Nieman Foundation at Harvard
When I’m asked about the future of news, I always say I’m optimistic, at least on net. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be holes, and the holes I worry about most are at the local level. The pre-Internet journalism model was highly localized because distribution was highly localized; the web changes that dramatically.
That’s the context for this interesting new paper from Horacio Larreguy, John Marshall, and James Snyder, Jr., looking at corruption in Mexico and how it gets reported — and how that that reporting impacts elections (emphasis mine):
We estimate the effect of local media outlets on political accountability in Mexico, focusing on malfeasance by municipal mayors…In particular, we compare neighboring precincts on the boundaries of media stations’ coverage areas to isolate the effects of an additional media station.
We find that voters punish the party of malfeasant mayors, but only in electoral precincts covered by local media stations (which emit from within the precinct’s municipality). An additional local radio or television station reduces the vote share of an incumbent political party revealed to be corrupt by 1 percentage point, and reduces the vote share of an incumbent political party revealed to have diverted funds to projects not benefiting the poor by around 2 percentage points.
We also show that these electoral sanctions persist: at the next election, the vote share of the current incumbent’s party continues to be reduced by a similar magnitude…However, we find no effect of media stations based in other municipalities.
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October 29 2014 All candidates forum Osoyoos British Columbia Canada
The auditorium was 85% full
the Old Guard are gathered near the podium by the East entrance
The OG is here to root for their candidates and heckle / intimidate all others. They did their job well.
The Moderator explained how the questions were sorted out to prevent duplicates.
My preference would be that each candidate pick 2 random questions out of 200+
answering 1 of them, then the next candidate…
Political action groups were there from the “pro firehall group” Sorry Michael Ryan, you being a standing councilor;
should have stayed out of the debate completely. What if Mike Plant and Stu Wells attended and took up as much time.
Boo to you MR.
During my opening speech I was heckled by the OG.
After the incident the moderator told me “if You acted up like that again, I will have to ask you to leave”
never saying anything to those that disrupted my podium time.
Future forums will have many more camcorders trained on these controlling groups; shining some light on this illegal practice.
The preselected questions were asked and answered (up to 9 times) ad nauseum.
There are many more current hot button issues that should have been asked:
Like the overpayment of 1.6 million (4 times too much) for the fire hall land.
The cowboy cops of osoyoos on the Province front page!!! (just days before)
The mayor on the front page of the Osoyoos times (current issue) pictured removing private property signage.
Who was in the back seat of your car Mr Mayor?
This is why we elect such pathetic representatives. No tuff questions are ever asked.
Candidates with shady backgrounds get a free pass.
Then the candidates closing statements.
As I was putting my camcorder away I heard people say things like; “I’m glad I came”
“this was more interesting than I expected”
One of the candidates was heard to say “I knew them all” when someone said “that was brave to step in between the combatants”
Two sets of video footage are posted on Youtube under dougformayorosoyoos.
Watch the above videos and see what a terrible format these All Candidates Forums are.
Random questions and more camcorders will be an improvement.
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