I can think of a couple reasons why Mitt Romney chose to take questions from local TV reporters and KOA radio hosts yesterday, while blowing off all those “print” journalists in Denver.

The most obvious reason is that Romney thinks local TV news is watched by the swing voters he needs to win. This approach would be in line with what he did when he came to Colorado the day before the GOP caucus. Then, his target was Republican caucus goers. So Romney blew off all real-life journalists, TV and print, and took loving questions only from friendly, conservative talk-radio hosts, whose listeners were likely to be heading out to caucuses. So Romney got to talk directly to his target audience.

An alternative explanation for Romney’s local TV tour yesterday is that he was scared pesky print reporters would ask him tough questions while mayhem-and-fluff loving local TV news journalists would have one eye on the incoming rainstorm and therefore be unable and/or uninterested in asking him substantive questions.

If this was Team Romney’s thinking, they got it wrong. Denver’s local TV news didn’t suck up and ask softballs. They asked real questions about real issues in Colorado, including the most obvious question, given the drama in the State Legislature, about his view on civil unions.

CBS4 reporter Shaun Boyd introduced her piece by saying, “As you can see, Romney seemed a bit flustered by the questions viewers posted on our Facebook page, trying to steer the conversation back to topics he was comfortable with.”

I would say Romney was less flustered and more irritated with Boyd’s news judgment after she posed questions about civil unions (answer: no), college-tuition reductions for undocumented high school graduates (no), and medical marijuana (no).

Sounding like Colorado GOP chair Ryan Call who recently said birth-control issues were “small issues,” Romney told Boyd:

Romney: “Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about?

Boyd: This is a significant issue in Colorado.

Romney: The economy. The economy. The economy. Jobs. The need to put people back to work. The challenges of Iran. We have enormous issues that we face, but you want to talk about, go ahead.”

Boyd picked up where she had left off, telling Romney matter-of-factly, “Marijuana.”

And Romney said, “I oppose the legalization of marijuana….”

Boyd, along with her counterparts at Fox 31, 9News, and 7News, all asked Romney serious questions, perhaps the kind he wasn’t expecting from local TV reporters.

I’m hoping the tough questioning continues through the election season because it’s informative and it makes interesting television, as opposed to happy-talk questions like, “Hey, how’s your dog.”

But I guess in Romney’s case, that would be considered a hardball query as well.

If you watch local TV news in different cities around the country, and I’m not suggesting you do so, you see that a small number of stations have political beat reporters, but most do not.

Why?

“Most stations where politics is a beat with dedicated reporter happen to be in places where politics is part of the culture,” Deborah Potter, who writes about television news for the American Journalism Rewiew.  “So stations in Des Moines,  for example, Chicago, New Hampshire, New Orleans, places where politics is what makes the world go round.”

James Pindell, the political beat reporter for WMUR-TV in New Hampshire told me that’s exactly why he’s covering politics there.

“My station is crazy about politics,” he says. “It’s the state sport. We spend a lot of time on politics. It’s very much based on market.”

Pindell, who’s on the board of the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, could not explain why a station in a place like Denver would cover politics so closely.

Potter said a local TV news beat may be driven by the “passion of an individual reporter.”

“Unless you have some kind of huge story involving a particular person and particular issue are you ever going to say that’s something that will get more people to watch,” said 9News News Director Patti Dennis. “It’s about being responsible.  It’s about all the things I believe a media organization is responsible for.”

9News has a political beat, including YourShow, a  public Sunday affairs program airing on Channel 20, that’s divided between Matt Flener and Chris Vanderveen. Dennis said she’s interviewing now to add a possible third reporter to the beat.

Fox 31′s political beat reporter Eli Stokols files daily stories about Colorado politics, taking a newspaper-like approach that’s highly unusual for any market.

I asked longtime Fox 31 anchor Ron Zappolo how the political beat got established at his station.

“I think we’ve always wanted to, but I think [Stokols] has been the impetus,” said Zapplo whose own interest in politics is refelected in the frequent political topics you see on his Sunday night show, Zappolo’s Poeple. “And I think he’s pushed it. Some people have been into it. Some people haven’t been. But I think he’s been the impetus to really put more emphasis on politics.”

