This group of citizens and media scholars considered the coverage of the 1998 Minnesota Gubernatorial election. Much of the discussion focused on the coverage of candidate Jesse Ventura. A minority Reform Party candidate, former wrestler and current sports radio talk show host, he had not been thought of as a serious contender for the office, but at the time of this conference recent polls showed him with twenty percent of vote. On election day, he won the gubernatorial race with thirty-seven percent of the vote, beating two longtime political figures in Minnesota, St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman and Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III.

The panelists agreed that coverage this year was better than it had been in previous years, but suggested room for improvement. The director of the University's institute on Race and Poverty, john powell, says there is a glut of information that is "not organized in a way that makes it useful." It is easier to cover the "he said she said" than the context. Anne Borgen of the League of Women Voters called upon journalists to finds ways to "keep people tuned in" to government all year round. But Duane Benson, chair of the Minnesota Business Partnership, stressed that part of the responsibility lies with citizens:"The media would reach if the general population would demand it."

St. Paul Media Attorney, Paul Hannah, who moderated both afternoon sessions, said: What we're really asking throughout the whole course of this day is what are the standards that journalists should hold themselves to? To whom should they be accountable, maybe ultimately who is it who decides what the standards are and whether or not the media have in fact at least attempted to be accountable? D. J. Leary, what sort of standards are you going to apply as you come to your opinion?

Mr. D.J. Leary is editor of the newsletter, Politics in Minnesota, and a principle at Media Sevices, Inc.: I come to this from background of having worked with a lot of campaigns and candidates over far too many years. My observation is that the campaign coverage has been exceptional. I've never seen this much coverage. [But] I've never met a political candidate who thought he had enough coverage on things. There are so many more opportunities for coverage in this election in Minnesota that we haven't had in the past. ... Some of it appears in certain areas, such as the Web coverage. And then in other places, as I traveled around the state there are rural radio stations and rural television stations that are doing it [aquatennial] style. And let me explain what that means. It's that I have this belief that if you took somebody down to the aquatennial parade in July in Minneapolis and put him on the curb and put a bag over their head, when the parade started and you pulled the bag off, you could defy him to tell you what year it is. Well, that's the kind of coverage we've gotten from some of the radio and television stations throughout the state

In most of the 24 non-metropolitan dailies in this state, the race for governor is not the primary race. The races that bring out the people are for sheriff or for county commissioner... Those are the races that bring out the people who in addition will vote for governor. It's very interesting when I talk to the editors around the state how the candidates are more and more pulling back and spending all of their time or a great deal of their time in the Twin Cities metropolitan market, two out of three votes are in here. They [the candidates] will not go to towns that don't have a television station. Campaigns are specific in terms of site, sound, color, and motion and wanting to do television. That's where they're spending their money. But when you ask the candidates [about] the coverage they are never quite pleased with the thing. When I talk to the editors, the news directors, they cite chapter and verse what they have been able to do.

We have the ad watch. The ad watch does something but it doesn't address the problem that you have with television commercials that are built on frequency. A television commercial will run 30 or 50 or 60 times and the ad watch runs once. And there has got to be some way that the pencil press can continue to be involved in terms of their coverage. I applaud MPR's position on doing an ad watch, The News Night Minnesota. We did not have that four years ago in that campaign. It's been a wonderful opportunity for minor candidates But there is a general belief that I hold that minor candidates do not file for election to get elected. They file to find a platform to espouse a particular idea. They want their ideas out, they have no hope of getting elected

Mr. Benson, Chair of the Minnesota Business Partnership and former state senator, argued that it is up to the public to demand more information: I think there is an old adage that says if you continue to do what you've always done you're going to get more of what you got. And I suspect we're kind of there. And so I don't see the coverage in this particular election cycle much different then it is in other ones.

How many of you have read [Walter] Mondale's book on governing? One or two, good. How many of you read [Michael] Dukakis' White Paper on Agriculture? Fewer than two even. The reason that nobody produces white papers anymore is nobody reads them and no one covers them as well Now is that the media's fault? I suspect we could conclude that, but I'm dependent upon the media so I'm not going to pick on you much. I think that the problem is within ourselves. If we demand more information I think we'd get it. The problem is we don't. The media would react if the general population would demand it. That I think is the problem that we have to contend with.

