Drinks & Dialogue Recap
Media Influence on Voter Turnout
It was a packed room for our Drinks & Dialogue featuring league member Melissa Libert giving a user-friendly version of her Master’s thesis showing a significant drop in voter turnout for municipal elections in communities with no media.
Drinks & Dialogue Chair Camille Taylor introduced Melissa who is also Assistant General Manager and Development Director at WGLT and WCBU radio stations.
It was the best turnout in a while for a Drinks & Dialogue but the subject of a vanishing media landscape and the repercussion for voting and democracy was a compelling subject.
Melissa shared that 55 million Americans across the country live in communities with no local news source. She also said that trust in media is at an all-time low — down to 22% from a high of 77% in 1964. Illinois lost 85% of its working journalists last year. What is left is a landscape of talking heads and podcasters giving opinions with a huge void of actual trained journalists.
Melissa pointed out there is very little data on voter turnout for municipal elections at the county-wide and state level, with McLean County offering a rare exception. And there is little scholarly research about the subject of vanishing media and voter turnout.
Melissa concluded from her research that there appears to be at least a correlation between loss of a community newspaper and lower voter turnout for municipal elections. The loss of newspapers results in a reduction of a watchdog function of city councils, school boards and county governments as well as a lack of information about candidates. Leaguers who have worked to put together Vote411 voter guide information say too often candidates are reluctant to provide answers to questionnaires.
WGLT News Director Eric Stock was also there and shared a growing reluctance by candidates and some elected officials to respond to questions or requests for interviews. He said instead, candidates and officials choose to play to their base and use their own social media where they can craft their own message and not be accountable to voters or constituents.
Melissa recommends the book “Them” by Ben Sasse in which he describes the current media landscape of cable news, pundits and podcasts whose entire point is to outrage, polarize and divide us.
She also recommends the documentary film “Join or Die” which the league will co-sponsor with host Not In Our Town for a showing at 6:30 p.m. March 31 at the Bloomington Library. More information about that event is elsewhere in this newsletter.
|