Strobe-Light Journalism

» NYT: Bowling 1, Health Care 0 (Elizabeth Edwards)

I've not been among those to track the mutterings of Elizabeth Edwards since she gained some amount of cult hero status during the Presidential campaign. But there's more than enough contained in this op-ed to not echo it here:

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn't fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.

News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates "sells," we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

....

If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie "Network" but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can -- as voters -- do ours.

At least some of us who decry the shoddy coverage of media outlets in our area do so for the reasons stated above. The depth of the coverage is shallow, the nature of it lends more heat than light, and the business forces at work in the industry don't exactly help. That's not to be confused with the critics who demand that media outlets simply cater to their ideological dogma.