Where's TV When You Need It? Not at the Senate Races... : Television: The seven major VHF stations have all but ignored the political races. Says one Senate campaign manager: 'If each candidate shows up on local television twice, it would be a miracle.'

By STEVE WEINSTEIN

May 19, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Pop quiz: There are four U.S. Senate races coming to a head in California June 2, with 13 candidates vying for spots in November’s general election. Name them. For extra credit, specify who is running against whom. You can even use local TV newscasts to help.

The problem is, just two weeks before the election, television newscasts would make for a lousy cheat sheet. Stretched thin by providing coverage of the recent turmoil in Los Angeles, most of the seven major VHF stations have until now all but ignored the hotly contested Senate campaigns, the 52 congressional races and numerous local contests--all of which, TV news people concede, have been rendered more important than usual by the recent unrest.

“What could be and should be one of the hottest political stories in years is not getting the attention that it should be getting,” said Josh Mankiewicz, political reporter for KCAL-TV Channel 9, who was singled out by several Senate candidates’ campaign managers as the one local reporter who consistently has paid attention to the Senate races over the last few months.

“We expected to get very little coverage going into this,” said one campaign manager who asked that his name not be used, “because we knew there were (so many) candidates running around trying to get on TV and in newspapers, but it’s been much worse than we anticipated. When all is said and done, if each candidate shows up on local television twice, it would be a miracle.”

Campaign managers for several other candidates expressed similar frustrations. For many weeks, they said, the candidates have been making public appearances, holding press conferences and scheduling interviews, and television--the medium that many people rely on for most of their news--has simply refused to show up. The three Democrats vying for the seat of retiring Sen. Alan Cranston--Rep. Barbara Boxer, Rep. Mel Levine and Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy--held a debate in April and only KCAL-TV covered it. Boxer’s campaign manager said that they have asked all of the commercial L.A. stations to televise similar debates between these three politicians, and all have declined.

The fallout from this neglect, campaign managers and some local reporters agree, is that the electorate is likely to be uninformed when they go to vote, if they bother to vote at all--or they will have gotten much of their information from campaign advertising on TV.

“If there was more continuous coverage of the campaign, you would have voters who were far better informed and probably a bigger voter turnout,” said Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer’s campaign manager. “A voter who just doesn’t know enough about any of the candidates to decide may just stay home. And that’s unfortunate for every candidate and for democracy.”

“This year more than ever, the Senate races cry out for attention because of the two races and all the candidates,” said Greg Stohr, spokesman for Rep. Tom Campbell, who is running in the Republican primary for Cranston’s seat against Bruce Herschensohn and Sonny Bono. “Many people don’t even know who is running, and if they do know Tom Campbell is running, they want to know how he plans to beat Dianne Feinstein.”

Campbell, of course, doesn’t have to worry about Feinstein because she is competing against fellow Democrats Gray Davis and Joseph M. Alioto in a special election for the other Senate seat vacated two years ago by Gov. Pete Wilson and currently occupied by a Wilson appointee, Sen. John Seymour. Seymour faces competition from Rep. William Dannemeyer, Jim Trinity and Bill Allen on the Republican side.

“I think the campaigns have a legitimate complaint,” said one local reporter, who requested anonymity and added that TV news’ refusal to thoroughly dissect the political races plays into the hands of big-money candidates who can buy the most commercial time. “Free media coverage of a political campaign is essential to the democratic process, but the sense of obligation to cover politics on television has simply declined. And that is really worrisome. How will people even know how to vote?”

News directors, many of whom are operating on reduced budgets and with less staff than in the past, contend that they have simply been overwhelmed by the riot and its aftermath.

Warren Cereghino, news director at KTLA-TV Channel 5, said that the last four weeks have been “utter madness as far as news is concerned.” He listed the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the earthquake near Palm Desert, the gas explosion in Guadalajara, another earthquake in Northern California and then the verdict in the Rodney G. King beating case and subsequent days of civil unrest--all of which stretched the resources of every local TV station and pushed aside coverage of an unwieldy primary campaign.

“There are too many races and too doggone many people running, and it’s just not possible for this television station to cover these races in as finite detail as they wish we would,” Cereghino said. “It’s just too cumbersome.”

