News Coverage of the State of the State Address

There is no shortage of local news coverage of last night’s State of the State address by Governor Granholm. News agencies in the Grand Rapids market all provided stories that gave a summary of what the Governor had to say, with most of the emphasis on jobs and state budget cuts.

Most local news agencies also had stories that focused on reactions from politicians and candidates. WXMI 17 ran a story that included comments from two State Representative and one State Senator. There comments tended to follow along parties lines, some with criticism and no concrete solutions to the issues addressed in the Governor’s speech.

The Grand Rapids Press also had a reaction piece, with seven responses from State legislators from West Michigan. Most of these responses were critical of the Governor’s speech, but some of the elected officials did acknowledge their willingness to work on some of the proposals put forth.

A WOOD radio story included reactions to the Governor’s speech from a few State Representatives and three of the Republican candidates for Governor. All three of the GOP gubernatorial candidates had negative responses to Granholm’s speech.

One thing that was missing from all the coverage was that there were no non-partisan perspectives. The WOOD radio story included a comment from the Mackinac Center, but one would be hard pressed to say that this organization did not have a partisan bias in favor of Republicans.

Protestors

In addition to reaction from legislators and candidates there was a fair amount of coverage about the various citizen groups that came to the State Capitol to express their views before the State of the State address. However, there were several different groups represented their, a fact that sometimes got lost in the coverage.

The WOOD radio story said that the protestors gathered outside in what “they had said would be about the State of the Citizen.” The Clear Channel station makes no distinction between the groups that had gathered. The Fox 17 story also at times doesn’t make any clear distinction in their story about protestors, not until their was a conflict between some of the groups present.

The Press ran an AP story that did acknowledge some of the groups protesting outside the capital, such as the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance and the Detroit-based group Moratorium Now Coalition. The article also acknowledges that there was a student group at the capitol protesting education cuts, but it is not clear how this group was organized. The student group was with the MSU Undergraduate Alliance.

The best coverage we found on the groups protesting was from the independent online news site, The Michigan Messenger. Reporter Todd Heywood provided readers with a good balance of comments from several groups on the lawn of the State Capitol. Heywood also did a nice job of verifying some of the claims made by protestors based on their what the Governor actual said in her speech.

Another good indication of the independent journalism provided by The Michigan Messenger was their investigation into some of the material being handed out by those organized by the Michigan Taxpayer Alliance. Heywood said there “was passing out DVDs which he said every American needed to see. Among the five videos were two outlining the Jewish conspiracy to destroy America (Missing Link and Know Your Enemy) and one on the need to be a member of a militia or be tried and hung for treason (Constitutional Militia).”