a Minnesota News Council Forum
December 16, 1998

On the evening of December 16, as the airwaves filled with coverage of U.S. bombs falling on Baghdad, about 60 people - primarily political candidates and journalists - gathered in the auditorium at the Lutheran Brotherhood building to review media coverage of third party candidates in the last election.

Candidates came from the Reform, Libertarian, Green, Grassroots, Taxpayers', Socialist Workers, Protect the Earth and the People's Champion parties. They came to praise and blame, examine and explain. While acknowledging that coverage of third parties was much better in 1998 than in any previous year, all agreed it still fell short in some areas.

Among the concerns candidates raised: lack of coverage of the issues they considered important, lack of coverage of races other than the governor's race, exclusion from debates and problems with polling.

Robert Rafn, a citizen interested in opening the election process to new voices, conducted exit interviews at one voting site in St. Paul on election day, asking people how many candidates they expected to see on the ballot running for governor. Of the 45 people interviewed, 27 (60%) said "three"; there were eight candidates. Rafn produced a report, "Media & Democracy. Case Study: Minor Parties in the 1998 MN Governor's Race," which he distributed to news media managers and others prior to the forum.

Rafn's interest in third-party politics grew into a passion during the 1996 presidential race. He tells this story: In October 1996, he called CBS News in New York to ask it to provide information on minor-party candidates; CBS News told him it had no intention of mentioning minor-party candidates at all (other than Ross Perot) and that was its prerogative because "We have freedom of speech."

"You mean the freedom to not allow alternative views to be expressed?" Rafn said with some amazement. The CBS employee responded with "Goodbye, sir" and hung up.

Rafn learned of a poll done in January '97 in which 67% of voters said they wanted to know about other options on the ballot. "When the majority of people want other options but they aren't getting them, and the media justification is that people don't want information, there's something wrong," Rafn said. "So I just decided to track it for myself this time to see what kind of information we're getting, what we aren't getting.

"I took a step back from advocating for one minor party or minor parties in general, to ask 'What does the public want and what do they need for their democracy to be able to function?' "

Rafn focuses on the critical role polling plays in structuring an election, from inclusion in or exclusion from debates, to the amount of media coverage a candidate receives. His report says:

"The issue of the polls is extremely significant, because it was used repeatedly by most of the major media to justify the continued exclusion of the minor parties from coverage. Staff and management at the different news agencies would frequently say, 'When the minor parties start showing significant numbers in the polls, then we'll cover them.' What they failed to mention... is:

Rafn challenged the polling procedures of Rob Daves, Director of the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll, and Mark Sump, of Capital Targeting Inc., which conducts the MN PULSE poll.

Daves denied that the Minnesota Poll worded its polling questions in the manner Rafn said it did. He explained that the Minnesota Poll started last February to measure name recognition of all candidates who were known or expected to be running for the governor's office. (The only third-party candidate then registered was Reform Party candidate, Jesse Ventura.)

In June, the poll began asking: "If the election were held today, would you vote for Democractic Party candidate Hubert 'Skip' Humphrey III, Republican Party candidate Norm Coleman, or Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura?" They allowed people to volunteer other names, but did not name other candidates or parties.

After the primary, the Minnesota Poll measured all candidates, listing candidate name and party.

From the candidate's perspective, that was too late. "Prior to the primary you're building your team." said Leslie Davis, write-in gubernatorial candidate with the Protect the Earth Party. "It helps morale (to see your candidate mentioned). People become discouraged when nothing gets reported."

"The period preceding the primary is critical," said Ken Pentel, Green Party candidate for governor. "My concern is with TV, where most people get their information. TV completely omitted coverage until after the primary. That's unacceptable. I felt it was irresponsible how the public airwaves were used."

Dean Alger agreed. Alger, a member of the Minnesota Compact, which promotes more substantive elections, said, "TV news is a big problem. It does a systematically poor job of coverage."

"There was not a lot of thought about coverage of candidates until after the primary," said Raelin Storey, of KSTP-TV, one of two television reporters to attend the forum. (Others who had planned to attend said the Iraq story kept them from being there.) "It's a resource issue. I was single-handedly doing all our election coverage."

It was a resource issue, too, at other media outlets. The Star Tribune, MPR and KTCA won praise for expending more resources than previously on coverage of third-party candidates: including them in weekly candidate question-answer features, engaging them in a third-party candidate debate, allowing air time for broadcast statements, including them in voter's guides.

But Dennis McGrath, Star Tribune politics and government editor, said if the paper had it to do over it would allocate its time and resources better. He said he would include more coverage of races other than the governor's race, and he applauded Rafn's suggestion of running the candidate question-answer feature in the Sunday paper (rather than Monday) to get higher readership.

Socialist Workers candidate Tom Fiske asked Lynda McDonnell of the Pioneer Press why her paper did not cover all the candidates, at the very least when they filed their candidacy.

"We didn't make it the same priority as the Star Tribune did," she said, but she cited a story the Pioneer Press did do on the governor candidates and the paper's inclusion of all candidates in the voter's guide. As well, the paper referred readers to more complete sources of information, like VoteSmart. "Will we do it differently next time? Yes. Will we do it to the level of detail that you want? Probably not."

Fiske challenged the media's view that there is no interest in minor parties, saying the televised minor-party debate was a hit. He said people recognized him, walked up to him on the street and expressed interest in his campaign.

After the primary, when election coverage increased, Rafn said he called the Minnesota Poll and was told that it had stopped listing all eight candidates in the poll question because it found that even fewer people supported the minor-party candidates when all the choices were listed. Daves denied that: he produced the exact wording of the polling question used after the primary showing that all eight candidates were offered as a choice. ("Fancy Ray" McCloney pointed out that his name and his party name were both given incorrectly.)

