Kay McFadden / Times staff columnist
A few simple tips for the media to get it right next time around

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Like the cowboy to whom he has been compared, President Bush rode a rugged image to re-election on Tuesday. But the television news media's handling of the 2004 presidential campaign played a role in that victory.

The election was supposedly about tangible problems: the war in Iraq, the economy, terrorism. Opinion polls drove home these topics again and again, backed by the cold, hard steel of statistics.

As a result, many networks seemed shocked to learn that when Bush voters went to the polls, they based their selection first and foremost on things such as morality, religious belief and lifestyle.

How did this happen? It could be that secular-minded journalists pay too little attention to faith. Perhaps the news machine's appetite for ratings fooled pundits into emphasizing hot flashes over sober analysis.

Or maybe it has to do with the media's methods. Increasingly, organizations rely on machines to crunch numbers, not reporters who wear out shoe leather.

If the 2004 election suggests a gap between red and blue America, an even larger one may exist between the media and the people they serve. As TV journalists look forward to elections to come, they should keep in mind four key lessons:

NBC tops election ratings NBC's election-night coverage was watched by 15.2 million viewers during prime-time Tuesday, according to Nielsen Media Research. ABC's coverage was seen by 13.2 million viewers, CBS' coverage by 9.5 million and Fox's by 4.7 million, according to Nielsen. Among cable news networks, 8.1 million people watched Fox News Channel, 6.2 million saw CNN and 2.8 million viewers tuned in to MSNBC. Source: Associated Press

1. Re-direct the debate

The University of Kansas' Dr. Diana Carlin, who has been a debate adviser on four presidential commissions, said it best: "How do you determine who wins? I never ask that. The point of a debate is supposed to be how much viewers learn."

Nearly all post-debate reporting failed in that goal, though a few organizations conducted obsessively balanced fact-checking (two mistakes apiece seemed the unspoken rule).

But journalists who reduced the event to a boxing match didn't just fail to inform viewers. They missed a key aspect of voter behavior: the feelings that often sway decisions.

Reporters could learn from citizens. The Poynter Institute's Christopher Scanlan noted in an article last month that the second, town-hall-style debate generated open-ended questions that did a better job of uncovering emotional influences.

Significantly, he suggested that situation also helped Bush.

"By inviting [him] to express his emotions, they helped the president make up for his lackluster performance in the first debate," Scanlan wrote. "They may have worked against the more cerebral and chilly Kerry."

2. Ditch the drama

In the 24-hour era, TV's constant appetite for the latest tidbit is antithetical to substantive reporting. It debases the meaning of news and creates an audience indifferent or unable to distinguish the real thing.

The most enduring example of how overkill can destroy perspective was, of course, the anti-Kerry Swift Boat ads.

The ads themselves never added up to more than perhaps a few days' impact. Helped along by TV coverage, though, they took on a month-long life that distracted from meatier issues. In the summer of Iraq, we were forced to relive Vietnam.

"The news focuses more on character and less on policy because that's always a handy way of generating conflict and making something newsy that really isn't," said the University of Missouri's Bill Benoit, an authority on campaigns and media.

If conflict isn't around, the latest can equal the greatest. This year's fashionable media obsessions were the undecideds and newly registered voters, especially those under age 30.

So fascinated were reporters with these novelties, they neglected a group that proved crucial on Tuesday: the previously registered and very much decideds.

As Dan Gilgoff of USNews.com observed, "[A] widely anticipated surge in newly registered voters sympathetic to John Kerry appeared to be countered by an uptick in rural, suburban and religious voters largely allied with President George W. Bush."

Meantime, the anticipated flood of 18- to 29-year-old Democratic supporters was only slightly higher than in 2000. So much for what's young and sexy.

3. Get religion

Journalism's rational world of who, what, when, where and how seems to attract those inclined to give short shrift to dogma.

Newspapers are better (they usually have religious columns), but TV news rarely touches the topic except in the context of — what else? — a fight over abortion or stem-cell research.

Even PBS' estimable "Frontline" centered its two-hour pre-election special about Bush and Kerry on Vietnam and business deals. It failed to examine in depth the president's born-again beliefs or how they were translating into legislative agenda.

To ignore Bush's faith, however, was to miss a huge factor in the election. Exit polling data showed that one out of every five voters identified himself as evangelical. Of these, an estimated 75 percent voted for Bush.

With the confidence of a second term and such looming issues as the likely appointment of a Supreme Court justice ahead, journalists need to understand religion on a far more intimate basis than they do now.

4. See real people

Although it is not the final lesson of the 2004 election, it is the most elementary: a return to old-fashioned street reporting.

Television lives in an era of cost-saving mechanization. Media consolidation has made it easier for newsrooms to cut jobs and pool resources. Anchors and glitzy studios get disproportionate resources.

But news outlets interested in gaining a real edge may consider how powerful a role grassroots groups had in getting out the vote for this week's Republican triumph.

The only way to know this, and to anticipate the effect, would have been to meet people face to face. The same held true for the 1950s and '60s civil-rights movement, similarly organized in private dwellings and places of worship.

Getting to know individuals instead of feeding their profiles through a machine can be vital when politics increasingly is about how people personally relate to a candidate.

Finally, street reporting may help wonks (and wonkettes; let's not forget the Internet) begin to distinguish the subtle stripes of belief that have caused so many citizens to turn independent.

As ABC's Peter Jennings commented in a rare moment of rude candor after one debate, "This whole business of there being an absolutely red and blue America is a crock."

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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