By Fran StewartDecember 6, 2010

On July 28, 2008, some 200 federal agents descended on Cuyahoga County government offices, residences of political and business leaders, and offices of local firms in a sweeping FBI investigation of corruption, bribery, election rigging and abuse of power.

Since then, dozens of elected officials, government workers, sitting judges, business executives, school administrators and union representatives have been charged. More than three dozen of those have already pleaded guilty.

It has evolved into what has been reported as the largest government corruption probe in Ohio history.

Source: The Plain Dealer, WEWS

Two months before the general election on November 2, 2010, Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo, one of the best-known political figures in the area, resigned the office he had held since 1997 and was charged in a federal public information with 21 counts of bribery, filing false tax returns and obstruction.

Less than a week later, on September 15, County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora was led from his home in shackles. He was charged with 26 counts related to corruption in office. The charging document read like a tabloid, referring to prostitutes procured in exchange for lucrative government contracts and sex in exchange for a county job with benefits.

Source: The Plain Dealer, U.S. District Court

“Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.” – Edmund Burke, 18th century Irish philosopher

“If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Fred Bastiat, 19th century French political economist

The role of the press, or news media, as a government watchdog is a long-established tenet of democracy. Most familiar is the First Amendment protection against any laws abridging freedom of the press.

“The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black

The particular set of circumstances unfolding in Cuyahoga County would seem to provide good opportunity for a natural quasi-experiment to determine the effect of local government corruption on voter participation.

Specifically, the effect to be explored is awareness of local government corruption.

Awareness of corruption is operationalized for study by looking at circulation data for Cleveland’s only daily newspaper, the Plain Dealer.

Extensive literature suggests that newspaper readers are more likely to vote than non-readers.

Gentzkow, Shapiro and Sinkinson (2009), in their longitudinal examination of newspaper entry and exit from markets from 1869 to 2004, indicate that simply reading a newspaper increases the likelihood of voting by 4 percentage points.

Jeffres, Lee, Neuendorf and Atkin (2007) found a strong positive relationship between newspaper reading and participating in political systems.

Moy, McCluskey, McCoy & Spratt (2004) found that attention to local news in newspapers and on television was similarly positively related to political knowledge, but only attention to local newspapers was positively linked to political participation.

Xenos and Moy (2007) sounded a cautionary note about the Internet: It may actually exacerbate existing gaps in political participation.

The Plain Dealer, more so than any other local media, sunk its teeth into the role of government watchdog after the FBI raid in July 2008.

The Plain Dealer used the backdrop of the specific federal probe to move onto investigations of illegal or unethical activities in other areas of local government.

That reporting led to a June 2010 guilty plea from the Cuyahoga County sheriff on charges of theft in office and ethics violations.

The newspaper’s probing also led to a criminal investigation of irregularities among the Boards of Revision, which are tasked with hearing residents' appeals of property tax assessments.

H1. Local newspaper coverage of local government corruption in Cuyahoga County will increase voter turnout among its readers.

One big reason is cost to taxpayers: As one example, a Plain Dealer investigation found that unsanctioned alterations to at least 2,200 official Cuyahoga County tax records eliminated $145 million from county tax rolls. But the cost is much higher when adding in rigged bids, workers who fail to do their jobs, and tarnished reputation among the business community.

Elections are opportunities for voters to remove from office leaders who fail to serve the public.

Much research has been conducted on voter participation at the national level, but little focus is placed on the local level, even though that is the level of government closest to the public (Hajnal & Lewis, 2003).

Turnout for local elections are often half the rate of turnout for national elections (Hajnal & Lewis, 2003).

The first step in assessing awareness of local government corruption was to conduct a content analysis of Plain Dealer coverage.

WordStat 6.1 software was selected for Computer-Aided Text Analysis (CATA).

The LEXIS/NEXIS Academic Search database was used to retrieve articles appearing on page A1 of the Plain Dealer for the six months leading up to the general election on November 2, 2010.

The LEXIS/NEXIS search returned 667 front-page articles going back to May 5, 2010.

These articles were divided by week into 27 total cases.

To determine how coverage varied over this six-month timeframe, a dictionary of specific terms related to the corruption investigation was compiled.

Personal familiarity with the Plain Dealer's coverage was the basis for the initial list of terms.

