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This study is the first longitudinal study to address two separate lines of research—sound bite research and news bias research—within a single network TV news study. Presidential and vice presidential campaign stories from Campaign '92 (ninety-nine newscasts) and Campaign '96 (100 newscasts) were analyzed to test the anti-incumbent bias hypothesis. The overall conclusions of this study were that (a) the anti-incumbent bias hypothesis received only minimal support, and (b) in both campaigns, Republicans tended to be negatively bitten more often than Democrats. In this respect, the networks were not equal-opportunity biters.
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Lowry et al. (1998) studied this question.
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