Four Campaigns, Eight Conventions...But Just One Spin

Questions: Leftward, Ho!

Coverage of all four conventions displayed the same pattern: Republicans who were interviewed by network reporters were usually challenged with questions that reflected Democratic talking points, while Democratic politicians were seldom challenged from the right.

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Here’s how Adams put it in 1984: "It would seem to be good journalism to confront both parties with the strongest arguments of their opposition. Even those who approve the press practice of ‘attacking the front-runner’ must concede one thing: Shielding the underdogs from the issues that help the front-runners results in underplaying, or missing, some of the most influential factors of the campaign."

In 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan was the obvious front-runner, but in the years that have followed, it’s become clear that Democrats are shielded from tough questions regardless of whether their nominee is the underdog or the front-runner, the incumbent or the challenger.

1984: Sixteen years ago, a major point of the Democratic campaign was the need for negotiations and arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, while Republicans were pushing the need for a strong defense to counter the Soviet military threat. Adams counted 15 questions asked of Republicans that were premised on the need for arms control, compared with only five that challenged the Democrats on the need for a strong defense.

At one point, Adams reported, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw complained that "There’s been practically nothing said about arms control or a nuclear freeze or the need for some kind of summit to end the madness of the nuclear arms race...." Were Republican national security policies really three times more questionable than those offered by the Democrats?

Adams also found that absolutely no CBS or NBC reporter questioned any Democrat about any of several key issues that cut in favor of the Republicans that year — among them, the economic boom, the taming of inflation, military success in Grenada. Republicans, however, were confronted 27 times with questions about the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and women’s rights, an issue then being used by the Mondale campaign to paint the GOP as extremist.

1988: As they had four years earlier, reporters frequently played Devil’s advocate with Republicans they questioned. CNN’s Frank Sesno asked a black GOP delegate to defend his ticket on civil rights: "Bush and Quayle opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act, or balked on it, and opposed Grove City — two very large, important civil rights bills. How do they overcome that stigma within the minority community?" That was just one of 128 left-leaning questions posed to Republicans during ABC’s, CBS’s, CNN’s and NBC’s prime-time coverage of their convention in New Orleans.

However, despite the fact that Republicans were attacking Dukakis as a social liberal who was soft on crime and defense, ABC, CBS and CNN rarely raised those issues. To its credit, NBC did force the Democrats to respond to the charges of their opposition that year. Chris Wallace, then with NBC, reminded then-Senator Al Gore that "You campaigned against Dukakis and your other opponents, saying they’re soft on defense. Aren’t Republicans this fall going to be able to use that same argument?"

1992: At their convention, Democrats were hit with 38 questions that reflected a Republican agenda topic. Jeff Greenfield, then with ABC, confronted Rep. Louis Stokes: "You know, Republicans are going to run against people like you as the cause of the real problems, the evil, big spending, insulated Congress. Isn’t that going to resonate a lot with voters?"

But the Republicans in Houston were hit with Democratic questions four times as frequently, 130 times. NBC’s Maria Shriver pitched universal health care to HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan: To "one of those 36 million people [without health insurance] — and that number is growing every day — to them, that is not good enough. They need health insurance now. So, are they better off voting for Bill Clinton if the Congress has this in their hands to have a Democratic President?"

And, "This convention’s clearly going to try to paint Bill Clinton as a super-liberal," ABC’s Greenfield told an Arkansas delegate, "but how can a man be elected five times the governor of your state, not exactly a Northeast Harvard-boutique state, and be effectively be painted as a liberal?"

1996: Because of severe reductions in broadcast coverage, there were fewer questions four years ago, but the five-to-one ratio was even more lopsided than in either 1988 or 1992. Because of President Clinton’s signing of a welfare reform bill, correspondents were four times as likely to challenge the Democrats from the left than the right.

At one point, NBC’s Brokaw hit Donna Shalala with liberal arguments against welfare reform: "If you were a poor single mother in a poor rural state in America, without many resources, and you wanted to go to work, you want to do the right things, but there aren’t too many jobs for people who have real skills. Wouldn’t you be slightly terrified looking into the next two years?" ABC’s Michel McQueen similarly asked former DNC official Lynn Cutler whether "the liberals in the party, as you unashamedly describe yourself, feel abandoned by the President this year."

Republicans were also hit from the left. CNN’s Judy Woodruff informed then-Rep. Susan Molinari that "Leading up to the convention, Bob Dole was running well behind President Clinton with women voters. We looked at the statistics of how many women delegates, what, 43 percent in 1992. Only 36 percent of delegates are women this year. What sort of signal does that send the country, you think?"

On the second night of the convention, NBC’s Brokaw challenged a convention speaker, a rape victim who was advocating victim’s rights. "This is a party that is dominated by men and this convention is dominated by men as well," Brokaw told Jan License. "Do you think before tonight they thought very much about what happens in America with rape?"

Conclusion: During every convention cycle, Republicans were far more likely to be confronted with their opponents’ talking points. Incorporating Adams data, Democrats were only one-fourth as likely to be faced with GOP arguments — 109 such questions, compared with a total of 393 Democratic questions asked of Republicans.