The relationship between political campaigns, the news media and the public isn’t simply an exchange between independent players. It’s a complex web of influence.
This dynamic comes into play when scrutinizing the constant stream of headlines and polls about President Biden’s age.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that 63 percent of those surveyed were doubtful of Biden’s mental sharpness to serve effectively; 43 percent felt the same of Donald Trump, despite their ages being just a few years apart.
Before discussing further, we must concede that questions about a candidate’s age and competence are always fair game. It’s not ageist to acknowledge that the capacity of our bodies and minds decreases as we age. It’s realistic for voters to consider this fact in making their electoral decisions. Additionally, aging is highly personalized, and some individuals appear lively at 80 while others may age rapidly at 50.
However, we must consider other essential truths. Headlines and opinion polls are not neutral in that they reflect and measure public sentiments, and importantly, they also shape it. The persistence of any theme elevates and legitimizes it.
As Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at Pew Research Center, explains, “As there is a great deal of focus on a topic in journalism, generally, it raises awareness of the issue for the public, making it appear more significant.”
We, as citizens and media consumers, prefer to assume that we arrive at our opinions and beliefs independently, and we reject any suggestion that our views have been influenced or manipulated by outside forces. Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that proves otherwise. We are influenced by the media.
This brings us back to the news coverage of Biden’s age. If elected, Biden will indeed be the oldest-ever U.S. president. However, he already held that distinction when he was elected for the first time. So, what has changed?
I propose that the most significant shift lately was because some Republican leaders honed in systematically on Biden’s age as the decisive factor working against him. In an interview in April, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley commented that it was improbable that Biden would “make it” through another term. This year, in the Republican response to the State of the Union address, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas observed that she was half Biden’s age.
Some commentators suggest that voting for Biden is tantamount to voting for Vice President Kamala Harris to become President since Biden might not last another term. For Republicans, that notion offers the added benefit of broadcasting their aversion to a liberal, minority, and a woman.
This once again takes us back to the chain of custody for a political attack. Campaigns put an issue in the spotlight, pollsters and journalists question if it is influencing the election, stories are written about the impact, and the coverage reinforces the cause. Editorial decisions lean towards deploying the weapon rather than clarifying the context and connection. It’s often presented as if such concerns only pop up spontaneously without the influence of campaigns and news coverage.
This scenario repeats itself in politics frequently.
In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, Trump, once again, lashed out against migrants and whipped up xenophobia, portraying their caravan as an “invasion, ” more than 2000 miles from the US-Mexican border. Less than a month to the midterms, The New York Times reported that Trump and his conservative accomplices worked together on social media and in other fora to propagate conspiracy theories and alarmist messages about the migrant caravan. The Times concluded that they successfully animated Republican voters “around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a dire threat to the country’s security, stability, and identity.”
This news about the caravan dominated headlines and airtime, and at least one poll was conducted about the perceived threat in this matter. According to Politico, Trump pounced on the caravan after his team reviewed the 2016 election’s competitive congressional districts poll, where border issues resonated with voters. But when the midterms ended, the media and Trump shelved the caravan issue. Quartz reported, “Republican attention was the driving force behind media coverage of the caravan…. Attention from Trump and other Republicans helped drive the media coverage of the caravan, and cable news and newspapers repeated the calls of alarm or set out to dispel fears in equal measure.”
If voters had independently shown more interest in the caravan, media coverage would perhaps have continued. However, we observed how political parties weaponized the migrant caravan and how the media helped deploy their weapon, adding that this doesn’t imply that immigration and border security are not newsworthy matters. Rather, editorial decisions can be influenced by political campaigns and coverage can affect voters as much as it informs them.
This pattern is playing itself out again with the presidential election. The notion that voters are worried about Biden’s age and capacity has been iterated so frequently that it needs no more justification besides the repetitively reported polling results showing the same concerns.
Therefore, there is a genuine chicken and egg dilemma here.
A case in point is Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, who generally opines that the media should focus more on the health and mental fitness of elected officials. He clarified via email that it’s unclear how much the age matter will affect votes for Biden. In Silver’s words, “In the abstract, voters express high levels of concern, but they did the same in 2020; still, he won both the primaries and general elections. And his approval ratings, while not great, are what you might anticipate given high polarization and high inflation.”
Overall, breathless headlines have created an impression that anxiety about the president’s age is a widespread, sensible belief. In contrast, the reality is that it’s in part, due to political machinations and the media’s compliance.
