For those who don't think dirty political campaigning is a problem in the Midwest, look no further than a recent study conducted by the University of Wisconsin that found especially high rates of political advertising to low rates of election news coverage on television newscasts.

The NewsLab team, overseen by UW political science professor Kenneth Goldstein, studied newscasts in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota in the month before the 2006 mid-term elections. The results found political advertisements dominating election stories — each state's capital and largest city aired 8,995 political ads and only 2,392 election stories. It also found that standard newscasts devote more time to teasers, bumpers and intros than to election coverage, government news or foreign policy.

In plainer numbers, that means in a regular 30-minute news broadcast, four minutes and 26 seconds consist of paid political advertising, while only one minute and 43 seconds consist of election news coverage.

Surprised? Don't be. Many experts worry that as life gets more hectic, more voters depend on television newscasts and political advertisements as their main information source before elections. These biased programs do not display accurate information because the positive ads only reflect the candidates' best qualities and the negative ones only point out the worst in opponents or even make false accusations. Instead of promoting the positives of their campaigns, many candidates focus on the negatives of their opponents. It is not necessary for candidates to publicly endorse petty accusations against each other through the media — or is it? It is important for candidates to differentiate themselves from their opponents and as much as society would like to say they hate dirty politics, they love them. Society thrives on gossip. Whether or not voters choose to believe the rumors is a different story. Those that rely solely on newscasts are subject to the same bias due to short programming and biased newscasters as well. Mike McCabe, executive director for the political watchdog group of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, told The Badger Herald, "I fail to see how it can possibly be described as serving the public interest, leaving viewers with nothing but paid political messages to go on." Basically, television coverage cannot be trusted to help a person make an educated vote.

The Madison area alone was blanketed with television advertisements both positive and negative for virtually every office on the ballot, and the bigger the election, the bigger the accusations and false ads against opponents. For those who think Madison is bad when it comes to dirty ads, imagine being elsewhere in the Midwest. Madison fared slightly better than other cities studied with an average of two minutes and 14 seconds of election coverage per 30-minute newscast, with about five political ads.

So who is responsible — the candidates or the media? Mr. McCabe said that because broadcasters operate on public airwaves, they have a civic responsibility and a legal obligation to serve the public interest. The ads will run whether or not broadcasters want them to.
"It's gotten so bad that we've reached the point where TV stations are acting [like] anything that gets aired about election campaigns is something they had to get paid to air," McCabe said. That leads to the conclusion that dirty campaigning stems from dirty politicians — but can politicians afford a clean campaign when it can cost success in the election?

The last month before an election is the time to prove the opposition wrong and show that candidates can surpass supposed weaknesses and be the stronger candidate, not bash one another into the ground. The effect of dirty advertising on voters may not ever be known for certain, but the continued research of UW NewsLab is sure to make this debate very interesting. They will continue to analyze political coverage in local Midwestern newscasts and release more information on their findings through summer 2007.

Joelle Parks ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism and Spanish.