The Role of Television in American Politics

Fred Wertheimer and Randy Huwa

Abstract

In the last 30 years, television has become the primary source of news for most Americans and a dominant force in politics as well. This study attempts to assess the impact of television on the political process. The analysis is based on the premise that (a) television can be a very positive force in politics and (b) the tendencies of television to distort politics can be overcome. The study examines the role of television in three different political contexts: Presidential nominations—TV coverage of primaries tends to exaggerate the importance of early primaries and gives undue attention to winners. Correcting this distortion requires more balanced media coverage and modifications of the nominating process itself Political programming—news, the first facet of TV political programming, tends to focus on the events of a campaign rather than on the substance: the issues and candidates' personalities. The networks can take and have taken steps to devote more attention to issue coverage. Further, public affairs broadcasting, the second major facet, provides valuable information to voters but is somewhat restricted by communications regulations. Possible remedies include repeal of the "equal time" rule and the institution of a system of free "voters time" for candidates. Paid political advertising— TV spots, though much maligned, provide candidates with an unprecedented forum for the presentation of information to voters. The increasing costs of the medium, however, threaten to reduce access and increase candidate dependence on political action committee (PAC) contributions. This study explores the modification of the existing "lowest unit rate" rule to reduce the costs of TV advertising.

If a tree falls in the forest, and the media aren't there to cover it, has the tree really fallen?

—cartoon from Saturday Review

The last three decades have seen a phenomenal, society-altering explosion of television. In 1950 fewer than 10 percent of American households had TV sets. Today television has an almost total market penetration—98 percent of all U.S. households have one or more TV sets, with an average of 1.67 sets per household.

The TV set is an active participant in most American homes. On the average, an American TV set is in use seven hours per day. The average American spends nearly three hours a day watching television, and on a typical evening, nearly half the population will be watching. A February 1980 poll conducted by the Roper Organization found that 91 percent of the respondents had watched some television in the previous 24 hours. For special events, as many as 75 to 80 million people may be watching the same telecast simultaneously (Graber, 1980).

In one generation, television has become the primary source of entertainment for the average American and the primary source of news as well. According to the Roper poll, television has been the chief news source for most Americans in every year since 1959. On a daily basis, the evening news programs on the three networks reached an average audience of 56 million individuals, up to 5 million in the last year alone. And polls since 1961 consistently have shown that television is the news medium that most people feel is most believable.

Not surprisingly, the use of television by politicians closely parallels the explosive development of the TV industry. In the 1980 presidential campaign, for example, television consumed more than half of the total campaign budgets of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan (Bonafede, 1981). Television appears to have become the single most important strategic resource for virtually all U.S. Senate races, major statewide candidacies, and many congressional campaigns (White, 1978). TV time and production costs, which have skyrocketed in the past decade, can consume one-third to one-half of campaign expenditures in elections at all levels of government (Graber, 1980).

The importance of television in politics has reached the point at which Theodore H. White can say, "Television is the political process—it's the playing field of politics. Today the action is in the studios, not in the back rooms" (Bonafede, 1980b). In significant ways, the media provide candidates with direct access to voters and have replaced the parties as the conveyors of political information (Swerdlow, 1981). Veteran Republican campaign manager John Sears has called the news media—the press, radio, and television—the "bosses of our political system." And Phillips (1975:v) has bemoaned the emergence of a "mediacracy."

Curiously, television became a dominant force in American politics during the past three decades with relatively little public attention. We watched the daily network and local TV news programs, we saw the paid political commercials, we listened to the TV debates when they occurred. But we did so almost unconscious as a society of the profound impact that television was having on the political process, on our ability to govern and be governed.

The challenge for the American political system in the 1980s is to come to grips with television. Too often, politicians yearn for the "good old days" when political news came from the party block captain—not from Walter Cronkite— and when the candidate selection process was not open to television's probing eye. Yet there is no room for nostalgia. The TV genie is out of the bottle. Television is here—and here to stay—as an incredibly powerful communications medium. And new technological advances—increased deployment of cable systems, satellite networks, and the...