Is there information missing from the political coverage?
Singer: There are gaps, but if there was more information how could we take it all in.
Maly: There are some gaps we cannot fill. The state has a hard time living up to the word ‘community.’
Ensuring accuracy and accountability
Is there a need in this Information Age for an intermediary to ensure accuracy?
Sloan: All material published is checked and run through an intermediary. There must be fact-checking, even for citizen journalists. Credibility and reputation is compromised by errors and innaccurate facts.
Singer: Traditional media doesn’t always get the facts right. The editing process checks facts and ensures accuracy. Reporting can be innaccurate but a formal editing process, an intermediary, mitigates that. There will not ever be media free of errors.
Maly: There is no intermediary for Helena Civic TV. Chaos of media is saving civilization, according to Maly.
Johnson: We need to educate people on informative, accurate Web sites.
Gray: People need to be taught early what information is inaccurate and detrimental.
Local political issues in TV newsrooms
Gray: The national media largely controls what content is broadcast. We are trying to stretch out of traditional ways to present information. We are trying to figure out what information people need on a local level. The proliferation of broadband has allowed more information to get out to people.
Maly: Free speech is the premise of community access television where the individual can have a voice alongside big media.
K’Lynn Sloan speaks
Sloan is the Montana correspondent for MTV Choose or Lose Street Team ‘08.
Many young people rely on the Internet for political information.
Montana’s youth are well-versed in the issues surrounding this year’s election. But they lack information on local ballot issues. Local candidates are largely unknown to younger people.
If young people aren’t getting information, their community involvement is less.
Social networking sites work well in metropolitan areas but not so well in smaller communities.
We have to harness the power of all the new tools we have to share and provide information.
Matt Singer speaks
Singer is CEO of Forward Montana and Left in the West blogger.
How do you get good coverage of 19 different races on the local ballot? “This is not super user-friendly.”
Montana’s problems will be best solved in Montana, not in Washington. We need more good media, good journalists out in places like Montana.
Conflicts of interest can be a good thing. They can bring new and different perspectives to the table.
Stephen Maly speaks
Maly is director of the non-profit Helena Civic Television. They want to provide Montanans with unfiltered and unbiased government information.
Helena Civic TV strives to provide people a chance to see their political offiicials at work. It is reality TV and asspires toward ubiquity.
The network looks to overcome geographic and social barriers. “We want to bring Canadian content into Montana.”
There are threats and opportunities associated with these efforts.
Charles S. Johnson speaks
Johnson is chief of the Lee State Bureau. He agrees that this election is one of the most interesting he’s seen and he thinks the coverage of the candidates and the issues has been good.
Timing the coverage of the candidates and issues the issues has been a challenge.
Traditional media have covered the basics of state-wide elections. New media has enhanced this coverage. On-line magazines and blogs contribute a lot of information to Montana’s political awareness
The established media tends to cover issues of the establishment. Main stream media needs to expand.
There is room for improvement in the timing of election coverage; more coveerage closer to the election may be more effective.
The Final Panel
This panel will look at the public’s needs for political information.
This year’s election is one of the most exciting in recent memory and the need for information surrounding such an election is paramount.
First to speak is Linda Gray. She is president of Max Media of Montana. Her company is expanding its coverage in Montana with increased local newscasts.
She says that the increased amount of information has required the adaptation of traditional media.
Some people rely soley on political advertisements to make their decision to support a candidate or policy.
All media markets in Montana are small market media because of limited resources. The public is interested in this election and getting information to these people is a challenge of small market media.
The need for information is critical to people making informed, sound decisions.
Comments from the audience, responses by the panel
McAuliffe: Where does text messaging fit in? The “moccasin telegraph” is gossip and in the absence of formal media, this is the news.
One of the themes that has come up in the other forums in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley is youth-organizing is youth-media.
Hill: The youth is deciding how the media is organized.
Anderlik: Young labor leaders are beginning to see how innovation can be useful.
LaPlant: “I find myself texting.” Children all over the country text me and I am compelled to respond. The young people drag us along. We have to maintain a level of technological savvy.
Question
What is the most effective way you communicate with your communities? and How do people within your community share information with each other?
Anderlik: Email is the most effective form of information sharing. Individual contact competes with television, radio and other media out there. “Talking at the workplace” is the best way of communicating.
Hill: “The Internet is indispensable now.” Email and facebook are widely used at the Poverello Center. “There is a connectedness in blogs.” Grassroots organizations make a difference in our lives.
LaPlant: “One of the reasons I sitting here today is because I poke my nose into anything that has do with human rights.” I want to keep people connected to the issues and I do that with email. I’ve noticed in my community casinos have become a place to congregate, interact and share information. Word of mouth, “the moccasin telegraph,” is very important and is not part of main stream media.
