Thursday, February 12, 2004
Once again, Kucinich mass-ignored in the mass media
Did anyone know that Kucinich won 3rd in Washington and Maine? (If you didn't, don't feel bad--probably almost NO ONE does . . .)
O.K., the herd mentality (call it unity or solidarity, I suppose) triumphs again, as John Kerry's ascendancy to the presidential nomination seems all but inevitable. Gephardt's gone, Lieberman's gone (good riddance), and now Clark's gone (too soon, I'd say). If we're honest, it's between Kerry and Edwards. And I have to say that--saddened as I am about Kucinich's low voter turnout--I'm a bit heartened by Edwards's surge that started in Iowa; because to me it seemed he was being ignored by the media almost as severely as was Kucinich, yet he overcame that. And, in fact, I really like Edwards. (I'd like to hear some concrete, practical plans rather than just all the rhetoric, but at least I agree with the rhetoric.)
And, if we're honest, I think we all must admit (I don't mean "all" as in "all of us Kucinich supporters," I mean "all" as in "everyone") that Kucinich has been consistently, consciously and deliberately ignored and dismissed.
There's no longer any reasonable explanation for it. It's not as though these people reporting on the race are ignorant somehow; they know what's going on--that's their job, to report on the campaigns, and they know very well that Kucinich is running--and they choose not to cover Kucinich's campaign.
You might say, "Well, obviously there was no reason to cover it since he's doing so poorly, clearly they were right to say that he never had a chance in the first place, and so they did exactly what they should have done." Which, of course, simply begs the question. There's circular reasoning here. And anyone who thinks media coverage of elections and campaigns does not guide public knowledge and opinion is simply blind. (Look at what happened to Howard Dean--practically overnight.)
In my mind, there is no doubt whatsoever that if Dennis had gotten the same coverage as Dean got, they would be in exactly the same boat in terms of popularity and success in the primaries. (Anyone who's paid any attention at all to the media coverage, just do this simple thought experiment. Can there really be any doubt?)
In case some think this is just "poor sportsmanship" or something of the sort--blaming the media for an inevitably doomed campaign--here are some numbers to back up my conviction:
Media For Democracy analysis of network coverage in January shows that anointed contestants John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards received 93.8 percent of Democratic candidate coverage by CBS, NBC and ABC's nightly newscasts. Candidates Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, garnered a cumulative 6.2 percent of coverage in January.
The international media watchdog group Media Tenor, after performing an exhaustive review, determined that the nightly half-hour national news broadcasts from ABC, CBS and NBC devoted exactly 0.94% of their coverage to the Kucinich campaign.
And the point is not Dennis would win if given enough publicity. It's very likely that he would not. (Although, you have to ask: when you've got a candidate who opposed the war as strongly and vocally as Dennis, opposed the Patriot Act, who has a plan for getting out of Iraq, who promises universal health care, free college and pre-kindergarten education for all, and who puts the working class above the corporate class and takes no special interest funds . . . when this guy can't win, something is VERY, VERY screwed up in this country and with this party.) Not all Democrats opposed the war, and that's not the most important issue for many of them. My biggest gripe is that Kucinich is never mentioned for his opposition to the war--or for anything else, for that matter, but AT LEAST they should give him that much credit: CALL HIM THE ANTI-WAR CANDIDATE, which he is; it doesn't mean he'll win, but just be HONEST about the candidates and the issues.
O.K., to the immediate point: finally some people are finding out about Dennis, and he's "rising above the sidewalk," as he puts it. He took third place in Washington and then third again in Maine (with 16%, which isn't at all bad). Why not cover this? Why not AT LEAST MAKE SOME BLOODY MENTION OF IT? The media is silent.
The Kucinich campaign noted that CNN, the day after the Washington primary in which Kucinich took third and the day before the Maine caucus in which he would also take third, made the false claim that no one except Dean had campaigned in Maine that day. . . .
