: The search for drama…
Among the structural biases of journalism, the narrative bias is the tendency of the press to understand issues in terms of “stories,” i.e. human drama. Further, this bias tends to promote the creation of master narratives, which are set stories that frame an issue.
Conflict among politicians, especially in election campaigns, is one of the definitions of news in politics. This is the source of the so-called horse-race reporting we see so often.
According to recent scholarship, the primary season is a highly stable political event. In the vast majority of elections since 1980, for both Republicans and Democrats, the frontrunner in the last poll before the Iowa caucuses won the nomination. Personal setbacks, fundraising anomalies, and shifts in momentum, had very little impact on the frontrunner.
This is a remarkably stable political situation. Yet the press covers the primary season as a volatile, or unstable, political event. The master narrative dictates that these races are up for grabs among several political actors. The data, however, do support this view.
This suggests to me that the most important period of the campaign is the summer and fall before the Iowa caucuses. During this period, a candidate must create a presidential image and a winning story. That image and story must be adopted by the press as the master narrative for that candidate.
But, like all great fiction, the resolution of the story cannot be easily attained. Hence, the press looks for drama, and often creates drama (the illusion of instability), in an otherwise stable system. The drama they seek is human: people versus people. This search for human drama dictates that policy analysis is boring, undramatic, and unworthy of serious scrutiny.
In this series:
Who wins and when…
Long, hot summer…
