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This study examines meta-coverage in Campaign 2000, defined as (a) coverage of the behaviors, products, and performance of the news media and (b) coverage of candidates' use of paid media, communication personnel, and other forms of strategic communication. Using a new model of press framing, a content analysis was conducted on 284 stories aired from September 4 to November 6 on ABC and NBC evening news programs. Results show that 55 stories contained enough press designators and 75 stories contained enough publicity designators to qualify,for framing analysis. A small percentage (12%) contained overlapping press and publicity designators. resulting in 116 stories that qualified for framing analysis. Results showed 11 script structures corresponding to three frames called conduit, strategy, and accountability which contained different degrees of cynicism. A frame-by-topic matrix indicated that press and publicity frames occurred most frequently in stories about politics and processes.
Like Jimmy Carter, McCain invented a new route to stardom. In 1976, Carter turned the Iowa caucuses, until then obscure events, into a launching pad. McCain's version of Iowa: the media. He's worked the precincts of the press corps like an Irish pol in Southie on St. Patrick's Day, offering his near obsessive candor and availability to reporters reared in an era of antagonism between the media and the politicians.
-Fineman (2000, p. 25)
News coverage of the "McCain mutiny" (Alter, 2000) during the early primary phase of the 2000 presidential campaign was on one level about Senator McCain's ideological and political challenge to the GOP front-runner, Governor George W. Bush. The subplot, however, was that journalists and the news media actively participated in the unfolding events (D'Angelo, 2000). Across the spectrum of print and electronic news formats-in hard news, features, panel discussions, sidebar stories, political and media analysis, commentaries, and editorials- for a short time, the news media gave considerable attention to the consequences of its "perilously intoxicating level of access" (Alter, 2000, p. 30) to Senator McCain. Howard Fineman of Newsweek quoted a Bush adviser who "groused" that easy access to Senator McCain influenced journalists to cover his campaign too favorably. Reporters "sold out for a box of doughnuts and a bus ride" (Fineman, 2000, p. 25), complained the source.
This incident provides a point of departure for...