Voters, Media Differ on Campaign, Poll Shows

Voters remain largely tuned out to the presidential campaign, and their impressions of the candidates are in contrast with the topics conveyed by the media, according to a study released Thursday.

For example, only about 26% of Americans view Vice President Al Gore as tainted by past scandal, even though nearly half the coverage of him since February has dealt with White House fund-raising abuses, the research found.

By the same token, more than half the coverage of Texas Gov. George W. Bush has focused on his campaign’s message that he is a “different kind of Republican,” but only 20% of respondents to a poll said he had different views from traditional GOP leaders.

Overall, the joint study and poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that voters are ignoring press coverage of the campaign.

“In some ways, this is the growing distrust of the press we’ve seen evolving over the last 15 years coming home to roost,” said Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the project and a former Los Angeles Times reporter. “Maybe in this new media culture, the press is going about trying to regain audience exactly the wrong way. Making the coverage more interpretive may be exactly the wrong things to do. People don’t want us to tell them what it means.”

The study analyzed 2,400 stories from seven newspapers, 18 TV and radio shows and two Internet sites. The poll was taken from a national sample of 1,204 adults and 918 registered voters from July 19 to 23, before Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate.

The studies said Bush has been more successful in controlling the press covering him, generating coverage portraying him as a new breed of politician. The most common themes in the Gore coverage, in contrast, have been negative: that he stretches the truth and that he is soaked in scandal.

While some of those messages appear to be sinking in among the public, the disconnect between the press portraits and voters’ perceptions remains substantial, according to the studies.

Only about 10% of the news coverage looked at whether Bush has relied on family connections to get ahead, but 54% of those surveyed said they believe the Texas governor has received a helping hand from his relatives.

Gore, meanwhile, has largely failed to portray himself as a competent and experienced public servant, the study found.

Just 2% of the news stories challenged the notion that he exaggerates the facts. And only 14% of the stories portrayed Gore as competent. But the voters surveyed were more likely to associate experience and knowledge with Gore than Bush, 38% to 25%.