By Jacob L. Nelson
For weeks in July 2024, a mix of journalists and academics lamented the news media’s relentless coverage of President Joe Biden’s age since his disastrous debate performance on June 27.
“The New York Times et al wish Joe Biden would go gentle into that good night,” wrote Jeff Jarvis, the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University of New York.
“The scale and persistence of this editorial blitz means that the Times, and all the other media that have followed, are both causing and covering the pressure,” wrote Melanie Sill, a former vice president of Southern California Public Radio.
Now, after relentless news coverage focused on both his diminished health and on the pressure he faced from his colleagues, donors and staff, Biden has dropped out of the race.
This raises the question: Are journalists to blame?
“It really looks like Biden was driven out of the campaign by the press,” wrote Dan Kennedy, a professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.
Dan Gillmor, a former journalism professor of practice at Arizona State University, similarly commented that the news media “played a central role in hounding him off the ticket.”
This way of thinking assumes that the power of the press is significant and straightforward: If journalists report on an issue in a certain way for an extended period of time, they will ultimately shape how people feel about it.
In reality, journalists’ influence is far more limited.
The (limited) power of the press
“Media effects” research, which, as the name suggests, “refers to the many ways individuals and society may be influenced by both news and entertainment mass media,” has long discredited the idea that people passively and predictably accept media messages – what’s referred to as the “direct effects” model.
Instead, media effects tend to be much more indirect. One of these indirect effects is “agenda setting,” which is the idea that journalists can increase the amount of time people spend thinking about a topic but not how people feel about the topic.
“The mass media set the agenda of issues for a political campaign,” write Maxwell McCombs, a professor emeritus at University of Texas at Austin, and Amy Reynolds, a dean and professor at Kent State University. The media does so not by telling people what to think but by telling them what to think about.
When The New York Times decides to place a story on the newspaper’s front page, Reynolds and McCombs point out, that decision implicitly legitimizes a topic as “newsworthy.”
There are exceptions. Investigative journalism, which reveals new information to the public, can indeed shift public opinion on a topic. For example, the political scientists Frank R. Baumgartner, Suzanna L. De Boef, and Amber E. Boydstun found that when journalists changed the way they framed news stories about the death penalty in the U.S. to emphasize the possibility that errors in the criminal justice system had resulted in the executions of innocent people, public support for the death penalty declined.
Generally, however, calling public attention to a topic isn’t the same as persuading the public what to think about that topic.
For example, public sentiment toward climate change has been fairly consistent. Between 2016 and 2023, about half of Americans reported that they think global warming “will pose a serious threat to their way of life in their own lifetime.” This consistency exists despite the fact that the number of news stories about climate change nearly doubled between 2016 and 2021.
The same is true when it comes to Biden’s age.
Polls show that people have thought for years that Biden was too old to run again. That’s despite the fact that news organizations by and large did not cover Biden’s age-related issues nearly as much before the debate as they began to after, with the exception of The Wall Street Journal.
If the press truly was powerful enough to shape public opinion, you would expect to see the concerns surrounding Biden’s age intensify in tandem with the coverage surrounding Biden’s age.
Instead, the concerns predated the coverage. In hindsight, it seems like the public was paying more attention to Biden’s age than the journalists charged with covering him.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Journalistic humility
This mismatch, between what the public thinks and what journalists do, is consistent with my own research into the relationship between journalism and the public that suggests journalists’ influence over the people they hope to reach is far more limited than conventional wisdom suggests.
As someone who studies the relationship between journalists and the public, I have found that journalists tend to struggle when it comes to engaging with the public. That engagement ranges from seeking more input from the public, getting the public to support the news via subscriptions, donations or memberships in news organizations, to simply competing for public attention in an increasingly overwhelming media environment.
I believe that, taken together, these limitations suggest journalists can never fully understand or control their audiences’ behavior.
It seems less likely that the news coverage alone is what pushed Biden to end his campaign. The coverage clearly got under his skin – in the weeks after the debate, his criticism of the press provided an uncanny echo of the media bashing that the country has gotten used to hearing from Trump.
