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EMIL
FRANZI |
Last election gave some lessons in political realityNovember 14 2007 |
Many conservatives and Republicans
believe there’s reporting bias in the media. So do
many progressives and Democrats. They’re all right.
Political reporting in Tucson generally follows whatever the dailies consider relevant. The Arizona Daily Star dominates through an earlier feed to the Associated Press bureau housed there. TV stations do little independent reporting as politics isn’t a high priority. Radio stations simply read what’s on the wire. KUAT presents local politics via Arizona Illustrated’s weekly “Reporter’s Roundtable.” Moderator Bill Buckmaster is a down-the-middle guy, but the panel assembled for the final Proposition 200 debate had to pretend. The panelists included Mark Kimble (Tucson Citizen), Ann Brown (Star) and Jim Nintzel (Tucson Weekly), who interviewed Prop. 200 originator John Kromko and Larry Hecker from the opposition. All three panelists already had participated in the editorial decision by their respective papers to oppose Prop. 200. The real title of the KUAT program should’ve been “Editorial Board Round-up.” While I appreciate Nintzel’s inherent fairness in actually annoying Hecker with a couple of real questions, the bare minimum called for full disclosure. The worst part of this is the belief that those with an opinion can somehow transcend it and hop back and forth from pundit to reporter. You can be both, but not at the same time. The Star also runs its version of Nintzel’s “Skinny” column. While Nintzel acts as pundit only, two guys at the Star write commentary on the same page they issue news reports — on the same subject matter. That eliminates even the pretense of objectivity. The worst example is the Star’s blackout policy of printing no letters or stories concerning an election for the last three days of the campaign. They don’t want anyone making charges that can’t be responded to, that is unless you put them in a paid ad or the paper restates the charges in an editorial. Other quick lessons from the latest campaign: You can force a decision via initiative, but don’t expect to win it unless you back it up, particularly when you know the establishment will cloud up and rain on it. Kromko tried with minimal resources and never raised any money. We also discovered how many enviros have been co-opted by that establishment. Campaign costs have risen considerably higher. You could once reach most local voters with a TV campaign based around news adjacencies. No longer — local news has massive audience loss. Daily newspaper penetration keeps sliding. Radio audiences are scattered. Internet is yet to be well understood. Telephone contact was reduced by cell phones and machines. And it requires a lot of direct mail to move voters. Money from the city’s matching funds program are way too inadequate to run a campaign against the dominant party or an incumbent, who also are aided by campaign finance laws restricting amplification of arguments for and against candidates while allowing a wide-open field for ballot measures and independent committees. Turn-out was miserable, even with the City twice mailing vote-at-home applications to every voter. At 27 percent, all that did was move voters from election day to early voting. The two GOP council candidates (full disclosure: I worked for one) never had the resources to let anybody know who they were. Nobody knew the Dems either. A generally party line vote dominated. Greens did well, with slightly more than 25 percent voting for both of their candidates in two-way races. We’ll find out how much of this is protest voting when somebody actually reads their platform. Sign codes favor incumbents and the dominant party, which is the real reason for their passage. Those actually caring about democracy should put up with them and quit whining. The major GOP handicap in council races was Mayor Bob Walkup, who branded the party with the same positions Democrats held. A minority party cannot change it’s status without holding policy positions that differ from the incumbents. It can only elect someone when all the other factors are in sync, a relatively rare occurrence.
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BUT WATCH WHAT YOU SAY! |
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