Ms. Anne Borgen from the League of Women Voters, suggested that beyond election coverage, the media could try and get the public interested in government all year round: I suppose the League looks at election coverage from the standpoint of the average voter or the average person who should be voting. They stayed away from the primary in droves. [T]hese aren't folks who are active in the party. These aren't folks who are active in an interest group. The majority of Minnesotans are people who only pay attention to an election right before it. They don't tune into politics until they have to vote. And I think [there's a] responsibility to keep people tuned in to why it's important. During the whole year you spend millions of dollars in ad research, ad companies do anyway, trying to get people to tune into your station. I think it could apply to why you should be interested in the political process too. I'm sure you know how to get people to tune in and listen to your station. [W]e listened to the panel ahead of us talk about not listening to the local news. I can be very sympathetic to that point of view but let's not dismiss the great majority of Minnesotans who do tune into their local news [to get] information about politics and what's going on.

Mr. Hannah: What do you think happened to keep people away from the primary [the low turnout and lack of interest]?

Ms. Borgen: I think that people don't relate it to their own lives. I think that people who are interested in politics can't believe how little interest there is in political parties and politics among the great majority of people You try to get somebody to get involved and you get the big yawn. I think that the media could do a better job [although] I think there have been some absolutely wonderful articles. Here is one in the Pioneer Press about tax policy of the three major candidates for governor. And they are well laid out, well discussed, and they have a comparison box at the bottom. If anybody reads it they learn a lot about what they think about tax policy. But I think the problem is that doesn't relate it to your life If your kid is in an inner-city poor neighborhood, what do these school choice policies mean to you? Would you get a better school if you went with one candidate or another?

Mr. Hannah: John Powell if there was one thing that you thought was lacking that should not be lacking, what would that be?

Mr. John Powell, executive director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty, answered "I think I probably would say analysis: "When you asked that question I immediately thought of Ghandi's response when someone asked him, what he thought about western civilization, he said he thought it was a good idea. And I think in terms of standards, I think that's a good idea. But it is not clear that we have standards so I don't really know

The problem is there is a tremendous amount of information coming at us, just a tremendous amount. And it may not even be information, it may just be data. It's not organized in a way that makes it useful. And we all suffer from, you know, web site overload. Stuff is coming at you not just now through television and through the newspapers, but now on the Web site

But it's not organized in a way that is very useful. I would like to see the press take a hard look at doing an analysis, not necessarily of just different policies of different positions of the candidates. And then let the potential voter respond to that.

Mr. Benson: My experience as a former legislator is that the press would cover something if you would say it. If you would say something about somebody, that would be in the story. But if you said, you should take a look at this and you should do some investigative reporting, then the odds were tremendous that it would never be written. So I think it's easier to cover he said, she said, than actually the issue.

Mr. Hannah: If you are a member of the media and you're trying to cover that campaign, where do you start? Do you go back to what Coleman said [on his farm policy]? If you don't report the charge by the Humphrey campaign are you now not being balanced and fair? Where in that case would you have drawn the line?

Mr. Leary: We've seen coverage of the debates and it's been great coverage. But there is a way to make them, through some analysis more interesting. One thing that makes Jesse Ventura such a refreshing candidate is he doesn't sound like the other two guys. They [the other candidates] wouldn't know where the hell to even go buy a turkey or a pound of hamburger. That's what real people talk about and that's never brought into the mix by the media in terms of the analysis. But these were very dull candidates. Is it the media's job to dust them up and make them look good? I mean, this was a very dull campaign and it serves some candidate's interest not to have the people paying attention It's not a cynical look. There is a body of opinion and interest in this country that it serves their interest not to have a lot of people vote. And if anybody doubts that you need only look at the votes against efforts to increase registration in other states or across the country, the voter motor bill for instance.

Mr. Benson: I would argue one of the reasons why Jesse Ventura has done well is he had no one defending him in the analysis Jesse could say whatever he wanted to and no one had to interpret it, and he can keep his message pretty simple. So I think your point is probably well taken on analysis. But where I draw the line is when the experts come on after a debate and tell us what we ought to think about the debate

Mr. Hannah: But what turns a media, a member of the media into anything other than a public spin doctor?

Male Participant: I sort of go back to the role of the media at least in vision in terms of the Constitution and the First Amendment. It was not to sell newspapers, it was to have a flow of ideas to make a democratic society work. It's hard for someone to say something and then five minutes later I'm going to analyze it as opposed to, and that's why I'm not wedded to white papers or whatever. But the idea of reading something, thinking about it, looking at it, looking at the implications. The implications may be positive or negative but let's talk about the implications, let's talk about what does this really mean for people and we never get to that

Mr. Hannah: Or are you asking too much of the media?

Mr. Benson: I think it's very hard to do because I've been there and as a candidate you have to fashion your message, if it's part of the story, not the entire story, and can't exceed 30 seconds for the print word.

