MIDWEST LOCAL TV NEWSCASTS DEVOTE 2.5 TIMES AS MUCH AIR TIME
TO POLITICAL ADS AS ELECTION COVERAGE, STUDY FINDS
CHICAGO, Illinois – In the month leading up to the recent
2006 mid-term elections, local television news viewers got considerably
more information about campaigns from paid political advertisements
than from actual news coverage, a new study shows. Local newscasts
in seven Midwest markets aired nearly four and a-half minutes of paid
political ads during the typical 30-minute broadcast while dedicating
an average of one minute and 43 seconds to election news coverage.
The new post-election analysis also shows that most of the actual
news coverage of elections on early and late-evening broadcasts was
devoted to campaign strategy and polling, which outpaced reporting
on policy issues by a margin of over three to one (65 percent to 17
percent). These findings come amid studies consistently showing that
voters look to local television newscasts as their primary source
of information about elections.
The analysis was released today by the Midwest News Index (MNI), a
project of the University of Wisconsin’s NewsLab. The findings
are part of an ongoing study examining the content and effect of local
television news in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.
The MNI is funded by the Joyce Foundation of Chicago, a leading philanthropy
in the area of political and government reform.
From October 7 to November 6, the UW NewsLab captured and coded the
content of early- and late-evening newscasts on 28 ABC, CBS, FOX and
NBC affiliates in seven markets in the five-state region. They include:
Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Cleveland, Columbus, Madison,
and Milwaukee. During this four-week period, the UW NewsLab system
captured 99.3% of targeted broadcasts, a notably high rate. The UW
NewsLab also obtained and analyzed corresponding advertising data
from TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG during this timeframe for the affiliates
included in these markets.
The amount of election coverage increased considerably, just over
a minute, from an initial set of findings presented by the MNI in
October. From September 7 to October 6, local television stations
devoted an average of 36 seconds to election coverage during the early-
and late-evening newscasts captured in the study. The new findings
show that 2,392 election stories aired in captured broadcasts on the
stations in the seven markets while 8,995 political ads aired during
the same timeframe.
The study also found:
- The average length of a single story devoted primarily to
elections was roughly 76 seconds. By contrast, a similar national
study conducted by the UW NewsLab during the 2002 mid-term election
found the average story ran 89 seconds.
- 41 percent of the election stories were aired in the final
week before Election Day.
- There was a political ad “echo effect:” Over one
in ten election stories mentioned, pictured, or focused on a specific
campaign ad.
- Gubernatorial coverage consumed over a quarter of the airtime
(26 percent) devoted to election stories overall.
The Midwest News Index will continue to capture and analyze local
news broadcasts in a total of nine Midwest markets through the summer
of 2007. The figures in this release are based on seven of the nine
markets, as advertising data was not available for the Springfield,
Illinois and Lansing, Michigan media markets. With the election season
concluded, future MNI reports will focus on coverage of government
and other civic news.
UW NewsLab is directed by UW-Madison political science professor Ken
Goldstein. The state-of-the-art facility has the infrastructure, technical
skill and supervisory capability to capture, clip, code, analyze and
archive any media in any market – domestic or international
– in real time. The Wisconsin NewsLab archives include data
collected in the 2002 and 2004 national elections, and are the most
comprehensive and systematic collection of campaign news coverage
on local television stations ever gathered.
The Midwest News Index findings will be continually updated on the
project Web site at www.mni.wisc.edu, which provides a comprehensive,
Web-based searchable archive available to journalists, scholars, civic
organizations and others.
“The data gathered by the UW NewsLab represent a comprehensive
look at the highest rated early evening and late evening television
news broadcasts in major Midwest markets. The MNI 2006 study builds
on studies conducted in 2002 and 2004 and provides a strong evidentiary
base for assessing the sorts of information that voters receive from
a crucial source of news over the course of the campaign,” Goldstein
said. “Scholars, reformers, policy makers, and broadcasters
may hold different opinions on the responsibilities of broadcasters
and the relative effect of different sorts of campaign communications,
but the data here are unambiguous – local television news provides
less news on politics than many other topics and the coverage is overwhelmingly
characterized by stories on strategy, horserace, and the game of politics.
