American Mid-Term Elections

The Role the Media Has Played in the 2006 U.S. Elections

Nov 3, 2006 Kate Butler

The U.S. mid-term elections are next week and the media has been at the forefront of speculations that Republican-dominated culture in Washington is about to change.

Two years ago, almost 50% of Americans were gearing up to vote George W. Bush out of office. To do this, they were prepared to elect a Massachusetts liberal who had voted with the Republicans on going into Iraq in early 2003. John Kerry may not have captured the hearts and minds of many Democrats, but he was their one great hope to oust Bush. As we all know now, Bush won the election, albeit with a small majority and continued his increasingly unpopular war.

Leading up to the election, the mainstream media seemed to give both candidates relatively equal coverage in terms of positive or negative press. Fox News was openly pro-Bush and had their commentators attacking Kerry at every opportunity. CNN, CBS, NBC, and CNN showed both candidates as having some problems, but there did seem to be some reluctance to criticize a president in the midst of a war.

Fast-forward to 2006: the mainstream media has been at the forefront of exposing scandals of the Republican-controlled Congress, and has been increasingly critical of the Bush administration. The Washington Post has been running front-page stories for weeks on how many seats the Republicans are going to lose in the House and the Senate, as well as keeping tabs on the various scandals Republicans are embroiled in. USA Today, a more populist paper, has also been focusing on scandals, as well as on how the Republicans lost so much ground so quickly. As for the major television networks, there has been a sense that it is ok to criticize House and Senate Republicans in a way that was not acceptable in 2004 because of the simultaneous presidential election. Other than Fox news, which has continued its’ non-stop pro-Bush angle, the other networks seem more aware that a change is imminent and have been covering stories with this in mind

Of course, part of the reason for the change in mainstream media coverage could be due to the citizens of America themselves. More and more people are fed up with corruption in Washington, and there seems to be this feeling that change is necessary. When news outlets see this, there are few that are so ideologically-based that they refuse to change their coverage. Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, we have seen a different type of election media coverage, which has undoubtedly made for a more interesting race.

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