Analysis:

This piece from WZZM 13 covers the Grand Rapids City Commission's passage of a resolution against the Iraq War. The story features a brief excerpt from the resolution displayed on the screen, but for the most part it does not talk about the specifics of the resolution. Instead, the story frames the resolution as being an inappropriate topic for the City Commission to address. One of the newsreaders introduces a series of comments from WZZM 13's website to show opposition to the resolution and reads comments critical of the resolution while the other uses terminology suggesting that the City Commission was wasting its time and was acting outside of its mandate.

The remainder of the segment is then given to City Commissioner Rick Tormala who explains why he supported the resolution. The newsreaders do not question any of his claims, nor do they ask him any questions about what he says. While it is somewhat rare for a speaker on a broadcast news channel to be able to speak so long (around a minute) without editing their comments, was this the best way to inform viewers about the passage of the resolution?

There was also no mention of the fact that antiwar groups pressured the City to pass a resolution for several years. None of those groups were mentioned.

Story:

Newsreader #1: The Grand Rapids City Commission passed last night related to the war in Iraq.

Newsreader #2: Now it thanks our troops for their service and goes on to say that the City Commission calls upon the U.S. government to set "clear and aggressive guidelines" for decision-making to the Iraqi government and bring the troops home.

Newsreader #1: The resolution has a lot of people talking at WZZM13.com. John writes "Give me a break! Why don't they work on city problems? This is what's wrong with government." A view from Grand Rapids says, "...We elected you to manage our city. Get back to work," and this from another citizen: "I am going to give George W. a call and see if he can help me out with snow removal issues."

Newsreader #2: The measure passed 6-1 with Commissioner Roy Schmidt voting against it.

Newsreader #2: Now Second Ward Commissioner Rick Tormala has agreed to join us here. You voted for the resolution, the response cannot be a surprise to you really, and so, why did you do it? Is it really just a meaningless gesture?

Grand Rapids City Commissioner Rick Tormala: Well, if it was meaningless, we wouldn't have done it. Forty-seven years ago the City of Grand Rapids took a position against the war in Vietnam, in 1971--before a lot of people were talking about that. They did it because of the fiscal effect on the budget of the City of Grand Rapids. The same thing is happening now.

Tormala: I mean, that resolution is not a perfect document, but I think if people take a look at it they will see that we're not pretending to be members of Congress, we're not experts on foreign affairs. What we are experts on is how the city budget runs and the amount of money that we need to run it. And basically, the United States government has not fully funded Homeland Security. Every time we have any kind of alert in Grand Rapids, where we go from yellow to orange, our deficit goes in the red. They don't send us the money, it's almost like an unfunded mandate. We need to fund our first responders and we need to fund our police and our fire fighters.

Tormala: So we're asking them to do that. We're asking them to take a look at restructuring the budget and to really put the money that they said they were going to put in Homeland Security in Homeland Security. And also, that they take care of the veterans.

Tormala: You've all seen the reports that the veteran programs are not fully funded. We think that they ought to be fully funded and we are doing ourselves--we're establishing a policy where we're going to create a veterans' preference program in two weeks so that when people come home, they'll be able to start businesses and do business with the City of Grand Rapids. And we're also looking at all of our policies to make sure that our people who are veterans who are serving in the military have family-friendly policies. So that's what we're doing.

Newsreader #1: Well, we thank you. We had over fifty comments on our website and now hopefully you clarified to them why you voted the way that you did. City Commissioner Rick Tormala, thanks so much for being with us.