'Grade the News' flunks broadcasters on election coverage

If you missed the stories on Bay Area television you needed to make informed decisions about the March 2 election, perhaps you blinked.

America's most relied-upon source of news -- local television -- is required to serve the public in exchange for free use of the airwaves. But in the weeks before the election, when public service was needed most, Stanford researchers found that three of the five most-watched stations devoted one minute or less of their principal nightly newscast to candidates' positions or the merits of ballot issues.

The 14-day analysis, covering the third week before the election and the week leading up to Election Day, was conducted by Grade the News, a Stanford media-research project that monitors the quality of Bay Area journalism. Results show that KPIX Channel 5, KGO Channel 7 and KRON Channel 4 broadcast more minutes of paid political advertisements than political news viewers could use to make voting decisions. Even when other kinds of political coverage were counted -- principally "horserace" reporting on who's ahead and candidate strategy -- ABC affiliate KGO still had more campaign ads than campaign reporting.

"Those stations failed to obey the first commandment of journalism -- empower citizens," said Grade the News Director John McManus. "It's a disservice to the community because television reaches potential voters who don't read newspapers."

Two other stations, KTVU Channel 2 and KNTV Channel 11, produced considerably more news voters could use: Three minutes and two-and-a-half minutes, respectively, per premiere evening newscast, according to the analysis.

A minimum of five minutes per night of campaign-issue coverage is recommended for television newscasts by the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a Washington, D.C., public-interest research group that advocates for media reform, and Best Practices, a project launched by Wisconsin Public Television.

"Research shows that stories about candidates' records and promises, and their strengths and weaknesses, are more useful for voters than articles focusing on polling data, candidates' strategies and the 'game' of politics," McManus said.

Sharply contrasting with television coverage, the Bay Area's three most popular newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, produced at least a third of a page per day of candidate-centered and issue coverage in stories starting on their front page and local-news front page, the researchers found. The Mercury led the pack with a half-page per day of campaign news prominently displayed. In addition, the papers made extensive use of their editorial pages and ran special sections to help voters make informed decisions.

But the analysis revealed that even newspapers gave short shrift to local races. Although voters across the nine-county Bay Area faced choices of a total of 65 ballot measures and dozens of candidates, coverage lagged far behind reporting on the Democratic presidential primary, a contest all but decided by the time Californians entered voting booths. Two state ballot measures -- Proposition 55, which aimed to raise $12 billion in bonds for school construction, and Proposition 56, which aimed to amend the state constitution so the budget could be passed with a smaller super-majority -- were rarely mentioned during the period of the study.

The Stanford research team, which included staff researcher Michael Stoll and doctoral student Seeta Peña Gangadharan, examined articles in the week before the election and the third week before March 2 to see which news organizations began preparing the public early. To level the playing field between print and broadcast, only stories beginning on newspapers' front page and local-news front page were considered. Because television has less time than newspapers have space, every story in the most-watched evening newscast was analyzed.

Grade the News is funded by the Ford Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Communication Professor Theodore L. Glasser is the principal investigator. The full study can be found at www.gradethenews.org.