Why Campaign Coverage So Often Sucks

MANCHESTER, NH -- Before I post about dynamics of the race as it's playing out here, a quick thought about the psychology of the political press . Reporting at event like this is exciting and invigorating, but it's also terrifying. I've done it now a number of times at conventions and such, and in the past I was pretty much alone the entire time. I didn't know any other reporters, so I kept to myself and tried to navigate the tangle of schedules and parking lots and hotels and event venues. It's daunting and the whole time you think: "Am I missing something? What's going? Oh man, I should go interview that guy in the parka with the fifteen buttons on his hat." You fear getting lost, or missing some important piece of news, or making an ass out of yourself when you have to muster up that little burst of confidence it takes to walk up to a stranger and start asking them questions.

Of course, it's amazing work. But I realized for the first time yesterday, that this essential terror isn't just a byproduct of inexperience. It never goes away . Veteran reporters are just as panicked about getting lost or missing something, just as confused about who to talk to. This why reporters move in packs. It's like the first week of freshman orientation, when you hopped around to parties in groups of three dozen, because no one wanted to miss something or knew where anything was.

Then there's always the fact that when you go to one of these events as a reporter, there's part of you that's aware that you don't really belong there. You're an outsider, standing on the edges observing the people who are there doing the actually stuff of politics: listening to a candidate, cheering, participating. So reporters run with that distance: they crack wise, they kibbitz in the back, they play up their detachment. That leads to coverage that is often weirdly condescending and removed from the experience of politics.

I'm convinced that some of the worst features of campaign reporting emanate from the kinds of psychological defenses that reporters erect to deal with their insecurities. That's not meant as an excuse. But I think many critiques of the political press express the belief that what's wrong with coverage stems from the superficiality and venality of those who are practicing it. That's certainly true in some cases, but just as you can't hope to fundamentally reform education by calling for a lot more of great teachers, you can't make political coverage better by simply hoping for better reporters. You need to deal with the structural issues that reinforce these tendencies (Oh, and fire the hacks). I had some thoughts about how to go about doing that a few months back.

OK, less meta posts to follow.

Comments (20)

1. "You're an outsider, standing on the edges observing the people who are there doing the actually stuff of politics: listening to a candidate, cheering, participating. So reporters run with that distance: they crack wise, they kibbitz in the back, they play up their detachment."

   Re-read your Hunter Thompson, Mr Hayes ("Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72")

   It's been going on for over 40 years!

   Posted by Mask at 01/05/2008 @ 11:14am

2. I don't really understand how this is supposed to work. So it is detachment that leads to horserace coverage that ignores the issues? I can understand if detachment leads to not writing the most emotionally evocative stuff, and thus leaving out some of the appeal of candidates like Edwards (because of the anecdotes he gives you in speeches) and Obama (because of the all the spirit lifting talk of hope and unity, or whatever).

   But the problem doesn't seem to me to be the lack of emotion. It is that the press decides early on what the narrative for an election is, doesn't seem to check on whether the narrative fits facts in the first place, and doesn't change that narrative, even if the situation they are describing changes.

   So they decided this was experience vs. change, even though none of the major candidates on the democratic side has that much experience in government, and despite the policy proposals of the 'change' candidate being probably really far from radical.

   So I would actually appreciate more meta-analysis, since I don't get how this story you are telling works. Maybe we disagree about the problems with campaign coverage.

   Posted by dentedpat at 01/05/2008 @ 12:24pm

3. Posted by MASK 01/05/2008 @ 11:14am

   Hunter S. Thompson's approach to politics isn't going to make political coverage suck less, just suck differently.

   Posted by srjenkins at 01/05/2008 @ 12:25pm

4. Posted by DENTEDPAT 01/05/2008 @ 12:24pm

   In short, slip-shod reporting that is a function of a media sound-bite culture, candidate message management, groupthink, etc.

   Posted by srjenkins at 01/05/2008 @ 12:29pm

5. When we all know Hillary is the DEM candidate

   More omniscience?

   good points on some of the other stuff, though John.