But it’s more likely that Biden’s frustration with his coverage was less about the journalists than it was about the accurate reporting they provided.
Contrary to the complaints, I believe journalists’ coverage didn’t persuade the public to change its views on Biden so much as it offered the public a close look into the mounting pressure he faced to reconsider his viability as a candidate.
Journalists find themselves in a frustrating position. Their industry has been in financial peril for decades. Most people don’t trust them. Yet there’s this seemingly contradictory sense among the public that journalists are powerful and influential “elites.”
I’ve written before that journalists – as well as the people who study them – should embrace what I call “journalistic humility,” the acceptance that how audiences think about and interact with the news will always be, to some extent, outside of journalists’ control.
Perhaps it would be helpful if those outside of journalism accepted these limits of the press as well.
Jacob L. Nelson is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Utah.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
Deirdre says
If journalists had no power to influence or inform, they wouldn’t have been banned and murdered in Gaza.
I believe the shift in thinking for young people has largely to do with getting their news online, which offers more diversity and depth with what you get at 6:00 with the weather and sports, plus a new baby animal at the zoo.
If journalists had anything to do with getting Biden to step down, all I can say is thank you thank you thank you.
JimboXYZ says
Don’t feel bad for Joe Biden. He served his purpose for the Democratic party. If anything the media was soft on him for the last 4 years including the 2020 election year, well, maybe not FOX news. He served his purpose well, mentoring Kamala Harris to be the nominee in 2024. Imagine KH becoming the 1st black female VPOTUS & POTUS in US History ? Nobody gets to that position without a fix in the background. It’s almost comical, now that Harris is the opponent, we’re starting to hear that Trump is a racist again, convicted felon & racist. The convicted felon is nothing more than the nonsense the Democrats have pulled to retain power for Biden-Harris.
Compare, there has been only one time Trump ever came close to falling on stage. The podium was wobbly and insecure. The only time Trump has been considered down on the stage, he was shot at in an assassination attempt. When all the media coverage of Biden footage falling down on stage consists of a live video feed of the event. That’s how it played out on the stage, nobody set him up for the falls. And the media propped him up for as long as the facade of his 1st & only administration. He’s one of the few that was both VPOTUS & POTUS in US History for his 50+ years. That 1st debate we saw oatmeal brained Biden in action, media had nothing to do with that. The debates have always been a thing, somehow the debates came with special rules and pushed ahead of the normal timeline. Imagine this happening in October 2024. If anything the media & even Trump accommodated Biden-Harris. That’s more generosity & fair play than what the DC Swamp on the Democrat side has ever done for Trump just in 2024 alone. How much is Trump supposed to tolerate of that, being the bigger candidate ?
The dude says
The mythology continues…
In Reality Captain Bonespurs routinely blabbers and tweets nonsensical and unintelligible words. Struggled to raise a glass to his lips. Had to be assisted down a very modest incline. Had to be toted on a golf cart while his European counterparts walked. Was stretchered out of the white house with a bad case of the sniffles…
BillC says
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trump will chicken out on a debate with Harris because he will claim the debate is rigged.
JOE D says
Well…he’s SORT of “chickened out” already…
He wants the NEXT debate to be moved from ABC to FOX News…because he doesn’t feel the media is treating him FAIRLY!
REALLY?!? If the fact that the CNN moderators didn’t address the 30 DOCUMENTED LIES by Trump, during the debate, wasn’t ALREADY a debate “FREE RIDE.”
Laurel says
BillC: He did! 🐣
Pogo says
@Jacob L. Nelson
Cute. You killed your straw man, deader than dead.
Stay tuned for an important message from Clickbait Lite by Agenda, LLC; contains 90% infotainment — use responsibly.
DaleL says
“Blame”??? The question simply was whether Joe Biden was fit to serve another four years as President. Jon Stewart, back in February on his return to the Daily Show, pointed out that Biden appeared to have declined considerably. He noted that the people around Biden denied that. He said in plain language what many people observed.
If anything, until the Juneteenth event, most of the media was soft, even protective, as to Biden. To a more critical observer it was apparent that Biden’s staff were taking measures to hide his decline. Then came Juneteenth with Biden standing in a strange rigid pose with a fixed facial expression. The first fifteen minutes of the debate confirmed what many had already been thinking.