In the newspaper the candidates were not listed separately, but were combined into the category "Other." On the web site, all the candidates were listed separately, along with their percent of support.

"Regardless of whether Rob [of the Minnesota Poll] listed all the candidates every time he polled or whether he did it only once early on," said Rafn, "he was by far the exception rather than the rule. Every other governor's poll of which I am aware either listed the three major-party candidates only, or open-endedly listed no candidates, allowing the respondent to 'freely' answer with the names of the five candidates that they did not know existed."

Rafn gave examples of the CTI and Mason Dixon agencies polls (used by KARE-TV, MPR and the Pioneer Press, and MN-PULSE), both of which he said listed the three major-party candidates only. (Libertarian candidate Kevin Houston shared Rafn's impression; his wife was polled and told she had to pick from among the three.)

"In both of these [polls] ... specific minor parties on the ballot were not a recordable response, thus making 'significant numbers' impossible for them to achieve," said Rafn.

Those "significant numbers" are important if a candidate is to get into the debates. Judy Duffy, president of the Minnesota League of Women Voters explained that the League invites candidates to participate in debates when they receive 5% in a non-partisan poll. KTCA required candidates to have a 10% showing in the polls to participate in its on-air debates (except the debate specifically for minor-party candidates). Some other sponsors required 15%. (The Reform Party candidate for Secretary of State, Alan Shilepsky, challenged the League on accepting polling results from MN-PULSE, which he said was not non-partisan because 95% of its business comes from the DFL party. Mark Sump, while acknowledging that the Democractic Party is a large client, said this in no way invalidated their polling methodology.)

Those requirements effectively barred all but the Reform Party from participating in the debates. Chris Wright, gubernatorial candidate of the Grassroots Party said barring minor-party candidates was absurd. His running mate, Darrell Paulsen, the only candidate with a disability, was excluded from a debate on disability issues co-sponsored by the MN Consortium on Disability and the League of Women Voters.

Duffy defended the 5% criterion, saying: "We sponsor the debates as a service to the voters, featuring the candidates most likely to win. This is not a service to candidates."

But Libertarian candidate Kevin Houston questioned whether the debates were really serving the public. Not only are third-party candidates, issues and viewpoints excluded, he said, but when, for example, Martin Sabo "wasn't available" to debate, the debate was canceled. No other candidates had an opportunity to explain their positions. "Whoever is ahead will do whatever they can to avoid debating," Houston said.

Without getting into the debates, the candidates weren't able to get their issues in front of the public, and issues reporting is what third-party candidates -- and citizens -- wanted to see more of.

"The media need to find a way to cover ideas," said Dean Alger. "Citizen groups are telling us they are very interested in new voices. The news media needs to think much more creatively. We need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions, like, 'What are these elections for?' It's about choices and about our future."

Rafn agrees: "There seems to be an unfortunate logic at most news agencies that the only reason a person should vote for a candidate is to win... [but] there are other reasons to vote. Some people may wish to vote for a party whose beliefs are most consistent with their own, to "send a message." Other people may wish to cast their vote in hopes of giving a minor party enough votes to become a major party. These reason for voting are ... legitimate."

"Is it the role of the media to take one person's ideas and to build a party around it?" asked Len Witt, of MPR's Civic Journalism Initiative, questioning whether the candidates were asking the media to do the candidates' job.

"No, it's not your role," said Wright, but he said he believed it was the media's role to explore issues in depth: for example, the marijuana controversy. During the campaign there was discussion of Coleman's having smoked it, Humphrey's having voted to decriminalize it, and Ventura appearing on the cover of High Times magazine, but no one wrote about the substantive issues (crime, prison building, imprisonment rates) associated with our current system of criminalizing marijuana use and sale.

Leslie Davis complained that the media did not cover his 14 concerns about environmental protection. He proposed that industrial companies pay a higher fee for using groundwater. Proceeds would be spent on various environmental, energy and transportation programs.

Doug Friedline, campaign manager for Jesse Ventura, told Davis and the other candidates that part of their problem was that the issues they considered important weren't so important to the public. Davis said polling has shown the environment to be the public's third greatest concern.

Libertarian Collin Wilkinsen pointed to tax reform, an issue of great interest to the public: Thousands turned out at a tax rally the Libertarians sponsored last spring but the rally received little coverage. "How did you drop the ball?" he asked the Star Tribune.

"We blew it," said McGrath. "We had a story because our reporter was there at the capitol, but we didn't have a photographer. It was a weekend and we're always short-staffed; it was too late to assign one... It didn't get the play it deserved."

Candidates complained about the timing of the coverage they did get. "It isn't effective to wait until the end of the campaign (before looking at the issues)," said Fiske. But McGrath disagreed: "An article closer to the election is more valuable than months before."

The forum ended with the question of responsibility - whose responsibility is it to see that campaigns, candidates and issues get covered?

Germann and several other candidates said it was their own responsibility to get their issues in front of the public. Storey said the Green Party did a good job of staying in contact and sending press releases.

But Gary Gilson, Executive Director of the News Council, suggested that candidates cultivate relationships with reporters and editors, instead of relying on press releases. He also urged candidates not to ask for coverage every time they talk with a reporter. Reporters do not write stories to do anyone a favor, he said, but because they get excited about the subject.

"It is the responsibility of the media [to cover campaigns]," said Gilson. "They voluntarily make a pledge to do public service journalism. They must take it upon themselves to do that, but it's up to you to prod them.