“Our newsroom has gone through a lot of changes during the last couple years,” Stokols explained. “That change created an opening for me to stake a claim on this beat. I mean, when we were between news directors in 2008, at the end of that year right after the Presidential election and into 2009, it was easy for me to start showing up at the Capitol when the session opened. And I said, this is what I do every day. And I would call in and send them stories, and I would work long hours. After a while, they got kind of comfortable with it or used to it, because it like, all right, we don’t have to worry about him. He’s doing this on his own, and we’re getting it done. Four months later, we’d been at the Capitol every day.”

But Stokols says he’s not the only one driving the political coverage. His station manager was the one, he said, who came up with the idea of leading off the sweeps earlier this year with a five-part series on the state budget and schools.

“To do five nights on education and the budget, when most people are bending over backwards to show flaming cars and dancing bears, it’s quite a contrast,” says Stokols.

Stokols agrees with Dennis that political coverage won’t help Fox 31′s low ratings, at least in the short term.

“Shifting view habits will be pretty hard to do based on political coverage,” Stokols told me. “And even if that were going to take place, it would take a long time.

 “This is about building a brand that’s recognizable and respected,” Stokols said. “Because you want people to think , if we want political news we’ll go to Fox 31. And then when you build that brand up, eventually, that’s when you start to see, perhaps, the numbers picking up.”

When you ask political junkies about Fox 31′s political reporter, Eli Stokols, many bring up Adam Schrager, who left 9News in February for a job in Wisconsin.

“With the departure of Adam Schrager, whom I think was an amazing reporter for television, I would say Stokols could be the heir apparent to Schrager in covering local politics,” Jon Caldara, of the Independence Institute told me.

“It seems he’s filled a void there that Adam left,” Colorado Senate President Brandon Shaffer (D-Longmont) told me. “Very few video journalists are really interested in state politics and what’s going on at the State Capitol, and he’s stepped up and filled that void.”

“I think Eli is filling the void that Adam Schrager left,” Colorado House Majority Leader Amy Stephens (R-Monument) said. “I think it’s a smart move.”

When I started asking people about Stokols last month, I wasn’t fishing for the Schrager comparison; the people I interviewed offered it up on their own.

And it’s true. Stokols is becoming the face of political journalism on local TV news in Denver.

But I think Stokols’ approach to political reporting is distinct from Schrager’s, and I actually had set out to write about the differences between the two journalists.

To me, Stokols is acting more like a newspaper reporter, filing daily stories, about the biggest political developments of the day, even if they’re not so big, while Schrager was on the air with broader pieces, fact checks of political advertisements, and YourShow, the public affairs program he developed and produced. Schrager didn’t cover the day-t0-day grind of political life in Colorado.

Both approaches have merit, and both are way unusual in the mayhem-and-fluff world of local TV news. Denver TV’s investigative reporters, while informing people less about the political issues and candidates, clearly have their value as well, even if their work over-dramatized or even silly at times. They stand out too  in an industry that specializes in bottom feeding.

But what Fox 31 (KDVR, Channel 31) is doing, dedicating a reporter to the political beat and airing stories most nights, is turning heads because, please correct me if I’m wrong, it’s just not done much anywhere by local TV news, much less in Denver, and even Schrager didn’t do it, especially toward the end of his career here.

“You look at the way TV news has evolved, and nobody dedicates a reporter down there [to cover the State Legislature) anymore, except there's Eli," said Marianne Goodland, who covered the Colorado Capitol for 13 years before taking a public relations job earlier this year. "A lot of TV people are there at the opening and end [of the legislative session], and they show up if there’s something hugely controversial. But day to day, that’s not something you see TV people doing. Eli is considered to be one of us, the capitol press corps.”

“He covers it like a newspaper reporter,” says longtime Fox 31 anchor Ron Zappolo. “He files a story every day. You know, he’s after it. He stays after it. He goes in there and he pitches these stories and he pitches them with passion. He convinces the powers that be here that, hey, we should be doing this and here’s why.”

“I think what’s unique is that we do it every day,” says Stokols. “That’s rare. News producers are generally inclined to look at a political story and say, that’s boring, unless it’s a sex scandal or unless there’s something juicy or outrageous about it. It’s taken me a while to get to this point in our newsroom, but thankfully I’ve gotten there because if I were still covering snow storms I probably wouldn’t still be in Denver.”

He adds that he still covers snow storms, just not nearly as often as he used to when he arrived at Fox 31 six years ago from Shreveport Louisiana, where got his first TV news job after graduating from the Columbia Journalism School in 2002.

