13 Ways of Looking at a White House
With apologies to Wallace Stevens
National politics is everywhere in the news media, but not everyone writes about it the same way.
For all the superficial similarities—the cast of characters, the subject matter, even the accompanying photographs—political news comes in a number of different forms.
Each one has its drawbacks. Some are better during elections, while others are better during big national policy debates in Congress. Some do a good job of talking about the effects on regular Americans, while others tend to appeal to an elite audience. Some are more fun to read, while others are more important.
The same news outlets can use more than one of these frames, and sometimes even the same reporters. But each frame has a very different approach to the news.
Here are 13 ways of looking at national politics.
1. Sports
Reporters using this frame love elections. They tend to treat politics as a zero-sum game of winners and losers and can sometimes forget to include the real-world effects. They can help drive interest in big elections and are rewarded with high TV ratings and online traffic. They rate who is most likely to win various races and call races on election night. Between presidential and midterm elections, they make do with special elections and gubernatorial campaigns. When covering Congress, they’ll portray votes as fights, writing about who “won the week” or came out ahead in a negotiation. They use lots of sports metaphors, like calling something a “Hail Mary pass,” and tend to tweet a lot during big games.
2. Entertainment
Reporters who use this frame treat politicians as a lower tier of celebrity, and celebrities as a lower tier of politician. They’ll often get the scoop on the personal lives of lawmakers and candidates, ranging from lighthearted topics such as their hobbies to more serious issues like a cancer diagnosis. They take their subjects seriously, and can sometimes uncover scandals or personal problems because of it. They also interview musicians, athletes, reality TV stars and other celebrities about their political opinions. Their favorite events are the annual White House Correspondents Dinner and any time a famous person testifies about a pet cause on Capitol Hill.
3. Pro Wrestling
Reporters who use this frame turn every story into a hard-edged debate between Democrats and Republicans that is as staged as a pro wrestling match. They try to give both sides equal weight, no matter how lopsided a particular issue may be on the merits. Typically, they do this on a cable news panel discussion featuring a partisan pundit from the left and one from the right going over the day’s talking points. The better ones step in to fact-check assertions made by their guests and use sharp questioning to draw out logical fallacies in their arguments.
4. Local News
Reporters who use this frame believe that all politics is local. When Congress votes, they write about how their state’s lawmakers voted, even when they all followed the party line. When the president signs a bill, they write about its effects on local residents and businesses. They do man-on-the-street stories, sometimes backed by state polling, about what local people think about big national issues, and they write about how local issues are being handled by the federal government. They sometimes make national news without realizing it when they quote a local politician saying something outrageous.
5. Refereeing
Reporters who use this frame spend most of their time fact-checking. They comb over interview and speech transcripts, campaign ads and official announcements for assertions that can be proved or disproved. They often have some kind of ranking system, such as “pants on fire” or “four Pinocchios,” for the truthfulness of the claims. They tend to have a pretty wide range of interests since they spend so much time researching different issues. They work overtime during presidential debates and have thick skin from being regularly attacked over their judgment calls.
6. Backgrounding
Reporter who use this frame spend their time digging into the finances, business records and past positions of political candidates. They look for conflicts of interest, flip-flops on key issues, controversial opinions and civil, criminal or marital trouble. In between elections, they use the same skills to look at how politicians may benefit from votes they are casting, how their statements on current issues conflict with their voting record and how their net worth stacks up to other politicians.
7. Palace Intrigue
Reporters who use this frame focus on the back-room machinations that lead to decisions in Congress and in the White House. They keep careful tabs on who is coming and going, forming alliances and feuding and seeing their stocks rise and fall. They excel at the big tick-tock story a few days after a major decision that pieces together how and why it happened. They also can score regular scoops on upcoming actions through mutually beneficial arrangements with their sources. They do a lot of reporting off-the-record, through emails and texts with sources they will identify as “senior administration officials.”
8. Polling
Reporters who use this frame treat every question as one that can be answered with the right polling data. During elections, they aggregate horse-race polls to make predictions on who will win the election and pore over crosstabs and exit polls to analyze how various demographic groups feel. The rest of the time they dig through results of off-year races, keep tabs on presidential and congressional approval ratings and look at polls on hot-button issues. They tend to make lots of charts.
9. Technocracy
Reporters using this frame tend to write about a broad range of policy questions with an eye on which ones would produce the best outcomes. They look at studies, talk with experts and review state-level experiments to see what worked. These reporters shine when there is a big national debate on a thorny subject like health care or tax reform and when they go into the field to talk to real people being affected by these policy debates. They sometimes lose track of the political reasons a particular idea might not be popular or might fail in practice. They make a lot of explainer videos.
10. Political Science
Reporters using this frame are also wonkish, but their curiosity is driven more on how politics works than the policy decisions it makes. They may try to predict who will win an election by using economic data, or they may look at how past politicians’ approval ratings were affected by natural disasters. In many cases, they are actually political scientists by trade who are writing for a more general audience or blogging ideas that aren’t yet ready for peer review.
11. Investment Advice
Reporters who use this frame view politics through its effects on the economy, various industries and specific businesses. If there’s legislation on health care, they’ll look at how it’s going to affect stocks for nursing home providers, hospitals and prescription drug makers. They write a lot about the Fed, monthly jobs reports and increases in the debt ceiling. Their audience includes business executives as well as investors who will make major financial decisions based on these stories, so their tone tends to be restrained and sober.
12. Industry News
There are several beats in Washington that flourish because the industries involved in them have a lot of money at stake. These businesses need information on what is going to happen and also a place to advertise directly to the decision-makers. Generally speaking, the beats are: defense, health care, energy and environment, education, transportation, agriculture and tech. Reporters on these beats write about national politics as a subset of industry news, focusing on technical provisions in legislation and regulations that could have an effect on the industry they cover.
13. Cheerleading
Reporters using this frame work for partisan outlets that aim to promote certain ideas or politicians. This can mean everything from covering topics in the news with more attention to that side’s arguments to ignoring newsy subjects that are problematic for that side to writing well-reported investigations that target the other side. (Or just writing regular news. Some partisan outlets do straight news reporting to bolster their reputation and elevate their opinion side.) Their reporting can be good or it can be bad, but their goal is to bolster their side.