After a preliminary analysis of the 663,202 total words, words that appeared to relate to county corruption and that occurred at least 12 times in at least 11 cases were added to the dictionary.

WordStat’s keyword-in-context tool was used to check the reliability of the Cuyahoga County Corruption dictionary terms.

As a result of the KWIC examination, nine terms were eliminated from the dictionary. For example, “pay to play” returned articles about sports and school funding, not bribery.

KWIC revealed that the wildcatted word “audit*” returned corruption-related terms, such as “auditor,” but also frequently returned references to “auditorium.” As a result, “audit*” was replaced with “auditor,” “audit,” “audited” and “auditing.”

FBI investigation implicat*commissioner*scandal*schem* auditauditorauditingpublic officialKelley

corrupt*county governmentbrib*kickback*DimoraRussoPOPEpatronagecronyism

This timeline shows the frequency of only the wildcat term of “corrupt*” over six months. The term appeared in 26 out of 27 case weeks.

Jimmy Dimora arrested

Corruption Frequency Over Time

WordStat calculates Jaccard’s coefficient as a measure of similarity among individual words. In this case, the words “auditor,” “commissioner*,” “county government,” “Dimora” and “Russo” all have high levels of co-occurrence within individual documents.

Franklin County, the closest in population to Cuyahoga County of Ohio’s 88 counties and the seat of state government, was selected as a comparison group.

Content from the Columbus Dispatch, Franklin County’s only large metropolitan daily newspaper, was retrieved from the Ohio Newspapers Newsbank. Because of the cumbersome of retrieval, three months of front-page Dispatch articles were retrieved.

The sample of Plain Dealer articles was reduced to coincide with the timeframe of August 8 to November 2, 2010.

The comparison sample consisted of 310 Plain Dealer articles and 349 Dispatch articles.

The intent of comparison was to measure the frequency of coverage related to a broad sense of corruption, not to look at specific terms related to the Cuyahoga County investigation. A more general dictionary would be needed for comparison.

Thesaurus.com was consulted for synonyms of both “corruption” and “corrupt.”

Duplicates and ambiguous words such as “bent,” “foul” and “open” were deleted.

breach of trustbriberybribingcrimecrookednessdemoralizationexploitationextortionfiddlingfraudfraudulencygraftjobbery

profiteeringracketshadinessshady dealshuffleskimmingsqueezeunscrupulousnessvenality

atrocitydecadencedegenerationdegradationdepravityevilimmoralityimpurityinfamyiniquityloosenesslubricityperversionprofligacysinfulnessturpitudeviceviciousnessvulgaritywickedness

basebentbribablecrookeddebaucheddouble-dealingexploitingextortionatefaithlessfast and loosefixedfoulfraudulentgone to the dogsinconstantiniquitousknavishmercenarynefariouson the take

openpaddedperfidiouspraetorianprofiteeringracket upreprobaterottenshadysnidesubornedtaintedtreacheroustwo-facedunderhandedunethicalunfaithfulunprincipledunscrupulousuntrustworthyvenalwide open

Dispatch

PlainDealer

Columbus Dispatch Plain Dealer

“Corrupt*” and “brib” were most closely associated in the Plain Dealer, whereas “fraud*” and “fixed” were most associated in the Dispatch, primarily appearing in mortgage-related articles.

Keywords Dispatch Plain Dealer Chi2 P (2-tails)

BRIB*   84 84 0**

CORRUPT* 4 191 179.328 0**

CROOKED   3 3 0.223

DEMORALIZ*   1 1 0.607

EVIL 3   3 0.223

EXPLOIT* 2 4 0.667 0.717

EXTORT*   2 2 0.368

FRAUD* 26 20 0.783 0.676

GRAFT   1 1 0.607

INFAMOUS 2 4 0.667 0.717

NEPOTISM 2   2 0.368

PAYOFF* 1 1 0 1

RACKET   1 1 0.607

SKIM*   1 1 0.607

SKIMMING   1 1 0.607

SQUEEZE 2 2 0 1

TAINT* 8 10 0.222 0.895

UNETHICAL 1 2 0.333 0.846

UNTRUSTWORTHY 1 1 0 1

Recall that the guiding hypothesis is not that coverage is different but that local newspaper coverage of local government corruption will increase voter turnout among its readers.