   Posted by crabwalk at 01/05/2008 @ 12:44pm

6. Good points all! Call it "detachment," or fantastical "suspension of disbelief," it amounts to poor reportage/coverage when the writer/author/reporter pretends "objectivity." No such position exists or is possible to assume. State your biases!

   Posted by lewwelge at 01/05/2008 @ 12:48pm

7. Questions remaining from Hypocrite Huckabee thread.

   If the top percentile of America , owns 85% of the wealth, why should they not pay 85% of the taxes that help run the country?

   The top 5 percent own more than half of all wealth.

   In 1998, they owned 59 percent of all wealth. Or to put it another way, the top 5 percent had more wealth than the remaining 95 percent of the population, collectively.

   The top 20 percent owns over 80 percent of all wealth. In 1998, it owned 83 percent of all wealth.

   A household in the middle -- the median household -- has wealth of about $62,000. $62,000 is not insignificant, but if you consider that the top 1 percent of households' average wealth is $12.5 million, you can see what a difference there is in the distribution.

   The middle class's major assets are their home, liquid assets like checking and savings accounts, CDs and money market funds, and pension accounts. For the average family, these assets make up 84 percent of their total wealth.

   The richest 10 percent of families own about 85 percent of all outstanding stocks. They own about 85 percent of all financial securities, 90 percent of all business assets. These financial assets and business equity are even more concentrated than total wealth.Edward Wolff, prof economics NYU

   So, regulation of securities benefits a small minority of the population, yet makes up a large percentage of economic policy for the whole country. It is these regulations, or deregulation's, that have been jiggled to help the top accrue more and more of the nations wealth.

   The most common measure used, and the most understandable is: what share of total wealth is owned by the richest households, typically the top 1 percent. In the United States, in the last survey year, 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of all wealth.

   This is the most easily understood measure.

   There is also another measure called the Gini coefficient. It measures the concentration of wealth at different percentile levels, and does an overall computation. It is an index that goes from zero to one, one being the most unequal. Wealth inequality in the United States has a Gini coefficient of .82, which is pretty close to the maximum level of inequality you can have.

   ...We have had a fairly sharp increase in wealth inequality dating back to 1975 or 1976.

   Prior to that, there was a protracted period when wealth inequality fell in this country, going back almost to 1929. So you have this fairly continuous downward trend from 1929, which of course was the peak of the stock market before it crashed, until just about the mid-1970s. Since then, things have really turned around, and the level of wealth inequality today is almost double what it was in the mid-1970s.

   Income inequality has also risen. Most people date this rise to the early 1970s, but it hasn't gone up nearly as dramatically as wealth inequality.

   Apart from the absolute level of wealth of people at the bottom of the spectrum, why should inequality itself be a matter of concern?

   Wolff: I think there are two rationales. The first is basically a moral or ethical position. A lot of people think it is morally bad for there to be wide gaps, wide disparities in well being in a society.

   If that is not convincing to a person, the second reason is that inequality is actually harmful to the well-being of a society. There is now a lot of evidence, based on cross-national comparisons of inequality and economic growth, that more unequal societies actually have lower rates of economic growth. The divisiveness that comes out of large disparities in income and wealth, is actually reflected in poorer economic performance of a country.

   Typically when countries are more equal, educational achievement and benefits are more equally distributed in the country. In a country like the United States, there are still huge disparities in resources going to education, so quality of schooling and schooling performance are unequal. If you have a society with large concentrations of poor families, average school achievement is usually a lot lower than where you have a much more homogenous middle class population, as you find in most Western European countries. So schooling suffers in this country, and, as a result, you get a labor force that is less well educated on average than in a country like the Netherlands, Germany or even France. So the high level of inequality results in less human capital being developed in this country, which ultimately affects economic performance.

   Posted by crabwalk at 01/05/2008 @ 12:58pm

8. Posted by SRJENKINS 01/05/2008 @ 12:25pm

   I didn't say it would, SRJ. I was merely pointing out that this is nothing new, nor likely to change.

   Not sure what the "solution" is? Not "advocacy journalism"...and you can't simply take dictation.

