The News Journal Admits to Deficient Political Coverage
Yesterday, John Sweeney took to the pages of the NJ OpEd page to tell us what we already know — that the media isn’t doing an especially good job at getting political candidates to discuss in detail their approach to issues of concern to voters:
A common and legitimate complaint about the mainstream news media is that they are more interested in fluff and scandal than substance.
The horse-race aspect of elections is more exciting to them than a candidate’s ability to govern.
Sad, but true.
A preoccupation with polls, for instance, works against the interest of the voter. But keeping everyone’s eyes on the trivial also serves the interests of the politicians. They have a stake in a dumbed-down electorate. It helps them avoid committing themselves and it gives them an easy scapegoat, “the media.”
This admission is in the service of touting an effort that the NJ is working on to get the candidates to actually speak in detail about these issues, so they’ll be submitting a series of essays to do this. This may or may not work — but I wonder about an effort to get political candidates to speak to specific issues that isn’t specifically mediated by a third party to insist on the detail required.
Which gets to the heart of the matter. The horserace reportage is a function of a bunch of things — a reporter’s interest may be one, but the daily demands of having something to report on is the other. If you have to crank out something on a political campaign in the course of a day, the horserace is the easy thing to cover. A story on the state of the race may keep the story fresh for the reporter, (and may also be easier for their audiences too) but it is way easier than getting up to speed enough on policy and policy choices to avoid the shallowness of talking points reporting. An example from Sweeney’s own column:
The biggest expenditures are the entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
You see the problem here, right? A specific political narrative that the media repeats ad nauseum without checking on it or giving it any context. Sweeney isn’t alone in this, but I think that if you claim to deal in information, you’d be embarrassed by just repeating this BS. Social Security and Medicare are among the biggest entitlements, but they are the only ones with a funding steam directly from taxpayer paychecks. SS is fine for some years (2037 currently) and can be pretty easily fixed. And its most immediate problem is getting Congress to pay the IOUs. Medicare also has a direct funding stream, but is in more immediate trouble, even though it has a slightly longer lease on life due to the ACA. Medicaid does not have a direct funding stream and does have lots of trouble. But the narrative of entitlements are a problem persists even when the data clearly doesn’t support that entirely. And to the extent that they are a problem, SS and Medicare have solutions, but little political will for any of it. But notice that the label of unsustainability applies to entitlement programs, but not to a raft of expensive policy choices (for instance, a Defense Department that is expected to be the world’s policeman, or even to an entire government posture of transferring as many tax dollars as possible to businesses) largely favored by Republicans.
And then we have the snide presumption that liberals like big government:
As liberals and/or progressives, have you ever met a government program you didn’t like?
As if Mr. Sweeney never heard of Medicare Part D or the massive amounts of new spending from BushCo on education during the Bush years. Maybe he could ask the repub candidates if they would vote against farm subsidies or why they would advocate the *borrowing* of billions of dollars to provide tax cuts or even if they would advocate the repeal of Bush-era spending on Medicare and Education. That, of course, would mean that Mr. Sweeney himself get out of the horserace business that he notes political media is so mired in. If you are going to ask serious policy questions and ask for detailed solutions, you need to do that honestly — not from the media narratives derived from those in what Jay Rosen calls the Church of the Savvy. If you are going to ask questions that ask liberal candidates to defend an activist government, you need to ask conservative candidates to defend the kind of activist government they fight for — restrictions of personal liberty, borrowing money to give to businesses and rich people, insertions of Christianist policy to government and so on. In short, whoever asks these candidates for more detail is going to have to get beyond a GOP talking points view of the world, and get beyond a GOP talking points view of liberals, specifically.
Good on the NJ for trying to get to some policy detail, but I’m not hopeful for this effort if Mr. Sweeney’s fairly uninformed — and, frankly, biased — questions are any guide.
Tags: Media, The News Journal
I’m glad you wrote about this because Sweeney’s column pissed me off.
OK, this guy works for a newspaper and he knows absolutely nothing about what the Democratic party stands for. Instead he uses lazy Republican talking points. But, I’ll take up the challenge – I’ll name government programs I don’t like:
– The Iraq War
– Guantanamo
– Government spying on citizens via the Patriot Act
– Government contracts to Blackwater
– Abstinence-only education
– Bush tax cuts for the wealthy
That’s just for starters.
Ooh, more
– corporate welfare programs
– tax loopholes for hedge fund managers
– tax rebates to oil companies
OK, this guy works for a newspaper and he knows absolutely nothing about what the Democratic party stands for. Instead he uses lazy Republican talking points.
The maddening thing about this stance is that he clearly sees himself above it all, with no overriding POV, and yet all he can manage in terms of detail to ask these pols is largely influenced by GOP talking points. You can’t be above it all if all you’ve got is the GOP view of the world.
Government programs I don’t like:
loan guarantees and subsidies for nuclear plants
Farm Subsidies
Minerals Management Service
Sweeney has been propagandized to the point that he’s totally unaware of his slant. He couldn’t be non-partisan or objective if his very life depended upon it. Forty years of Republican think-tank press releases have taken their toll on Mr. Sweeney. Now he only hears what they tell him he’s heard.
As many in the media do. See Jay Rosen’s piece “Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press”. They want to be seen as above the fray, smarter than the partisans, and sensible centrists.
Flood Insurance….
Social Security payments to millionaires.
(actually, a million isn’t what it used to be… maybe a couple of million)
The liberals are in charge of the government at every level. Why don’t you do something besides yap about everyone else?
You created this mess, you own this mess and now it will be your downfall.
Blame everyone else but look in the mirror, the Democratic Party stands for nothing.
DV: “Flood Insurance….”
Really? If applied correctly, it’s actually a pretty good way of regulating construction and ensuring eventual dismantling of buildings in hundred-year (or smaller) floodplains. Government refuses to offer it to new constructions in floodplains and then takes down buildings already there upon resale. Why do you oppose government flood insurance? I’m just curious.
Medicare Part D
Paying non-negotiated drug prices
Unfortunately UI, the top 4 on your list are endorsed and/or expanded by the current administration.
Big Government programs I don’t like:
Sewer, storm water facilities and roads being paid for by the tax payer instead of the developers whose land use projects make them necessary…not to mention the poles and lines etc. State and county (and federal for that matter – GARVEE Bonds for Bayberry Beltway Rte. 301 come to mind) debt is largely a factor of supplying major infrastructure facilities, for the sake of short term jobs in the construction industry, under the guise of economic development.
There was an interesting article I read recently about the number of jobs that support the arts in Delaware – 44K (I think it may have been in the WNJ) as opposed to the other industries that get so much support from Delaware politicians. Construction was listed at 27K.
Jack Markell and Chris Coons are coming under intense pressure right now from all across NCC for their extending so much public funding promises (which amounts to debt) for the economic development attached to the development industry.
The DelDOT Secretary has stated in several public meetings that DelDOT has no interest in “interferring” with county land use when it comes to how traffic improvements are to be considered on numerous record plans in the works….an untenable position that many in the legislature are taking a strident objection to – namely John Kowalko, Patti Blevins and Deb Hudson among others (Mike Katz, Gerry Brady and Bruce Ennis).
Government spending I don’t like:
Agriculture subsidies
JROTC
zionism subsidies
What is sad is that he allows Ron Williams to write a weekly column….