DTH, media, fall for voter-owned spin
Government and political PR people have many tricks that help bend political reporters to their spin. One of the easiest to use is playing into media bias.
Case in point: When the Chapel Hill city council took tax funds to finance local elections, the last thing it wanted was continual reminders in the media that it was using, well, tax money to pay for elections. So the council came up with “voter owned elections” to describe the scheme. Like fat bass, local media took the bait, even though reporters have at least three choices: voter owned elections, a term that favors the pro-public finance crowd, taxpayer funded elections, a term that favors opponents of it, or a relatively neutral term like publicly financed elections.
A big part of the reason, of course, is that media people generally favor public financing of elections. Plus, they generally take what the spin doctors hand them.
Some media, like the Daily Tar Heel, went even further, blindly pronouncing the Chapel Hill program a “success.” No evidence is produced for that statement save for the fact the only two people taking tax money in the recent election were both elected.
In fact, tax-financed candidate for mayor Mark Kleinschmidt won only after his supporters mailed an anonymous last-minute negative attack on the other candidate, Matt Czajkowski.
The mailing was financed with private contributions, of course, well outside the public finance system.
And even more interesting, the Chapel Hill Watch blog reports that the attack mailing may be perfectly legal even under the local pubic finance system. After the election, Kleinschmidt supporter Cam Hill fussed up. Apparently, all he needed to do was report the effort, after the fact, so long as he registered before Nov. 4.
When will reporters notice that the warm and fuzzy voter owned election concept is starting to feel, well, a whole lot less warm and fuzzy?
Truth is, reporters and political operatives love to play this game. But the real question is, does the game advance independent journalism or the civic good? Posted by Leroy Towns
Note: this is a corrected version of the original post. See comments.
November 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I support voter-owned elections, although I’m not convinced they are needed in Chapel Hill where money has never been used to buy influence as far as I know. However, you need to get your facts straight. Penny Rich was not an incumbent. She ran and lost 2 years ago; this year she ran an aggressive public outreach campaign. Mark Kleinschmidt was not the incumbent mayor, although he was an incumbent council member. The mark of success or failure for this program will be measured in how many, if any, candidates run who do not fit the standard demographic profile (middle to upper income, liberal, mostly white).
November 6th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Terri, you are absolutely correct and I will note the error on the post. Thanks for the comment.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
It’s one thing if you disagree with publicly financed (or taxpayer funded) elections, but you really need to check your numbers. Stop blaming “the media.” From what I’ve seen, 56% of North Carolina voters support publicly financed elections, and 80% support initiatives to confront the problems of big money in politics:
http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/poll_shows_support_for_public_campaigns
But I suppose that’s just because the polling used the right phrasing, right?