So it’s not surprising that Stokols doesn’t see other local TV stations as his real competitors.

“I don’t just want to beat the other TV stations,” says Stokols. “Frankly, the other TV stations don’t seem to care about these types of stories. If they did they’d put people on them. But I want to beat Lynn [Bartels of The Denver Post]. I want to beat Tim and Jeremy and those people at The Post. I want us to be the place that people go to first, before they go to the Spot, which may be ambitious.  But if you’re not trying to be number one, what’s the point?”

“I’ve gone from reporting for TV and worrying about getting two minutes of television on the air by 9:00 to essentially being a blogger first, a newspaper writer,” continues Stokols, who wanted to be the next Tom Brokaw after it became clear that being a Major League Pitcher wasn’t in the cards. “You’re at [a political event], and you tweet it immediately. Then you go back and you get it on the web and beat The Denver Post. Then you worry about putting it on the newscast. You’re not that worried about beating your other three TV-station competitors, because they probably weren’t at the event to begin with.”

“I like to write,” continues Stokols, whose work also appears on KWGN, in an arrangement that was hammered this week story by the Colorado Independent. “It’s not hard for me to churn out a couple articles a day. If you want to make yourself and your reporting more far-reaching, you have to be able to write, you have to be able to do social media, you have to be able to tell that story in a newscast. You have to figure out how to do each delivery platform in the best way possible.”

As for the comparisons to Schrager, Stokols says: “Any comparison to Adam is humbling.  When I first got here six years ago, he was doing this and had already built a reputation. He was a model to show me that this could be done in local TV and done really well.”

Fox 31′s political coverage definitely gets the attention of political insiders, even if its impact on Fox 31′s low ratings is unknown. (I’ll address that topic in another blog post.)

You wouldn’t expect partisans or political activists to criticize a reporter like Stokols, but the near unanimous gush you hear from politicos of various stripes shows just how starved they are for TV reporters who regularly cover their events and report intelligently on what they do. There’s a huge pool of gratitude out there, all along the political spectrum, for a TV station that’s committed to covering politics every day.

“I greatly respect the outstanding work Eli Stokols did in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles for Channel 2 and Fox 31,” former GOP Chair Dick Wadhams told me via email. “Eli works very hard to be fair and objective but more importantly he seems to enjoy and understand the give and take of politics and campaigns.  Eli genuinely likes elected officials, candidates and activists and appreciates their roles in the political arena.”

“As the mainstream media pare down their scope, it is heartening to see the commitment both Stokols and Fox 31 have shown to providing their audience with in-depth political reporting,” said Kjersten Forseth, Executive Director of ProgressNow Colorado, which, for disclosure, I’ve advised on communications matters.

“Eli has brought a breath of fresh air to political reporting in Denver, ” said Mike Cerbo, president of the Colorado AFL-CIO, via email.  “He is interested in the issues and engaged in complex debates. His reporting is balanced and equitable. He is one of the few reporters in Denver who is covering politics as it relates to working families.”

Stokols told me he gets grief and epithets from liberals at rallies, who think Fox 31 is part of the national Fox cable network, of “fair and balanced” fame. Fox 31 Denver is an independent station with no connection to the Fox News Channel.

Maybe you’re tired about now, if not earlier, of my going on about Fox 31, when we know a content analysis would likely show the newscast to be, well, lacking big time, journalism-wise. And Denver has other journalists with more proven greatness than Eli Stokols.

Why am I doing this? I spent years documenting the obvious: that local news mostly sucks. Yes there’s good reporters, good intentions, and good stoies, and it could be worse, but still. I wrote about it a lot when I was a media critic at the Rocky.

Now, with journalism in free fall, and television still the most powerful force in politics, here’s a local TV news station that doing something that’s really, really the right thing to do.

Marching to the tune of journalistic integrity, Channel 4 has yet to air a story about Michael Hancock’s alleged ties to prostitutes.

“I said from the very beginning that this is a story we are going to pursue aggressively behind the scenes and conservatively on air,” News Director Tim Wieland at Channel 4, Denver’s CBS affiliate, told me. “The bar for reporting for this story is evidence. What I didn’t want to do was report on the process of our investigating. Once we had something concrete to report, some evidence to report, that we would do so. Because of the nature of the claim, and how sensational it is, the bar should be high.”

“We did all the same investigating that everybody else did,” he added. “In all that investigating, and we continue to investigate, we haven’t come up with evidence to support the claim. And so we haven’t done a news story about it.”

