Groups Urge Illinois TV Stations to Boost
Election and Public Affairs Coverage
Letter to broadcasters notes project to track coverage in Chicago, Springfield
[Chicago] Four public interest advocacy groups today challenged Illinois television
broadcasters to significantly boost coverage of the 2006 elections and election-related
issues.
In a letter to the state’s TV stations, the heads of the Illinois Campaign
for Political Reform, the Better Government Association, Common Cause Illinois,
and the League of Women Voters of Illinois called on broadcasters to demonstrate
their commitment to election, public affairs and governmental coverage by airing
at least two hours of candidate-centered or issue-centered programming weekly
during the six weeks leading up to the November general election.
The letter notes the Illinois groups along with partner organizations throughout
the Great Lakes region are teaming up with UWNewsLab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
to track and analyze political news coverage in 9 Midwest TV markets, including
Chicago and Springfield. The collaborative effort will produce a Midwest News
Index providing a quarterly analysis comparing the amount and quality of news
coverage in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio.
“We believe that more substantive coverage of campaigns and public policy
will provide a great service to a viewing public that is currently overwhelmed
and repelled by 30-second campaign ads,” the letter says.
The letter also points out that a 2004 study by the University of Wisconsin and
the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center found that local
TV stations devoted eight times more coverage to stories about accidental injuries
than they did to coverage of all local election races combined.
The groups offered to work with the stations to help identify ways to improve
coverage, and said in the letter they will call public attention to stations’
success in upgrading coverage or failure to meaningfully cover elections and public
affairs.