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Posts published in “Day: December 27, 2006”

Inspirational

December 27, 2006

Yesterday the Idaho Statesman single out as the most visionary Idahoan of the year, a shopping center developer. Today, it names the Idaho person who has most deeply inspired its editors and, presumably, Idaho.

A Boise State University football player.

Not, we should add, because of a wildly dramatic life story or some astounding incident in his personal life. Rather, the editorial board declared, "[Ian] Johnson and his Broncos have captured the hearts of the people in this community, who are giddy over playing in a major bowl game. That's why we selected Johnson the most inspirational person of the year."

To recap. Visionary: Shopping center developer. Inspirational: Popular college football player.

We await with the highest of anticipation the paper's selections - coming in the next few days - for the most courageous, devoted and influential.

In the public interest, or someone’s

December 27, 2006

Most television station web sites carry rundowns of regional (as well as national) news, which regular include political and governmental news, as well as occasional reports the station itself has developed. But you won't see many of those political or governmental stories actually make the airwaves.

Turn on the evening news and you'll get a predictable blend of cop stories, traffic stories, fire stories, and occasional consumer scare stories. (Is it really news if it's all this predictable?) Scarce are stories that help viewers act as more informed citizens in their community, or that tell viewers something important about their city and state they didn't already know. It does happen, but not often on local television stations, in the Northwest or elsewhere. What you see in Portland, Seattle, Boise or Spokane is about the same in Albuquerque, Memphis or Minneapolis: Just change the locator names on the weather board.

The Portland Mercury snarkily suggests, "My own unofficial study of local news shows that the remaining 30 percent of the stories are drug scares, 30 percent are about meth users WHO COULD BE BREAKING INTO YOUR HOME RIGHT NOW!, 20 percent are about wayward mountain climbers, and 15 percent are about childcare workers WHO COULD BE MOLESTING YOUR CHILDREN RIGHT NOW!). By contrast, local stations raked in nearly $27 million in political advertising during 2004 . . ."

The Money In Politics Research Action Project has taken this beyond simple observation into statistical analysis, and beyond that into a challenge of renewing the broadcasting licenses of Portland's commercial television stations. Some other Oregon parties, including Portland City Commissioner Erik Sten, have filed in support. That effort likely will die on arrival at the Federal Communications Commission, but that's secondary. The main point they want to spread is the grounds for the challenge: That local TV stations haven't been providing citizen-useful news coverage.

In a release, Janice Thompson of MiPRAP said, “Voters are not served by broadcast TV news programs that provide little or no coverage of political campaigns. This trend is in stark contrast to the dollars earned by TV stations on political advertising and is why we have filed a license renewal challenge with the FCC.”

Sten: “Voters rely on television to get a lot of their information and what they are getting is not adequate. Our community can do better.”

Political coverage was what they studied specifically (by taping all or nearly all news broadcasts), and the numbers jump out if you consider them closely.

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