Many grassroots Democrats and never Trump people wrote letters, sent emails, and voiced their concerns to the White House, etc. As the news media reported, top Democrats expressed concern. Donors quit donating and the polls indicated that Biden had no path to victory. Some in the media also realized that their past reporting was not accurate. They and others realized the extent to which Biden’s staff had hidden his decline.
The “Blame” actually is with Biden himself. It is a common hubris of the old to hang on long past the time in which they should retire. Thankfully, President Biden was forced to face reality before it was too late. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump has not taken a similar route.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Yeah, the author is right. It’s accurate coverage and people being able to actually see what’s going on that is tanking candidates. Narcissists need to control the narrative and when the narrative is there for everyone to see, well, people see them for what they are.
feddy says
The failed assignation is to blame for Biden getting pushed out.
Sherry says
@ feddy. . . Geez . . . a failed romantic meeting, huh? Are you trying to say assassination?
Joe D says
In “years gone by,” when you wanted to
learn the FACTS of a situation or issue you went to the 6:00 pm new cast for the (usually) BALANCED news reporting.
That all went OUT THE WINDOW around 2016 with that year’s election. News was no longer balanced and factual, now there was what is considered “spin.” SPIN is what parts of the story are EDITED to present a (mostly political) particular view of an issue. I remember a presentation, for a psychologist conference, where 2 story video clips were presented about the SAME story…but they were edited so COMPLETELY different, that you couldn’t believe they were about the same story!
The SOCIAL and INTERNET Media provided EVERYONE the opportunity to put their opinions/lies/attacks out there, with MANY people just taking those OPINIONS as facts w/o ANY further checking (hence the addition of a “fact checking” list after almost EVERY public speaking event, starting around 2017, because of all the lies)!
The “IF it BLEEDS it LEADS,” mentality has ALWAYS been there, but the concept of “Journalistic INTEGRITY,” seems to have been thrown out of the window.
Yes, Biden was getting “old”…so am I, but he still has his integrity, and his experience, and his long standing BIPARTISAN negotiation skills. He’s managed foreign policy over DECADES of GOVERNMENT SERVICE. Yes, he isn’t as SPRY as a 50 year old. But once he performed poorly in the first debate (yes he did…but I agree with BIDEN: “How do you debate a liar”…especially when they are making up “facts” and “statistics” as they go along). However, once the MEDIA SHARKS were sent loose, Biden essentially lived with a CAMERA “up his nose”….24/7, just WAITING for the next flaw to be broadcast on GLOBAL NEWS within 5 minutes. Could ANYONE survive that kind of 24 hour scrutiny without doing, or saying something ill advised…I know I couldn’t, and I doubt many out there reading this could either.
And for those that say MEDIA doesn’t influence opinions, I say: “RIDICULOUS!” You can SLANT ANY story to push a particular view depending on how you cover it…gone are the days, when you could consider the news “neutral.”
When I travel. I try to turn on the local news first to get a feel of what’s going on in the area/country/world. Many times I’ll spend about 15 minutes, before I hear/see a news story, and ask myself “Where the heck are they getting this information,” which definitely sounds politically SLANTED …INVARIABLY it’s a FOX News affiliate, and I have to change the channel. Until the last 5-6 years , FOX used to be my favorite network…not anymore!
Unfortunately too many of the Democratic elected officials decided “the old man” was a liability now (whether based on facts or not, in this day and age “APPEARANCES”…spray tans, hairpieces, shoe inserts to make you appear taller and custom made suits to ensure your weight gain is camouflaged, are ALL that matter, not the SUBSTANCE underneath)!
Laurel says
Is the media responsible? Yes it is. The media focused, exclusively, on Biden’s performance and ignored the fact that Trump is a poor debater. The simple fact that Biden is old, as is Trump who also screws up names and words, and is only three years different in age, was all the media was interested in. Out the window went Trump’s felonies, hate speech, lies and low character.