To make the link between newspaper content and reader behavior, more information is needed.

Franklin County still serves as a comparison group.

S M R

Newspaper coverage

Cuyahoga County voter turnout

Unit of Analysis: Circulation data for both newspapers were available at the ZIP Code level. Precinct-level voter information and census tract-level demographic data were recoded to match corresponding ZIP Codes.

Dependent Variable: Percentage of registered voters in each county who turn out for the 2010 general election.

Independent Variables: A dummy variable was created for corruption, where all Cuyahoga County ZIP codes were coded 1 and all Franklin County ZIP codes were coded 0.

Independent Variables: The Sunday circulation percentage for each ZIP Code was selected to serve as the Independent Variable for newspaper readership.

Control Variables: Three control variables were selected in an attempt to ensure that any change in the dependent variable indicated by the independent variables was not actually due to demographic differences in the analyzed units. These variables are: Median Age, Median Income and Percentage White.

Coefficientsa

Model

Unstandardized Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig.B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) -.001 .056 -.021 .983

MEDIAN AGE .006 .002 .250 3.567 .001

HOUSEHOLD

INCOME

3.554E-6 .000 .527 6.162 .000

% WHITE .001 .000 .203 2.595 .011

2 (Constant) -.076 .057 -1.321 .190

MEDIAN AGE .010 .002 .402 5.018 .000

HOUSEHOLD

INCOME

3.157E-6 .000 .468 5.666 .000

% WHITE .001 .000 .163 2.183 .032

Corrupt -.059 .017 -.226 -3.367 .001

a. Dependent Variable: Voter Turnout 2010

The regression indicates that corruption did have a statistically significant effect on voter turnout in 2010. However, corruption appears to have decreased turnout.

Coefficientsa

Model

Unstandardized Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig.B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) -.001 .056 -.021 .983

MEDIAN AGE .006 .002 .250 3.567 .001

HOUSEHOLD INCOME 3.554E-6 .000 .527 6.162 .000

% WHITE .001 .000 .203 2.595 .011

2 (Constant) -.050 .065 -.778 .439

MEDIAN AGE .010 .002 .379 4.491 .000

HOUSEHOLD INCOME 3.062E-6 .000 .454 5.383 .000

% WHITE .001 .000 .142 1.787 .078

sunday categorical hi

low

.019 .022 .072 .862 .391

Corrupt -.063 .018 -.243 -3.469 .001

a. Dependent Variable: Voter Turnout 2010

However, newspaper circulation, examined as a nominal variable categorizing units as either above or below average circulation, was not statistically significant.

Coefficientsa

sunday categorical hi low Model Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig.Beta

dimension0

.00 1 (Constant) -.910 .368

MEDIAN AGE .244 2.865 .007

HOUSEHOLD

INCOME

.841 7.033 .000

% WHITE -.135 -1.181 .244

2 (Constant) -.956 .345

MEDIAN AGE .292 3.311 .002

HOUSEHOLD

INCOME

.769 6.170 .000

% WHITE -.162 -1.432 .160

Corrupt -.160 -1.672 .102

1.00 1 (Constant) .685 .497

MEDIAN AGE .069 .650 .519

HOUSEHOLD

INCOME

.456 3.987 .000

% WHITE .431 3.869 .000

2 (Constant) -.223 .824

MEDIAN AGE .251 2.009 .052

HOUSEHOLD

INCOME

.380 3.387 .002

% WHITE .404 3.822 .000

Corrupt -.292 -2.439 .019

a. Dependent Variable: Voter Turnout 2010

Findings from this analysis seem to go against the literature, especially regarding the effect of newspaper readership on voter turnout. However, given that corruption was significant and voters learn about corruption through the newspaper and other local media, some sort of effect would seem to exist. Perhaps the lack of findings are due to too small of a sample size or perhaps media is a mediating effect. This is an attempt to explore the findings a bit differently.

H1. Local newspaper coverage of local government corruption in Cuyahoga County will increase voter turnout among its readers.

I must reject the hypothesis that local newspaper coverage of local government corruption is statistically significant in increasing voter turnout. However, awareness of corruption had a statistically significant negative impact on voter turnout.