The Coverage of 2015 Elections Debate in the UK - Literature review Example

Content Analysis: The Coverage of Elections debate in the UK Introduction Public debates by political leaders are at the center of democracy today. The intent of such debates is to provide the general public with a position of each of the political leaders on various issues of public concern. The media plays an important role in informing the public of the stances taken by the leaders and it also gives the public the chance to air their views about the same. In this perspective, the modern democratic principle put focus on the population’s empowerment through information (Chambers, 2001). In some settings the use of these debates is for the purpose of evaluating the political leaders’ stances on various political issues concerning the nation. Mass media plays an important role in covering these debates and providing their audience with different perspectives of these debates. The media also gives the audience the opportunity to air their views about these debates and political affairs and receive feedback for more informed decisions. This paper gives a study of the coverage of the 2015 party leaders’ debate in the UK. It uses the Huffington post, the Daily mirror, the guardian and the telegraph newspapers’ articles to examine the bias of coverage of the debate. Background General elections provide the public with an opportunity to select new political leaders into office. The public has to listen to the politicians sell their policies and make decisions on who best suits the office after an evaluation of the policies of the different parties. A public debate is one forum where the public can get a preview of the policies and make a comparison on the different stances taken by the candidates. In some election cases, the incumbent leader can make a decision to run for the same office as before. The influence held by the incumbent can at times skew the coverage of the electioneering process to their favor or give them a negative image in the media. Rozzel (1991), reviews the coverage of gubernatorial elections of 1989 in Virginia. This study uses a number of newspapers which include the Washington post, New York Times, the wall street Journal, time, Los Angeles times and the world report among others. This study found out that the coverage was biased in favor of the wilder campaign as compared to the opponent Coleman. This trend indicates that there are a number of reasons that skew the coverage of the campaigns in favor of a candidate and disfavors others. For instance, Allan Keyes a black candidate in the Maryland senate elections believed that his status as a black candidate in the elections disfavored his bid’s coverage in the 1989 elections. Moreover, keyes was a black candidate little known to many in the state and the opponent was a white incumbent. Critics of the Keyes position believe that the coverage of the opponent was motivated by the strength that the opponent had and the demographics of the state at that time. From Keyes (1989), it is evident that coverage bias can be as a result of incumbency. Many political analysts and studies believe that the power of incumbency has the potential to not only cause leverage to a candidate but it has the same potential to burden a candidacy too. Incumbency is one of the many characteristics that can cause a polarization in the voter segments if not properly handled. Some studies have noted that the journalists’ action to provide much coverage to one candidate could have a polarizing effect on the voter. This situation is often worsened if the characteristic or position being highlighted by the media is not popular. In Himelstein (1983), race baiting is the example given to illustrate this situation. Jeffries (2002) gives the defense posted by the journalists to cover their action of note covering the candidates equally. According to this study, the journalists believe that in the determinants of more coverage are the actions of the candidates in the campaign trail. These factors include the speeches given, the background of the candidate and the level of experience (Williams 1990). Experience and background in this case can have the same meaning as incumbency. The main reason behind this conclusion is that a candidate who is incumbent will have a hands on experience one the job and a background of service in the same office. Method Four newspapers were selected for this study. These include The Huffington Post, The Daily Mirror, The Guardian and The Telegraph. The selection of these newspapers was as a result of their consideration or preference in their ideological position on how they report their news articles. The Huffington Post is seen as an Independent player, The Daily mirror is left-wing populist, and The Guardian has a center-left and social-liberal ideology. The Telegraph is conservative in ideology. This selection was strategic in giving the study a balanced perspective of the leading political ideologies in the country. The study qualitatively analyzed the use of words and pictures by the newspapers with the aim of determining any form of attack on the candidates in this election. It also looked at the headlines of the main articles that were reviewed in the newspapers and the location of the articles within the outline of the papers. The study focused on the papers use of words like “scared” and “refusal” to identify instances of attack against the candidates’ position on the debate. Scared would mean that the candidate is depicted by the journalist as weak and would fail in the debate. Refusal indicates that the journalist implies that a candidate had a motive behind their lack of participation on the debate. As such the use of these two words would paint the candidate in bad picture and cause polarization of the electorate. Results All these newspapers did give the debate buildup almost an equal cover in their articles. The Huffington post had much of its articles balanced with little use of the words identified above. Of the 10 articles reviewed in the period running from January 5th to March 22nd, only one article comes close to a potential bias. The article describes the incumbent candidate as giving an ultimatum on the debate that each of the other candidates must take or forget the whole idea of debate altogether (Vale, 2015). While the use of picture by this newspaper remains largely balanced, in this article, the authors chose to use the picture of the incumbent prime minister in the last debate in 2010. In this picture, Mr Cameron is well groomed but looks clueless of what he is speaking about. In this debate, it is reported that the opponent of the leader took the day mysteriously. In the mirror, the attack on the incumbent is more evident. The remarks made by this candidate that the green party needs to be invited to the debate too made the journalists of The Mirror to refer to the candidate as “the chicken torry leader”. These remarks are not only abusive of the personality that he is but also biased against the candidate. The journalists in this article does not pay keen attention to the position taken by the leader but instead judges the leader as trying to shy away from the public debate. The guardian takes a more balanced position in reports pertaining to the debate both in picture and in word. In most of the picture taken by the newspaper, the three candidates in 2010 public debate are standing side by side indicating that there is no special bias to anyone of them in picture. In words the newspaper tries only to give the position of other commentators but remains strictly within its role to report and give history of the process. The telegraph has no different approach from a majority of the newspapers. The overall tone of the reporting is that the incumbent leader has shown a general refusal to attend the debate. As such much of the reports that are contained in the article of the Telegraph are biased against the incumbent candidate. The articles portray the candidate as using his position to prevent a debate from taking place. Discussion and conclusion In all the articles reviewed, the incumbent candidate received a wider coverage than any other candidates in the developments of the debate process. This could be attributed to the experience, background and unique position taken by the candidate. Much of this publicity was not favorable as much of the content focused on the negativity of not attending the debate. In fact some articles had already concluded that the candidate had backed out as early as January. The use of picture by all this newspapers was biased and pointed to the fact that the candidate had shifted his position on the subject. In conclusion, political debates form a very important platform for the aspiring political leadership to be evaluated. It is however not the only platform that can be used to gauge the leader’s ability. Therefore, in reporting about these debates, the journalists should not take it as the general feeling of a candidate towards an election. In this case, the four media houses have a biased reporting of the process. Even though one candidate receives much coverage, the coverage is clouded with negativity. Bibliography Chambers, E. (2001). Bush Vs. Gore, impeachment and beyond. Princeton, Princeton university press Himelstein, J. (1983). Rhetorical continuities in the politics of race: the closed society revisited. Southern speech communication journal.Vol. 48 Jeffries, J. L. (2002) Press Coverage Of Black Statewide Candidates: The Case of L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia. Journal of Black studies Vol. 32. No. 6. Keyes, A. (1989) Myrace for the senate: can a black Conservative receive fair trial from the american media. Policy reviews. Vol. 48 Rozell, M. J. (1991)Local Vs. National Press Assesments of Virginia’s 1989 gubenatorial Campaign. Polity. Vol. 24 Vale, P. (2015). David cameron Gives Broadcasters Ultimatum- One Televised Debate With Seven Party Leaders. The Huffington post. Williams, L. F. (1990). Years of contrast: From Sutton to Dinkins. Unpublished manuscript Read More