It’s no secret that we here at Campaign Desk crave meat, nice chewy facts and statistics that we can sink our teeth into and make our own decisions based on the information at hand. In that regard, we’d like to think we’re not all that different from a lot of Americans who have a stake (no pun intended) in the next four years.
Today, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau reporters Ron Hutcheson and James Kuhnhenn deliver the goods: a deft analysis of the differences between health care plans put forth by George Bush and John Kerry. In just over 1,000 words, Hutcheson (reporting from Michigan, where Bush is campaigning) and Kuhnhenn (reporting from Washington) serve up comparisons, ignoring the “he said/she said” explanations, and giving us funding options and coverage plans.
Readers of Knight Ridder’s 31 daily papers and its wire service got their money’s worth this morning, we thought to ourselves.
Well, not so fast.
For those unfamiliar with the process of news-gathering, it’s worth noting that standing between the stories that reporters write and the stories that readers read is a large turnstile called EDITORS. Editors decide which stories will run and how much space they will receive. Their job is to block the inferior and wave through the good. Alas, however, editors are mortal too; some of them are possessed of wisdom and judgment and some couldn’t direct a two-car funeral. As a result, occasionally the good stuff just doesn’t see the light of day, or appears in an altered state.
The Hutcheson-Kuhnhenn story today provides an excellent case study.
Readers of both the print and online versions of The Philadelphia Inquirer this morning received (registration required) the full version of the story. Online readers of the Miami Herald (link above) also got the full text. But readers of the Herald’s print edition (as provided by LexisNexis) got a pared down version minus several paragraphs that offered important, detailed comparisons of the Bush-Kerry health care proposals.
The print and online (registration required) editions of the San Jose Mercury News and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press (registration required) ran a condensed version of the Knight Ridder article. Adequate, but not as informative as the original.
Online readers of both The Charlotte Observer (registration required) and the Lexington Herald-Leader (registration required) saw the full text of the story, but pity the poor subscribers in Lexington and Charlotte who schlepped out for their papers, hoping to learn more about an issue voters consistently rank as among the most important to them. Not a word printed.
Pity also the poor readers in Michigan, who checked out the print and online editions of the Detroit Free Press this morning to discover that the paper elected to use its own story about Bush’s visit to the western part of the state. That decision by the editors would be perfectly sound if the hometown scribes had produced a report of better or even equal quality as their Washington colleagues. But it wasn’t even close.
Staff writers Dawson Bell and Chris Christoff, devoted a few paragraphs to Bush’s health-care proposal that was a classic “he said/she said” assessment:
Bush said Kerry’s health proposals would result in tax increases.
“I’m running against a fellow who has got a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision-making in health care,” Bush told a boisterous crowd in Holland. Kerry spokesman Rodell Mollineau said Bush has done nothing to lower health care costs and is responsible for higher medical costs, while he has protected profits for drug companies. He said Kerry’s health care plan would reduce families’ health care premiums and cut the cost of prescription drugs significantly.
The remainder of their story summarized the candidates’ position on siphoning water from the Great Lakes — an issue that may rank up there with health care costs among Michigan voters, and be deserving of extensive coverage, but we’re not ready to bet the farm.
Campaign Desk has bemoaned the tendency of lazy or hurried reporters to offer up little more than the claims and counterclaims of the candidates and their surrogates. They do no service for their readers. Based on today’s sampling of coverage, some of that blame should also be showered upon the folks running the newsroom, who make the decision to give the precious space of their newshole over to any and everything except for informative and detailed coverage of the news of the day.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.