Covering Election Denial: Local Journalists in the 2022 Midterm Elections

• In Event: Local News and Democracy

Abstract

In 2022 US election many races featured Republican candidates who contested the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election and preemptively called into question the sanctity of the upcoming midterm elections. Journalists are crucial intermediaries in the democratic process whose decisions about how to interpret and frame political events shape public opinion. Accordingly, how journalists cover election denial has important consequences for the political information environment and for democracy itself. In this study, we use a survey and survey experiment conducted with 253 local news reporters covering these Congressional campaigns to examine this process.

Our first research question is descriptive. How do journalists approach covering election denial candidates? If journalists act as stenographers and passively convey these candidate's statements, they spread false claims of voter fraud to their audience. If they instead adopt a “game frame” and cover elections as a political horserace, reporters trivialize threats to democracy by narrowly focusing on how election denial affects a candidate's electoral prospects. We use a survey to assess journalists’ views about the broad approaches to campaign news coverage they see as acceptable or unacceptable and, in addition to these abstract assessments, evaluate their approach to more specific scenarios that can arise when covering election denial candidates in a series of campaign coverage vignettes.

Here we find that election denial poses a dilemma for journalists. They support efforts to increase the public’s trust in elections, but also feel compelled to let election deniers explain their views in the news. This ambivalence extends to the news coverage scenarios where journalists exhibit a mix of views about the appropriate way to cover these candidates, with some viewing more adversarial coverage approaches as unacceptable.

Our second research question is causal: can these news coverage practices can be changed based on encountering information about an alternative approach to covering anti-democratic candidates? Using a pre-registered survey experiment, we consider how journalists respond to a tip sheet outlining an approach we refer to as democracy-framed campaign coverage. In the experiment's treatment condition respondents encountered a tip sheet emphasizing the importance of covering the implications of elections for the health of the democratic process, noted the negative consequences of recirculating misleading statements about voter fraud, and suggested alternative approaches to covering election denial, such as centering local election administrators as sources. Relative to those in control, exposure to the tip sheet changed how journalists approached election denial in a series of campaign coverage vignettes. It decreased the appeal of stories that addressed election denial as an electoral strategy or recirculated rhetoric casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections. The treatment also increased the perceived importance of covering candidate stances on policy measures related to election certification.

Our study shows why election denial poses a dilemma for journalists covering political campaigns. At the same time, the experiment reveals an openness to alternative approaches to covering election denial that square core journalistic values with these challenges. These findings have broader relevance in illustrating how reporters grapple with violations of democratic norms that intrude into national, state and local elections.

Authors

• Erik Peterson, Rice University

• Shannon C McGregor, University of North Carolina

• Ryan Block, Rice University