On Thursday, Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain visited West Michigan for a fundraiser at the Ferrysburg home of wealthy Republican fundraiser Peter Secchia. The fundraiser--which netted around $1.2 million for McCain according to media reports--was the primary impetus for the trip. However, rather than use the event as an opportunity to focus on the role of money in electoral politics, the corporate media in West Michigan focused most of its coverage on where McCain was at any given time and the few comments that he made to the media. However, despite the limited engagement with the media, local media outlets failed to investigate McCain's statements and instead simply repeated them verbatim in their coverage with no critical analysis.

WOOD TV 8's coverage began by explaining that during his visit "John McCain focused on Iraq." The story had three quotes from McCain in which he explained that Iraq is a "fragile victory" and said that he is glad Senator Obama is making his first trip to the Middle East. The story also covered briefly McCain's proposal for a gas tax as well as a News 8 reporter's question about how McCain would fix the Michigan economy. In response, McCain said that he would increase research and development funding and would not raise taxes. However, the WOOD TV 8 story failed to follow-up by looking at specific policies advocated by McCain. The story also included two paragraphs about how the local Democratic Party held a $2.30 per plate fundraiser to contrast the difference between their constituents and McCain's constituents who paid $2,300 per plate. Interestingly, this was the only portion of the story that offered any kind of criticism or independent analysis when the reporter reminded viewers that "candidates on both sides often attend high-dollar-value fundraisers, as Obama did during his visit to Grand Rapids in May."

WZZM 13's coverage featured two quotes from Senator McCain about how the United States has succeeded in Iraq due to the January 2007 "surge" or escalation of the war. WZZM 13 made no effort to investigate this claim and their was no analysis of McCain's position on Iraq. Aside from this, their coverage featured the usual reporting on where McCain was throughout the day.

WXMI Fox 17 began by framing talking about how many stops McCain has made in Michigan and how it has been a good place for the senator to raise money. It included a small amount of footage from outside of McCain's $2,300 per person fundraiser in Ferrysburg before transitioning into footage of McCain talking about how the US has "succeeded in Iraq" and criticism of Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama for his failure to visit Iraq. Like the other coverage of the event, the Fox 17 story simply told viewers about all of the stops that McCain made and aired quotes from the Senator with no analysis or follow-up.

As is generally the case, The Grand Rapids Press coverage was the lengthiest and contained information that was not in the other stories. For example, the story tells readers that McCain's fundraiser netted $1.2 million for the candidate's campaign. However, when it came to actual reporting on what the Senator had to say and what he plans to do, The Grand Rapids Press coverage was as bad as the television stations. Much of the story focused on McCain's travels throughout the day. The story did quote McCain on Iraq, but did not bother to investigate his claims that "the Surge" has succeeded "economically, military, politically, and by just about any other measure." The newspaper also reported that McCain advocated a "gas tax holiday" as a means of helping poor Americans, but the paper did not look into his plan.

All said, the coverage of McCain's visit to West Michigan is typical of what we see in the corporate media--a lot of focus on where candidates are traveling and what they said--with little analysis of what they plan to do in office. Moreover, it was typical in that the local media outlets failed to investigate or challenge any of McCain's statements.