Before every election season, editors and political reporters at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution vow to do a thorough job of covering campaigns, highlighting not just poll results but also providing comprehensive reports on the candidates’ platforms. But after each election, editors and reporters find areas in which coverage wasn’t as complete as they had hoped.
“We take election coverage very seriously and commit substantial resources to it,” said Hank Klibanoff, managing editor for news. “Our goal is to dig deep into the prevailing attitudes, positions of politicians, trends and strategy. [But] there is not an election I’ve ever been part of as a reporter or an editor that I didn’t look back and wish I’d done more more and deeper profiles of candidates, more watchdog reporting of campaign charges and promises, more sense of voter attitudes. And there’s not an election that didn’t produce surprises.”
This year, one of the surprises was the tough challenge that former DeKalb County Commissioner Hank Johnson has given incumbent U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), forcing her into a runoff. Most of the attention leading up to the election was focused on the latest controversy involving McKinney a scuffle with a Capitol police officer.
News columns paid less attention to Johnson, although The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Voters Guide did provide some details: He served as a magistrate judge in DeKalb for 12 years and a county commissioner for five. I also learned from the Voters Guide that he lived in Lithonia, is interested in bringing more federal dollars to the district and pledges to take care of his constituents. (McKinney also attracted a second Democratic challenger, Alpharetta businessman John F. Coyne III.)
“We certainly should have put more effort in covering the 4th District race, and perhaps we would have seen that Cynthia McKinney was in more trouble than we suspected. As it turns out, this was the best story to emerge from the election season,” said metro editor Bert Roughton.
Perhaps one of the reasons that political reporters may have misjudged the depth of McKinney’s support is her own aversion to news media attention. She has said in blogs and other public forums that the mainstream media are out to destroy her, and she rarely answers questions from reporters in public forums.
The same can be said for Ralph Reed. In the Republican primary for lieutenant governor, the former Christian Coalition leader went down in flames at the hands of another lesser-known candidate. This newspaper rightly focused a great deal on Reed, who became quite artful at dodging tough questions about his involvement with disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
By contrast, this newspaper didn’t tell readers enough about his challenger, Casey Cagle, nor about the Democratic primary hopefuls for the second highest office in the state. The AJC covered the debates, did candidate profiles and talked about where the candidates stood on major issues. But candidates with smaller war chests simply didn’t get as much coverage as those with more money.
In fairness, said Roughton, this newspaper hasn’t historically focused on the lieutenant governor’s race. Reed’s national prominence led to more coverage this year.
The newspaper’s most comprehensive coverage focused on the Democratic primary for governor. We offered coverage from veteran reporters and columnists on Cathy Cox’s and Mark Taylor’s campaigns, their attack ads and their plans for the future.
“We worked pretty hard to listen to voters and even sent reporters out across the state to talk to folks about what they were feeling and what they considered important,” said Roughton. He also pointed out that in the days immediately preceding the election, candidates were asked their views on key issues and were allowed to give their responses “without our filter or interpretation.”
Overall, Klibanoff said, “I was very pleased that we were able to go deep on the big races and include in our coverage new and appealing methods of presenting the information: easily scannable and digestible graphics and charts and grids . . . ”
More information helps prevent surprises for the readers and for us.