Wieland said his station published one story online explaining why Channel 4 did not accept Hancock’s conditions for reviewing cell phone records, but this story was deemed appropriate only for the station’s website.

“I’ll tell you, it was an extremely difficult decision. When you see everybody else out there doing it, and you’re the only one not. Believe me I did a lot of soul searching.  But at the end of the day, when you’re in this seat, you have to do what you feel is right. I had laid down the standard for our team, and it wouldn’t have been right for me to go back on it.”

But, says Wieland, CBS4′s investigation into the matter continues.

One of the things I try to do as a media critic is keep track of what officials tell journalists they’re going to do. And if promises made to reporters aren’t reported on, I ask about them.

For example, there’s the dangling promise Scott McInnis made to The Denver Post about clearing up his name months ago, but tempting as it is, that’s not what I’m returning to now.

Today I’m writing about State Treasurer Walker Stapleton’s promise to 7News in January that he’d seek an opinion from Attorney General John Suthers about whether it’s ok for him to moonlight for his former company.

You recall Stapleton’s moonlighting job would add as much as a quarter-time-plus job to his life and bring in, at $250 per hour, up to a nifty $150,000 on the side, making The Denver Post wonder about a “conflict of time.”

I asked 7News content producer/presenter Marshall Zelinger whether Suthers had produced an opinion on Stapleton’s moonlighting. Zelinger emailed me that Stapleton spokesman Brett Johnson told him that Stapleton never asked for an official opinion from Suthers’ office.

Zelinger told me that he understood from Stapleton, during his Jan. interview with him, that he was going to seek an official opinion, and that’s why Zelinger stated in his piece that Stapleton had “asked the attorney general’s office to make sure it’s OK to moonlight afterhours.”

Zelinger contacted Suthers’ office and confirmed that Stapleton never sought an opinion.

However, in January, Politics Daily reported that Stapleton had talked about the issue with Suthers but did not ask for a formal ruling.

You’re excused for missing it, but there’s some disagreement among local TV reporters about whether Ken Buck’s anti-abortion stance means he’d oppose common birth-control methods.

Three local TV news stations fact checked the segment of a Michael Bennet ad stating that Ken Buck “wants to ban common forms for birth control,” and each station came up with a different conclusion.

7News called it a fact, lumping it together with Buck’s position against abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, and stating that “this is Buck’s position on abortion.” (No citations are provided.)

News4 called it opinion, using this logic: “Buck’s position is, life begins at conception. By far, the most common forms of birth control, condoms and the pill, work before conception. And Buck is not opposed to those.” (News4 provided no citations.)

9News got uncharacteristically squishy on us and couldn’t decide if the statement was true or false. 9News told viewers that the veracity of Bennet’s ad “likely depends on what you consider common forms of birth control.” (As with all of its Truth Tests, 9News did provide detailed citations, one of which cited an email from Buck’s campaign stating that Buck opposes birth control methods that “would keep a fertilized egg from implanting, like hormone-based birth control methods, some other forms of the pill, IUDs, RU-486 and what’s known as the morning-after pill.” )

To get the facts on the table about the impact of birth-control measures on fertilized human eggs, I emailed Nanette Santoro, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at the University of Colorado.

She agreed to provide information, as long as I emphasized that she does not advocate any political position but instead provides current scientific thinking on the topic.

I asked her which human birth control methods don’t damage a fertilized egg.

She emailed me this list of barrier methods: Condom, diaphragm, Essure method of blocking the fallopian tubes. She also included vasectomy and tubal ligation.

I asked which methods cause damage to fertilized eggs.

Her reply:

“Combination birth control pills [made with hormones progestin and estrogen], vaginal rings, or patches interrupt ovulation and do not harm fertilized eggs. Eggs are not released in these cases.

Progestin-only pills, or implants, had been long thought to cause a hostile environment to the fertilized egg. The lining of the uterus is rendered unreceptive in this line of reasoning, and that is why women do not conceive. This conceptualization has led to the belief that these methods interrupt a fertilized egg. Therefore, a person who believes that life begins at conception would understandably be averse to such a method. However, newer research indicates that progestin-only methods make it harder for the sperm to get to the egg by affecting cervical mucus permeability to sperm, and may also interfere with the motility of the fallopian tubes, making it hard for sperm to get up there or for the eggs to get down. Therefore, the accumulated data now weighs more in favor of these methods not interfering with fertilized eggs. This is an important change in thinking.

