Analysis: Our Studies, Commentaries and Backgrounders

The first presidential election of the 21st century may go down in history as the moment when campaigning disappeared into private space. Eighty years ago, radio allowed people to hear candidates by their firesides for the first time. Thirty years later, television added pictures, which transform ...

Coming from press critics, the following may strike some as out of character: We believe journalism should be praised for its work in the wild epilogue of election 2000. One reason the American people seemed calm but fascinated during the spectacle--even as they witnessed sometimes disgraceful ta ...

As we watch the Overtime Campaign of the 2000 election, the headache of reporting it continues. Election night, when the networks made erroneous projections about who had won, was probably the worst moment in the 50-year history of television coverage of politics. Newspapers that prematurely misc ...

Add to the press' defeat in Election 2000 the latest embarrassment: The election night call declaring George W. Bush winner did not come from the news media polling group Voter News Service. It came first from the political desk of the Fox News Channel, which was being run by Bush's first ...

In the closing weeks of the presidential race, coverage was strikingly negative, and Vice President Al Gore got the worst of it. In contrast, George W. Bush was twice as likely as Gore to get coverage that was positive in tone, more issue-oriented and more likely to be directly connected to citizens.

Quality sells, but commitment — and viewership — continue to erode.

Every four years the men who would be president squabble over the presidential debates. What format? Which journalists should ask questions? Chairs versus lecterns?

This year, however, the debate over the debates has more consequence. The four major television news networks have allowed th ...

If elections are a battle for control of message through the media, George W. Bush has had the better of it on the question of character than Albert Gore Jr., according to this study of coverage leading up to the GOP convention. But the public may not be getting—or believing—the message.

The first-ever study of online coverage of the presidential election found that many of the most popular online portals do not live up to the promise of the Internet as a gateway to new, unfiltered and diverse information about politics.