Local Television News and Campaign 2000: Assessing Efforts to Increase Substantive Content

Content analysis of local newscasts during Campaign 2000 reveals that stations that participated in two civil society efforts to increase the quality of news coverage devoted far more atlention to coverage that included more extensive discussion of issues than did stations in the same market that did not participate in either program. Treatment stations as a group provided more information regarding the background of issues, more discussion of the details of policy proposals and more discussion of the possible consequences of those proposals should they be adopted. The differences were greatest between stations in mid-sizedandsmaller markets.