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.
they’ll give a BIG yawn and continue offering infotainment.
How’s Obama doing on Faux with Chris Wallace? Chris can’t be any worse than the mice men on abc.
Great question. Can’t believe I overslept, but I’ve been feeling kind of tired this weekend.
Anyway, I don’t know if I believe this, fully. I think the MSM gives people what they want. Because let’s face it–her husband would still be a senator if people actually voted their economic interests rather than their flag pin/skin color/gay-straight and other stupid interests. Which, might I add, won’t put gas in their cars, food on their plates, keep a roof over their heads or keep their kids out of Iraq.
The MSM is certainly complicit. They make boatloads of money off of BS. But when do we take responsibility for the considerations we make to elect a president–or anyone to any office? I just don’t know if I buy this anymore.
this, IMHO, what makes Obama such a great speaker.
He acknowledges the workings of our little peanut id brains & then engages our better natures.
The MSM could do that too, if they wanted – if they didn’t limit their coverage to 30 second sound bites & 2 minutes stories.
But they don’t – instead it’s junk food “news product”, just as empty & indigestable as all those “food products that can’t actually be called “food”.
The old town crier didn’t walk down the streets at night and holler that the king was robbing you blind. The MSM is giving you the message that the owners’ want you to hear. Same as it ever was. The only confusion is that once in awhile somebody tells the truth and leaves everyone scratching their heads until MSM is back on point, giving you the message that the owners want you to hear.
Your basic premise is Bullshit! The MSM today is simply a marketing tool of the corporate structure in this country.The tell the populace what they want them to know. Their record with respect to serving the country is crap. Defense funding of the “Network Advisors”; Discussions of “lapel Pins”; WMD!!!!!; Secretary of state presentations before the UN; And all repeated ad nauseum; THAT IS NOT NEWS!
When do we take responsibility? We do but our decisions are determined by the “FACTS” that we are given.
If most people believed this to be bullshit, then most of the news consumers out there would have yawned about this and the MSM would have moved on.
Now do I think ABC, e.g., was wrong and complicit for putting up some hack woman asking about the hand-over-the-heart, not patriotic enough tripe during the last “debate” when they could have asked about real issues? Most definitely. But the media’s not the only ones giving this tripe air, and you know it.
The MSM is guilty of giving people what they want. You can’t eat a damned flag lapel pin, and you can’t eat patriotism. But it’s mighty important to some people, and you can’t totally blame the MSM for noting that. I blame them for stoking what’s already there.
Yuh drunk the coolade! Who else “is giving it air?” “news consumers” buy the only thing that they are sold. And you know it. Who the hell wants to eat a lapel pin? And since when, until the MSM pushed the idea, did that wearing represent a sign of patriotism? And I guess that if the newspaper says its so, then it has to be so.
I guess that landing on a aircraft carrier, using PAID military personel to spew the company line must be correct since the networks put them on the air – Oh screw it.
There are so many examples of the msm complicity that –Oh, why bother. The populace knows and the media just tells them what they already know. Give me a break.
No, you give me a break. I am sick to death of hearing about patriotism on steroids. But if it had NO resonance, then why the hell does it keep coming up? My point is that the media aides and abets this problem.
I’m looking for a better answer here. You know damned well that there are some people who wear their patriotism like a talisman. We may not be able to break through to everyone, but how to break through to enough to change this flippin’ narrative? Pretending that it’s all the media’s fault just isn’t helping and has no basis in reality. None. As you know damned well.
I saw Fox News Sunday this morning and Obama did great. Wallace was no better than Stephanopoulis, but Obama was really well prepared and rested for this one.
I think you can catch a rerun of the show on Fox News later in the day. (FNS first broadcasts on local Fox affiliates.) He had the first 40 minutes or so of the show.
Thanks for taking away my pain.
Bravo, Elizabeth Edwards!!! She is saying what so many of us have been saying for years, Maybe some of the dunder heads in the media will listen, but I doubt it.
