WXXI Hearts Robach
This morning during NPR Morning Edition, WXXI-AM ran a short profile of the State Senate race for the 56th district between incumbent Joe Robach and challenger Willa Powell, reported by Bud Lowell. Unfortunately, the reporting was highly slanted in favor of Robach. Approximately twice as much time was devoted to Robach, compared to Powell; worse, while the story lavished favorable attention on Robach’s irrelevant family legacy, and his record of porkbarrel spending, Lowell reported only on Powell’s criticism of Robach, ignoring her own policy positions.
Glaringly, WXXI did not add a disclaimer noting that Robach is also a major sponsor of the station. Apparently Bud Lowell’s criteria for a candidate’s aptitude is his record of bringing home the bacon to Rochester — particularly to certain public radio stations therein.
Unfortunately, the story does not appear to be posted to the station website at the time of this writing, but you can contact them here.
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I hadn’t heard the news peice, so I followed up on delabarre’s post. I called WXXI, and convinced Bud Lowell to make the peice available on podcast from the local news section
I guess I’m partly to blame for the content, or lack thereof. I didn’t tout what I would do, when Bud Lowell cornered me at the Albany Express press conference hosted by AQE and Citizen Action. I didn’t give him any great sound bites to work with. Bud insists he did a fair job, and that he summarized my platform directly from my website. He managed to do it in a single sentence, whereas I have a whole web page that translates a single spaced, small font printed page (wait until you see the insert in City Newspaper this week!). I break my platform into three distinct peices, so if I had my d’ruthers, I would have liked my platform described that way.
The bottom line is that the media covers political contests like horse races, not like reasoned debates. Why should WXXI be any different?
I didn’t hear the news spot, so I called WXXI to ask if they would post the track as a podcast, which they did.
I’m not sure I can objectively critique it - better that you decide whether delabarre’s reaction is valid. I am a little miffed at the way Major Duffy was boxed into a quasi-endorsement.
Bud also summarized my whole platform into a single sentence.