But somebody certainly should. This is something that campaign reporters or pundits that chose to take up the BuzzFeed “scoop” could have done. So is contextualization, and reminding readers, as The Washington Post editorial staff did, that the individual mandate was once a widely-held Republican position, not just another thing on which Romney had changed his tune.
Some have done that, and good for BuzzFeed if it got some reporters to grapple seriously with Romney’s record. But journalists, that’s also your job. You shouldn’t need BuzzFeed to remember this.
The fact that a few of them had wrestled with the context—either to much less media traction or to traction that has since been forgotten—is also a sign of our noisy times.
That is a fairly hideous construct. "Traction" is ugly enough but "to traction" is in a place beyond the realm of the word ugly.
Reporters have a simple solution for too many bright shiny objects on their computer screens. The solution can be found on any electronic device. It's called the "off" button.
As for recall - "If you want to remember it, write it down. Paper doesn't forget." was something I learned from my 2nd grade teacher.
It seems to me many reporters are mimicking the talking heads. And the talking heads do little more than debate and re-debate and re-re-debate the current topics of the news cycle. For people in tv studios ancient history starts with yesterday.
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Final thoughts
It saddens me to see CJR linking to the rag also known as the Huffington Post. That's like reporting that the tail wags the dog and then linking to the tail. The reporter could have done a little, um, reportage and found something relevant from a far better source. Marshall Mcluhan for example.
Maybe she was too busy on Twitter.
#1 Posted by F. Murray Rumpelstiltskin, CJR on Wed 21 Mar 2012 at 09:17 PM
"That’s a grim picture of political journalism, possibly, we hope, exaggerated."
Understated, if anything.
#2 Posted by Weldon Berger, CJR on Thu 22 Mar 2012 at 10:10 PM