The modern presidential campaign makes major use of media events to build support for candidates and to obtain free (earned) coverage. During the 1960s, the advent of network nightly news broadcasts permitted campaigns to reach tens of millions of voters without having to buy expensive campaign ads. By the early 1970s, the vast majority of local television stations produced their own evening news shows as well, expanding the scope of coverage even further. By the 1980s, network news operations had expanded to encompass morning news shows such as the Today show (NBC) and Good Morning America (ABC). Local television outlets followed suit by creating their own morning news shows. During the 1990s, the proliferation of twenty-four-hour news operations provided campaigns with even more opportunities to obtain free coverage of campaign events.
In the Campaign of 1968, Republican nominee Richard Nixon’s campaign took full advantage of the growing availability of these opportunities for free media coverage. The Nixon campaign carefully staged hundreds of events to maximize national news coverage. In the decades that followed, candidates adapted to the changing media environment in planning their campaign appearances, timing events and strategically locating them such that they would be convenient for the media to cover. The proliferation of local news resources and, later, cable news networks eventually made it feasible for campaigns to stage multiple events on the same day and receive extensive coverage from the vast array of network, cable, and local news operations.
Presidential campaigns have historically used a wide variety of events to obtain earned media coverage and to mobilize their supporters. These include activities such as making stump speeches to potential supporters, holding rallies, attending public events (such as state fairs and parades), showing up on daytime and late-night television shows, participating in debates, and attending fund-raising events (although nowadays these tend to be closed to the press). In recent years, candidates have often garnered earned media coverage as a result of content they’ve posted on social media. In the Campaign of 2012, GOP hopeful Donald Trump notoriously took to Twitter to complain about debate moderators, fellow candidates, and members of the press corps; his intemperate tweets were themselves fodder for media coverage.
In the Campaign of 1992, presidential candidates borrowed a page from history and turned to several time-honored strategies for creating media events. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton embarked on a bus tour of towns across the United States in which both the visits and the bus itself became topics of media coverage. Candidates also began to make greater use of town meeting events where the candidates take questions from small groups of supporters or average citizens. Much like the traditional stump speech, candidates typically respond with carefully crafted answers. Since the Campaign of 1992, the town-hall-style event has become a fixture of the modern presidential campaign; however, these have increasingly become closed events, as campaigns carefully screen attendees and handpick the audiences.
Presidential campaigns also make heavy use of media events that allow candidates to demonstrate their concern over a particular issue or topic. During the Campaign of 2000, for instance, Republican nominee George W. Bush made education reform the top priority of his domestic agenda. As a result, candidate Bush made numerous visits to schools throughout the campaign. In the Campaign of 2004, incumbent president Bush visited the troops often in order to remind voters that the country was at war and that he best understood the security threat faced by the nation.
The traditional campaign rally still provides candidates with some of the best photo opportunities of any media event. Rallies generally involve thousands of voters, which enables candidates to be portrayed as having a large public following. During the Campaign of 2008, for instance, Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s campaign made frequent use of mass rallies. Like most candidates, Obama visited colleges and universities to attract support from young voters and local community members. Obama’s St. Louis rally attracted one hundred thousand participants, which produced some visually stunning images of the candidate surrounded by a sea of supporters (an image George W. Bush attempted to evoke in the Campaign of 2004 by visiting the troops in Iraq). Obama attended a similarly large rally at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the same location where President John F. Kennedy once proclaimed, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner!”) and where President Reagan demanded, “President Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” These visual parallels, and Obama’s popularity abroad during the campaign, may have lessened some voters’ concerns about Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience.
In the 2015 lead-in to the Campaign of 2016, Donald Trump effectively used media events to maximize free or unearned media coverage. By the end of 2015, Mr. Trump spent scarcely any money on his campaign while simultaneously receiving intense and persistent coverage throughout the media.
See also Cattle Call; Earned Media
McCubbins, Matthew D. Under the Watchful Eye: Managing Presidential Campaigns in the Television Era. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1992.
Shaw, Daron R. “The Impact of News Media Favorability and Candidate Events in Presidential Campaigns.” Political Communication 16, no. 2 (1999): 183–202.
Taibbi, Matt. Spanking the Donkey. New York: Broadway Books, 2006.