Schultz said she tries to push her coverage “beyond the news of the days” by connecting national stories with local voices—a tactic that, she said, helps “humanize the story” and go beyond “the policy discussion and rhetoric.” And Spangler said that if he had the resources, he’d do more traveling, talking to voters in the Upper Peninsula, say, and Battle Creek, to see how policies are impacting their lives.
Klinefelter works, almost literally, to create that dialogue. He said he likes to take what candidates and politicians say and put it before “real-life people.”
“Because of how TV works, people will be interviewed with the light and camera and be thinking ‘I’m on TV’ … they change totally,” he said. “But I come up to the same person with my little [radio] mic, and it’s a totally different thing. I get really honest, interesting opinions on, for example, if a foreclosure policy will really be helpful to them.”
Those efforts don’t just make the news more accessible; they also help journalists hold politicians accountable and keep the debate honest.
Schultz warned against falling into the “he said, she said” trap. “When on deadline, it’s easy to get reaction from the other side in response to a political attack or negative ad, but it takes more time to dig into the issue, (and) research the record and facts,” she said.
Analytical research is often essential to factchecking, of course. But as attacks become “more vicious and more shallow,” attention to the lives of ordinary people can also help journalists cut through the political war of words, Pluta said.
“One thing journalism does okay at is to immediately turn attacks around,” Pluta said. “Good journalists will, after a week or so, step back and say, ‘let’s examine this.’ They get beyond the rhetoric on, say, working moms, and look at how a candidate’s policies will impact the real lives of working moms.”
A teacher would be fired if her lectures were as unpredictable as the events the news media must investigate. This is one of two biggest reasons why surveys by the news media have shown repeatedly that the average American is too ignorant to vote intelligently. Thank God that most Americans don't vote must be the motto of reporters. Because no one in the news media is interested in communicating like a teacher. That is surprising because much of what reporters do is ineffective because they don;t want to change their "professional standards." Consider the tax code. It is full of special interest exemptions for the most powerful special interest groups because our political system rewards power. But if every daily newspaper would just publish a one page report on our tax code and distribution of income every year on April 15, ordinary people would be shocked and insulted by what they read. And then every year their anger will grow stronger if nothing is done to correct those flaws. And the April 15 one page report will become a deadline for politicians to do something. With the current professional standards for journalism, an shocking report on the tax code is forgotten by voters in a more colorful world of Weiner scandals et al. The news media lack of discipline in reporting information is the reason why the news media is ineffective. But no one cares. And that includes the intellectuals who work at CJR.
#1 Posted by Stanley Krauter, CJR on Tue 15 May 2012 at 12:13 PM