The 2008 Media Primary

The press plays a crucial role early in the preprimary presidential campaign, determining which candidates appear viable to voters, contributors, and other media. This process necessarily benefits some candidates over others. We analyze how the press winnowed the candidate fields of both parties in the early 2008 preprimary campaign. We find coverage remarkably similar across a wide range of traditional and new media, including newspaper, radio, television, cable, legacy and web-native Internet news, and talk shows. The media ignored most candidates to concentrate on the Democratic contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama while paying less attention to the Republican race. Tone towards candidates was uniform except on partisan talk shows. The tone of Internet news was slightly more balanced than traditional outlets. Similar coverage across media results from journalistic preference for dramatic story lines, staffing constraints, and widespread speculation about candidate viability, which we describe as “handicapping the candidates.”