ABSTRACT
There is nothing new about that concept. Campaigners have long recognized that voters placed more credibility in news coverage of the campaign than they did in the campaigns’ self-created propaganda. Campaign efforts to take advantage of that trend have also been part of the process for centuries; supporters of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson printed ads disguised as news (Seib, 1994). But the complexity of modern news organizations has made the task considerably more complex. Multiple factors go into a decision by a news organization when they must consider how much coverage should be devoted to a candidate or an issue. Some argue that the best coverage goes to those who are most adept at playing the “media game” (Ansolabehere, Behr, & Iyengar, 1993). Inevitably, some are covered while others-including some that might be of equal importance-are not; those who understand and adapt their message to the press are more likely to get press coverage and the credibility that is associated with it. As Sigal (1986, p. 15) noted, “News is not what happens, but what someone says has happened or will happen.”
