THE SOUND BITES, THE BITERS, AND THE BITTEN - AN ANALYSIS OF NETWORK TV-NEWS BIAS IN CAMPAIGN-92

This study pulls together two separate lines of research - sound bite research and news bias research - within a single Campaign '92 network TV news study. Presidential and vice presidential campaign stories th at appeared on network television were analyzed in terms of categories of biters and types of bites. Results indicated that the twenty-year trend of shrinking sound bites has stopped. Contrary to statements mad e by some members of the working press, there was no evidence of liber al news bias in the network selection of bites by the candidates thems elves. However, the analysis of bites by noncandidates did produce res ults consistent with a hypothesis of liberal news bias. The Bush-Quayl e ticket was negatively bitten almost twice as much as the Clinton-Cor e ticket and more than three times as much as the Perot-Stockdale tick et.