Behind the Times

Endorsing the system

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Elections, Lancaster, Mike's posts |

Endorsements for the 5th District congressional race are in, and no surprise, Niki Tsongas leads the pack, with Jim Ogonowski second. For Niki, we have the The Boston Globe, Boston Herald (!), The Sun in Lowell, The MetroWest Daily News and several weeklies. For Jim, it’s the Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence and at least one weekly — this one. For those of you scoring along at home, that’s five for the Democrat, two for the Republican, no love at all for the three independents.

Today’s Times & Courier leads off with big profile pieces on the two major-party hopefuls — and that’s on par with the coverage you’d get from the Globe, the Sun, the Daily News or any other big paper covering the 5th District. So comes now Kevin Thompson, the Constitution Party nominee, with evidence of a vast media conspiracy (or at least we’re not doing our jobs):

Mr. Moskowitz has become a master of illusion. In a debate involving five different candidates, he makes three candidates disappear with the wave of his pen. In the last two debates, Eric Moskowitz has been the Boston Globe man on the scene. Yet, I wonder what scene he was really at.

And:

Mr. Moskowitz and the Boston Globe ought to be ashamed of themselves. They knowingly kept information from the public. They made the editorial decision to ignore most of what actually took place. In an almost conspiratorial manner, Kevin Thompson, Kurt Hayes and Patrick Murphy have been purposefully hidden from their news reports.

And:

The mainstream media continues to be the lapdog for a two-party monopoly. Despite their own cries for tolerance and diversity, they selectively discriminate against third parties and independents when it comes to their own coverage.

Kurt Hayes sent the Globe a similar, if less strongly worded, complaint in September.

(Update 10/12, 11:30 a.m.: Hayes is going to make a federal case out of it — he’s asking the FCC to enforce “equal time” restrictions on the region’s broadcasters.)

I’ll note here that the Times & Courier candidates’ guide — two pages of questions and answers — devotes as much space to Thompson, Patrick Murphy and Kurt Hayes as it it does to Tsongas and Ogonowski. But the gist of the Hayes/Thompson complaint is true: The Republican and Democrat are getting much more coverage in all media than the three independents.

To which I ask: So what? This strikes me as the same complaint I hear from devotees of women’s sports, soccer and (increasingly) hockey: “You’re killing our sport by not televising it. Stop showing so much football and baseball. Shine a little spotlight on the ladies (or the soccer players, or the hockey players).”

The answer to that has always been: ratings determine coverage. Show me an NCAA field hockey tourney that gets Final Four-like ratings, and I’ll show you next year’s spotlight on ESPN2. Show me an independent that drums up the kind of support Jim and Niki have, and I’ll show you tape recorders and video cameras crowded three deep.

We’ve seen this before: For a couple years after Ross Perot’s strong showings of 1992 and 1996, just about anyone who ran for office as a Reform Party member got the kind of respect the independents are looking for. Grace Ross was treated as a frontrunner (as it turns out, rightly so) in the Worcester City Council primary election last month because of her strong (for a Green) showing in last year’s state election, and you can bet whoever the Greens nominate in 2010 will be treated better.

This is, to a certain point, a chicken-and-egg question: Can a third party (or unenrolled movement) rise up without the media giving it more attention “than it deserves”? I’m not sure. But one thing that entered my mind when choosing to endorse a major-party candidate was this — the role of the newspaper is to reflect accurately the world around it. If a newspaper champions a longshot candidate by giving him coverage, or editorial consideration, not commensurate with his “buzz” and chances for success, then the newspaper is open to charges of bias the other way.

Better to let public acceptance of independents lead media trumpeting of them. I will endorse Thompson’s proposed solution, even if I don’t agree with his diagnosis of the problem:

We the People need to put an end to this cover-up. Send journalists a message – we want fair coverage.

Fair coverage — yes. Send us that message. If the two parties aren’t doing it for you, write letters and convince our editors and reporters that there’s a groundswell of support for these guys. When we can see that independent politics has traction, the cameras and columnists will follow.