So the news comes on after House,* and the local Fox affiliate leads with a story about Rep. Chaka Fattah's first TV ad in his run for mayor of Philadelphia.
This post isn't about local politics, but you'll need a quick sketch of the background here. The Philly mayor's race is decided in the Democratic primary. There are five candidates but nobody's really caught fire (see TheNextMayor.com for the full background). Last summer Rep. Fattah was leading in the polls, mainly due to name recognition (or perhaps name coolness). The leader now seems to be Tom Knox, a businessman and Just-for-Men abuser** who's spent millions over the past few months on a flood-the-airwaves TV campaign.
This post isn't about campaign finance, but the Fox29 story about the importance and effectiveness of TV advertising in the Philly mayor's race accurately conveyed the dynamic at work: Money = TV ads = votes.
But here's what this post is actually about: Fox29 News never mentioned who receives all those millions of dollars in TV advertising. Their take on Fattah's campaign was along the same lines as Attytood's (Fattah said he hadn't run any ads due to a "rope-a-dope strategy." Will Bunch writes, "Rope-a-dope? Well, that's partially right.") But of course Attytood isn't the one who's been cashing all those big checks from Tom Knox's campaign.
My complaint here isn't new. Campaign-finance reform advocates have long complained that TV news has a vested interest in the current system. Their stations are on the receiving end of all that Big Money. Runaway campaign spending is, for TV, the goose that keeps laying the golden egg. And TV news is unlikely to report favorably on the reformers' other recommendations for things like free air time for candidates.
But bracket the question of campaign finance and let's just consider the matter of journalistic integrity. What obligation does a reporter for a local TV station like Fox29 have when reporting on Tom Knox's multimillion TV ad buys?
I think there has to be a number, a concrete dollar figure. The viewers deserve, and journalistic standards demand, at least that.
If you're a reporter on Fox29 news and you're telling viewers about the millions Tom Knox is spending on TV ads, you owe it to your viewers to add, "X percent of that spending, a total of Y dollars, purchased ads on this station."
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* I'm sure I'm not the only one wishing that Fox would arrange some kind of House/Bones crossover to bring Stephen Fry's psychiatrist into Hugh Laurie's hospital.
** Seriously, the man has a horrifically unnatural dye job. There doesn't seem to be any kind of code of ethics for political consultants, but I still think Knox's should be sued for malpractice for allowing the poor guy to go on TV with his hair looking like that. It's just wrong.
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