What role does media bias actually play in a woman candidate's campaign? Do sexist press portrayals bring her political aspirations to an abrupt stop or are they merely one more bump on an already bumpy road to elected office? Regina G. Lawrence and Melody Rose assess the effect of media bias on women's electoral chances by using Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful bid for the US Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 as a case study. In addition to the usual quantitative evaluations of coverage in newspapers and television broadcasts, their analysis draws upon interviews with campaign officials and observations in the political blogosphere. The authors' holistic approach to their subject, which includes investigating not only the media's perception of Clinton but the influence of non-media factors on her campaign, makes their book a valuable contribution to the literature on women in politics.
Lawrence and Rose's main argument is that any examination of Clinton's campaign must consider three interlocking variables: the male-identified norms of US presidential politics, contemporary media norms and routines, and the individual candidate in her particular political context. To this list they should have added a fourth variable: societal attitudes toward the appropriate gender roles and behaviours for women. The authors routinely incorporate this variable into their analysis of Clinton's presidential bid. Though traditional gender norms drew the masculine contours of the Oval Office, the authors draw attention to how wider societal attitudes formed a constant backdrop to Clinton's political ambitions and even speculate that these standards will not be applied uniformly to all women candidates. Still, over the course of the book, the authors succeed in demonstrating how these variables intersected at different points during Clinton's campaign to continually shape and reshape her circumstances and strategies. What they discover is that Clinton's own choices and the presence of a charismatic African-American opponent played far more prominent roles in her defeat than did the media. In fact, sexist news coverage rarely acted as more than an irritant to the candidate and sometimes even helped her to attract outraged voters and supporters.
The real strengths of Hillary Clinton's Race for the White House are in its empirical testing of current theories on women in politics and in its fuller exploration of media behaviour. In assessing the literature's predictive capabilities, Lawrence and Rose conclude that some of the double binds women politicians have traditionally faced are weakening or are not as salient for all women, while others, such as the association of the White House with traditional gender roles, remain surprisingly resilient despite advancements made by the women's movement. The authors also offer a refreshingly honest appraisal of the mainstream media's approach to covering presidential elections, which includes a preoccupation with the horse race, gaffes and preset “scripts” for each candidate. They correctly point out that male candidates must also contend with a press more interested in who will win than in the issues and that negative coverage of a woman politician should not be confused with sexist coverage. Lawrence and Rose also reveal how Clinton's own rhetorical strategies influenced her media depictions, from the style of her television advertisements to her refusal to foreground the history-making potential of her candidacy in her political communication.
Media scholars and students will be particularly interested by what Lawrence and Rose uncover during their foray into the online news environment. Unlike mainstream journalists, bloggers felt comfortable discussing Clinton in a blatantly sexist manner, suggesting that the more aggressive forms of media bias noted in traditional media outlets a couple of decades ago have now migrated to the Internet. Their preliminary findings make it clear that scholars need to go beyond just assessing how much politicians, activists, and voters use new social media for engaging in politics to evaluating the actual content of their online political discussions.
Overall, Hillary Clinton's Race for the White House represents a growing maturity in the study of media coverage of women politicians. Lawrence and Rose offer a complex analysis of the many forces at work in a female candidate's campaign for office, not just those obstacles unique to women. By placing news coverage within this larger context, the authors avoid the trap of overestimating the media's actual ability to thwart a woman's political aspirations. Instructors keen on fostering debates about media power should include this book as a text in courses related to women in politics, journalism, and American politics. It would also make an excellent resource for researchers studying these topics as well as for those interested in Hillary Clinton, political communication, and gender stereotyping in the United States.
