What is the Role of Traditional Media in a Presidential Election?

February 28, 2024

A national political reporter for Politico and the chief correspondent for The Washington Post join the governors to discuss covering the election.

Traditional media has long played an important role in presidential elections by informing voters about the views and backgrounds of candidates for public office, facilitating debate and dialogue between candidates and voters, and reporting election results in a timely and accurate manner. But today, candidates can speak directly to voters through social media and no longer feel compelled to participate in presidential debates, shifting the dynamics between candidates and the press. In this episode, our hosts, former Tennessee Governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam, and their guests discuss the evolving role of traditional media in a modern presidential campaign.

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“The eyes and ears of people on the ground”

Natalie Allison, a national political reporter for Politico and former reporter for the Tennessean, has been out on the campaign trail covering Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential election. She shared several observations from the last few months, including just how seriously voters in early states take their responsibilities. “They go out on a weeknight, on a weekday, even on weekends to these political events. They could be hanging out with their kids, they could be watching TV, and they’ll show up to hear a candidate that they may know they never have any intention of voting for, but they’re curious and they take it really seriously that they have the opportunity to really be gatekeepers in these presential primaries to determine the fate of candidates if they get to continue,” she said.

She also discussed the important role that traditional media plays in vetting presidential candidates, particularly for voters who live outside of the early primary states. “It’s our job to let them [the public] know this is what this person is like, this is what they believe, this is what they say they believe, and then when we pressed them on it, this is how their answer changed,” she told the governors.

As for the type of stories that the media covers – from incremental updates about what candidates are doing each day to more substantive stories about their policy positions – she acknowledged it is a balancing act. “There’s a constant demand for content, and we also want to be the eyes and the ears of people on the ground. There are a lot of really trivial exchanges that we might cover, but sometimes in those, we’ll pick up on something that does matter. So, in a conversation one of these candidates is having with someone at a diner that maybe they don’t think the press hears, we might find out that suddenly they’re telling someone their position on abortion in New Hampshire is something different than what they told someone at the American Legion in Iowa.”

“Much less cross-current discussion”

Dan Balz, chief correspondent for the Washington Post, has covered 10 presidential campaigns in his career and talked about how the role of the media has changed from the first convention he covered – the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago – to today.

“We now just have, I would say, a quite different media political environment than we had back then, or even that we had 25 years ago, before the internet was as dominant as it was,” he told the governors.  “We know that the cable networks are kind of ideologically aligned, which means people get their information from the network that they feel most comfortable getting their information from, the one that they tend to agree with more. We have much, much less cross-current discussion. We don’t have in any way a kind of common story of where we are as Americans.”

As to how he approaches reporting, he shared a sentiment very much aligned with the themes of the podcast. “You have to approach this with an open mind and an openness and a willingness to listen, and particularly a willingness to listen to people whom you don’t understand as well or whose views may differ from your own personal views,” he told the governors. “I’ve always thought that what I want is to be able to produce journalism that people of varying views or political allegiances would see as fair. And by that, I don’t mean a kind of both sides-ism. I think we’ve all run into that question over the last half dozen years, and that’s not what really good journalism is, but it is an effort to seek the truth and to recognize that the truth is always elusive.”

The most difficult election to cover

Both Allison and Balz addressed the uniqueness of this presidential election and the related challenges facing the media.

“This is going to be the longest general election in the history of the country with two candidates that a majority of the public wishes were not the two major candidates,” Balz said, pointing to the candidates’ respective ages and ongoing legal proceedings as other unprecedented factors.

How does all of that affect his approach to covering the campaign? “We have to be as measured as we possibly can about all of these aspects that make up this election,” Balz said. “We’re constantly calibrating how we approach week by week, month by month, but it’s the most difficult election to cover of all of the elections that I’ve been involved in.”

Allison also acknowledged the difficulty of covering issues related to the age and health of the candidates. “For the most part, reporters are treating them as two candidates who could be 60, could be 50, could be anybody else,” she said. “I think it is normalized the fact that they’re pretty old at this point, despite the fact that most Americans don’t want to see them on the ballot. And so it’s a difficult question. How often should we be talking about the health conditions of candidates on the ballot?”