Partisan Balance And Bias In Networkcoverage Of The 2000 And 2004 presidential Elections

摘要

Study findings show that aggregate network coverage of the 2004 presidential election was mostly even-handed, at least according to the objective measures used in this study. These findings are consistent with the Fico and Zeldes' (2002) study of network coverage of the 2000 presidential election. The practice of pairing imbalanced stories to better balance the overall partisan tilt of a day's segment was also consistent between the two presidential elections. This study therefore replicates coverage balance patterns at the network level. The aggregate network findings of this study are at odds with some other research. Certainly these findings do not support the pattern of Democratic bias in aggregate network coverage found in the D'Alessio and Allen's (2000) review of bias studies. Nor do these findings support the earlier research of Lowry and Shidler (1998) that attributed a liberal bias to the networks.