Methods like the progestin IUD, Mirena, may also act this way and may not inhibit the fertilized egg but may prevent fertilization from occurring. The copper IUD is more likely to interfere with fertilization.”

I asked her: When you say the data “weighs more in favor” of progestin-only pills “not interfering” with fertilized eggs, do you mean that they could potentially interfere but probably won’t? This would be important to those who believe life begins at conception.

She replied:

“I think it’s unlikely but there is never any definitive evidence in that regard. So if I were a sort of ‘agnostic’ on this question of when life begins, I would feel comfort at the fact that my progestin-only method was unlikely to be interfering with a fertilized egg, and would sleep well at night.  However, if I were a very black-and-white thinker, and could not tolerate the possibility that a fertilized egg might be interfered with by my birth control method–no matter how small the possibility–it would be best for me to choose another method.”

I did a bit more research and then asked her this question: Even if taken properly, the combination pill that stops ovulation has a failure rate, meaning that sometimes ovulation occurs and an egg is fertilized accidentally. Very rare, I know. But if ovulation occurs, is implantation affected? In other words, is the accidental fertilized egg less likely to be able to implant in the uterus of a woman who’s been taking anti-ovulation pills?

Santoro replied:

“It’s not known with certainty what happens when a woman who uses birth control pills regularly ovulates.  Usually there is an error or an interaction with another medication that lowers the pill’s potency.  Because the pill contains both estrogen and progesterone, the lining is likely to be receptive to the fertilized egg.  But in some women, the lining is actually stimulated by too much progesterone.  In these cases, it gets relatively thin and might be inhospitable to a pregnancy.  It is hard to know whether this is even a credible mechanism, though, because the pill also inhibits sperm entry into the uterus and alters tubal motility.”

I asked her one last question: What kind of birth control pill is the most common, combination or progestin-only? Or are they about the same in popularity?

Her reply: I think they are all about the same in popularity.

So you can interpret Santoro’s facts for yourself, since Santoro is not taking a political position here. She’s just offering information.

But as I interpret it, if you believe that killing a fertilized egg is murder, as Ken Buck does, then you wouldn’t tolerate even the most remote chance that your birth-control pill could cause murder by potentially stopping implantation, in rare cases, of a fertilized egg that otherwise could have implanted in the uterus.  

So based on Buck’s campaign statement to 9News that he opposes birth control methods that “would keep a fertilized egg from implanting,” then he would logically oppose all types of birth-control pills, which are the most common type of birth control in America, because all of them could potentially do this.

In an excellent paper released Aug. 31, Ari Armstrong and Diana Hseih arrive at the same conclusion stating:

“While most often the pill acts to prevent fertilization, sometimes it can prevent a zygote from implanting in the uterus,” they write, adding that the birth-control-pill manufacturers, Ortho Tri-Cyden and Trinessa, state that their pills alter the lining of the uterus.”

So as you can see below, only the fact checkers at 7News appear to have properly evaluated the segment of Bennet’s ad addressing birth control.

7News reported categorically that it’s true that Ken Buck wants to ban common forms of birth control, properly combining his abortion position with his birth-control stance. That’s correct.

9News was half right, pointing out that Buck opposes birth control methods but failing to dig deeply enough into the matter to understand that all birth-control pills would be opposed by Buck, based on his own criteria for protecting fertilized eggs.

And News4 got it wrong by claiming Buck doesn’t oppose the pill when, in fact, he has said he opposes some types of birth-control pills as well as any birth-control method that makes implantation less likely, which could include all pills, at least in rare instances.

Now reporters should ask Buck himself what he has to say to women who are using forms of birth control that he opposes. About 17 million women in America who use the pill, plus millions of others who use forms of the IUD and other methods, and would like to know.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTS OF LOCAL TV NEWS STORIES ON BENNET’S TV AD

News4 Reality Check: Bennet Jumps in with Attack on Buck

News4: The final claim in the ad is aimed at Buck’s pro-life stance.

AD: Ken Buck even wants to ban common forms of birth control.

News4: That’s opinion. Buck’s position is, life begins at conception. By far, the most common forms of birth control, condoms and the pill, work before conception. And Buck is not opposed to those.

7News Investigators: “Fact or Fiction: Is Ken Buck too Extreme?”

