story #2 (if applicable)

Length of Coverage: ________ minutes

Story #3 (if applicable)

Length of Coverage: ________ minutes

Frequency Totals

Total number of stories: __________

Total length of stories: __________ minutes