Editors respond to GTN's analysis of campaign coverage, fall 2004

Posted Nov. 22, 2004

See the full analysis of campaign coverage, and a separate story examining fairness and sourcing.

 

Robert Rosenthal, managing editor, San Francisco Chronicle:

This was an election with intense interest and we planned our coverage with the belief that there was high reader interest at every level: local, state and national. Issue stories were assigned and planned well in advance and ran for the eight weeks leading into the campaign.

The plan was to use the entire paper, not just the front page and the Bay Area front. Stories on issues appeared in the business section and in even in Datebook, where we wrote about the campaign through the eyes of artists and writers.

We also planned on using our zoned sections for the voters guide on local issues and races that within the confines of the zoned geography. This increased our story and content count greatly for readers in the zoned sections.

We appreciate your doing this but feel the results of the survey do not fairly reflect much of the coverage we had in the paper. For example we ran a five-day series on health care. The first day it ran on page one. The next four articles were issue-specific, solution-oriented and addressed subjects relevant to readers. Since they ran on the Business section front, they were not included in your survey. We did a three day series on energy issues. One day ran on the front page the next two days in the Business section. Those stories were also substantial, and issue and solution related but would not show up. We also ran other issue/explainers stories on California business related initiatives on the Business section front.

You can argue with those decisions but we did that to allow for substance, graphics, photos, etc. in the Business section while also allowing us to cover other campaign issues in the A section, as well as cover the war and other important stories.

 

Stacy Owen, news director, KRON Channel 4:

There are a couple things I would like to address. The problems, I believe, come from the fact that you picked just one newscast.

1) Reporting by contest: We got a zero "grade" for Congress, Legislature and local, when we were the only station to offer every candidate running for a federal office (Senate and House) what was essentially free time.

As part of our commitment to covering issues, and avoiding sound-bite journalism, we invited candidates from the Senate race and 14 congressional races to come to our studios and record :50 responses to two questions. (In only one race did both sides respond, in three races no one responded.) So every night at 6 p.m. and every morning between 7 and 9 a.m., we ran two candidate responses to questions posed by our viewers (which we gathered via e-mail). We added this element to our 11 p.m. newscast the last couple of nights to make sure that every candidate appeared at least once. Eleven congressional races -- 13 candidates. One U.S. Senate race -- one candidate.

2) Local issues: Also a "zero," yet every day we profiled a local ballot initiative at 5 p.m.

3) Horse race: Every Friday night, we did a story on the polls that probably landed in the "horse race" column of your study, but I might argue was also "issue-oriented." Rather than just report on the horse race, we did a "week in review" to try to give some perspective to how all the different polls differed. Our goal was to avoid proclamations that one candidate was ahead of the other ... but instead to point out the overall lack of agreement or reliability of the polls.

I appreciate the work that you all are doing to hold our feet to the fire. We will always disagree with methodology, because you are unable to take a complete picture of a station's efforts. I am glad you picked our main show this time, but know that it represents only 13% of our daily offering of news and information.

 

Kevin Keeshan, news director, KGO Channel 7:

I don’t think the question is what we did differently this time. Instead, it should be: What was different about the general election vs. the primary? In the primary, the presidential nomination was already determined, so there was minimal local interest in that race. There were no legislative or congressional primaries that were significantly contested. We felt the best way to serve our broad audience of viewers in the nine-county Bay Area was to focus on the propositions, which is what we did. This was especially important since the governor had put so much stock in the passage of the budget bond measures.

In November we had one legislative race of note which was truly contested, in the 21st Assembly district. We did five stories on that race, ranging from the candidates’ positions on the major issues to campaign spending to fact checking television ads and how both political parties were weighing in.

There was no congressional race where the incumbent didn’t have an overwhelming registration advantage, which is why we chose to not profile those races. We did do a story on why the Bay Area congressional districts are drawn the way they are, and why there were no truly contested races. We felt the best way to serve our viewers in the general election was explaining the numerous statewide, regional and local ballot measures voters would be facing on the ballot. That philosophy is reflected in our coverage. In fact, we devoted one 60-minute and one 30-minute “Beyond the Headlines” program outside of our newscasts to provide additional coverage of those issues in as much depth as possible.