AD:

Narrator: “Ken Buck wants to ban common forms of birth control. And his view on abortion?”

Buck: “I am pro-life and I’ll answer the next question, I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.”

FACT:

This is Buck’s stance on abortion. He has said that the only exception is when the life of the mother is at risk. During an interview with Craig Silverman on KHOW radio, Buck reinforced his position on abortion.

“If you believe that life begins at conception, which I do, then the exception of rape or incest, you’re taking a life as a result of the crime of the father, and even though I recognize that it’s a terrible misery that that life was conceived under, it is still taking a life in my view, and it’s wrong,” said Buck.

9News “Truth Test: More Context for Buck’s comments.”

QUOTE: Does Ken Buck speak for you? Buck supports banning common forms of birth control.

TRUTH: This likely depends on what you consider common forms of birth control.

Buck believes life “begins at conception,” so birth control methods that don’t impact that (i.e. condoms, some forms of the pill) are fine with him. Others that would keep a fertilized egg from implanting like hormone-based birth control methods, some other forms of the pill, IUDs, RU-486 and what’s known as the morning-after pill, are not supported by him. (Source: E-mail from Buck spokesman Owen Loftus to 9NEWS, Aug. 26)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the latter category included at least 5.2 million women in America between 2006 and 2008 (Source: CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/abc_list_e.htm#emergency)

Fox 21 reported Monday that Ken Buck held a “U.S. Senate unity rally” Monday night in Colorado Springs.

But Buck spokesman Owen Loftus told me today that Buck’s stop in Colorado Springs was a normal campaign rally, not a GOP U.S. Senate unity rally.

“That was just a mistake on Fox 21′s part,” he said, adding that “if we were to have a unity rally, we would make a big deal of that.”

“There were Norton supporters there,” he added. “They are coalescing around Ken now.”

He pointed out that Allison Sherry of The Denver Post covered the Colorado Springs event, and she did not describe it as a U.S. Senate unity rally.

Sherry reported that Buck encouraged his supporters at the Colorado Springs rally to support gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes as well as incumbent Attorney General John Suthers.

Fox 31′s weekday anchor and Vice President of News Operations Joe Cole reported:

Republican nominee Ken Buck was in town for a U.S. Senate unity rally. He’s trying to gain support from Jane Norton’s supporters whom he beat in the Republican primary. He is also turning his focus to incumbent Democrat, Senator Michael Bennet.

In its report on the rally, Fox 21 pictured Buck with the tag “unity rally” at the bottom of the screen.

It appears that the Fox 21 reporter may have thought Buck’s statement of support for Maes and Suthers was a U.S. Senate unity rally when in fact it was just Buck getting behind the GOP candidates for governor and Attorney General.

Cole did not immediately return a call for comment.

For people like me who still miss the Rocky Mountain News, I decided to ask two former Rocky media critics why local TV news in Colorado hasn’t covered U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck’s position that abortion should be banned, even in the case of rape or incest. 

It seems to me that it’s the kind of political tidbit that’s understandable to a wide audience, and so it might make good TV, especially because there’s a video of Buck saying it.

Former Rocky media critic Greg Dobbs first doubted that I could assert that there was no coverage of Buck’s stance. He emailed me:

“First, if you’re certain that local TV news hasn’t reported Buck’s statement on abortion, so bet it. But I’m not. Unless every local newscast is monitored for every single story, whether a video package or a simple “tell” by the anchors— and unless every bullet point in every story is catalogued— I can’t automatically accept your premise. Again, you might know for a fact that no one has told this story about Buck, let alone shown the video, but I don’t.”

Dobbs is smart to be skeptical.

There’s a huge amount of local TV news pulsating across Colorado at almost any given moment in three TV markets: Denver, Colorado Springs/Pueblo, and Grand Junction/Montrose. As you may know if you’ve ever looked at the number of shows aired each day, the number of hours is staggering. The total varies by station but, for stations like CBS4, 9News, and 7News, the news programming starts at about 5 a.m. for a couple hours, picks up again around noon for a half hour or hour, pops up again in the late afternoon for an hour or two, and then concludes with the 10 p.m. broadcast. Plus weekends. In case you’re ever star-struck by a TV journalist, just remember how much work it takes to fill those broadcasts, even if much, but certainly not all, of the content is simplistic.

