The relationship between political campaigns, the media, and the public is not necessarily an interaction between independent actors. It’s a network of influence.
This motivation is especially relevant when it comes to avalanche of title and President Biden’s age polls.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 63 percent among those surveyed think Biden does not have the mental acumen to serve effectively; 43 percent say so of Donald Trump, even though their ages are only a few years apart.
Let me say up front that a candidate’s age and ability is always fair game in politics. It is not ageist to acknowledge the scientific fact that our bodies and minds decline in capacity as we age. The fact that voters factor that into their election decisions is not age discrimination. And aging is individual: Some people appear full of life at 80 and others age at 50.
But there are also other facts that must be considered. Headlines and polls not only measure and reflect public sentiment, but also influence it. Persistence of a topic enhances and validates that topic.
As Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, told me: “As with any field of journalism, more broadly speaking, when there are many highlights on a topic, it increases how prominent that topic is to the public, and people are more likely to consider what’s in the news as important.”
I also think that we as citizens and media consumers like to think that we are entirely self-sufficient in our views and beliefs, and we are against the notion that opinions that point has been influenced or manipulated by outside forces. But a growing number of studies prove the opposite. Without a doubt, we are influenced by the media.
Which brings me to coverage of Biden’s age. It is true that if re-elected, Biden will be the oldest president we have ever had. But he was already the oldest president the first time he was elected. What has changed?
I think the biggest change is not the simple passage of time, but the decision of some Republican leaders to focus like lasers on Biden’s age like the factors weighing against him. In an interview in April, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley speak Biden is unlikely to “pass” a second term. In this year’s Republican response to the State of the Union speech, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas note that she’s half the age of Biden.
Some observers debate that voting for Biden is essentially voting for Vice President Kamala Harris for president, because Biden may not extend another term. For Republicans, that concept has the added benefit of allowing them to campaign against a trio of people they despise — a minority libertarian and a woman.
Which brings us back to the web of influence: Campaigns raise an issue, pollsters and journalists ask if the issue affects a race, questions Stories are written about that impact, and because of coverage, influence is often enhanced. It is the chain of surveillance for a political attack, but that connection and context is often not made clear. It is often presented as if these types of concerns are only present in the minds of voters and are unaffected by campaigns and news coverage.
This happens all the time in politics.
Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Trump again decided to incite xenophobia among Americans by spreading rumors of a caravan of migrants, an “invasion” he called, targeting our southern border.
Less than a month before those midterm elections, The Times report“Over the past two weeks, Mr. Trump and his conservative allies have worked largely in tandem on social media and elsewhere to issue alarming, conspiratorial warnings about the caravan of migrants. more than 2,000 miles from the border.” The Times concluded that it has largely succeeded in inciting Republican voters “around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a serious threat to our security, stability, and identity.” country.”
This caravan attracted attention and consumed airtime. And there has been at least one poll done about the threats people think caravans pose. According to the PolitburoTrump had “grasped” on the caravan issue after his team looked at voting from competing constituencies in the 2016 election and found that border issues had made headlines. resonate with voters in those regions.
But as the midterm elections ended, Trump rekindled the caravan issue and so did the media, as Quartz reported. And as the publication points out, “The attention from Trump and other Republicans has helped spur coverage of the caravan in the media, as well as cable news and newspapers. or repeat warnings or seek to allay concerns.”
If the caravans were purely an organic concern for the public, it would probably continue to have stronger coverage. Instead, in that case, we saw how a political party weaponized a topic and the media helped deploy that weapon.
This is not to say that immigration and border security do not deserve independent coverage, but rather that the media do not just cover campaigns; Editorial decisions may be influenced by those campaigns, and coverage may affect voters as much as it informs them.
This is happening again. The idea that voters worry about Biden’s age and competence has been repeated so often that it no longer needs any proof beyond a poll that reflects what respondents have consumed: newspaper reported that they were concerned about Biden’s age and qualifications.
There’s a real egg conundrum here.
And as Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight, who generally believes that the media should “focus more and not less on the health and mental well-being of elected officials,” told me via email, no It’s clear how age affects voting for Biden, anyway. As Silver put it: “In the abstract, voters raised concern at a high level but – they did the same in 2020 and he won both the primary and final round. And his approval rating, while not high, is roughly in line with what you might expect given the high polarization and high inflation.”
The breath-taking headlines have created a sense of anxiety that the president’s age is common knowledge and common sense, when in fact, at least in part, it is fueled by political manipulation and media complicity.
