State of Virginia: the Focal Point ?? In providing coverage for this year’s State Senate and House election campaign, during the past couple of weeks the media has seemed to almost focus extensively on one state: Virginia. This seems a bit absurd and there seems to be no reason for this, as we know that nationally Virginia has just as much significance as any other state.
Leighly explains, in chapter 8 of Mass Media & Politics, the tendency of the media to focus on the negative developments in campaign coverage. A study conducted by Thomas Patterson during the 1976 presidential contest indicated that the nonpresidential campaign coverage tended to focus primarily on details of the strategy and logistics behind the political battle, and who was ahead or behind in the campaign, known as the game or horserace. Instead of focusing more on the actual difference of agenda's in the candidates, and provide basic substansive information aboutthe candidates, the media emphasised major blunders or miscues that occured during campaigning.

This seemed to be precisely the case with Republican George Allen of Virginia.
Yesterday, the NY Times featured a front page article featuring the latest allegations regarding Senator Allen George. The article mentioned two former acquaintances of the Senator who had come forward to reveal George’s long of history of racial tendencies and brought various examples of the racially offensive comments he had made, such as his reason for moving to Virginia “because the blacks know their place.” The Times also mentioned a few people who had denied these accusations and come to his defense, such as his campaign advisor and former spouse. Overall the article put the Senator in a negative light, “until a few weeks ago, Mr. Allen appeared to have a solid advantage in his reelection campaign …but insinuations of racial insensitivity have hovered in the background of the Allen campaign ever since last spring” (referring to the New Republic reporting of his wearing a confederate flag pin in his yearbook picture).
The article briefly went through the string of incidents that occurred since the campaign, that had given him a lot of negative media coverage, beginning with his first campaign appearance where he referred to a young democratic college student, of Indian descent with a racially offense term as a “macaca”.
AOL news Senator Faces More Allegations of Racial Slurs on the main welcome screen provided a similar story as well, although it was more comprehensive in its featuring a greater number of people who come forward to deny the validity of the allegations, such as his college roommate.

In addition, the three major news magazines: Newsweek, Time, US News & World report have given extensive coverage to the Virginia campaign, mostly describing the negative allegations and blunders of rep. Senator George Allen.
This week’s issue (October 2nd) of Time magazine, featured George Allen as well. Joe Klein’s In The Arena column titled “Iraq? Who Cares! Say, Is Your Mom Jewish?” The article focused on Webb’s anti-war views and international policy in general in the War on Terror, but highlighted Allen’s admitting of his Jewish heritage “It was a fabulous political theatre…Allen squirming, craven and hegira from white hegira from white-bread Presbyterianism to the admission that his mother was a Sephardic Jew”

“We’ll stop including him in this column as he stops giving us material,” Time said humorously in the same issue when he once again made it to a side column that usually features a couple of non formal sentences or interesting anecdotes about developments within the government.
However, even if the macaca incident could be used to explain the extensive media coverage Senator George Allen has been receiving, it wouldn’t explain why his Democratic opponent for the US senate Jim Webb has been receiving extensive coverage as well.
Newsweek’s September 18th issue devoted four and half pages discussing the Virginia candidates, focusing on Jim Webb, such as his services to country in Vietnam, and his adamant policies against the war in Iraq that he had right from the beginning seemed the prime forces. “Webb is not a normal politician. He is a warrior with the medals and wounds to prove it.” The overage of Webb seemed rather positive and the writer portrayed him also as someone, with strong moral convictions “soldiers do their duty, regardless if whether the politicians who lead them into wars are right or wrong” who seemed to be above political stereotypes and lowly tactics, but at the same time lacked the tact, and experience greatly needed in campaign speeches and debates. On the other hand the article characterized “GOP senator George Allen Jr.,” as someone who “plays the good-ole boy superpatriot…but next to a hardened combat veteran like Webb, he can seem like a tough guy wanna-be.”

However, minimal coverage has been given to any other state senators. The NY Times yesterday’s metro section briefly mentioned in a few short sentences Florida republican Katherine Harris, (the descriptions paled in comparison to the amount of content featured regarding Virginia senator George Allen) and the September 25th issue of US News & World report had a brief article mentioning the Montana candidates for Senate. Other than these few exceptions that the media has tended to focus on the national issues and has seldom gone up close, profiling the candidates like it did with Virginia , with too many other states.
Evidently the thirty year old study, Paterson produced that indicating that electoral coverage is marked by an emphasis on important conflicts and strategies that occur within the campaigning and its focusing on the negative occurrences and political slip-ups still applies today. Obviously the media has failed to live up ot the expectations of the public advocate model. By focusing on the types of issues illustrated above, and failing to provide the basic political issues of the day, the media seems to be falling in line with the profit-seeker model; it focuses on entertainment values in order to attempt to glean the largest audiece possible.