Male Participant: You can't exceed 20 seconds for the radio and 15 seconds for the TV. So now get up and really relay something of depth? If you're going to be part of that story it's got to be something that's punchy and fits in.

Ms. McDonnell: I'm Lynda McDonnell, with Pioneer Press. And I want to go back to the point about the family farm thing. One of our reporters did write about Norm Coleman's speech [T]he comments that he had actually made at Farmfest were rambling and garbled. And then we got what the AP had used to summarize them and then how the Humphrey campaign had spun that. So he wrote an article quite early on pointing out that Norm Coleman had not said what Skip Humphrey kept saying he said, but Skip Humphrey kept saying it. So one of the issues that reporters confront and it sort of gets back to the comments somebody made about, the ad ran 60 times and the ad-watch ran once. When it first starts running how do you deal with it when Skip Humphrey had a theme that he thought was working for him and he kept using it. And Coleman came back to it again by filing these complaints [I]t has a life of its own at that point. So even if you write about it responsibly it has a life of its own.

Mr. Bakst: My name is Brian Bakst, I'm a journalism student. And my question is along the lines of something that Mr. Powell just discussed a minute ago. Are the media doing enough to discuss trade-offs with both the candidates and the public, the voting public; for instance, or are they isolating the issues like we're talking about, would you like lower taxes or would you like more money spent on education?

John Powell: I'm not sure that the media has to pose the question. There are some things about Government that are not particularly satisfying that are created for the good and the better welfare of the people

Ms. Borgen: And I don't think most people are aware of that or want to follow it

Mr. Hannah: Do you take it then to be a part one of the objectives, that the media are accountable to the public to define issues that aren't being defined by their candidates?

Ms. Borgen: I don't know if they have to define the issue, but when the League does a study we do something called facts and issues. Facts are how are the judges elected in Minnesota? How are they elected in some other places? Issues are, what does that mean? What if we elect them another way, what might happen? I mean, that's going on to the second half of the question to say, you know, if Mr. Coleman is elected and if he does this or this about education, what are you apt to see? Step one, ask, what does it mean for various people. Step two is, what happened. Did he implement it? If he did, how did it turn out. I mean, I just, I sort of see that as the media's role of getting people interested in elections, because it matters over time.

Mr. Benson: I've had a situation where I've had to deal with the media on a regular basis and we're coached. And we're told this is how the media behaves. If you want, no matter what question they asked you, this is the answer you give. And the media has to find a way to break through that. And I think in most instances you don't. Now there are some noted exceptions such as when Clinton was in Russia trying to talk about the failed economy and people said, but what about Monica Lewinsky. Which is sort of interesting, you know, the media was hounding there and they weren't going to let him talk about his agenda. They had their own agenda. But in much of this we let the politicians or whoever set the agenda and we're not really in that sense being responsible to the public.

Ms. Borgen: I have talked to hundreds of people in the last six months in my job, and I have found out that people are not planning to vote because they are sick of politics because of what is going on in Washington. So how in this day do we deal with issues that are larger than our state, but they're going to have a direct impact on the politics of this state because the people who should be engaged at this point are not engaged. In fact, [they] have made a conscious decision that they are not going to be engaged at this point. So how do we deal with that?

Mr. Leary: I started in an age of political civility that no longer exists. You have people attacking each other and politicians, so that why would anyone in their right mind think this was a noble endeavor, that what you do in politics. And nobody talks about the noble calling of public service anymore

Ms. Parry: I'm Kate Parry, I'm an editor at the Pioneer Press. There is an interesting piece of research that came out this week that I think speaks to some of the questions and concerns about the quantity and quality of coverage. Kathleen Hall Jamieson at the Annanberg School is studying 12 different markets and coverage of gubernatorial campaigns. And both newspapers in the Twin Cities market are part of that study. Her latest findings show, it's very troubling in most markets, there is less coverage of the gubernatorial campaign that makes it to page one as compared to 1994. And she chalks this up to Lewinsky and Clinton bumping the gubernatorial races off the front page just at a time when governors are becoming more important as the responsibilities go to the states. But that's not true in the Twin Cities market. And, in fact, at both newspapers there is considerable more coverage appearing on page one in this race than was true in 1994. Neither newspaper has cut back on the resources devoted to it. And, in fact, in some fairly unusual ways both newspapers have added some untraditional resources

Mr. Benson: The only caveat I would give to that is they are covering the issues that the candidates want them to cover. And so, if there is something in that study, the candidates are doing a good job. They are not being forced to ask questions about housing or whatever else is out there, that's the media's job.