Biased, negative and obsessed with polls: Why voters are frustrated with election news

News audiences are often critical of election news coverage, accusing political reporting of being too negative, too focused on polling and too biased against a particular candidate. Mallory Perryman, Ph.D., studies public perceptions of news and walks us through three major problems that audiences have with election coverage and why – despite these complaints – election news is the way it is.

About the Presenter

mallory perryman

Mallory Perryman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture. She serves as the journalism sequence coordinator of the school. Her research focuses on public trust in news with an emphasis on perceptions of media bias. She recently published her book "Mediated Democracy: Politics, the News, and Citizenship in the 21st Century" with CQ Press.

She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Her teaching specialties include video and multimedia storytelling, data visualization, audience psychology, political reporting and emerging media. Before pursuing her doctorate, she worked as a producer for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo., and for the video news company, Newsy.

Perryman uses a combination of survey and experimental methods—including psychophysiology techniques—to look at news from the perspective of the audience. Why do people say they like their own news sources, but also report disliking the “media” in general? How can it be that people with opposing political views can judge the same news story as biased, but in different directions? Why do people so often believe that news stories will have negative effects on others? By tackling such questions, her work helps to explain why people are so often frustrated with news coverage.

She has published her work in several top communication journals, including the International Journal of Public Opinion, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and Communication Research. She regularly presents her research at the annual conferences for the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the International Communication Association.

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