To CNN:
Presidential race:
In a report on the Maine caucus, you claimed that Howard Dean was the only candidate campaigning in the state. You must have been extremely surpsired, then, when Dennis Kucinich came in third in Maine with 16% of the vote. In fact, Dennis had been campaigning at the caucus site as well as in four other cities in Maine that day. Furthermore, since this was a day after Dennis took third place in Washington (beating Edwards, Clark, and Sharpton), some mention of his campaign might have been appropriate, one would think.
As one who has been watching Kucinich's campaign for quite some time, and observed the media coverage (or rather, lack thereof) of his campaign, I am constantly dismayed at the reprehensible behavior of the media in undermining the democratic process by ignoring (seemingly deliberately, for whatever reason) certain candidates--not just now, when the winner seems all but chosen already, but a year and a half before the election, continuing all the way up until now.
This bizarre phenomenon is certainly not unique to CNN. (I myself have written to NPR about this issue recently as well.) In fact, the international media watchdog group Media Tenor, after performing an exhaustive review, determined that the nightly half-hour national news broadcasts from ABC, CBS and NBC devoted exactly 0.94% of their coverage to the Kucinich campaign.
You may have corrected this last omission (and I hope you have) in recent days. Such corrections are too little too late, however. Please try to do a more honest and thorough job of covering all the candidates and all the issues in the future. You have more responsibility than perhaps you realize; and, unfortunately, the quality of our republic depends in large measure on the quality of the press and the television media that must inform the populus and helps shape their vision of what is true and of what is possible.
Thank you very much,
Dustin Hansen
St. Paul, MN
ungeziefer@mac.com
Tell CNN You Want Fair Coverage For Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich has finished both the Washington and Maine caucuses ahead of candidates John Edwards, Wesley Clark and Al Sharpton. This represents the strongest back-to-back showing of his campaign to date. One would think that such a clear surge would require coverage from the national media. One would be wrong.
On the evening of February 8th, as Dennis Kucinich was running strong in Maine, and a day after defeating Edwards, Clark and Sharpton in Washington, CNN put out a report on the Maine caucuses. In this report, CNN stated that, "Dean, struggling to revive his once-promising campaign, was the only candidate who campaigned in the state Sunday, making stops in six cities."; The facts fully dispute CNN's version of events.
Dennis Kucinich spoke at the Bangor Civic Center caucus site which was filled with television cameras, as well as caucus sites in Lewiston, Auburn, Portland and Westbrook. Clearly, Howard Dean was not the only candidate in Maine on February 8th.
The behavior of CNN is not unique. The international media watchdog group Media Tenor, after performing an exhaustive review, determined that the nightly half-hour national news broadcasts from ABC, CBS and NBC devoted exactly 0.94% of their coverage to the Kucinich campaign.
Dennis Kucinich has begun a strong surge in the race for the Democratic nomination. He is in this race to the end. The time has come for the national media to get wise to this, and at a minimum, to begin reporting basic facts with accuracy and integrity.
Encourage CNN to give Dennis fair coverage. Write CNN at http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ . The most effective letters are original, brief, polite, and stick to the facts.
Contribute Online Now
Campaign Roadkill: Pay-to-Play Steamrolls the Underdogs
The Federal Communications Commission has let the 1971 "lowest unit rate" statute become riddled with loopholes, to such an extent that today broadcasters routinely exploit our democracy by overcharging candidates to run political ads. This abuse forces out of the race candidates who can't raise special interest money to buy airtime.
The 1971 provision was designed to ensure that broadcast companies do not exploit candidates when they seek to advertise prior to an election. The real beneficiary of the law is supposed to be the public. But Chairman Michael Poweel and his like-minded colleagues at the FCC have let slide enforcement of the statute, allowing local broadcast affiliates to raise the cost of pre-election political ads. In so doing, they have closed the political process to most candidates, barred broadcast media as an avenue for minority viewpoints, and heightened the importance of special interest money in determining election outcomes.
The FCC has taken a pass on its responsibility to regulate the industry. The net effect is broadcast media that have taken control of the democratic process, demanding that candidates raise multi-million dollar war chests in order to be considered contenders. Local broadcast affiliates are the single largest recipient of this campaign money, and the most frequent abusers of the statute.
