Political scandals often involve allegations of unethical, immoral or illegal conduct. While greed and lust for power are the classic elements of most scandals, other contributing factors include mendacity, obfuscation, obsession, moral bankruptcy or lapse of good judgment. Scandals can damage a politician’s reputation, reduce voter trust and even derail his or her career. Fortunately, a vigilant investigative press is usually on hand to expose wrongdoing and ensure transparency within the government.
Nevertheless, in real life, politicians involved in scandals can use a variety of tactics to restore their reputation and reframe the meaning of the scandal. In particular, they may deploy several image restoration strategies simultaneously through different communicative channels and change them depending on the way the scandal evolves.
To analyze these factors, this article focuses on news discourse in the United States during the Whitewater and e-mail scandals. It also compares scandal discussions in different media environments. This study uses newspapers, broadcast and one cable news outlet as a baseline for comparison. Using content analysis and focusing on two similar scandals limits the ability to analyze nuances in the coverage of a scandal but allows us to investigate how media environment influences current scandal discussions.
This research contributes to a growing body of scholarship that focuses on political scandal and highlights important implications for future research. Specifically, the results suggest that scandals are a poor proxy for politician misbehavior and are more likely reflecting the level of political polarization than misconduct. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that scandals hurt politicians with voters but help them with donors if the parties are aligned and if the opposing party throws baseless accusations.
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