Race for the presidency : media and the nominating process

Long before the first state primary is held, presidential aspirants are reconnoitering the country, seeking visibility and backing and calculating their chances to become the party nominee months later-many months later. But presidential hopefuls and their backers move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. To most of the people who will eventually make their choice in the national election, the ways and means leading to the convention are remote and hard to fathom. To Professor James David Barber of Duke University one thing seemed certain: reporters and news commentators played an outstanding role in presidential nominations. He concluded that a study of the nature and extent of this role would help to clear away some of the fog surrounding the complexities and in the end help us improve the process. "Thus far we Americans have been lucky," he said, "but there must be a better way to select our candidates."

Accordingly, Professor Barber assembled a group of academic authorities seasoned in the problems of research. And in a three-year project supported by the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation and The Ford Foundation, his team, through extensive personal interviews, long and patient perusal of newspaper and magazine files, and review of hour upon hour of television tape took a close look at the interaction between, on the one hand, television and newspeople and, on the other, the campaigners hustling coast to coast and border to border on behalf of their candidates. That interaction, the team found, has become the heart of the American presidential nominations system as the other major factors-e.g., parties and state and local bosses-seem to have withdrawn into the background.