Is Local Election Coverage in the Media Suffering?

Mainstream media is not focused on local issues, leaving new media to pick up the slack.

In the most critical election in many years, the media coverage of the recent Primary elections seems to be overshadowed by other national news.

Recent years have shown that local coverage especially is lacking. As elections data site FiveThirtyEight reported, "Local News Coverage Is Declining — And That Could Be Bad For American Politics." It found, "The local news business was devastated by COVID-19, even though consumers wanted more of its product…. A growing body of research has found that government is worse off when local news suffers."

Elections are an expression of the county's current climate. Elected officials and politicians are the decision-makers who can directly impact a community's way of life through one vote. But is the media doing enough to cover the people's decisions during election season?

Consider what happened this week during the primary elections in three battleground states, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Kentucky. These states are some of the first to enter primary elections and some of the first to indicate what issues and topics are important to the communities that cast a vote.

Both races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina featured a "celebrity" candidate - Pennsylvania's TV doctor Mehmet Oz, and North Carolina's headline-making congressman Madison Cawthorn. Dr. Oz's race in Pennsylvania was too close to call on election night, and Cawthorn was ultimately defeated by another Republican challenger. Coverage of these two races has been overshadowed by stories such as the $40 billion Ukrainian aid package and the entertaining Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial.

Coverage of major trends and issues that proved to be important to the local communities in the primary races seem to be an afterthought when looking at the media's coverage. Data shows that communities want more coverage of their local issues, but the need is not being met.