On Speculative Election-Year Journalism

We've all got our griefs when it comes to how the presidential campaigns have been covered by journalists, and most of us find enough to like about to continue giving it our attention. Well, Paul Fahri has an interesting essay in the American Journalism Review the questions why the media gets its political predictions so wrong so often ... and wonders if there isn't a better way than this fundamentally speculative stance in coverage.

"The accelerated news cycle, Halperin says, has increased the demand for news and analysis of the campaign without a corresponding increase in thoughtfulness, perspective — and more bodies to gather and collect the facts. Reporters, he says, now work harder to answer the wrong questions — who's winning the daily image and message battle, who's ahead in the horse race — rather than who'd make the best president."

Fahri notes the influence of the peculiarities of the modern moment--political journalism teams are increasingly young folks, often covering their first or second campaign; they lack the long-view vital to more nuanced reflections. As well, reporters--often on the staffs of decimated newsrooms--are under increasing pressure to not merely file a story and go home; they must blog, appear on news shows; update their stories online by the hour; write two more stories; and on. It's physically impossible for reporters, who double as human beings, to do it all well.

And Fahri doesn't overlook perhaps the most uncomfortable root of why presidential coverage so often bombs: the relatively small group of correspondents who travel together, socialize together, who see the same speeches over and over, they tend to confirm for each other a particular news viewpoint, creating a sort of consensus before the articles are delivered.

"The national reporters, (Andrew) Cline says, 'had heard the same speeches over and over, so there was nothing new for them to report after a while. So, naturally, they end up focusing on what's different day to day — the jockeying and the positioning, the polls, the horse race. It becomes insiders talking to insiders. [But] for the voters, what the candidate says in his backyard is news to them, because they haven't heard it all before. They want to hear what the candidate says about fixing Social Security or Medicare or tax cuts.'

"Cline says groupthink is 'unavoidable' when "reporters all ride the same plane, go to the same events and are socializing with each other... If you know the angle you're taking is the same as the one everyone else is taking, you've got your butt covered. It certainly minimizes your risk. But what you really want is a reporter who digs a little deeper.'"

In other presidential election news, a The New York Times article points to how strangled newsroom budgets translates into little funding to send reporters on the campaign trail. And we're not just talking about the local rags:

"Among the newspapers that have chosen not to dispatch reporters to cover the two leading Democratic candidates on a regular basis are USA Today, the nation’s largest paper, as well as The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer (at least until the Pennsylvania primary, on April 22, began to loom large)."

The vacuum on those pages is filled with stories from wire services like the Associated Press, and elsewhere by intrepid bloggers.

So what's the cost to us Regular Citizens?

"...the absence of some newspapers on the trail suggests not only that readers are being exposed to fewer perspectives drawn from shoe-leather reporting, but also that fewer reporters will arrive at the White House in January with the experience that editors have typically required to cover a president on Day 1."

Despite my recoiling at the overused "ready on Day 1" warnings, I get the meaning here. We want presidential reporters with enough experience and skills to spot inconsistencies, to be able to look both forward and back, to have enough guts to investigate. That experience should be happening right now.

Comments

[Ryan]

David Foster Wallace has an excellent essay, available in one of his collections, about his stint as a reporter (on assignment for Rolling Stone) covering John Mccain's 2000 primary campaign. It paints a very revealing picture of the frustrations of being a political reporter today - two particularly interesting ideas he discusses are the near impossibility of separating hype from reality [ even the most human and seemingly impromptu moments on the trail are constantly suspected of being orchestrated by campaigns ] and the advantages establishment candidates reap by going "negative" - because overly negative campaigns tend to dissuade new voters from becoming involved in the process, and new voters are substantially more likely to vote for the non-establishment candidate.

I believe the essay is titled "Up, Simba."

[Jess]

Even public radio--I can barely listen to it anymore. There's such a strain to find reasons to talk about Barack and Hillary. And Bill Richardson's gotten more coverage now that he endorsed Obama than he ever did when he was campaigning. How is that democratic--the media crowned the nominees with their coverage time and the word "frontrunner" even before elections were had.

That's one prediction they got right, I guess. They created the reality.

[Aaron V.]

Any suggestions of reporters we should be watching and rooting for this election-year?

[Anna Clark]

Gosh, I'm not sure about particular names of people who are officially on the "campaign trail." But I do perk up when Farai Chideya talks about election stuff on NPR's News and Notes. Same with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! But neither of them are "on the bus."

Who do you like?