PERSPECTIVE ON THE MEDIA : What, Us Biased? Some Doubts : After pledging to report on the issues, three networks emphasized ‘horse race-ism’ and failed the fairness test.

This was the year television networks reneged on their campaign promises.

After 1988, critics deplored the media’s degeneration into tabloid-style character cops, their manipulation by campaign consultants and their attention to the horse race rather than the issues. Repentant journalists promised to make election reporting tough but fair, more substantive and more independent of the candidates and their spin doctors. When 1992 rolled around, the networks seemed ready to deliver. Throughout the primaries and party conventions, they downplayed photo opportunities, critiqued campaign commercials and probed the candidates’ speeches for false and misleading claims.

So why isn’t the audience satisfied? Recent Times Mirror surveys find voters almost as discontented with the media’s 1992 campaign role as they were in 1988. Nearly half feel that the media had too much influence over the election, and the proportion who found the coverage too hard on the candidates actually rose since 1988. Equally worrisome, almost half of the electorate believes that journalists often let their own political preferences shape their campaign reporting.

My content analysis of election news helps explain the public disaffection. A team of researchers analyzed each sound bite from every election story on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from Labor Day through Election Day. The results belie the network pledges. Not only was the coverage less issue-oriented this fall than in 1988, but it was also less balanced, equally negative and even more intrusive.

Despite the attention lavished on features like NBC’s “Ad Watch” and CBS’s “Reality Check,” fewer than one in three election stories this fall focused on policy issues. In fact, stories on the horse race outnumbered issue stories; in 1988 the opposite was true. The main reasons were heavy coverage of competing poll results and the presidential debates. Instead of focusing on what the candidates said during the debates, the networks concentrated on who “won” or “lost.”

More troubling than the relapse into “horse race-ism” was an apparent lapse of fairness. We tabulated nearly 1,000 on-air evaluations of the three major presidential candidates by reporters, voters, pundits and other sources aside from the candidates themselves. By this measure, in 1988 George Bush and Michael Dukakis received equal portions of praise and criticism. This year, however, a majority of sources lauded Bill Clinton, while nearly three in four disparaged Bush. (A slight majority also criticized Ross Perot.) In fact, Bush receivedthe worst evaluations of any candidate during nine of the 10 months of campaign ’92. Moreover, journalists directed their “reality checks” disproportionately against Bush. His assertions were challenged or contradicted more frequently than those of Clinton and Perot combined.

Whether this imbalance reflected journalists’ perceptions or political realities, it is also notable that the candidates collectively received much more on-air criticism than praise, just as they did in 1988. The generally negative tone extended beyond evaluations of the candidates to the campaign itself. During the fall, nearly 300 on-air sources complained about the quality of the campaign, the paid political ads and the choice of candidates. The critics outnumbered defenders of the process by a 20-to-1 margin.

By contrast, post-election polls show that three in five voters were satisfied with the choice of candidates, three in four learned enough from the campaign to make an informed choice and two in five rated the campaign commercials as helpful. You wouldn’t know any of that from watching TV news. Such relentless negativism does not simply reflect public alienation from the political system; it intensifies it.

Finally, this will go down as the year the networks took over the election agenda from the candidates. The media morals squad of 1988 became the media truth squad of 1992, with correspondents recast as commentators. The decision to arbitrate the campaign instead of just narrating it encouraged reporters to upstage the candidates with their own pronouncements.

Thus, after Perot charged Republicans with dirty tricks, NBC’s Lisa Myers responded, “Perot’s bizarre allegations raise more questions about his character, truthfulness and fitness to be President . . . (He is) notorious for not telling the truth . . . thoroughly skilled in the art of manipulation . . . yet few dare tell Perot his prism is distorted.” (But what do you really think, Lisa?)

Similarly, when Bush criticized Clinton’s civil-rights record in Arkansas, CBS’s Eric Engberg responded, “George Bush’s civil-rights record is less than pristine . . . He built his ’88 campaign around the Willie Horton issue.” This version of “Willie Horton” as the racist centerpiece of Bush’s election strategy has been argued by Democratic critics. But Engberg offered it not in a point-counterpoint format, but on his own authority.

In winning their battle against the politicians to control the airwaves, however, the networks are losing the war for the hearts and minds of the public. The sudden popularity of talk shows attests to widespread rejection of a journalist-centered news format in favor of broadcasts built around candidates and voters. Despite the media’s self-image as the public’s surrogate, public perceptions of partisan, negative and intrusive reporting are creating a popular revolt. The audience has begun to demand information without representation from the media insiders whose claim to speak for “the people” looks increasingly shaky. Incumbents beware!