100%<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n Again, Bush had an edge over Gore on the issues. These stories were more likely than average to be mostly about George Bush (31% versus 28% overall).<\/p>\n\n
As would be expected, issue related themes were most often written around policy explanation (32%). The policy related frames of these stories lead directly to a dominate impact on citizens or stakeholders (59% versus 32% overall).<\/p>\n\n
Nevertheless, even the issue related themes did not escape the negative tendencies of the press in this election period. More than half of the issue themes carried a negative tone.<\/p>\n\n
Foreign Policy<\/span>
<\/strong>
The policy issue that received the most coverage was foreign affairs (7% of all themes), driven by the crisis in the Middle East and the bombing of the USS Cole.<\/p>\n\n Much more so than any other theme studied, foreign policy stories were written with citizens in mind. Nearly two-thirds (63%) were written in a way that showed how the topic impacted them or the nation as a whole\u2014three times the average.<\/p>\n\n
In particular, these stories examined the candidates’ relations with world leaders (29%). Both the press and the candidates seemed to treat these tragic events delicately. Nevertheless, voters may well have gained some important knowledge from the resulting stories.<\/p>\n\n
The Internet and television shied away from the issue of foreign policy. In particular, the New York Times accounted for a quarter of all foreign policy stories, compared with only 16% of all the coverage. Much more than average, foreign policy themes were found on the op-ed and editorial pages (43% versus 25% overall).<\/p>\n\n
Energy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n Stories about tapping the nation’s oil reserve and the candidates’ connections to oil were the next most common issue story, comprising 5% of all stories studied\u2014mostly in the first week of the study. They were more likely to appear in print (53% versus 45% of all stories) and less likely to appear on television (12% versus 20% overall).<\/p>\n\n
Cross accusations made by the candidates comprised a full third (34%) of all the oil stories compared to 10% overall.<\/p>\n\n
Nearly half (46%) of all the oil stories were straight news accounts and only one-in-seven were framed around internal politics.<\/p>\n\n
Health Care & Elderly and Taxes <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n For all the talk of health care & elderly and taxes as being the deciding issues of the campaign, these two themes made up only 11% of all the themes studied. Only three-in-fifty stories studied (6%) covered the issue of health care & elderly, most of which fell in the first week of the study. When the press did address the issue, it had a strong tendency to do so with a negative tone, as nearly two-thirds of these stories were negative. Add to that the fact that Al Gore and his campaign were the subject of more than 40% of these stories compared with only 11% about Bush, one can assume that the health care issue has not worked out well for Al Gore.<\/p>\n\n
The issue of taxes & economics, on the other hand, which picked up steam in the final week of our study, was mostly covered by comparing the two candidates (59%); otherwise these stories focused on Bush and Gore in equal amounts. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ironically as the debates kicked in, coverage of policy themes declined drastically, from 48% in Week One leading up to the first debate to 30% in Week Three. As the election got closer, the press favored the “race” over the issues. In all, about three-in-ten of the stories we studied related to policy themes. 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