ELECTION COVERAGE….Via Steve Benen, the University of Wisconsin?s NewsLab provides a dispiriting recap of local news coverage of the midterm election:
Local newscasts in seven Midwest markets aired nearly four and a-half minutes of paid political ads during the typical 30-minute broadcast while dedicating an average of one minute and 43 seconds to election news coverage.
The new post-election analysis also shows that most of the actual news overage of elections on early and late-evening broadcasts was devoted to campaign strategy and polling, which outpaced reporting on policy issues by a margin of over three to one (65 percent to 17 percent).
By advanced arithmetic, this means that these broadcasts dedicated an average of 18 seconds each to discussing actual issues. I wonder how blogs would fare if someone did a similar study of the political blogosphere?
