| INNOVATION SCARCE IN ELECTION COVERAGE
A study of seven stations in six markets
By Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks
Campaign events. Generic video. Candidate soundbites. Those were
the staples of local TV stations' election coverage two years ago-in
other words, business as usual. And despite the increasing importance
of the Internet in providing campaign information, new research
finds that most local stations made little or no effort in 2000
to direct viewers to their own Web sites for additional political
coverage. The study did find one positive change: for once, TV newsrooms
spent more time examining issues than covering the horserace.
The NewsLab-sponsored study analyzed 280 election-related stories
from seven stations in six markets: KHOU, Houston; WRTV, Indianapolis;
WHAS and WLKY, Louisville; KOCO, Oklahoma City; WTXF, Philadelphia;
and WFLA, Tampa. Forty-one percent of the stories focused on campaign
activities or events, such as endorsements, campaign stops and rallies,
debates and fundraising efforts. That's no surprise-these events
are a hallmark of campaign coverage year in and year out. But what
is unusual is the amount of time devoted to horserace polls and
the "who will win" question in 2000.
This analysis shows that only 12% of the stories focused on the
horserace aspect of news. Issue-driven coverage actually came in
second behind event coverage, comprising 16% of all stories on local,
state and national campaigns. The most popular issues covered by
these seven stations were the economy (21%), local issues of importance
(17%), Medicare/Medicaid (14%), social security (11%) and crime
(5%).
Still, there's no evidence that this issue coverage looked any
different from all the other campaign stories on the air. The most
popular visuals for any story, whether event-focused or issue-focused,
fell under the umbrella of generic candidate and election-related
video. These visuals appeared in 41% of all stories that included
video. Second to general election video were sound bites (26%),
followed by graphics with general election or poll information (11%).
Issue-related video only appeared in 8 of the 273 stories that included
video-a mere three percent.
A comparison of stories by both primary focus and primary video
shows that of the 45 issue-related stories only 6 contained issue-related
video as their primary visual; one used an issue-related graphic
as its primary visual. Most of the issue-related stories used generic
candidate and election event video.
The analysis also looked at whether these stations promoted election
coverage on the Internet and found that, overwhelmingly, they did
not. Only ten percent of all stories included a graphic or any mention
of a station's Web site. Most of those stories aired on KOCO in
Oklahoma City, which directed its viewers to its Web site for additional
election information 39% of the time. During the time period and
newscasts studied, two stations--WLKY in Louisville and WTXF in
Philadelphia--made no mention at all of election coverage on their
Web sites.
When the analysis is completed in a few months it will include
coverage from KVUE, Austin, Texas; WEWS, Cleveland; WESH, Orlando;
KNXV, Phoenix; KING, Seattle; and WFTS, Tampa. The additional data
could have an impact on these preliminary findings. The content
of all of the stations' Web sites will also be analyzed to find
out if they used the Web to offer more detailed information that
simply wouldn't fit into a traditional television news package,
even if they didn't promote their Web sites on-air.
For now, though, the results suggest that local TV stations did
little to provide their viewers with more context or substance in
their campaign coverage two years ago. The study serves as a challenge
to newsrooms as the next campaign gets underway.
References:
1. Amy Reynolds teaches journalism at Indiana University.
Contact her at alreynol@indiana.edu.
She conducted this study along with Gary Hicks of Southern Illinois
2. Another study of local campaign coverage found significant differences
between station groups. Read more at http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/campaignnews.PDF
3. Read a study of network coverage of campaign 2000 at http://www.appcpenn.org/press/political-freetime-release-122000.asp
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