Is this you watching local public affairs coverage?
This is a big election year. There will be records broken all over the United States for voter turnout, individual campaign contributions and campaign volunteer hours. The public has gotten involved at levels never seen before. But the way it seems on television, you wouldn't know there is much more than a Presidential race and a question about the balance of power in Congress.
Unfortunately, while there are thousands of races for city council, state legislative seats, ballot measures and school board all across our country, the local TV stations have given them short shrift. When you consider that it is your school board, your city council and your state legislature that is going to impact your day to day life more than who is in the White House, it's a real shame that so little attention is devoted to local issues.
At this point in this election, at most I can offer just anecdotal support for this contention that the media is ignoring local races and issues. I have seen very little on my local news about the three statewide ballot measures beyond recent poll numbers. In fact, one issue, a $3.4 million bond package has been completely ignored for the most part. State legislative races and city council races are not even on their radar screen.
But there is statistical evidence that the broadcasters ignore local issues and candidates. In December 2007, Common Cause's Sacramento Media Group released a study of local news coverage during the election season of 2006. Among the key findings, the report found that only one TV station out of five met a minimum of 5 minutes per night of election related coverage leading up to voting day. And of that coverage, much was devoted to "horse race" and what candidates were wearing. The report also stated that most of the coverage by all of the local stations during November 2006 was on the lopsided governor's race between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Phil Angelides, while 13.8 percent focused on congressional races and 1.6 percent on state legislative races. So, of less than 5 minutes a night on average, only 1.6% of that was on local legislative races. Does that sound useful to the public?
Viewers were seven times more likely to see a paid political advertisement than a political story during Sacramento's local newscasts. Related to that, from September 2006 - Election Day in November the five local broadcasters earned about $32 million in revenues from election related advertising.
The broadcasters argue that they can't spend time on these issues because they only have so much time to air stories. Well, the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported in 2006 that, around the country, 49 percent of all stories on local newscasts concerned crime. Perhaps the local broadcasters should spend less time on crime and more time on things that might prevent crime like improving our schools, examining the quality of social services and how economic development programs are working. It's all a matter of priorities.
There will be some who say "Hey, the broadcasters are just trying to sell ads, they do what they need to do for that." That is true, but there is no proof that people do not want to hear about local issues! In fact, people I hear from are starved for it! But even that misses the key point here.
The bottom line is that the broadcasters are using OUR airwaves. They get licenses from the federal government to use the airwaves for free. In return they promise to provide for the public interest. The big problem with that- "public interest" is poorly defined. There are clear rules for children's programming. But there are no clear rules for serving the local community in any other way. In addition, if a community is not satisfied with how well the broadcaster is serving them, they only have windows of opportunity every eight years to challenge a license. And license challenges rarely succeed because the bias is clearly in favor of the broadcaster.
We need local broadcasters to do a better job serving local communities, but they aren't going to do it out of goodwill. This is why we need a few changes to their public interest obligations and how we hold them accountable.
Guidelines for public-affairs programming should be as clear as those for children's programming. There should be a minimum of three hours per week of qualifying local civic or electoral-affairs programming on a licensee's most-watched channel. A clear definition of what qualifies needs to be established so that the local weather and sports reports are not claimed as public-affairs programming. In addition to other requirements, a minimum number of locally produced public-service announcements (PSAs) should be aired by broadcasters and must be aired at times when viewers are likely to be watching.
Broadcasters can be held accountable to these new standards in a number of ways. First, licenses should once again be renewable every three years instead of every eight years so that if broadcasters are not living up to their license obligations, the public does not have to wait years to hold them accountable. The FCC should create a revised license-renewal process that increases the amount of public participation and places the burden of proof on the broadcasters to demonstrate that they have fulfilled their obligations to the public. Finally, the FCC should publish clear guidelines for the creation and powers of citizen advisory boards to assist broadcasters in understanding the needs of the community. This would help ensure that the community is served effectively, and help broadcasters fulfill their obligations.
In the meantime, I will be watching my local public access station. They are airing several public affairs shows including repeats of a candidate's forum featuring people running for city council, school board and the state legislature. Interesting. If they can do it on a shoestring budget, why can't the network affiliates do it?
