CNN’s John Roberts on election 2008

The presidential election has been a huge boon to the cable news networks, all of which are up over last year, and no one has seen more growth than CNN. During third quarter, CNN’s primetime average among total viewers shot up 68 percent, to 1.35 million, still well behind Fox News Channel’s 2.21 million, up 59 percent, but ahead of MSNBC’s 876,000, up 62 percent. Its gains have been even bigger among adults 25-54 in primetime, where it’s up 85 percent to 473,000. Fox News is up 64 percent in the demo, to 558,000, and MSNBC has risen 55 percent, to 342,000. While Fox News Channel maintains its conservative image and MSNBC skates to the left, CNN is perceived as somewhere between. Like MSNBC, its primetime programming has been given over mostly to politics, with Campbell Brown: Election Center and Anderson Cooper 360 dealing heavily with the campaign. The mornings, too, are largely focused on presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. John Roberts, co-anchor of CNN’s American Morning and a longtime CBS News journalist before moving to cable two years ago, talks to Media Life about the differences between the 2008 and 2004 campaigns, media bias, and whether he plans to vote (yes).

 

What has been the most significant storyline of this campaign?

 

The storyline has changed so many times. It started out being the war in Iraq, and now it has shifted to the economy. And what’s happening is so dramatic, we always identified it as issue No. 1, but now it’s issue numbers one, two, three, four and five.

The real storyline is what factor the economy is having on the campaign. It’s like 1992 on steroids.

 

Also, there are the historical candidacies of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. But the biggest issue is the economy and what to do about the incredible collapse we’ve seen in the financial markets and the failure of all these banks people thought were solid institutions.

 

There have been some criticisms of the so-called mainstream media in this election by John McCain’s campaign. Do you think viewers share some of those concerns?

 

When it comes to viewers, viewers on some occasion will look at any coverage through their own political prism. And then anything that doesn’t conform to their ideas is seen as biased. That’s true on the left on the right, and it all depends on that prism.

 

I think the great center of America sees our coverage as very balanced. Every day we make sure we’re telling the story that’s completely down the middle, equal representation from both sides.

In the ebb and flow of any campaign there’s what’s called the bandwagon effect.

And the media leans with who has the momentum, and then it changes back. There are some subtle shifts back and forth, but we try to the greatest of our ability to be completely objective and fair.

 

Do you think the media has shown bias one way or another toward Obama and McCain?

 

Well, you know, there are certain media outlets, without naming names, that may have, but all I can speak to is CNN. Our intense desire is to provide people with nonpartisan, non-biased information, and that’s what we try to do to the best of our ability.

 

Obviously reporters and anchors do have personal opinions about politics and election issues. Do you think it’s possible to be completely objective? How do you ensure that you stay that way?

 

I know that it’s absolutely possible, but I can only speak for myself.

 

I used to be a member of the White House press corps, and I was very tough on Bill Clinton, and I covered Al Gore’s campaign, and I was very tough on him. President Bush later shook my hand, I think saying thanks for being so tough on the Al Gore campaign.

But within the first 100 days, the Media Research Council named me the worst White House correspondent because I was so unswervingly tough on the new administration.

 

My goal is to be an equal opportunity holder of feet to the fire, regardless of who it is.

 

Are you registered to vote, and do you intend to vote in this election?

 

I am, I’m registered in Virginia. There is no party affiliation registration in Virginia. But if there were, I would be a certified independent. I adhere to no party ideology, I’ll vote for the person who I believe is best for the country and can best address the concerns I have going forward.

 

What distinguishes this campaign from past ones in terms of media coverage?

 

One of the things we’ve done at CNN, one of the commitments we’ve made, is we’ve dedicated ourselves to being on the road with the candidates. The amount of manpower we’ve thrown at this really is quite extraordinary. We have producers out on the campaign trail all the time filing i-reports and wire stories. Every time something moves we have it covered two or three different ways.

 

Another change is the technological resources. The Election Center in New York is kind of like color TV versus black and white. We have this extraordinary technology we use to break everything down and deliver information to viewers so they can understand it.

We have room for two full panels, so we can layer our coverage, and we have the incredible magic wall that John King plays around with. So I think that makes the coverage deeper, more colorful and informative than it ever has been in the past.

You have experience in both broadcast and cable. What’s the difference between how the two approach campaign coverage?

 

I used to think the networks were the be all and end all of campaign coverage.

I can remember back to watching conventions in the ˜60s and ˜70s when programming was dedicated every night. To some degree conventions meant a bit more than they do now, but since that time the networks have diminished the amount of coverage regarding the conventions.

 

This is an extraordinarily important campaign. We have two wars going on and the economy is struggling. So we have thrown everything including the kitchen sink into our coverage. And a good example of that was during the conventions. We had a wall-to-wall period from 4 p.m. until the conventions ended.

 

We also had three hours of coverage during my program in the morning. We had the CNN Grill that was up live throughout the day, and we did a number of shows out of there, so it was really the center of gravity during the conventions.

 

Compare that to what the networks are doing. They’re still doing about an hour of coverage, but they’ve really pared back from what we’re doing. One thing we try to drive home is issue, issue, issue, issue. Candidates like to change the subject, but we like to cut though the clutter and spin to give people the best look at all the issues.