Jackson says
President Biden’s message of respect for democracy and a goal of protecting our country came through clearly, without any narcissism or hubris or self aggrandizement something Trump could not achieve in a century of attempting. I felt bad for Joe and the disappointment of the loss of his second term, but I’m very proud of a politician who can make that sacrifice and make it with class.
President Biden’s message of respect for democracy and a goal of protecting our country came through clearly, without any narcissism or hubris or self aggrandizement something Trump could not achieve in a century of attempting. I felt bad for Joe and the disappointment of the loss of his second term, but I’m very proud of a politician who can make that sacrifice and make it with class.
Jackson says
Joe Biden’s speech from the Oval was a Masterpiece of selflessness in favor of national unity. Yes, even for those who vote for the disloyal opposition. VP Harris will carry the torch forward with the same core values as Biden while the Insurrectionist puts democracy at risk. It’s time to choose.
We always must remember January 6th and the betrayal of Donald Trump and the Republican party. Vote Blue.
dave says
In these days of the media, you have to weed through the real crap to get to the facts and you alone have to either accept or reject it. . The people close to Biden, will killed it for him, by not identifying there is an obviously a problem with his health, the media saw the condition and long time ago. . With Trump its the same, the man is a vocal time bomb. Is it his health. No doubt his doctor that, like Biden protects the person. Unlike normal aging, which is characterized by forgetting names or words, like Biden, Trump repeatedly shows something very different: confusion about reality,” New York psychologist Suzanne Lachmann said Trump, 77, would “seemingly forget how the sentence began and invent something in the middle” resulting in “an incomprehensible word salad”—a behavior she argued is observed “frequently in patients who have dementia.” And depending on where you hear it and read it in the media, a person must believe it or not. Maybe the media is also using a lot of ‘word salad reporting’, :)
Tony Mac says
Oh, the irony. First Trump and the Republicans screaming about how stuttering, muttering, floundering Joe Biden should drop out of the Presidential contest and when he does — they scream and yell, “Hey, that’s not fair…we spent a lot of money running against that guy…we want our money back…”
Journalists on the other hand, were falling all over themselves to find any Democrat who wants Biden to step down. But not one of them has the guts to ask any Republican how they can support having a convicted criminal leading their party. The media is walking Trump into the Oval office.
But consider this — and remember not one single “journalist” has posed this to any Republican politician — For the first time in American history, an entire political party, representing millions of Americans, are conceding that it is okay to put a convicted criminal in the Oval Office! An entire political party and its members would rather have a criminal lead this Nation than a decent, honorable man.
And the media refuses to ask any Republican how they justify supporting Trump.
Those “Gatekeepers of Democracy” will fail to do their work and the result could be catastrophic for this Republic.
So, good-bye Joe, Hello Kamala…Republicans will try to skewer her alive, you know — race, gender, etc…They have no definitive policies to make the lives of Americans better, so they will resort to school yard bullying and that will work in this county and state but Nationwide — nah…don’t think so.
See you November 6th.
Kennan says
I think we’re asking the wrong question. The question should be.: How can News organizations at large as well as newspapers report on a presidents cognitive decline, seen in real time in front of one’s eyes, but cover Gaza With biased veil assuming nothing happened after October 7th.
I’m a registered Democrat, but I think it’s a real smear on our country when the best two combatants we have for the biggest office in the land are these two guys? Biden is certainly not a threat to our democracy like the other guy, but his cognitive decline was a real issue. I think it was really stupid for all the lock steppers in the Democratic Party that we’re doing nothing more than pushing elder abuse on a man that unfortunately was no longer ready for prime time, I do, however, respect him for having the presence of mind to step down for the betterment Of his country; However, he was dead to me before all the cognitive gaffs because of his association and support of a war criminal in Gaza. The other guy Would probably do even worse, but really at the end of the day…… This is what we got. One can only hope that Kamala Harris is a decidedly better choice for the Democrats, but I think there were at least four or five other choices that would be stronger.
Sherry says
The 78 year old “convicted criminal”. . . Is he OK? Prosecutor VS Criminal
My new tee shirts on Fine Art America. Can’t wait for the debate!