Editor’s Note: With this entry, we inaugurate the occasional publication of letters to Campaign Desk that we find informative, provocative or persuasively critical.
Letters most likely to be published are those that are brief, temperate, and thought-provoking — including those that take a position different from, or critical of, our own. Letters least likely to be published are those that rely on partisan sloganeering, intemperate language or selective fact-gathering to prop up a dubious proposition.
Letters will be edited, but only for length, grammar and punctuation, and no letter will be published without the writer’s explicit permission. Readers can reach us at cjrtips@jrn.columbia.edu.
With that, we’re off:
Dear Campaign Desk:
First off, let me state, that, though I am currently a graduate student at the [John F.] Kennedy School [of Government at Harvard], in my real life, I am a rapid response/research campaign guy who has worked on numerous campaigns from big city mayor to US senator to governor and president.
Let me make a point about why newspapers refuse to make a judgment on whether an ad is true or not … They don’t want a campaign to make an ad using quotes by the papers in the spot, e.g., “the New York Times called George Bush’s ad ‘a distortion.'” This problem has become more acute over the past 6 years, as newspapers and broadcast have become even more careful about making judgments regarding accuracy of campaign claims.
This goes to one of the biggest points of media coverage of campaigns. The media still has a self-image of itself as a neutral observer of the political process, when in fact, it is a crucial shaper of that process. This is not a comment about bias, rather about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle — that “the act of observing a phenomenon changes the nature of that phenomenon.” Until the political media recognizes that this is true, we will continue to have this bizarre Kabuki theatre of political reportage.
Again, I enjoy your site.
–Dennis Yedwab
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.