   Posted by Mask at 01/05/2008 @ 1:08pm

9. When we all know Hillary is the DEM candidate and the Repub is not yet decided...and the bulk of American people can't stand either party nor the MSM, so we try to live our lives inspite of it all....

   Posted by JOMAMMA 01/05/2008 @ 12:36pm | ignore this person

   did not Ioway dent your confidence in Hillary?

   Posted by brannigan at 01/05/2008 @ 2:04pm

10. I don't know if I would say the campaign coverage sucks. I do think it's biased. Who's bias? The reporters? Editor? Both?

    I've grown accustomed to bias and even expect it. I listen to Left Radio on SIRIUS 146, Rush, Hanity (occasionally), and read sources from both sides. Plenty of bias no doubt. It helps me to develop my own opinion without spouting the sound bites that so many tend to do. Not so much on this blog but definitely on others.

    Posted by FritztheCat at 01/05/2008 @ 2:42pm

11. Posted by BRANNIGAN 01/05/2008 @ 2:04pm

    As I pointed out to him on another thread, JOMAASCH's belief that Her Nibs is a Terminator or something, damn near invunerable...and also capable of manipulating things so well that NOBODY and NOTHING can stand in her way.

    Iowa DID show that she's capable of being knocked down. The flesh was burned off the titanium exo-skeleton. If she loses New Hampshire, the legs will be blasted off. And if she loses South Carolina, Sarah Connor will have crushed her under the hydraulic press!

    Posted by Mask at 01/05/2008 @ 2:48pm

12. Posted by FRITZTHECAT 01/05/2008 @ 2:42pm

    XM has an excellent and non-biased coverage on Channel 130. It's called "POTUS '08"

    Posted by Mask at 01/05/2008 @ 2:49pm

13. That's right Fritz, accurate reporting can only emanate from an integrated describer, one who recognizes the metronomic character of opinion-writing where the only certainty is fungibility/change.

    Posted by lewwelge at 01/05/2008 @ 2:51pm

14. MASK, thanks for the tip. I'll have to give that a listen.

    Posted by FritztheCat at 01/05/2008 @ 3:24pm

15. In my experience with it (which is driving back and forth from work) POTUS '08 is nothing but a place where conventional wisdom gets repeated over and over again (maybe it gets better in the middle of the day and at night. I don't know) That said, I don't know of a place that has good campaign coverage.

    Posted by dentedpat at 01/05/2008 @ 4:27pm

16. Posted by DENTEDPAT 01/05/2008 @ 4:27pm |

    Just because they don't interview the editors of "Mother Jones" every other day, or have a weekly Noam Chomsky commentary...doesn't mean they're "but a place where conventional wisdom gets repeated over and over again".

    Posted by Mask at 01/05/2008 @ 4:51pm

17. ....accurate reporting can only emanate from an integrated describer, one who recognizes the metronomic character of opinion-writing where the only certainty is fungibility/change.

    Posted by LEWWELGE 01/05/2008 @ 2:51pm

    Your previous position as (my) least comprehensible has been displaced by a couple of recent newbies--I might add, quite active ones in recent weeks! Plus, your recent posts have been short and `of the earth'.....until this one! Where the f^%$ did you get the term "integrated describer"? The explanation is worse! Did Moses just give that to you last night before your decent?

    Posted by Happy at 01/05/2008 @ 4:54pm

18. OK, less meta posts to follow.

    BLOG | Posted 01/05/2008 @ 10:42am

    fewer! mr. blog, fewer.

    we mustn't lose "fewer".

    what's next

    ¿much people?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/05/2008 @ 5:23pm

19. WHY CAMPAIGN COVERAGE SO OFTEN SUCKS...

    hmmmmmmm?

    i suppose if we were to report on vacuum cleaners or singularities the coverage would suck, as well.

    it's only natural.

    it's nothing to do with the reporting, per se.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/05/2008 @ 5:27pm

20. Posted by JOMAMMA 01/05/2008 @ 6:40pm

    MAASCH...one word for you--

    "HSUBFOOLS"

    Posted by Mask at 01/05/2008 @ 7:23pm