“Every night you have to set your priorities, and we’ve been dealing with more immediate concerns,” said Jeff Wald, news director at KCOP-TV Channel 13. “I won’t say politics is any less important than anything else. It’s probably more important than ever and something we shouldn’t ignore, but there are so many compelling stories right now that we haven’t had trouble filling our limited air time with priority information and material that people need to know.”

Campaign managers understand that the urgent news events, coupled with a need to follow the presidential candidates whenever they come to town, has relegated the Senate and congressional races to the TV assignment desk’s bottom drawer. In addition, they acknowledged, the sheer number of Senate candidates stifles TV coverage because if a station covers one candidate’s public appearance, then, to be fair, it is obligated to cover all the candidates. It’s easier, campaign managers said, to ignore the whole thing.

None of the campaigns fault TV for focusing so heavily on the riot and its aftermath, but they point out that during this ratings sweeps month some stations still have found the time to air profiles on actor Jason Priestly and on people supposedly abducted by space aliens--stories “inspired” by TV entertainment programming.

Several news directors said that they plan to remedy the problem by intensifying coverage of all political races in the coming two weeks. Rick Friedman, political producer at KCBS-TV Channel 2, said that while his station in normal news times would have started earlier, concentrating on politics now is actually ideal.

“It would not be a good idea to cover the Senate races for a longer period of time because there has yet to be any real interest in the campaign,” he said. “Voters do not get interested until the last week or two.”

Linda Breakstone, political reporter for KABC-TV Channel 7, agreed. “I was covering (Gov. Bill) Clinton’s education speech the other day, and he was spouting all these platitudes, and I turned to one of my colleagues and said, ‘Boy, this just doesn’t seem as important these days,’ ” she said. “It’s politics as usual compared to all the real life-and-death, bottom-line things we’ve been dealing with (for the last three weeks). So maybe it’s worked out for the best. Maybe people are hungry now for information, for answers to these problems, and they will really pay attention during these next two weeks.”

Breakstone added that the Senate candidates could have grabbed much positive TV coverage if they’d displayed some hands-on leadership during the crisis. None did, she said.

While applauding any news coverage that they can get, campaign managers disagree that such a commitment during the last two weeks is enough.

“Because politics is so removed from people’s lives, they need to be exposed to candidates over an extended period of time and repeatedly; otherwise, the average voter will not absorb any information from a single TV news story,” said Roy Behr, campaign manager for Leo McCarthy. “And the problem you’ve got is stations are now talking about focusing on the race for the next two weeks and you have 12 Senate candidates out there and only 10 days of news left. That doesn’t bode well for extended or repetitive coverage.”

Without such coverage, campaign managers and several TV journalists admit, the manipulations of political consultants and their potentially misleading advertisements assume even greater significance than usual. Some say that the candidates with the most money can, without much scrutiny of their record or the claims they make in their ads, in effect buy their way into contention.

“These are supposed to be elections, not auctions,” said Kapolczynski. “A seat in the U.S. Senate should not go to the person with the most money. It’s a sad day when the best fund-raising ability determines who wins, and in this year with such limited media coverage of the races, that certainly appears to be the trend.”

But Breakstone argued that because of the furor over misleading and negative ads of past political seasons, voters are now sensitized to see through these commercials. “And with all that has happened,” she said, “they’ve seen so many other things that are more important that if they see a trivial commercial, they will really turn away and go, ‘Yuck.’ And you have to put some responsibility on the voters. If you’re going to vote for someone, get some information about them. Read the newspaper.”

Jose Rios, managing editor at KTTV-TV Channel 11, dismissed complaints from candidates as “self-serving,” arguing that television cannot be held responsible for everything that goes wrong in politics. “Sure they would have gotten more coverage had (the riot) not happened, but they have to understand that it would have been irresponsible of any news organization to pretend that this was just a regular pre-primary period.”

The Race for U.S. Senate

In the California June 2 primary, 13 candidates are vying for spots in November’s general election for the state’s two senatorial seats. By party and by seat, they are:

Alan Cranston’s Seat

Republican:

Sonny Bono

Tom Campbell

Bruce Herschensohn

Democrat:

Barbara Boxer

Mel Levine

Leo T. McCarthy

Pete Wilson’s Seat

Democrat:

Joseph M. Alioto