TV networks shirked their responsibility to create an informed electorate and left the recent election in the hands of campaigns allowing political ad time to far outweigh the time devoted to actual coverage. According to Newslab, the average Midwest local TV station aired four and a half minutes of election ads but only a minute and 43 seconds of news coverage. While there's some controversy over the validity or exact point of those numbers it is disturbing that the ratio was so weighted in favor of ads as opposed to, you know, the context that news is supposed to provide.Stations aired more political ads than coverage
TV networks shirked their responsibility to create an informed electorate and left the recent election in the hands of campaigns allowing political ad time to far outweigh the time devoted to actual coverage. According to Newslab, the average Midwest local TV station aired four and a half minutes of election ads but only a minute and 43 seconds of news coverage. While there's some controversy over the validity or exact point of those numbers it is disturbing that the ratio was so weighted in favor of ads as opposed to, you know, the context that news is supposed to provide.Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Banning political ads altogether is not the solution, perhaps we should only allow ads paid for by the candidate's campaign themselves. Most of the ads at fault are by "consumer advocacy groups," or as most people know them, the special interest lobby, who funnel their millions into ads that push for the candidate that best serves their interests and are beyond the regulations of current campaign finance laws.
Posted at 12:53AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Mike M.
1. So why not just forbid paid political ads? Advertising tobacco products is verboten, why not this junk too?
It would make a large contribution to the campaign finance problem since politicians wouldn't need money to purchase advertising.
So how would voters get information? The same way they do anyway; from the journalists. All you ever learn from a paid political ad is what mud someone wants to sling this week and what kind of a dog they have.
Posted at 5:06PM on Nov 24th 2006 by Eric Norman