National Media Coverage is not much better than Local News
We have conducted dozens of studies looking at what local TV stations and the Grand Rapids Press report on and how they cover major issues. One reason why GRIID does not track national media outlets is because there are several credible organization who already do that important work. Groups like Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Media Matters, News Dissector, Project Censored and the Project for Excellence in Journalism all provide excellent documentation and analysis of national news reporting.
Last month, we completed a 100-day study of the Grand Rapids Press coverage of the US war in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Many of our findings were similar to the analysis that the national media watchdog groups while the US administration gets ready to make decisions on sending more troops in the ninth year of that occupation.
Currently we are working on a 30-day study of the Grand Rapids Press coverage of elections in Kent County. The study began the day that the top 10 finalists in the ArtPrize competition were announced and will conclude the day after there are local elections (November 4). There are 43 candidates running for a variety of local city council seats, as well as 3 ballot proposals for a few communities within Kent County. We want to make a comparison of how the Press reported on the ArtPrize entries/voting and the local political candidates/voting.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) documents what topics were covered on a weekly basis. For the week of October 12 – 18, fund that health care was the lead story, due in part to the Senate Finance Committee vote on Health Care. After Health Care, the ongoing economic crisis received the second most coverage during the week of October 12 – 13, followed by the “Balloon Boy” story.
The “Balloon Boy” story received more coverage last week than US policy in Afghanistan or Pakistan, despite the fact that the US administration has been debating sending 40 – 80,000 more US troops to fight in that war. Another indication of how the media fails to inform the public about the crucial issues of the day, but instead chooses to make a boy in a balloon, ongoing national news.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
After dozens of studies, what has the practical effect of these efforts been? Has the local corporate media ever made positive changes in their coverage in response to the GRIID studies? Does GRIID have an ongoing dialog with the local media (i.e. meetings and correspondence)? Are the studies presented to the media regularly? Does the media respect GRIID?
It seems there have been a number of these studies over the years (often covering similar topics as previous studies, suggesting that they have been largely ignored by the corporate media), but little talk about what the results have been. If there have been successes, they should be shared (same with failures) — but if they haven’t really gotten anywhere, maybe a new approach should be tried.
I guess I’m basically just curious what the effect of these efforts has been.
Marion, I appreciate the comment and questions. The news media has responded to some of our studies and has acknowledged their shortcomings from time to time. I have written about this in the past and have had lots of personal interaction with reporters and news directors from this area.
There has not been much consistent change in how the local media reports the news, but we never set out as a main goal the idea of getting them to change. We are in favor of accountability, which is why we spent a year work on a local TV licensing campaign in 2005.
What we do with our findings is to work with local individuals and organizations who are working on issues like sexual assault prevention, civic engagement, anti-war work, racial justice and other social change efforts. Our documentation of the local news provides people with some sense of how the local community might perceive issues of the day, based on how the local media reports on or doesn’t report on issues.
We see the media monitoring work as an educational and organizing tool for area organizations and people who want to work for change.