We also felt it was important to explain how the new electronic voting systems worked, what security concerns existed and where they would be used on Election Day. Our business reporter David Louie was our dedicated electronic voting expert throughout the campaign and on election night. I’m not sure what we would do differently next time. That all depends on the races and ballot measures involved. Each election is different and carries with it different coverage priorities.

 

Chris Lopez, managing editor, Contra Costa Newspapers:

In the home stretch of the election season we wanted our presidential coverage to be issue-driven and we wanted to maintain a high degree of local election news. Those were our two goals and the game plan we attempted to execute heading into Nov. 2.

 

David Satterfield, managing editor, San Jose Mercury News:

Quickly, I'd say there's not much that surprises us in the numbers relating to the Mercury News. The Merc always has maintained a strong commitment to election issues. We knew the presidential race would bring out a large number of voters, so it was incumbent upon us to provide a lot of information about all the other races and issues on the ballot.

We relied heavily on Knight Ridder's Washington bureau to provide coverage of national races, and they did a particularly good job of focusing on issues in the presidential race rather than just "horse-race stories.'' That then gave us the time and resources to focus on state propositions and local races. We didn't do a whole lot differently than past elections; we knew it was a high-interest election and responded accordingly.

What might we have done differently? In hindsight, I wish we had focused more attention on the gay-marriage issues in those 11 states that had them. It appears that issue may have driven more turn-out in those states, and were a contributing factor to the outcome in the presidential race.

 

Ed Chapuis, news director, KTVU Channel 2:

This year KTVU made the commitment to run special "election focus" reports every night in our 10 o'clock news for the five weeks prior to Election Day. These featured an in-depth analysis of local ballot measures, statewide propositions and candidate profiles. We felt this commitment was important in order to better inform KTVU's viewers (and voters) about critical issues they were facing on Election Day. Our job was to make sure these important issues also made for informative and interesting TV. Examples of some of the local stories we did were a county measure on funding for the fourth bore for the Caldecott Tunnel, a library tax in Santa Clara Co., a measure on genetically engineered food in Marin County and new regulations on pot clubs in Oakland. In addition, we did in-depth pieces on 13 of the statewide propositions -- ranging from stem cell research to three-strikes law reforms to Indian gaming.

What would [we] do differently next time? Try harder to get politicians to agree to debates. We pressed Senator Barbara Boxer and her challenger, Bill Jones hard on doing a debate on KTVU. In the end, Boxer said no. They did only one debate and it didn't serve the voters well. KTVU had great success in 2003 with the "Race to the Recall" debate that we created, and we want to do more of them. But it will require the participation of incumbents.

While there will always be criticism of the "horse race" aspect to coverage, I believe KTVU -- in particular our veteran political reporter Randy Shandobil -- has been successful at weaving relevant and interesting voter polls into the issue stories. Polls have a place in political coverage. They need to be used judiciously and put into perspective. KTVU benefited from an exclusive agreement with the Field Poll -- whereby KTVU aired Field Polls exclusively the day before they were released to the morning newspapers. We saw real value in that. And it allowed us to move beyond the "who's winning?" aspect to the "what issues are important?" stage of political analysis.

I believe that TV actually has an advantage over newspapers. We can deliver moving pictures and sound which convey emotion. Newspapers can't do that. As for covering local races, the greatest challenge involves making the stories relevant to all of our viewers, not just the ones who are voting on a measure. When we do a story about school bonds in Santa Clara County, it still needs to connect with viewers in Alameda. Our job is to tap into the universal appeal of an interest in the quality of education and safety in schools.

As for the presidential race, the hard part with that was covering it when the candidates didn't visit California often. But it was clearly the hottest race. That's what people were really interested in seeing. So, we focused on the supporters and the positions of Bush and Kerry. We did profile pieces on their positions on the war, terrorism, health care and the economy.

Critics may contend we spent too much time on the presidential race, but look what happened on Election Day. Record turnout. We had one of the closest races in history. People were really in tune to this -- because they felt they were participating on a referendum on the future of America.

What do you think? Discuss it in The Coffeehouse.

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