She doesn’t seem to see that the idea that corporations are running the media applies to the current democratic candidates. One has welcomed corporate money the other has shunned it – hmmm – just like her husband. My question – why be obtuse about it?
No one will listen – nothing will change. The media will continue to offer its condensed bios of the characters in that novel so that we don’t even have to think for ourselves…here’s the effete orange juice-drinking elitist, here’s the war hero maverick, here’s the cackling woman who should have been the front runner…
Talked about that yesterday when I saw them on a panel. Goodman said all the things Goodman said, the complacent and apathetic sheeple in the crowd gave her a standing ovation. Fineman, admitted to the media being lazy and complicit, while making excuses. I was going to ask a question of Fineman on this very thing, but the idiot 9/11 Truthers mobbed the mics and they cut the session short before the Q&A.
the “no moderator” debate is a brilliant idea. Get the press completely out of the process so they can’t move the agenda toward inanity. If Obama wants meaningful discourse on all the issues he should leap at this opportunity. I bet Elizabeth Edwards wouldn’t want John to turn such a thing down.
Would have been nice 21 debates ago. Now that the race is over, Obama should be lining up his debate card with McCain.
Interesting analysis of some of the characters in the campaign. Where does Kucinich fit in or is he too revolutionary for a blue blood like Edwards? Face it, the mass media is one huge propaganda machine for the “haves” in this nation and the masses seem unable to obtain information on politics any other way.
Elizabeth Edwards certainly would be numbered in the higher echelons of money and prestige in this society of ours. I don’t think calm talk even repeated to the foothills of forever will bring us a “vibrant, vigorous
press”.
Perhaps, our only hope is that more and more people will use the internet and the blogosphere as a source of information. Then, we can flank the mm and build the basis for a real reform movement. Until then, we must keep slogging on, hoping against hope that we can have an impact. It’s such a wild and crazy time that events may well provide us the opportunity for momentous change.
Avoid stress, dance!
Elizabeth Edwards’ OP-Ed this morning was terrific. Alot like Al Gore’s criticism of the media in his book “The Assault on Reason.” We need more of this.
And we need a president who appoints like-minded people to the FCC board once elected. We need to legally mandate some better standards for the broadcast media (where most people get their news and information.) Media ownership rules need to be changed and standards need to be set for accuracy and relevance in reporting in order for broadcasters to keep their licenses. On this, Obama gets it. He doesn’t campaign on it for obvious reasons, but he gets it.
Read her Op Ed. Great! As is your post. At the end of your post, you ask the 64,000 Dollar question. Faced with what the media has become, what do we do? And the answer is that we have to probably do is act in two different ways at exactly the same time.
First- we have to deluge the media sources with E mails, letters, Opinion pieces, Telephone calls- all directed at informing them of what their responsibility is to us.
Second – and jsut as important is that we haev to inform every single sponsor of the “News” broadcasts that they are going to be attacked through the use of a national boycott if they do not assume their rightful role as the transmitter of news, rather than their current position as purveyors of Propoganda!
I think news can hardly help being what they are because by default `new’ should be different from the day, week before. The candidate’s platform can hardly make the news unless there is an unusual twist, or clarification… On the other hand, a between candidate drama `he said she said that they said’ is fertile ground because every single day there is a further spin. The problem is not that news is superficial but that for some reason, it is assumed that people should make their electoral decisions based on them. I wonder if it’s true since the primaries outcomes were mostly determined by demographics so far.
This premise of `importance’ of news mounts additional pressure on keeping them `relevant’: every new primary is apparently deciding, every percent difference in the polls is indicative of something … never mind the undecided, the error margins; any change in the candidate’s behavior (and the news seeks change) is immediately caricatured and exaggerated to make them appear the biggest liar – the shattered rack – etc, and given a `message’ status. The news cannot help prioritizing the issues of the moment (electability) over the issues of substance (who would be a better president).