Journalism

reportApr 30, 2001

The First 100 Days

Did George W. Bush really get an easier ride from the media in his first months in office?
reportMar 15, 2001

Campaign 2000

How the press covered the campaign, from New Hampshire to the home stretch.
reportJan 1, 2001

Campaign Lite

The first presidential election of the 21st century may go down in history as the moment when campaigning disappeared into private space. Eighty years ago, radio allowed people to hear candidates by their firesides for the first time. Thirty years later, television added pictures, which transform …
reportDec 27, 2000

A Lesson in Humility for Journalism

Coming from press critics, the following may strike some as out of character: We believe journalism should be praised for its work in the wild epilogue of election 2000. One reason the American people seemed calm but fascinated during the spectacle–even as they witnessed sometimes disgraceful ta …
reportNov 17, 2000

Hearing Too Much and Learning Too Little

As we watch the Overtime Campaign of the 2000 election, the headache of reporting it continues. Election night, when the networks made erroneous projections about who had won, was probably the worst moment in the 50-year history of television coverage of politics. Newspapers that prematurely misc …
reportOct 31, 2000

The Last Lap

In the closing weeks of the presidential race, coverage was strikingly negative, and Vice President Al Gore got the worst of it. In contrast, George W. Bush was twice as likely as Gore to get coverage that was positive in tone, more issue-oriented and more likely to be directly connected to citizens.
reportOct 1, 2000

Local TV News Project 2000

Quality sells, but commitment — and viewership — continue to erode.
reportJul 27, 2000

A Question of Character

If elections are a battle for control of message through the media, George W. Bush has had the better of it on the question of character than Albert Gore Jr., according to this study of coverage leading up to the GOP convention. But the public may not be getting – or believing – the message.
reportApr 10, 2000

ePolitics

The first-ever study of online coverage of the presidential election found that many of the most popular online portals do not live up to the promise of the Internet as a gateway to new, unfiltered and diverse information about politics.
reportMar 1, 2000

Local TV News Project 1999

For all the "I-Team" graphics and driving music, enterprise reporting — the serious, proactive journalism that local TV so heavily promotes — is dropping precipitously.