Local journalism simply isn’t what it used to be.
It began with the death of your local hometown newspaper. It’s been compounded by an online media industry that’s too busy laying off existing reporters to spend much time expanding local reporting. Now the last bastion of local journalism, local TV broadcasters, are increasingly being hoovered up by giant companies for which real journalism isn’t much of a priority.
A new joint study out of Stanford and Emory University indicates that this shift is having a profoundly-negative impact on the American public, public discourse, and the democratic process. The researchers found that the erosion of quality local reporting is not only leaving America less informed, but more divided than ever before.
The full study, now peer-reviewed and published this week in the American Political Science Review, took a specific interest in Sinclair Broadcasting, which has been under fire in recent years for hoovering up the nation’s local broadcasters, then replacing their already-shaky local reporting with what many argue is little more than glorified propaganda.
Sinclair’s policy of forcing these local broadcasters to air homogenized, facts-optional “must run” segments went viral last year when Deadspin illustrated what this looks like in practice.
The Emory and Stanford study dissected both the content and viewership of 743 local news stations over the latter two thirds of 2017, analyzing some 7.41 million 2.5-minute segments. The study found that when Sinclair acquired a local news outlet, it unsurprisingly resulted in a notable spike in nationwide news coverage, and a notable decline in actual local reporting.
Often that’s simply a matter of cost. Covering local town halls, political campaigns, and regional issues often requires a lot of legwork larger companies aren’t keen to pay for at scale. Still, the end result is a public that no longer really understands what’s happening in their own towns and cities, opening the door to less meaningful oversight of local politicians.
“Over the longer term, this kind of consolidation has the potential to give significant electoral power to the owners of large media conglomerates and reduce the ability of voters to hold their local elected officials accountable,” study author Greg Martin told Motherboard in an email.
The study found that after Sinclair acquires a local broadcaster, ratings tend to dip, suggesting that viewers don’t actually like this shift away from genuine local reporting. But because this same phenomenon is likely playing out at other local broadcasters and newspapers, they’re left with few options to turn to if they want to try and remain informed on local issues.