By Gennifer Harding-Gosnell
Eighty million Americans sat out the presidential election in 2020. Of those who did vote, 85 million of them were registered to one of the two major political parties. If non-voters were their own political party, they would be nearly equal to the numbers of Republicans and Democrats combined.
Though the reasons for not voting vary widely by the individual, when 80% of non-voter respondents to an NPR survey say they believe “the mainstream media are more interested in making money than telling the truth,” it begs the question does the media play a part in influencing people to NOT vote.
The media has certainly been found guilty of not covering enough of what the people want to know, and too much of everything else. Pew Research Center studies from the 2016 election show “about four-in-ten say there is too much coverage of candidates’ comments on the campaign trail (44%), their personal lives (43%), which candidate is leading in the polls (37%) and the candidates’ moral character (30%). There is only one topic that most Americans say has received too little coverage – candidates’ stances on issues (55% feel this is under-covered).”
Many media organizations will intentionally give the most air time to the loudest and the most extreme voices and viewpoints. News stories about these people and issues tend to generate the most clicks, views, and comments, thus generating a perceived larger audience that is touted to bring advertising and subscription revenue to the company.
Director of the Center For Policy Studies at CWRU, Joseph White, explains, “There has been a long development in which it became harder and harder for the “mainstream” media to act as ‘centrists’, treating the two sides as equally plausible. This clearly has contributed to polarization, [then] polarization to distrust and so on, in a vicious cycle.”
The idea that the media is biased and polarizing is not new. By the early 70s, research had already established “that news and public affairs programs of the television networks were, in a broad sense, consistently propagandistic and sometimes malign. They evoked images of American politics ‘which are inordinately sinister and despairing, causing the viewer to turn against the social and political institutions involved, or against himself [for] feeling unable to deal with a political system like this.’ More recent studies have reached similar conclusions: ‘negative’ news stories and ‘negative’ campaign ads create cynicism, drive people away from political participation, and often confuse them to such a degree that they refuse to vote or even read about politics and government.” 
Improvements to election coverage have been suggested, though rarely implemented, over many years. An article from a journalism industry conference in 1995 states, “The tough parts will be getting politicians to stick to substance and getting news organizations to resist the temptation to focus on the hollow symbols of slick media events. More needs to be reported about the substance of issues in campaigns. Although the strategy of politics can be fascinating, it is the candidates, not the consultants, who are being elected. Reporters too often become captivated by a campaign’s message of the day or picture of the day. Reporters need to think more deeply about what politicians are offering up and whether it means anything to anyone. If it doesn’t, they need to be willing to report that.”
The unregulated, open nature of the internet and social media has since only exacerbated these concerns. This Knight Foundation study concluded, “Social media and word of mouth via friends and family—two sources of news for many non-voters—are consistently tied to lower likelihood of voting in the future, more skeptical views about the efficacy of voting and lower community engagement overall.”
This corroborates information learned by Cleveland VOTES a local group promoting civic engagement that helped survey non-voting residents and found that “Over a third of Clevelanders get their information from social media and tv, but trust friends/family more for information about community issues.”
Not just what gets covered, but how it gets covered, can be problematic. Many organizations, especially legacy-media outlets, use what’s known as “horse-race” election coverage: it is candidate-focused, tied to who is winning and losing, relies heavily on opinion polls, and favors coverage of those already winning out of the gate, the underdog, or controversial figures. This can shift voters’ focus to non-substantive items and is in direct conflict with issues-based coverage that is exactly what non-voters are asking for.
Horse-race coverage can also negatively affect turnout among those who do vote. Research shows early media forecasts of a landslide Clinton victory over Trump in 2016 may have influenced left-leaning but less engaged voters to stay home assuming their votes weren’t needed that day.
“That’s me,” says Jeanelle, 38, from the Broadway/Fleet area. “I didn’t really take Donald Trump all that seriously as a candidate. All the media talk leading up to the election was about how Hillary Clinton was gonna win in a landslide, and the day of the election, they were all like, she’s totally leading, so I was like, okay, I don’t really need to go, she wasn’t my choice anyway. So I went to bed pretty early, and when I woke up the next morning, it was like, holy s**t, he actually won? I kinda felt bad for not going, but then I was mad, like was this really the best y’all could do? If a retreaded Clinton, a career politician, and a flaky real estate agent are the best we have for Presidential candidates, we’re screwed anyway.”
“We often do not understand the story behind the story,” says Cleveland VOTES co-Founder Erika Anthony. “We can’t focus solely on things like voter turnout. There’s a lot of things that can surround or impact what that turnout rate is. The media needs to place more value on storytelling…We [Cleveland VOTES] are trying to elevate news outlets like The Observer or new civic tools like the Cleveland Documenters to get those stories not being captured through traditional media sources.”
This piece is part of a series of stories titled “None Of The Above” created as part of the Democracy SOS Fellowship program. Other stories in the series can be viewed in print or online at theclevelandobserver.com.
