Watergate and Vietnam Shift a News Paradigm: Documenting the Evolution of Magazine Coverage of Presidential Popularity

Abstract

Scholars have long asserted that events like Vietnam and Watergate brought forth a new wave of media cynicism toward government and politics. Documenting such a change and linking it to those events, however, presents a real challenge—that is, increasingly negative media coverage of politics could reflect an increasingly negative media or perhaps just an increasingly negative politics. This study utilizes more than fifty years of magazine coverage of presidential popularity to make a comparison of coverage before, during, and after Vietnam and Watergate. The results provide support for the claim that media behavior changed to become more negative after the Vietnam and Watergate experiences. In short, before Vietnam and Watergate, the media were far more likely to assist the president by emphasizing his popularity as it rose; and after Vietnam and Watergate, the media were far more likely to burden the president by emphasizing his (lack of) popularity in the face of its decline. The nature of the findings suggests that unprecedented behavior by presidents may lead to significant, long-term changes in the news paradigm.