It's time the FCC started paying attention to the will of the people, instead of serving the bottom-line interests of media companies. Tell Chairman Powell to fulfill his sworn duty to make media more fair, democratic and accountable.
Best regards,
Rebecca, Elizabeth, Danny, Doug and Tim
The Media For Democracy Team
What's At Stake:
The murky relationship of money, media and politics becomes crystal clear when it comes to advertising. If a candidate can't deliver cash to buy political spots from local broadcasters, his or her run for office is dead on arrival.
This is compounded by the network news organizations whose journalists in the last week have decamped in droves from the campaigns of the lesser-runs to hitch a ride with the "contenders."
Media For Democracy analysis of network coverage in January shows that anointed contestants John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards received 93.8 percent of Democratic candidate coverage by CBS, NBC and ABC's nightly newscasts. Candidates Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, garnered a cumulative 6.2 percent of coverage in January.
Back-of-the-pack candidates vying for more exposure in the media mix, must turn to local affiliates to get their messages across to voters. But these broadcast outlets are doing little to help. In the 2002 mid term elections, local television stations jacked up the prices of political ads by an average of more than 50 percent, according to a report by the Alliance for Better Campaigns. The biggest culprit of them all was Fox affiliate KTXL in Sacramento, which hiked advertising rates more than 250 percent prior to the 2002 elections.
"We have no evidence to suggest that local affiliates will behave more honorably in 2004" said Meredith McGehee, president and executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns.
McGehee cites these abuses despite a "lowest unit charge" federal statute enacted in 1971 to prevent such pre-election profiteering. Under the statute, broadcasters -- who pay nothing for their licenses to use publicly owned airwaves -- are prohibited from charging candidates more for ad time than they charge their high volume, year-round advertisers. This provision was designed to ensure that candidates are not exploited by market forces for their need to advertise in a compressed period of time prior to an election.
"The statute as currently written and enforced is inadequate," McGehee said. "If there's something the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] can do to enforce it, they have not."
"Candidates who try to take advantage of the lowest-unit-charge provision risk having their ads bumped to a less desirable time slot if another advertiser is willing to pay more," McGehee said.
David Swanson, who until last week was the press secretary for the Dennis Kucinich campaign, said, "paying money at all for television advertising is unfair and wrong. The public owns these airwaves and there ought to be substantial free airtime for political campaigns."
In search of a fatter bottom line, broadcast media outlets are squeezing second tier candidates out of the democratic process. As local affiliates hike ad rates to exploit increased demand come voting day, those who can't pay the multi-million-dollar price tag for political ads are declared "unelectable" and left in the dark.
As we enter the middle stretch of the Democratic race, candidates with dwindling war chests have few options but to bow to a media system that dictates who runs and for how much.
Those missing from this process, of course, are the voters themselves.
By Timothy Karr
MediaChannel.org
By one key measure, Kucinich boasts a larger base of supporters
than almost any other candidate. The chart below displays the
amount of money each candidate has raised from small donors
(those giving $200 or less). This is a critical figure, essentially
an index of the number of loyalists each contender has amassed. Of
the eight candidates for whom data was available, Kucinich came in
second in small contributions -- behind Dr. Howard Dean, but ahead
of all other "top-tier" candidates, such as Sen. John Kerry and Rep.
Richard Gephardt.
Through the third quarter, based on data from the Center for
Responsive Politics, the Kucinich campaign had brought in $2,188,700
from contributors giving $200 or less. This compares to Kerry's
$2,067,116, Gephardt's $1,640,029, Lieberman's $1,060,141, Clark's
$1,042,678, Edwards' $419,756, and Sharpton's $24,614.
In current numbers as of January 26, the Kucinich campaign has brought
in over $3,038,000 from 60,890 contributors of $200 or less, including
$882,653 from 16,356 Californians, $194,631 from 3,971 New Yorkers,
$131,822 from 2,646 Ohioans, and $115,036 from 2,259 small donors in
Massachusetts.
