Is Earned Media On The Way Out?

There are two types of media coverage in campaigns, earned media and paid media. Paid media is of course advertising. Earned media is the coverage a candidate doesn’t have to pay for, such as interviews, debate appearances, and the like. It’s “earned” because a candidate has to work for it. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt to be the candidate of a major party.

Paid media obviously is alive and well. Probably too alive and well for most of us.

But what’s happening with earned media? It used to be that candidates craved media attention. Forgoing an opportunity to be in front of a camera was anathema. These days, not so much.

On Real Time last week, Bill Maher noted that the target in their “Flip a District” campaign was hiding from the media, and the public. Here in Arizona, we see the same thing. Candidate after candidate is turning down debate invitations and interviews. At public forums, half or more of the candidates sometimes are absent. Journalists from major media outlets can’t get their calls returned.

What’s changed? Could we be headed to a day when candidates show their faces only on paid ads and at partisan events closed to outsiders?

I’m not sure, but here’s my take:

Earned media can be great, but there’s a risk reward element not present in paid media. That interview or debate is free, but if you perform badly it actually can hurt your candidacy. Paid media may cost a lot of dough, but it comes out exactly as you want. And it’s that trade-off associated with earned media that’s changed, on several fronts.

First, fewer people actually are seeking out the information. A favorable newspaper write-up only is as good as the number of people who bother to read that paper. An unfavorable write-up, however, will travel far and wide. Fewer folks paying attention thus tilts the risk reward ratio

Second, even though fewer people are paying serious attention to the news, there are far more outlets than there used to be, thus further diluting the positive impact of favorable coverage by any one outlet. Negative coverage gets replayed more than positive coverage, so, again, it is not diluted as much as positive coverage by this phenomenon.

Third, the news media outlets are more polarized than ever. This shifts the risk reward analysis in two ways. On the one hand, it reduces the value of favorable coverage by outlets on the same side of the political divide as the candidate, because the consumers of those outlets already support the candidate. For example, the benefit to a progressive of having Rachel Maddow mention his campaign is at best marginal in terms of votes. It could drive a benefit in terms of small dollar campaign contributions, but small dollar contributions have become virtually irrelevant today. On the other hand, coverage by outlets on the side of the political divide opposite the candidate provides greater potential in terms of voter persuasion. But the risk of negative coverage by those outlets is huge.

Fourth, and probably most significant, is the volume of paid media coverage. Here is yet another insidious aspect of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions. The more paid media coverage there is, the less important earned media becomes. The more voters you can reach with scripted advertisements enhancing your image or trashing your opponent’s, the less you need actual news coverage to assist in voter persuasion. So, when the Supreme Court unleashed a torrent of campaign spending, it shifted, perhaps dramatically, the risk / reward ratio associated with earned media coverage.

I’m no expert on this subject, but I know this: Ten years ago we didn’t hear about candidates avoiding the media and the general public. Today, we hear about it all the time. Where will we be ten years from now? My prediction: The candidate will be less important than the money and the marketing machine behind the candidate to the outcome of the election. Indeed, we may already have reached that point.