Any intelligent debate needs to begin from that starting point.”
Larry Hansen, vice president of the Joyce Foundation, expressed concern
over a troubling trend in the way the general public receives information
about elections and the lack of responsibility exhibited by television
broadcasters.
“When you reflect on the recent campaign season, with its relentless
assault of outlandish, negative political ads, you can’t help
but fear what future elections may bring. This year, political campaigns
invested hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to local broadcasters
to get their message across during local evening newscasts,”
Hansen said. “All the while, local broadcasters failed in their
responsibility to provide an adequate amount of substantive election
coverage, which might have helped counterbalance the waves of negative
ads. In the end, well funded candidates and local broadcasters win
while voters, most candidates and democracy lose.”
Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a political reform
organization affiliated with the Joyce Foundation added, “Today’s
report shows that paid political ads have now become the primary source
of information leading into our elections. During such an important
election cycle, it is alarming to see that viewers were influenced
more by campaign consultants than by objective television coverage.”
Following is a chart illustrating a breakdown of the typical 30-minute
local news broadcast in the seven markets in which news coverage and
political advertising were analyzed by the UW NewsLab. Times reflect
averages based on total broadcasts captured and coded.
Typical 30 Minute Broadcast Breakdown
(NOTE: Individual reports on each of the seven markets providing
additional detail for each of the five states are attached and available
at www.mni.wisc.edu and www.joycefdn.org.
* * * * *
ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN NEWSLAB AND THE MIDWEST NEWS INDEX:
This report is released by the Wisconsin NewsLab of the Department
of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The
principal investigators are Ken Goldstein, professor of Political
Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the
Wisconsin NewsLab and Wisconsin Advertising Project and Erika Franklin
Fowler, Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and Research Director of the Wisconsin NewsLab.
The project is funded by a grant from The Joyce Foundation. In the
eight weeks leading up to the 2006 election campaign (September
7th through November 6th), project staff captured local news on
the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in 9 Midwest markets in five
states (the capital city and the largest media market in the state):
Minnesota (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee),
Illinois (Chicago and Champaign/Springfield), Michigan (Detroit
and Lansing), and Ohio (Cleveland and Columbus). This 9-market study
of local news coverage of politics is part of a longer project that
will examine the content of local news throughout the year, the
most in-depth research on individual markets ever conducted (www.mni.wisc.edu).
The news programming was captured through a sophisticated market-based
media server technology. Each day, digitally-recorded video was
sent over the Internet to the UW NewsLab servers overnight. The
NewsLab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (www.polisci.wisc.edu/uwnewslab)
is a unique state-of-the art facility that has the infrastructure,
technical skill, and supervisory capability to capture, clip, code,
analyze and archive any media in any market – domestic or
international – in real time. Video can be gathered, digitized,
sorted and archived automatically by the InfoSite system, a media
analysis product of CommIT Technology Solutions of Madison, Wisconsin
(www.commitonline.com). This system includes a variety of automatic
validation checks to ensure superior coding reliability and logical
consistency. With over a terabyte of storage, the UW NewsLab servers
manage data, encode and archive video, and serve content through
one of many custom media analysis tools, both internally, and to
the rest of the world via the Internet. The Midwest News Index director
is Tricia Olsen. The University of Wisconsin Advertising Project
(www.polisci.wisc.edu/tvadvertising) is also housed in the UW NewsLab
facility, where it tracks real time political advertising flows
across the nation.
ABOUT THE JOYCE FOUNDATION: Based in Chicago with assets of $830
million, the Joyce Foundation funds groups working to strengthen
public policies and improve the quality of life in the Great Lakes
region. Its Money and Politics program supports efforts to promote
a well-functioning representative democracy with open and accountable
government, informed citizen participation, competition of ideas
and candidates, fair and equal application of the laws, a high level
of public trust and protection of fundamental rights.
Other grant making areas for the Joyce Foundation are education,
employment, the environment, gun violence prevention and culture.
More information can be found at www.joycefdn.org.
* * * * *
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