The 2008 presidential race has started to attract many new voters, including college students who have never been too involved in politics, including myself. The good news is, there seems to be no shortage of television coverage of anything even remotely related to the candidates. In fact, the race to the presidency has seemed to cause a huge media sensation, which is great for viewers…the voting population is getting all sorts of information, and the TV news, particularly local, is reporting on issues that actually matter.
Journalism.org published an article called “Why Local TV Loves the Presidential Campaign.” http://journalism.org/node/9164 The answer, of course, is for the high revenues that stations will generate from advertising dollars. So the question is, if the 2008 race did not have “celebrity” candidates (Barack and Hillary) and did not attract so many youthful audience members, would local news deem politics so important? I think it’s fair to say that coverage of the race would be important, but not overly so in comparison to other topics. The article suggests that perhaps media continues to be driven by the dollar, and not as a public information provider.
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