To see a graph depicting this, click here:
http://kucinich.us/images/clip_image004.jpg
—ungeziefer
THE CADAVER POLITIK Home Page
UNGEZIEFER
O.K., the herd mentality (call it unity or solidarity, I suppose) triumphs again, as John Kerry's ascendancy to the presidential nomination seems all but inevitable. Gephardt's gone, Lieberman's gone (good riddance), and now Clark's gone (too soon, I'd say). If we're honest, it's between Kerry and Edwards. And I have to say that--saddened as I am about Kucinich's low voter turnout--I'm a bit heartened by Edwards's surge that started in Iowa; because to me it seemed he was being ignored by the media almost as severely as was Kucinich, yet he overcame that. And, in fact, I really like Edwards. (I'd like to hear some concrete, practical plans rather than just all the rhetoric, but at least I agree with the rhetoric.)
And, if we're honest, I think we all must admit (I don't mean "all" as in "all of us Kucinich supporters," I mean "all" as in "everyone") that Kucinich has been consistently, consciously and deliberately ignored and dismissed.
There's no longer any reasonable explanation for it. It's not as though these people reporting on the race are ignorant somehow; they know what's going on--that's their job, to report on the campaigns, and they know very well that Kucinich is running--and they choose not to cover Kucinich's campaign.
You might say, "Well, obviously there was no reason to cover it since he's doing so poorly, clearly they were right to say that he never had a chance in the first place, and so they did exactly what they should have done." Which, of course, simply begs the question. There's circular reasoning here. And anyone who thinks media coverage of elections and campaigns does not guide public knowledge and opinion is simply blind. (Look at what happened to Howard Dean--practically overnight.)
In my mind, there is no doubt whatsoever that if Dennis had gotten the same coverage as Dean got, they would be in exactly the same boat in terms of popularity and success in the primaries. (Anyone who's paid any attention at all to the media coverage, just do this simple thought experiment. Can there really be any doubt?)
In case some think this is just "poor sportsmanship" or something of the sort--blaming the media for an inevitably doomed campaign--here are some numbers to back up my conviction:
Media For Democracy analysis of network coverage in January shows that anointed contestants John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards received 93.8 percent of Democratic candidate coverage by CBS, NBC and ABC's nightly newscasts. Candidates Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, garnered a cumulative 6.2 percent of coverage in January.
The international media watchdog group Media Tenor, after performing an exhaustive review, determined that the nightly half-hour national news broadcasts from ABC, CBS and NBC devoted exactly 0.94% of their coverage to the Kucinich campaign.
And the point is not Dennis would win if given enough publicity. It's very likely that he would not. (Although, you have to ask: when you've got a candidate who opposed the war as strongly and vocally as Dennis, opposed the Patriot Act, who has a plan for getting out of Iraq, who promises universal health care, free college and pre-kindergarten education for all, and who puts the working class above the corporate class and takes no special interest funds . . . when this guy can't win, something is VERY, VERY screwed up in this country and with this party.) Not all Democrats opposed the war, and that's not the most important issue for many of them. My biggest gripe is that Kucinich is never mentioned for his opposition to the war--or for anything else, for that matter, but AT LEAST they should give him that much credit: CALL HIM THE ANTI-WAR CANDIDATE, which he is; it doesn't mean he'll win, but just be HONEST about the candidates and the issues.
O.K., to the immediate point: finally some people are finding out about Dennis, and he's "rising above the sidewalk," as he puts it. He took third place in Washington and then third again in Maine (with 16%, which isn't at all bad). Why not cover this? Why not AT LEAST MAKE SOME BLOODY MENTION OF IT? The media is silent.
The Kucinich campaign noted that CNN, the day after the Washington primary in which Kucinich took third and the day before the Maine caucus in which he would also take third, made the false claim that no one except Dean had campaigned in Maine that day. . . .
To CNN:
Presidential race:
In a report on the Maine caucus, you claimed that Howard Dean was the only candidate campaigning in the state. You must have been extremely surpsired, then, when Dennis Kucinich came in third in Maine with 16% of the vote. In fact, Dennis had been campaigning at the caucus site as well as in four other cities in Maine that day. Furthermore, since this was a day after Dennis took third place in Washington (beating Edwards, Clark, and Sharpton), some mention of his campaign might have been appropriate, one would think.