I told Dobbs that I engaged a service, NewsPowerOnline (and there are others), that monitors all of it, from the 5 a.m. newscast to the late-night broadcasts. It does this by searching for key words in the closed captioning. The technique had been used in the media-monitoring world for years. It’s not 100 percent accurate, because the computer-generated transcriptions sometimes garble words, but it’s pretty amazing.

My comprehensive search covered all local TV news programs and found no mention of Buck’s abortion stance in the past year. (For my initial blog post on this topic Wednesday, pointing out that major media had essentially ignored Buck’s abortion stance, I did a simple web search of Denver TV stations’ websites. The Newspoweronline search was much better.)

Dobbs wrote that he is “put off by the general emphasis in TV news on the candidates’ horserace rather than the issues with which the winning candidate will struggle.” And this “might help explain why Buck’s views on abortion haven’t gotten the attention you think they should.”

He continued:

“A key issue for you (or anyone else) isn’t necessarily a key issue for the electorate. If the shoe were on the other foot and newscasts focused ceaselessly on abortion at the expense of the economy, it would raise even bigger questions.

I’m not saying that any candidate’s position on abortion should be covered at the expense of the economy. I want both covered, and I agree that given the wide public concern, the economy should get more coverage than abortion.

After all, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that while abortion isn’t a top-tier interest of voters, they consider the issue of abortion in voting decisions:

Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters say abortion is at least somewhat important as an issue in terms of how they will vote in November, with 33% who say it is Very Important. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say it’s not very or not at all important to them as a voting issue.

Dobbs continued:

“Anyway, if mainstream Republicans have said anything this year about what matters, it is that they want to focus on the economy and jobs; they themselves are trying to put ‘social’ issues on the back burner.”

Dobbs is right that GOP candidates have said this, but if you’re a reporter, you have to look at what Buck, specifically, has said about how seriously he’d take social issues, if he’s elected to office. He says he thinks Senate Republicans have shown weakness in not dealing with them.

I posted this radio transcript previously, but it proves my point so well here that I must copy it again. This is an exchange May 21 between Buck and Jim Pfaff on KLZ  radio AM560.

Pfaff: “These social issues, like marriage, these are critical issues. It has been one of the great weaknesses of the Republican Party not to deal with these critical issues.”

Buck: “I agree with you that I think it has been a weakness of the Republican Party in the United States Senate, and I think it’s time that we look at the people we are sending back to Washington DC and making sure those people are sticking by the values they espouse on the campaign trail,” Buck responded.

Addressing another point, Dobbs wrote, “Third, it’s my guess that to date, TV news hasn’t told much or anything at all about Bennet’s positions on abortion. If my guess is right, should it be skewered for that?”

No, I would not skewer TV for not covering Bennet’s views, which are not as far out of the norm as Buck’s. But Bennet’s views should also be covered, to allow voters to contrast the two candidates.

Dobbs concluded his email to me with something I agree with. “Finally,” he wrote, “as a lifelong TV news journalist, I think it’s fair to say that newscasts are limited by a number of things: the restrictive length of stories, the fact that things must stay simple because people can’t go back and reread what they’ve heard, and the number of topics they must cover in a single political race.  

In a subsequent telephone call, Dobbs added:

“Buck’s stand is clearly outrageous to people on the pro-choice side of the abortion issue. But to people on the pro-life side, the most outrageous position is one that supports virtually any kind of abortion at all, because they consider that murder. Unless we’re talking about something universally outrageous, like suggesting the execution of everyone who’s gay, although in some parts of the world even that is not considered outrageous, I don’t want my news providers to make news decisions based on what they think is politically outrageous or not.”

As Sarah Palin might say, this sounds all objectivey, but tell me, how is a journalists supposed to decide what’s news without at least considering the “outrageous” factor? It’s part of what makes news.

And in this case, polls show between 70 and 80 percent of adults think abortion should be legal in the case of rape and incest. A journalist has to try to connect to the mainstream sensibility and respond to it. Sometimes this means giving voice to marginalized views, like’s Buck’s on abortion, that later become mainstream, precisely because the media has spotlighted them.

For another view on this issue, I emailed another former Rocky media critic, Dave Kopel.  

Asked if he thought local TV news should cover the issue, Kopel wrote, “Well, I almost never watch local TV news, so it’s hard for me to have an opinion on whether they’re covering that issue sufficiently compared to other issues.”

