Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Local TV news short on politics
By David Bauder, Associated Press
Despite its windfall from political advertising last fall, local TV news in 11 major markets spent little time covering local politics, a new study has concluded.
More than 90 percent of newscasts examined last fall had no news about campaigns for the House of Representatives, local or state governments. They devoted eight times the amount of coverage to people injured in accidents, said the Lear Center Local News Archive.
"If you want to get on local news, it's easier to be in a freak accident than to run for local office,'' said Marty Kaplan, professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School, which worked with the University of Wisconsin on the study. Researchers looked at all the evening and late-night newscasts in 11 cities for the 29 days before the Nov. 2, 2004 election.
The study is being released today in Washington by the Lear Center, which has encouraged local television news to be more aggressive in covering politics. Their findings this time mirror similar studies done in 2000 and 2002.
Local stations took in an estimate $1.6 billion in political advertising in 2004, according to the Alliance for Better Campaigns. That more than doubles the $770 million the stations got four years earlier.
More than half of those local news broadcasts contained a story on the Bush-Kerry presidential race, compared to 8 percent that had a local political story.
One reason local political races may be avoided is the broad geographic reach of some stations. A New York City station, for example, may not want to risk spending two minutes on a Brooklyn race for fear of turning off viewers in Manhattan or New Jersey.
"That's a challenge,'' said Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association. "It isn't to say you don't do that, but it's a challenge.''
Cochran also noted that a vast majority of local races are not particularly competitive.
Kaplan agreed it was a challenge to cover these races, but that local stations have promised to do so in order to get their licenses to operate.
The time spent on the presidential race may have also taken time away from local races, he said. While national news broadcasts and cable news are also outlets for presidential news, there's usually no other TV outlet for the local stories.
Since there are many viewers who watch local newscasts and don't read a newspaper or watch national news, it's important for those stations to keep on top of the presidential race, Cochran said.
The study also appeared to give no credit to stations like those in Seattle that sponsored candidate debates because they weren't shown within the newscasts, she said.
In U.S. Senate races, the amount of time spent on commercials outnumbered that for actual campaign news by a 17-to-1 ratio, the study said.
As with many national newscasts, the study criticized the stations for spending more time on campaign strategy than issues. But it said the stations did a generally good job in informing viewers where to vote and if there were any polling problems.
The markets included in the study were New York; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Dallas; Seattle; Miami; Denver; Orlando; Tampa; Dayton, Ohio; and Des Moines, Iowa.
13:24 Posted in Seattle Tales | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Politics
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Buy Blue
Why was BuyBlue.org started?
On the morning after the 2004 election, half of the country woke up in disbelief and disgust. Shortly afterwards it turned to anger and bitterness and many were entertaining moving to another country. It didn't take long for all of us to collectively realize that we had lost our country to the other side and we wanted, no needed to do something about it. It was at that moment that the original idea for BuyBlue.org was born.
What is BuyBlue.org all about?
Mission Statement: BuyBlue.org supports businesses that share our progressive values and ideals. BuyBlue.org uses our power as consumers to vote with our wallets, supporting businesses that abide by sustainability, workers' rights, environmental standards, and corporate transparency. At the same time, BuyBlue.org focuses sharply on businesses that violate the essential values of a sustainable, fair and profitable society through their policies and the politicians they support.
Vision Statement: BuyBlue.org will become a powerful tool used by a community of millions dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of our elected and appointed leaders. We will form strong coalitions with stockholders, shareholders, corporations, small businesses and communities which share our values to gain strength through numbers. We will influence the political landscape, stimulate economic growth among participating businesses and industries and use the American dollar as an incentive for corporate transparency and responsibility.
Go to Buy Blue
15:20 Posted in Seattle Tales | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Politics
Friday, February 04, 2005
Works by Deborah McCarroll
Deb is having her exhibition this weekend at the Pike Place Market.
Take a look at her abstract series and write a comment
21:26 Posted in Seattle Tales | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Welcome to Girls' State
For Women Seeking Office, Washington Is The Hot Spot
By Karen Breslau on Newsweek
Jan. 31 issue - In 1992, Christine Gregoire, then running for attorney general of Washington, made a pilgrimage to the offices of EMILY's List, the legendary fund-raising network for women candidates. At the end of a daylong campaign course, EMILY's List founder Ellen Malcolm ushered Gregoire into a back room. "Ask me for money," Malcolm said. But Gregoire choked. "I thought, I can't do that," says Gregoire. "After I stumbled around for a bit, Ellen said, 'Let me play the candidate, and I'll show you how'." That conversation was invaluable, says Gregoire, who earlier this month was inaugurated as governor after a contested triple recount gave her a 129-vote lead over her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi. Not being squeamish about raising money - $6 million for her campaign and $2 million more for the recount - "is one way you make yourself credible," says Gregoire.
It's a lesson the women of the Evergreen State have learned well. Although Rossi is suing for a new election, Gregoire's victory makes Washington - at least for now - the first state to have a woman in the statehouse and two in the U.S. Senate, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. They are not anomalies in Washington: Gregoire, Murray and Cantwell, all Democrats, are creatures of a political culture that has produced greater electoral gains for women per capita than any state in the country - ranging from school boards and city councils all the way up. National groups are studying the state's political farm system in hopes of replicating it elsewhere. "Washington has normalized the whole idea of women leading," says Marie Wilson, of the White House Project, an organization promoting women's political involvement.
There's no easy explanation for how Washington came to be girls' state. The state's progressive frontier culture is part of it. "Women arrived here in covered wagons," Gregoire told NEWSWEEK. "Their contributions were respected from the beginning." Seattle elected the nation's first female big-city mayor, Bertha K. Landes, in 1926, and the state got its first female governor, Dixie Lee Ray, in 1976. But the big breakthrough came in 1992, when women nationwide were swept into office following outrage over the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Murray, a self-described "mom in tennis shoes," vaulted to the U.S. Senate; Cantwell, then 34, was elected to the House of Representatives, and Gregoire became attorney general. "You reach a certain threshold, and then everyone becomes a role model," says Cantwell, whose 2000 Senate run was inspired by Murray.
Women have also benefited from the lack of an old boy's network. The state's relatively weak political parties and open primaries make it easier for newcomers to break in. Washington's tech-driven, entrepreneurial economy has also generated a high number of women business owners, says Seattle political consultant Cathy Allen. "Women here are writing the checks to candidates," she says. "They are more invested in the system." Though Washington is a Blue State, Republican women have also fared just fine. Conservative Jennifer Dunn, a top fund-raiser for George W. Bush and former chair of the state GOP, represented suburban Seattle in Congress for 12 years. In 2004, Cathy McMorris, a pro-life Republican, was elected to Congress from Spokane.
All three of Washington's top women have compelling life stories. Murray, a homemaker, was so angry about education-budget cuts that she got herself elected to the state Senate. Gregoire started her career as a clerk typist, put herself through law school, then became a crusading anti-tobacco attorney general. Cantwell, the first college graduate in her family, made (and lost) her own fortune as a software executive during the 1990s. "When I ran for Senate in 1992, I had women saying to me, 'Don't you think a man should do that?' or 'Put your name on the ballot as Pat, not Patty'," says Murray, who was re-elected to a third term last year. In Washington, no one dares to offer that advice now. Women rule.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
Governor Gregoire's Legislative Agenda
00:40 Posted in Seattle Tales | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Politics