Bravo to Elizabeth Edwards for telling it like it is about the sorry state of media coverage of the political campaign. I knew she was an avid consumer of blogs, and you can tell why from her editorial this morning.
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.
As Ms. Edwards points out, it’s no wonder that the public never had an idea what kind of health care plan was being offered by Sen. Joe Biden. Joe Biden didn’t fit into the media narrative. The media is, once again, completely falling down on the job and doing an immense disservice to the public.
Ms. Edwards has internalized the central core truth that undergirds the ethos of the blogosphere.
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.
Indeed. Bloggers are the skeptical press behind the complacent press. We don’t have big budgets or newsrooms. But we know bad and lazy reporting when we see it.
I was lucky enough for a time to have a front-row seat in this campaign — to see all this, to get my information firsthand. But most Americans are not so lucky. As we move the contest to my home state, North Carolina, I want my neighbors to know as much as they possibly can about what these men and this woman would do as president.
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.
How many times have we made the same plea to the press? “Do your job.” And, yet, they don’t and they won’t. Thank you to Elizabeth Edwards for using her clout to say what needs to be said.
