October 15, 2004
(Updated) Local TV News' Abject Public Affairs Failure
The Mystery Of The Missing City Council Race
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
There's an article in today's Oregonian on the City Council race between Sam Adams and Nick Fish which opens with each candidate securing the vote of an undecided voter. The end of the first section frames an issue we've been meaning to raise here.
Although both candidates have been campaigning for nearly a year, they still find themselves at neighborhood forums and on doorsteps needing to explain what they're running for -- an open seat on the five-person, nonpartisan City Council. The winner will manage city bureaus with multimillion dollar budgets and set legislative policies for Portlanders.
There are two open seats on the City Council in this election -- two-fifths of the Council, and therefore only one Council vote away from controlling much of the City. And yet Portland's television newscasts have pretended for much of the year that the race for the Commissioner No. 1 position doesn't exist, and doesn't matter.
After an Adams/Fish debate at the end of September, we asked each of the candidates how much coverage they've received on the local television news. Neither one could recall any instance. So we contacted all four local television news operations, asking for the number of times they've covered the Mayoral race versus the number of times they've covered the Commissioner No. 1 race.
Only one station responded -- and that was KGW who said only that they "don't have that kind of information available."
While all the local stations have covered the Mayoral race to varying degrees, no observers seem to be able to recall any coverage of the City Council race. Three of the four stations in question didn't feel the question was important enough to respond to our inquiry. And the one that did respond claims they have no way to tell us what they've covered or how often -- a claim about which we are deeply skeptical.
We know there are local media people who read this site, so perhaps they can offer us and our readers some insight. As The Oregonian says today, Adams and Fish are running for "an open seat on the five-person, nonpartisan City Council" and whichever candidate is elected "will manage city bureaus with multimillion dollar budgets and set legislative policies for Portlanders."
Does that not seem to any of you television news people to be a matter of some significant importance?
Update
There is little correlation, of course, between what television news covers on the air and what of their on-air coverage they post online. Nonetheless -- and understanding that there's at least a bit of salt with which this should be taken -- we thought we'd run some comparisons. All of these results are via Google searches for hits which include the names of both candidates, and restricted to the websites of each news station.
For KATU, we found two hits for stories about the Adams/Fish race. Of those, one was about voter reaction in May to candidates based upon their support for same-sex marriage, and the other was simply election results. By comparison, 33 hits came back for stories on KATU's website about the Mayor's race.
For KOIN, we found no hits for stories about the Adams/Fish race. Then again, we also found only one hit for the Mayoral race, and that was an ad for the station's Mayoral debate -- so this might say more about the uselessness of KOIN's website than anything else.
For KGW, we found three hits for stories about the Adams/Fish race -- the first about the candidates' sexual orientation, the second about the primary results, and the third merely the election results themselves. By comparison, we found 24 hits from KGW's website for stories about the Mayoral race.
For KPTV, we found no hits for stories about the Adams/Fish race. By comparison, we did find 11 reported hits from KPTV's website for stories about the Mayoral race, but that includes one which appears to just be a list of active races, and Google initially only displays four of these 11 because the other hits are simply duplicate content at different URLs at the site.
Update
Just to add to the context, and with the same caveats as before, here are some comparative results from four local papers.
For The Oregonian (which publishes daily), we found 107 hits for the Adams/Fish race, and 205 hits for the Mayoral race.
For The Portland Mercury (which publishes weekly), we found 9 hits for the Adams/Fish race, and 15 hits for the Mayoral race.
For the Portland Tribune (which publishes twice weekly), we found 32 hits for the Adams/Fish race, and 66 hits for the Mayoral race.
For Willamette Week (which publishes weekly), we found 12 hits for the Adams/Fish race, and 42 hits for the Mayoral race.
Update
Without trying to make any statement one way or the other as to the relative quality of the coverage amongst and between all of these sources, we suppose we'd be remiss if we didn't also include ourselves in the mix. Using the same methods via Google, for our own website we found 67 hits for the Adams/Fish race, and 126 hits for the Mayoral race.
Comments (2)
Evan on 16 Oct 2004
Just be glad you're not involved in the Metro Council race. Metro controls so much money -- and so much about the region's shape and form -- it's ridiculous that the media (not even the newspapers) aren't paying attention.
PajamaRant on 18 Oct 2004
I would say you are right on about the local news coverage of the election.
TV stations tend to reuse yesterday's political news and rarely take in-depth analysis when they do not have interesting video bytes to build a story on. (i.e. during the elections TV goes crazy with results soundbites etc. whereas during the race, candidates and issues are largely ignored unless stations can get the 'man on the street' reaction)
The corresponding TV websites ultimately suffer according to the stations desire to cover local politics (i.e. KATU/KGW doing ok, and KPTV/KOIN sucking eggs)
Papers and blogs can continue to hammer away at issues every day because they do not necessarily need a video stand up of a candidate, they just need a couple bytes from the person to string a story together.
The result is: Television survives on controversial/questionable soundbites in front of the camera resulting in few political stories.
Newspapers/bolgs can create a story on very little (a phone call to a candidate is the easiest method) resulting in a higher rate of political coverage.
My recommendation for voter education from the press.
Read blogs and newspapers before the election - THEN turn to a TV station on election day that has a good roundup of accurate political commentators, KATU-Hibbitts, or KGW-(commentator of the moment)