if you think back to this year<u+2019>s presidential campaign and recall a lot of articles mentioning hillary clinton <u+2019>s email troubles and donald j. trump <u+2019>s various controversies, you wouldn<u+2019>t be wrong. if it seems there were fewer articles about jobs, the economy and taxes, that<u+2019>s because there were. the temptation to blame news organizations for this imbalance is strong, but there is at least some reason to resist it. critics have long assailed campaign coverage as focused too much on candidate personality, campaign strategy and assessments of who<u+2019>s winning, instead of on policies and ideas. but this year, the candidates share the blame. i compared the content of campaign ads with the content of news articles about two specific topics: candidate traits or characteristics, and the economy or jobs. both the candidates and news organizations spent more time discussing the candidates<u+2019> fitness for office (or lack of it) than they did the nation<u+2019>s economy. and the imbalance grew more lopsided as the election approached. using analytic tools provided by crimson hexagon , i categorized the campaign news coverage of 23 media outlets. this consisted of four broadcast networks; three cable news networks; national public radio and hugh hewitt on the radio; two online news sites; and 12 newspapers. i specifically searched for news about mrs. clinton<u+2019>s campaign and her email server or her campaign and wikileaks, and several controversies connected to mr. trump<u+2019>s campaign (including things like trump university, the khan family and the <u+201c>access hollywood<u+201d> video). i also looked for news about the candidates<u+2019> campaign appeals on the economy and jobs. this list isn<u+2019>t exhaustive, but it gives a sense of the trade-off between coverage of these controversies and the economy. the candidates<u+2019> controversies received more coverage, on average, than their views on the economy. from june until election day, 38 percent of the stories mentioned mr. trump<u+2019>s various missteps, and 35 percent mentioned mrs. clinton<u+2019>s email. only 17 percent mentioned mr. trump and jobs or the economy, and only 10 percent cited mrs. clinton<u+2019>s campaign and the economy. closer to the election, from oct. 8 on, the numbers got even more lopsided. this was an important date <u+2014> just after the release of the <u+201c>access hollywood<u+201d> video and a few weeks before f.b.i. director james b. comey<u+2019>s letter to congress . from this point, 53 percent of the campaign articles mentioning either controversies or the economy discuss mrs. clinton<u+2019>s email, while only 6 percent mention her alongside jobs or the economy. as for mr. trump, 31 percent mention his entanglements, while 10 percent mention him related to jobs and the economy. the imbalance in coverage of the candidates<u+2019> character is striking, as is the lack of coverage about the economy compared with the controversies. moving one week past the video release, between oct. 15 and election day, roughly half (56 percent) of the stories about scandals and the economy mentioned mrs. clinton<u+2019>s emails, and only a quarter (26 percent) discussed mr. trump and his imbroglios. a mere 7 percent of the stories in these last three weeks mentioned mrs. clinton and the economy (11 percent mentioned mr. trump and the economy). these choices have consequences. according to the gallup organization , americans<u+2019> reports of what they heard or read about mrs. clinton between june and september were mainly references to her handling of emails during her time as secretary of state. in contrast, mentions of mr. trump changed week by week, tracking what was happening on the campaign trail. but before anyone blames the news media, it<u+2019>s important to examine what the candidates themselves were talking about over the course of the campaign. if media reports reflect candidate discourse accurately, then it is not merely the media choosing to report on scandals. it might be at least as much the candidates<u+2019> choosing to campaign on them that results in unending coverage of traits and characteristics. to figure out if this was the case, i used data from kantar media/cmag on all the candidates<u+2019> campaign ads aired between june and election day. i coded all of the appeals in each ad and weighted the appeals by how many times the ads ran on television. mrs. clinton made more ads than mr. trump, and she vastly out-advertised him, running nearly three times as many ads as he did. all told, over half a million ads were run in 2016 during this period. the content of the ads is revealing. both candidates spent most of their television advertising time attacking the other person<u+2019>s character. in fact, the losing candidate<u+2019>s ads did little else. more than three-quarters of the appeals in mrs. clinton<u+2019>s advertisements (and nearly half of mr. trump<u+2019>s) were about traits, characteristics or dispositions. only 9 percent of mrs. clinton<u+2019>s appeals in her ads were about jobs or the economy. by contrast, 34 percent of mr. trump<u+2019>s appeals focused on the economy, jobs, taxes and trade. since the start of presidential campaign television advertising in 1952, no campaign has made 76 percent of its television ad appeals about any single topic. on average, traits typically garner about 22 percent of the appeals. the economy typically generates about 28 percent of the appeals. there<u+2019>s usually much more balance. of course, this was an unusual election year, with two very unpopular candidates, so the candidates<u+2019> flaws may have simply been too big a story for either them or the media to pass up. whatever the reason, the criterion of fitness for office dominated the clinton campaign<u+2019>s messaging and made up a good share of the trump messaging as well, and the news media covered it. lynn vavreck is a professor of political science at the university of california, los angeles, and a co-author of <u+201c> the gamble ,<u+201d> about the 2012 presidential campaign. the upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. follow us on facebook and twitter . sign up for our newsletter. a version of this article appears in print on november 25, 2016, on page a20 of the new york edition with the headline: candidates fed a focus on character over policy. order reprints | today's paper | subscribe
why this election was not about the issues
lynn vavreck