News Verdicts, the Debates, and Presidential Campaigns

Study Design and Rationale; Network Television News Coverage of the Debates, 1976-1988; Candidate Verdicts in Post-Debate Analysis Programmes; Journalists and the Idea of Presidential Debates; the First Bush-Dukakis Debate - Face-To-Face Contact; The Quayle-Bentsen Debate - A Verdict Effect?; The Final Presidential Debate - October 13, 1988; Debates in the Eyes of the Audience; The Audience Responds to "Attack" Ads; Debates in the Context of the Rest of the Campaign.

?No one ever lost money underestimating the American voter! False, says this major study of presidential debates, whose dominant message is more issues and less hoopla. Is that just a predictable normative response? And do the media best understand the public's real appetite? This study says "no" to these interesting and difficult questions. Time-series methodology, even if "existing analytical techniques somewhat restrict interpretation," do "locate important changes in the ways our respondents rated the candidates as debaters, judged their images, shifted their voting intentions, and determined the importance of issues." The post-debate verdict effect, they conclude, actually occurs, at least until overtaken by another day, or by deeper pre-existing attitudes. A strategy for future research is offered, including embedding some of the variables of media coverage and commentary and analysis of the role of TV producers, reporters, and other gatekeepers. This work serves best as a model of the use of a battery of surveys to attack a problem. It will not allay our sense of unease with some of the common hypotheses. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate students.?-Choice