…about a recent piece of cutesy-poo “news” coverage:

Sent in response to the showing of part of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ad as a candidate for Governor on the KING news broadcast on August 19, 2003.Dear KING5,

Thanks for putting part of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political commercial on (for free!) during your ‘news’ program last night. I’m sure that he appreciated the free plug, and it’s good to know that Arnold is the only one running, and, even though he’s not running for any office in Washington state, that this is a hip and trendy news story, and that we should all be paying attention. I’m also hoping that you will be airing the commercials, in whole or in part, from each and every one of the other 134 people running for Governor of California. I’d hate to think that just because Arnold is the press-appointed front runner that you wouldn’t be spending equal time on the other candidates.

I recognize that there is a certain amount of tabloid fodder necessary to entertain a significant portion of your audience, and that a famous actor running for office almost fits the bill. I only lament that the local news programs would pay so much attention to tabloid political movements in other states, while ignoring (or at least under-reporting) political developments in the state from which they broadcast.

I know that Arnold will pull in the viewers and hold them at least until the commercial runs, and that that’s your plan. But how about equal time for people actually running for Governor of this state? Or the problems that actually affect people that can receive your broadcast? I can think of a dozen stories of a political nature that are ever so much more important that who’s running for which office in some other state. And when you spend your precious air time resources on just one of the candidates, you implicitly declare him the winner, or at least the only candidate worth paying attention to. Arnold has already got what appears to be enough name recognition to win the race. He doesn’t need your help.

The press, and by extension television, even the tabloid type of television that you put on last night, has tremendous power to shape and define political races simply by focusing the attention on a particular candidate. The 24 hour news cycle demands that any contest for any office be reduced to a horse race where there must be a winner and a loser. ‘Reporters’ follow candidates around looking for ‘gotcha’ moments where a slip of the tongue can be turned into headline fodder in short order. Lazy shortcuts reduce people to clichés, painting a portrait of Al Gore, say, as a wooden policy wonk, or George Bush as a capable and decisive businessman. These portraits get reproduced in the echo chamber, reinforcing themselves until they begin to sound like truth. And we all know that truth is much harder to distribute in sound bytes between commercials, and that many viewers will change the channel if you try to engage them about something important.

I’ll continue to watch the three networks for my local news fix. I’m not even disappointed that you (in this case) have been caught in lowest common denominator ‘journalism.’ But I for one am capable of seeing commercials during the newscast for what they are, and I don’t have to be pleased about it.

Rich Webb