Campaign Coverage of Policy Issues

The Graber reading for this weekend covers the way the news media cover campaigns, and includes a graph likely familiar to many who closely follow political news. Readers say they want to see more coverage of candidates' policy stances.

An online survey that LA Times campaign reporter Matt Pearce conducted of his Twitter followers reflected similar sentiments.

But another question on that same survey makes it abundantly clear why reporters will often focus their reporting elsewhere.

People are almost twice as likely to say they want to see more policy reporting than they are to actually read it. The media, as we've discussed abundantly in this class, is — for better or worse— a business. And with short-staffed newsrooms and overworked reporters, it does not make sense and is not pragmatic for reporters to putting energy and effort into policy stories that readers are not going to read.
Readers can influence coverage — speaking from an inside perspective, especially when it comes to digital media, analytics are important and some reporters watch them very closely. Readership/analytics are not the only factor at play here, but if more people read policy stories, news outlets would report more on policy issues.