Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Paul Krugman has a good column today ranting about the state of the national media:

Under the headline "Voters Want Specifics From Kerry," The Washington Post recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John Edwards talk about "what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or lower-income people. I have to face the fact that I will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don't seem to address that."

Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can't say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard about it?

Well, I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis - how it's playing, not what's in it.

On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to "shove it"... the context was missing.... Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire who financed smear campaigns against the Clintons - including accusations of murder.... There are two issues here, trivialization and bias, but they're related. Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies, and turned instead to trivia.... Even on its own terms, such reporting often gets it wrong, because journalists aren't especially good at judging character. ("He is, above all, a moralist," wrote George Will about Jack Ryan, the Illinois Senate candidate who dropped out after embarrassing sex-club questions.)

All true, but its not just the national media and the puditocracy. I watched more local news than I ever watch leading up to the primaries and judicial elections this year and the coverage was HORRIBLE. Perhaps the worst offender was Suzanne Marques on the local NBC. She did stories nightly about the local elections -- sheriff candidated meeting with votes, and the stories were entirely about horse-races and voters expressing pleasure at meeting the candidates; judicial candidates holding a debate with no substance at all; state reps having fundraisers with no issues -- and one of her stories actually addressed issues in an election. The debates on the local PBS station were generally lame as well, given that it was these same local media chumps asking pointless questions that were usually invites to ad hominem attacks between the candidates rather than something to illucidate the positions of people who get little real media coverage in these small races.

Once again, I went and voted and left half my ballot blank because I just couldn't form an opinion on these races.

Krugman is certainly right. It's much worse when you have this problem at the national level, but media coverage of politics has become rediculous.The always funny Wonkette points out today, though, that Krugman is actually engaging in exactly the behaviour he is denouncing:

Media covers itself in absence of news at Democratoc Convention

BoiFromTroy --
Did anyone notice that the press seemed to spend almost as much time
talking about itself as it did talking about the actual Democratic
Convention this week? Like the John Kerry biopic that skipped over his
service as Lt. Governor to Mike Dukakis and had about 20 seconds on the
would-be President's Senate career, the press corps in Boston filled in
the gaps about what was really happening in Boston with shallow,
self-absorption:� The National Journal writes about how for reporters covering the convention was like going to war. We're wondering if that would qualify them, too, to serve as President.
� The Los Angeles Times laments
how cable news pushes the most salable morsels, then abandons them when
they go stale. Note to Tribune Company: Ratings, or in your case,
subscriptions, are how to make money and avoid layoffs!
� Paul Krugman says TV was focused on personalities, not policies of candidates...you know, unlike the Convention itself!

� In the WaPo, Tom Shales focuses on how Kerry's speech was timed specifically for television and David Westin defends network's Spartan coverage.

I suppose this is what happens when you put 15,000 reporters at an
event, covering one third as many people trying to make a decision that
has been a foregone conclusion for months.