politics

Reporters Stick to the Script in Salt Lake

Cookie-cutter, "he said, she said" political reporting is the rule, rather than the exception. But every now and again, a newspaper will come along and offer...
September 1, 2006

We’ve dropped the hammer on a few newspapers this week for relying on the tired formula of “he said, she said” -style reporting and not backing up their statements with evidence, but today brings a slightly new wrinkle.

In covering the president’s speech about Iraq and terrorism at the American Legion in Salt Lake City yesterday, most newspapers continued to rely on the old tactic of repeating what the president said, then blandly going through the roll call of the usual Democratic and Republican suspects for their partisan spin on the speech. (See the New York Times for a good example of this. The paper quotes presidential advisor Dan Bartlett, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel with predictable results.) This doesn’t mean that one side or the other doesn’t have some insight into the situation, or that a politician is somehow unworthy of having his views disseminated — it’s just that the whole process is just so predictable as to be little more than a paint-by-numbers exercise.

The San Francisco Chronicle offered a take that’s worth a quick look, however. Their piece does a good job of explaining that polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq and the president’s handling of it, and quotes three outside sources to buttress its findings — the only problem is, they’re all Democrats. Granted, the politicians quoted (Boxer, and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Pete Stark) are all local politicians, but were there really no Bush supporters to be found?

We’re not calling for a partisan back-and-forth here — that’s the last thing that would make this kind of reporting better. But stacking the deck against the president to this extent isn’t fair, either.

The best take on the president’s Salt Lake City speech we’ve seen actually came from the local paper, the Salt Lake Tribune. The paper’s Rebecca Walsh and Matthew D. LaPlante covered the story better — or at least in a more interesting way — than most, turning in a piece devoid of partisan talking points, while quoting — gasp! — regular people who actually attended the speech. They included American Enterprise fellow Karlyn Bowman, Journal of Political Marketing editor Bruce Newman, Cindy Sheehan, Rice University professor of political science Richard Stoll, and Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics. Not a bad list, and the only politician (other than the president) who made an appearance was Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

This brings up a larger, more important point that cuts to the heart of political journalism. While the majority of daily political reporting relies on a few quotes from politicians, and perhaps a think tank fellow, isn’t the Tribune‘s story just more engaging? The piece covers the bases: it quotes the president, a partisan think tanker, two private citizens, and several experts on political marketing and politics. In doing so, it represents a multiplicity of views from various factions and perspectives, giving the story a life that few focus group-tested quotes from a politician ever will.

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Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.