Look, mom, no bias : a content anaylsis of newspaper photographs of the 1988 presidential campaign

It is common practice for newspapers in the United States to endorse candidates for public office. Several studies have looked for a correlation between newspaper endorsements and election results. Other studies have looked for an interaction between endorsements and photographic coverage of candidates at the local election level in newspapers and at the national election level in news magazines. This study, conducted at the University of Tennessee in 1989, investigated the question: Is there any correlation between newspaper endorsements and photographic coverage of endorsed and non-endorsed candidates at the national election level? A content analysis was performed on the news photographs of the 1988 Democratic and Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates that appeared in 14 newspapers during the three weeks preceding and including election day. The newspapers were divided into three groups: those that endorsed the Democratic candidates, those that endorsed the Republican candidates, and those that did not endorse either party's candidates. The analysis took into account the number, size, placement and type of each photograph. No pattern of bias in photographic coverage in favor of endorsed or non-endorsed candidates was found in any of the three groups of newspapers. Thus, the findings of this study suggest that newspapers in the U.S. do achieve their stated goal of providing fair and equitable coverage of candidates for public office.