I asked Kopel if he thought the existence of video of Buck articulating his position on the issue should have made it easier for local outlets to cover it. Kopel responded, “I don’t think that the video makes any difference. It’s not a position he has been hiding or changing his mind on. According to his website: ‘opposed to abortion except to protect the life of the mother. ‘”

I agree. The video of Buck stating his position is irrelevant. Reporters should just talk to him about it.

Here’s proof that TV journalism shouldn’t start and stop when the camera rolls.

Denver FOX 31 correspondent Eli Stokols quoted an “off camera” comment by U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck Thursday.

You don’t see TV reporters quoting off-camera discussions with newsmakers often enough, and by not doing so, they’ve gotta be withholding a ton of material that should be aired in the public interest.

In this case, Stokols of Fox 31, reported that U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck “openly questioned [his opponent Jane Norton's] ability to hold up under the scrutiny of the media and noted her apparent lack of comfort discussing campaign issues with reporters and at candidate forums.”
 

According to Stokols, Buck said, “Can you imagine her against Romanoff in a debate? That’d be like tennis with the net down.”

Give Stokols credit for putting this comment into the public record.

Raj Chohan, a reporter for Channel 4 News (CBS4), is leaving the station to become a lawyer.

He and 9News’ Adam Schrager are known in political circles for, among other things, their on-air fact checking of political ads during election cycles. 9News’ ad analyses are called “Truth Tests.” CBS4′s are called “Reality Checks.”

CBS4 doesn’t plan on dropping Reality Check, which is a great public service given the overwhelming power of political ads on television. The on-air fact checks are some of the best political coverage we see on local TV news shows. And, strangely enough, they’re popular. The big challenge for journalists covering politics on local TV news is to find ways to make important political information engaging enough so viewers don’t change the channel. The ad checks are one way to do this.

Chohan will continue hosting KBDI’s flagship public affairs show, Colorado Inside Out, which airs Friday at 8 p.m. on Channel 12.

Chohan’s wife, CBS4 reporter Shaun Boyd, may replace him as the lead reporter for the “Reality Check” series.  

In an email to me, Chohan responded to a few questions about his departure from CBS4.

 ·         Is it true that you’re leaving Channel 4 to practice law? Why?

I will be leaving Channel 4 after the May ratings book to become a lawyer.  I expect to graduate in May with a J.D. from DU. I will spend the summer preparing for the July bar exam.  I have accepted an offer to join the Denver office of a national law firm.

 ·         Will you be leaving Colorado  Inside Out?

I expect to continue hosting Colorado Inside Out.  It is a unique show and one of the best parts of my work week.  KBDI has expressed an interest in my continued tenure there and I am certainly inclined to stick with it.

 ·         Will anyone be doing Reality Check in your absence? If not, why?

CBS 4 is in the process of identifying a replacement for Reality Check.  The inside scoop is that my wife, Shaun Boyd, may take it over.  She is an excellent reporter and would do a great job with the franchise.  She has been approached by the news director, Tim Wieland, about this possibility.  She has not yet made a final decision.

 ·         Do you think you’ll go back to journalism someday?

I love the biz, but I don’t expect to return in any full-time capacity.  For my family, the journalism business has become too unstable.  News outlets are making less money and making tough business decisions to remain viable.  There are a lot of talented journalists on the street looking for work.  Local TV stations across the nation have been cutting back staff, newspapers have been taking a beating, and the new model of journalism has not yet developed enough for me to feel secure in this business over the long term.  Several years ago, my wife and I saw the storm clouds gathering over this business.  We decided to set-up an exit strategy before things got too bad.  We have two young children and could not risk the insecurity of a business in flux. I am excited about my new career and look forward to practicing law.  I hope to keep some presence in the news community via Colorado Inside Out, perhaps even a blog or maybe a column. 

 ·         What will you miss most about leaving journalism?

I will miss covering politics.  It is a fascinating time to be doing news.  This is a wonderful business for information junkies who enjoy learning how the world works and contributing to the discussion.  No matter what the economic realities of the business are, I hope enthusiastic aggressive journalists will continue to come to the business.  It is a remarkable thing to be able to do for a living. 

 ·         What will you miss least?

What I will miss least:  I never enjoyed “death patrol.”  This is when reporters show up on doorsteps on the worst day of a person’s life – when they have lost someone very close.  At times these stories can offer compelling insights into the human condition.  However, most of the time they are an unwelcome intrusion into a family’s grief.  The other thing I won’t miss is working holidays.