As one who has been watching Kucinich's campaign for quite some time, and observed the media coverage (or rather, lack thereof) of his campaign, I am constantly dismayed at the reprehensible behavior of the media in undermining the democratic process by ignoring (seemingly deliberately, for whatever reason) certain candidates--not just now, when the winner seems all but chosen already, but a year and a half before the election, continuing all the way up until now.
This bizarre phenomenon is certainly not unique to CNN. (I myself have written to NPR about this issue recently as well.) In fact, the international media watchdog group Media Tenor, after performing an exhaustive review, determined that the nightly half-hour national news broadcasts from ABC, CBS and NBC devoted exactly 0.94% of their coverage to the Kucinich campaign.
You may have corrected this last omission (and I hope you have) in recent days. Such corrections are too little too late, however. Please try to do a more honest and thorough job of covering all the candidates and all the issues in the future. You have more responsibility than perhaps you realize; and, unfortunately, the quality of our republic depends in large measure on the quality of the press and the television media that must inform the populus and helps shape their vision of what is true and of what is possible.
Thank you very much,
Dustin Hansen
St. Paul, MN
ungeziefer@mac.com
Tell CNN You Want Fair Coverage For Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich has finished both the Washington and Maine caucuses ahead of candidates John Edwards, Wesley Clark and Al Sharpton. This represents the strongest back-to-back showing of his campaign to date. One would think that such a clear surge would require coverage from the national media. One would be wrong.
On the evening of February 8th, as Dennis Kucinich was running strong in Maine, and a day after defeating Edwards, Clark and Sharpton in Washington, CNN put out a report on the Maine caucuses. In this report, CNN stated that, "Dean, struggling to revive his once-promising campaign, was the only candidate who campaigned in the state Sunday, making stops in six cities."; The facts fully dispute CNN's version of events.
Dennis Kucinich spoke at the Bangor Civic Center caucus site which was filled with television cameras, as well as caucus sites in Lewiston, Auburn, Portland and Westbrook. Clearly, Howard Dean was not the only candidate in Maine on February 8th.
The behavior of CNN is not unique. The international media watchdog group Media Tenor, after performing an exhaustive review, determined that the nightly half-hour national news broadcasts from ABC, CBS and NBC devoted exactly 0.94% of their coverage to the Kucinich campaign.
Dennis Kucinich has begun a strong surge in the race for the Democratic nomination. He is in this race to the end. The time has come for the national media to get wise to this, and at a minimum, to begin reporting basic facts with accuracy and integrity.
Encourage CNN to give Dennis fair coverage. Write CNN at http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ . The most effective letters are original, brief, polite, and stick to the facts.
Contribute Online Now
Campaign Roadkill: Pay-to-Play Steamrolls the Underdogs
The Federal Communications Commission has let the 1971 "lowest unit rate" statute become riddled with loopholes, to such an extent that today broadcasters routinely exploit our democracy by overcharging candidates to run political ads. This abuse forces out of the race candidates who can't raise special interest money to buy airtime.
The 1971 provision was designed to ensure that broadcast companies do not exploit candidates when they seek to advertise prior to an election. The real beneficiary of the law is supposed to be the public. But Chairman Michael Poweel and his like-minded colleagues at the FCC have let slide enforcement of the statute, allowing local broadcast affiliates to raise the cost of pre-election political ads. In so doing, they have closed the political process to most candidates, barred broadcast media as an avenue for minority viewpoints, and heightened the importance of special interest money in determining election outcomes.
The FCC has taken a pass on its responsibility to regulate the industry. The net effect is broadcast media that have taken control of the democratic process, demanding that candidates raise multi-million dollar war chests in order to be considered contenders. Local broadcast affiliates are the single largest recipient of this campaign money, and the most frequent abusers of the statute.
It's time the FCC started paying attention to the will of the people, instead of serving the bottom-line interests of media companies. Tell Chairman Powell to fulfill his sworn duty to make media more fair, democratic and accountable.
