MediaWatch: March 1995
Table of Contents:
Even In Stories Using the "L Word," Reporters Resisted Labeling the Candidate and President
Clinton's Incredible Shrinking Ideology
Why did the voters make such a dramatic turn in the 1994 elections away from the 1992 victory of Bill Clinton? Or did the voters perceive the dramatic turn was not theirs, but Clinton's? The national media presented candidate Clinton as a far cry from the liberals nominated by the Democrats in 1984 and 1988, but the presidency didn't follow that story.
To document the ideological labeling of Clinton, MediaWatch analysts used the Nexis news data retrieval system to identify only the stories with the words "Clinton" and "liberal" within 25 words of each other from January 1, 1991 through December 31, 1994 in the news magazines Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, and news stories in USA Today. Within this sample of stories using "Clinton" and "liberal," reporters were more than twice as likely to deny Clinton's liberalism as admit it.
In 1991, no story identified Clinton as liberal, while 26 stories in the sample claimed he was not liberal. In the 1992 sample, the ratio of reporters' not-liberal labels to liberal labels grew to 84-11. In the first year of Clinton's presidency, the ratio shifted to the left, 19 not-liberal to 20 liberal. By 1994, reporters only attempted to deny the liberal label four times, compared to 26 liberal labels. In total, not-liberal descriptions still more than doubled liberal labels, 133-57.
1991. Without a single liberal label, the news magazines and USA Today presented him before the primaries in 26 stories as a moderate, even a conservative.
U.S. News & World Report's Matthew Cooper thought Clinton might be too conservative in the July 22, 1991 issue: "Clinton has youth and vigor but a minimal Democratic base -- and he sounds too much like a Republican to be nominated." U.S. News writer Donald Baer, who joined the Clinton White House as chief speechwriter in 1994, added on October 14, 1991: "Once, he was a liberal who became the nation's youngest Governor; now at 45, Clinton is the innovative darling of disaffected moderates."
In Newsweek, Ginny Carroll announced on September 30: "Clinton's expected entry into the race next week gives Democrats a chance to break the liberal lock on the party." Newsweek moved on to the inside story on November 25: "Aides to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton called Cuomo `the ultimate Big Government liberal' and the perfect foil for Clinton's `New Paradigm' candidacy." Two weeks later, the same story repeated: "Aides to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton have already begun referring to Cuomo as `the last of the Great Society candidates.'" Little did the public know this "moderate" would become the President who sold his health care plan as the logical extension of the New Deal and the Great Society.
At Time, Michael Kramer found on October 14, 1991 that "Many of Clinton's ideas...are viewed by liberal Democrats as neo-Republican." Then-Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson suggested on welfare policy, "Clinton, the moderate Southerner, is yin to Cuomo's northeastern liberal yang."
The '92 Campaign. The trend of trumpeting Clinton's centrism intensified in 1992. Eleanor Clift explained in the February 10, 1992 Newsweek: "Truth is, the press is willing to cut Clinton some slack because they like him -- and what he has to say. He is a policy wonk in tune with a younger generation of Democrats eager to take the party beyond the liberal stereotype." USA Today's Adam Nagourney and Bill Nichols wrote on March 18: "This moderate Southerner benefited from the fact the Democrats seem finally to have kicked their addiction to nominating liberals doomed to failure against Republicans."
In fact, USA Today turned out the most lopsided sample in 1992: 40 denials of liberalism to one Tony Mauro story arguing that Clinton's views on legal issues could be "more liberal" than the Bush administration. Time came closest to balance with a denial-to-admission ratio of 13-4, compared to 15-4 for Newsweek and 16-2 for U.S. News. Some liberal tags came in Clinton's campaign against Paul Tsongas. While Newsweek's Jonathan Alter explained on March 16 that Clinton had moved "beyond liberal orthodoxy," he explained: "While `reinventing government' is still a part of Clinton's approach, he's now running more as Hubert Humphrey than Sam Nunn."
In a count separate from the study's overall findings, Clinton was described as liberal 57 times in attributed or quoted remarks, mostly from Republican opponents. That's less than the 133 reporter denials of Clinton's liberalism, and all but one of the attributed mentions came after June 1. By November 2, Kenneth T. Walsh of U.S. News concluded: "As [Bush] roams the battleground states attacking Bill Clinton as an untrustworthy liberal who will raise taxes and expand government, his message strikes many voters as hopelessly stale and irrelevant."
1993. White House liberalism arrived, and ideological labels nearly vanished. Newsweek's ratio of not-liberal to liberal mentions fell to 6-3, Time's to 3-2. USA Today (5-7) and U.S. News (5-8) used liberal labels more than not-liberal ones. On February 8, U.S. News columnist David Gergen described his future boss: "He has come down decisively in favor of a new age of liberal rule, picking up where Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson left off."
Moderate mentions only surfaced in stories about image makeovers. A headline in the June 14, 1993 Newsweek read: "A Hard Right Turn: As part of a calculated effort to dispel his liberal image, President Clinton withdraws the nomination of controversial civil-rights lawyer Lani Guinier."
1994. The not-liberal to liberal ratio continued to shift right: Time 1-3, Newsweek 1-8, U.S. News 2-9, USA Today 0-6. On October 10, USA Today's Bill Nichols was writing: "Not only did the Clinton health-care plan fail, but it was almost universally perceived as a bureaucracy-laden liberal expansion of government." Eight days later, Nichols explained: "Voters really believed Clinton was much more conservative than his Democratic predecessors and feel his agenda has been a liberal ruse." Nichols, like his colleagues, did not take any responsibility in the story for his part in that ruse before the 1992 election.
