5 ways politicians benefit from really hostile media interviews
5 ways politicians benefit from really hostile media interviews
Politicians like being interviewed in the media, but those interviews can be partisan and combative.
Fox News accuses Democrats of deception. CNN calls Republicans liars. Yet politicians subject themselves to such apparent abuse when giving “cross-partisan” interviews. Are politicians reaching across the aisle and winning over new voters? Are politicians bolstering their entrenched base?
New research from Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia helps explain why this phenomenon is becoming more common and popular.
David Clementson, associate professor of public relations, and Wenqing Zhao, Ph.D. student, tested the effects of combative cross-partisan interviews. In the experiments, an interviewer from one partisan side accused the guest from the other ideological side of being deceptive.
The findings reveal five surprising reasons politicians should actually like it when they are accused of deceit by antagonistic media.
- Politicians gain trust from their “ingroup” voters when they are interviewed by “outgroup” media and are accused of deception. The first experiment showed that when a Democratic media outlet interviews a Republican, or a Republican media outlet interviews a Democrat, the politician’s supporters trust the politician more when the interviewer accuses the politician of deceptively dodging a question. It is not as advantageous to be interviewed by friendly “ingroup” media.
- Voters think the media are too hostile, so, appearing on “cross-partisan” media can exploit voters’ distrust of the media and bolster a politician’s trustworthiness. The experiments showed that voters perceive media hostility even if an interviewer acts biased and belligerent toward a politician. Viewers who consider the media to be hostile will favor the politician whether or not the media accuse the politician of deception. The effect even happens for Democrats watching a Republican politician and Republicans watching a Democrat.
- Republicans benefit from tough CNN interviews among voters who distrust the media. The second experiment tested a televised interview of a Republican being accused of deception on CNN. Republican voters express more distrust of the media than Democratic voters. When a Republican politician appears on CNN and the interviewer calls out the politician for duplicity, a base of supporters who already think the media cannot be trusted respond favorably to the politician.
- Democrats especially benefit from tough Fox News interviews. The third experiment featured a liberal Democrat interviewed on Fox News. The more the interviewer was considered hostile, the more the liberal’s trustworthiness increased—among viewers from both parties.
- Partisan viewers think the media are more hostile on the basis of partisanship, not necessarily because of what an interviewer actually says. Fox News is considered more hostile among Democrats than Republicans, regardless of whether the interviewer is civil or uncivil, and vice versa for CNN among Republican and Democratic viewers. So, the media already have skepticism stacked against them based on party labels, which advantages politicians among their support base.
Commenting on the findings, Clementson said, “It must feel awfully uncomfortable for a politician to submit to an interview with opponents in the media and then to be called a liar. But we see why media relations operatives, campaign strategists and their clients should actually embrace this overt partisan hostility. The more the media are considered biased—and our media landscape sure is cluttered with partisan media outlets—the more politicians are trusted. Politics will probably only grow more awkwardly aggressive, as though a cycle of hostile media will perpetuate more support among a politician’s base.”
The paper appears in a recent issue of Journal of Applied Communication Research. This is the latest in a series of prominent studies from Grady College researchers Clementson and Zhao testing the effects of deception in political scandals and media interviews.
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Editor: Lauren A. Pike, lauren.pike@uga.edu