Best regards,
Rebecca, Elizabeth, Danny, Doug and Tim
The Media For Democracy Team
What's At Stake:
The murky relationship of money, media and politics becomes crystal clear when it comes to advertising. If a candidate can't deliver cash to buy political spots from local broadcasters, his or her run for office is dead on arrival.
This is compounded by the network news organizations whose journalists in the last week have decamped in droves from the campaigns of the lesser-runs to hitch a ride with the "contenders."
Media For Democracy analysis of network coverage in January shows that anointed contestants John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards received 93.8 percent of Democratic candidate coverage by CBS, NBC and ABC's nightly newscasts. Candidates Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, garnered a cumulative 6.2 percent of coverage in January.
Back-of-the-pack candidates vying for more exposure in the media mix, must turn to local affiliates to get their messages across to voters. But these broadcast outlets are doing little to help. In the 2002 mid term elections, local television stations jacked up the prices of political ads by an average of more than 50 percent, according to a report by the Alliance for Better Campaigns. The biggest culprit of them all was Fox affiliate KTXL in Sacramento, which hiked advertising rates more than 250 percent prior to the 2002 elections.
"We have no evidence to suggest that local affiliates will behave more honorably in 2004" said Meredith McGehee, president and executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns.
McGehee cites these abuses despite a "lowest unit charge" federal statute enacted in 1971 to prevent such pre-election profiteering. Under the statute, broadcasters -- who pay nothing for their licenses to use publicly owned airwaves -- are prohibited from charging candidates more for ad time than they charge their high volume, year-round advertisers. This provision was designed to ensure that candidates are not exploited by market forces for their need to advertise in a compressed period of time prior to an election.
"The statute as currently written and enforced is inadequate," McGehee said. "If there's something the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] can do to enforce it, they have not."
"Candidates who try to take advantage of the lowest-unit-charge provision risk having their ads bumped to a less desirable time slot if another advertiser is willing to pay more," McGehee said.
David Swanson, who until last week was the press secretary for the Dennis Kucinich campaign, said, "paying money at all for television advertising is unfair and wrong. The public owns these airwaves and there ought to be substantial free airtime for political campaigns."
In search of a fatter bottom line, broadcast media outlets are squeezing second tier candidates out of the democratic process. As local affiliates hike ad rates to exploit increased demand come voting day, those who can't pay the multi-million-dollar price tag for political ads are declared "unelectable" and left in the dark.
As we enter the middle stretch of the Democratic race, candidates with dwindling war chests have few options but to bow to a media system that dictates who runs and for how much.
Those missing from this process, of course, are the voters themselves.
By Timothy Karr
MediaChannel.org
By one key measure, Kucinich boasts a larger base of supporters
than almost any other candidate. The chart below displays the
amount of money each candidate has raised from small donors
(those giving $200 or less). This is a critical figure, essentially
an index of the number of loyalists each contender has amassed. Of
the eight candidates for whom data was available, Kucinich came in
second in small contributions -- behind Dr. Howard Dean, but ahead
of all other "top-tier" candidates, such as Sen. John Kerry and Rep.
Richard Gephardt.
Through the third quarter, based on data from the Center for
Responsive Politics, the Kucinich campaign had brought in $2,188,700
from contributors giving $200 or less. This compares to Kerry's
$2,067,116, Gephardt's $1,640,029, Lieberman's $1,060,141, Clark's
$1,042,678, Edwards' $419,756, and Sharpton's $24,614.
In current numbers as of January 26, the Kucinich campaign has brought
in over $3,038,000 from 60,890 contributors of $200 or less, including
$882,653 from 16,356 Californians, $194,631 from 3,971 New Yorkers,
$131,822 from 2,646 Ohioans, and $115,036 from 2,259 small donors in
Massachusetts.
To see a graph depicting this, click here:
http://kucinich.us/images/clip_image004.jpg
—ungeziefer
THE CADAVER POLITIK Home Page
UNGEZIEFER
| |
