Civic journalism: An attempt to renovate democracy's feedback loops
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With the low level of recent election campaigns and the even lower voter turnouts, many journalists have wanted the country to repair its political system.
But some also want to renovate the practice of their own profession. The media, after all, operate some of the major feedback loops in democracy, between candidates and voters, between the governors and the governed.
Leaders at both PBS and NPR are trying elements of a new "civic journalims" or "public journalism" to make the media more effective as a place for this basic communication.
PBS, for instance, is targeting extra broadcast time to the campaign finance issue, creating a new weekly program, Follow the Money, pegged to the 1997 Senate campaign finance hearings. The series is part of an ongoing PBS Democracy Project, created in 1995.
NPR, too, has been putting special effort into election coverage. The network's former editorial director traced the thinking behind its Election Project, which aimed to give voters a bigger role in campaigns that are now dominated by candidates' spinmasters and other handlers. Public radio stations apply these ideas in coverage of local issues and elections.
PBS tried to boost voters' views of the issues with a centerpiece event held in January 1996--the National Issues Convention, which brought together a scientific sampling of Americans to discuss national issues and grill the presidential candidates. A poll of participants after the convention showed that many had changed their minds on issues after discussion. The event was the second large-scale "deliberative poll" organized by Texas political scientist James Fishkin. He and public TV had tried to hold a similar issues convention during the '92 campaign, but couldn't raise the money needed. But by September 1995, organizers announced that funding was secure for the 1996 event.
The PBS Democracy Project for 1996 also included a range of documentaries and other programs, such as a humorous take on campaigning, Vote for Me: Politics in America.
For the 1998 elections, the Democracy Project aided many local public TV stations; 40 aired local candidate debates. Prominent political journalist Ellen Hume directed the project through mid-1998.
PBS leaders hoped their expanded coverage will restore public TV's reputation for innovation that was tarnished when a major funder, the Markle Foundation, bitterly pulled out of planning for coverage of the 1992 election.
Free airtime for candidates
In talks with the Markle Foundation, a major sticking point for many local public TV stations, and therefore PBS, was the emphasis on improving the way candidates get their message to voters--by providing increased "free time" on the air for 1992 candidates to speak at length, without the constraining format and high costs of 30-second commercials. A number of stations did experiment locally with free time, however, and despite difficulities say they'd do it again.
Photo of National Issues Convention by Mark Matson for Current.
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