OHIO — As the GOP presidential primary extravaganza continues to roll along, disenchantment has infected some observers—a.k.a., the voters.
With the Ohio press ramping up campaign coverage in anticipation of the state’s March 6 primary, I thought it would be interesting to ask some people here what the state’s journalists are doing right, and how they might improve coverage. So I blasted out some questions on email, Facebook, and Twitter. Specifically, I asked:
• What do you want to learn about the candidates and/or their campaigns?
• How does the press rate for digging deep into attack ads, and what can reporters do to help you sort out truth from fiction?
• Any suggestions on how the press can improve campaign coverage?
Even within the circle of this veteran journalist, not everybody was eager for more politics news. “I don’t think there is any positive outcome to covering the candidates,” replied Leisa Clymer, a Columbus psychologist and author. “… They are all sleeping in the same bed, and political ‘sides’ are as pointless and meaningless as WWF professional wrestling matches.”
But that sort of cynicism was in the minority. (And actually, other than Stephen Colbert’s video spoof of Newt Gingrich feasting “on the flesh” of CNN newsman John King, we haven’t actually seen any fake violence or blood. Yet.)
I received 22 responses in all, including six from former journalists, many of which offered constructive criticism. And though my crowd-sourcing experiment was hardly a scientific or random survey—a recent poll found voters in the dark about simple facts regarding the GOP candidates, while many of my respondents follow the news fairly closely—it might hold some insights for the Ohio press about what their readers and viewers want.
Some responses were lengthy, others short, but clear patterns emerged. Many of the people I heard from want reporters to probe deeper into the money trail: Who bankrolls the campaigns, who are the people and organizations behind super PACS, and what are politicians/candidates doing in return for all that loot?
“If you take money from someone, then you condone and support whatever it is that that person does. That tells me more about a candidate than anything,” said Julie DuSablon, a Columbus book editor. “I love the recent idea floating around that candidates should wear sponsor clothing like NASCAR drivers do.”
There was also a steady demand for fact-checking and ad watch stories, though my
crowd was divided on how good of a job the media does in that area.
“I especially like the ‘attack ad analyses’ that some newspapers print,” said Vince Volpi, CEO of a global business-consulting firm. “Newspapers… have an extra-constitutional duty to educate and report, not influence.”
A long-time former Ohio reporter, Tim Miller, said journalists have done an increasingly good job “of digging into the attack ads.”
While such ads are “somewhat destructive… we do, at times, get better information about a candidate’s track record when the media dive down into the truth behind such accusations,” Miller said. “For example, the Gingrich attack on Mitt Romney gave the media the opportunity to take a close look at Bain Capital.” (For an example of how this process unfolded in Ohio, see this Stephen Koff post for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.)
But others said the media must work harder at digging into ads and the assertions made by politicians. A former Ohio reporter turned entrepreneur, Susan Prentice, believes today’s journalists should embrace that old chestnut—if your mother tells you she loves you, check it.
“The news organizations would do well to remember that and check everything that comes out of a candidate’s mouth,” Prentice said. “Most people don’t do a lot of fact-checking on their own, and they tend to believe whoever shouts the loudest.”
Another respondent longed for a political fact-checking site like Snopes.com, “to confirm or refute campaign ‘truths.’”
A teacher would be fired if her lectures were as unpredictable as the events the news media must investigate. This is one of the two biggest reasons why surveys by the news media have shown repeatedly that the average American is too ignorant to vote intelligently. But reporters in Ohio will never supply their customers with an annual seven day remedial education because they have too big of a financial incentive in their failure to communicate. Imagine what would happen if reporters published just two metrics every year on the foster care program in their respective states. A significant number of foster care children are killed every year by the people who were hired to protect them. When this happens, investigations usually document that there was too many children per social worker and too much turnover in social workers for adequate surveillance of foster care parents. But this is a chronic problem for politicians because they must satisfy their strongest special interest groups before they can subsidize the weakest. Foster care children will always get what is left after middle class adults get their entitlements. And voters never pay attention because they don't even know about the problem. With just two metrics, on the other hand, voters and politicians would do a better job of protecting vulnerable children. But a dead child is more vauable to the news media because reporters make their living by being the messenger of bad news. And a dead child is also more fun for a reporter. He gets the chance to investigate and discover,,,,,, gasp, incompetent politicians, That is the kind of discovery that reporters yearn for so they can win a prize for investigativee journalism. .
#1 Posted by Stanley Krauter, CJR on Mon 6 Feb 2012 at 02:30 PM