Media Spin and Campaign Journalism: The Boys on the Bus

Redefining Media: Information as Product

Media is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "an intervening substance through which something is transmitted or carried on." This definition conspicuously omits the "spin factor" so central to political argument and campaign journalism. A more accurate definition might read: an intervening substance through which something is transformed to meet the current needs of the disseminator. According to Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus, information gathered by the media is more product than reality.

This is a troubling thought. If the facts upon which people base their decisions are hollow and unsubstantiated, then the burden of discovery falls on the individual. Most people do not have the time or the resources to verify the accuracy of information they read or hear. If one cannot trust the media, one must seek out primary sources — yet, as Crouse reveals when discussing the Agnew campaign, even that avenue is compromised. One reporter admitted, "I don't think that we put in nearly as much thought to covering a campaign as they put in to how we're going to cover a campaign" (Crouse 300).

Pack Journalism and the Herd Mentality

Consider the argument that information gathered by the media is more product than reality. An original story — one that a writer perceives from events and records as fact — would likely contain the same core details as any other account of the same event, depending on the writer's vantage point. But if writers are "trapped on the same bus or plane" and "compared notes with the same bunch of colleagues week after week," their story, true or embellished, would be essentially identical (Crouse 7). They synthesize facts into an acceptable format and dispense them like aspirin. As Crouse observes, "The larger the audience, the more inoffensive and inconclusive the article must be" (Crouse 20).

Reporters check their impressions just as they check facts. The pack journalism dynamic means the media is constantly culling, refining, and polishing stories in accordance with the wishes of the campaign manager. Without the campaign manager's cooperation, a reporter might not make it onto the right bus. If "a campaign reporter's career is linked to the fortunes of his candidate" (Crouse 59), what reporter will risk revealing a damaging fact? Doing so would harm both the candidate's chances and the reporter's own advancement.

Television, Sensationalism, and the Nixon Years

As media sources evolved, the herd mentality of the 1960s gave way to the television media event of the 1970s and the news personality of the 1980s. Networks found themselves compelled to create news when none existed. NBC was accused by CBS of "editorializing" by making a demonstration "look more exciting than it actually was" (Crouse 180).

Crouse contrasts this with cable reporters who produced documentaries that "reflected no particular ideology" (Crouse 180). These reporters were not on the bus. They did not receive the script and, as a result, actually recorded history. CNN had not yet taken control of the media with its on-the-spot sensationalism, and the networks at that time treated identical wire copy from AP reporters as most authoritative. The networks were "gradually trying to develop less obtrusive equipment so that their news teams would not change the nature of the events they were covering" (Crouse 184) — an effort to convey less spectacle and more truth.

This new approach might have produced more in-depth reporting, but the White House intervened. According to Crouse, a call came from Charles Colson, special counsel to President Nixon, which resulted in a story being edited. "In the wake of the cutting of the Watergate report, many of the younger people at CBS worried that the news department was abandoning its new approach" (Crouse 187). The spin factor intensified during the Nixon years as journalists were kept at bay by limited access to the President. As Crouse notes, "Every President from Washington on came to recognize the press as a natural enemy and eventually tried to manipulate it and muzzle it" (Crouse 191). The question becomes: is it the media's intention to report the facts of a story, or merely to get a story out without errors — even if that means omitting pertinent information? Has the media lost sight of its purpose in the face of calculated manipulation?

Works Cited

American Heritage Dictionary. Palm SII.

Crouse, Timothy. The Boys on the Bus. New York: Ballantine, 1974.

Kamber, Victor. Poison Politics. Retrieved from