Speech coverage became political too quickly
Journalism is all about telling both sides of a story.
That’s as it should be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard one side and been convinced they were right, only to hear the other side and be equally convinced. Often there are third and fourth perspectives, too.
The world isn’t a black and white place; that’s why covering news can be so challenging.
The coverage of Barack Obama’s budget speech last night got me thinking about this. Of course, print and broadcast journalists gave details from the speech. They related the high points of what the president said.
But it seemed like the coverage switched too quickly to what the opposition had to say, turning the story into a “he said, they said,” before readers/viewers had a chance to digest the content of what may turn out to be a very important discussion of the future of our country.
Maybe that’s because reporters assumed everyone had watched or listened to the speech and reaction was more important.
I think there’s another reason. In the highly polarized state we’ve evolved into over the last couple decades, journalists have been under attack for leaning too far to the left. And they’ve been lambasted particularly in the last year for being too soft on Barack Obama.
So there is a knee-jerk response to make sure they’re getting the conservative response to everything the president says or does.
Don’t get me wrong. I certainly think the Republican reaction to a presidential speech is an appropriate part of the coverage. It would be wrong not to include it.
But the meat and potatoes of coverage of a major presidential speech should be reporting on and analyzing the details and the nuances - helping Americans understand what it all means to them.
Instead, it was turned into a political football to be kicked back and forth.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I agree that we should spend more time analyzing and explaining things in the news. Too often I find myself debating a subject with someone only to find out that they have no clue what I’m talking about. At which point I have to explain the policy, and then defend my position and in the mean time try to figure out their position in the issue as well, and then debate it. As you can imagine I don’t talk politics often in real life anymore because of this. People just don’t seem to get it, they just know they are angry. If the news actually just explained a story instead of getting into the middle of the fight maybe people would be better informed to make decisions. This would be extermly helpfull to the average joe as well as the seasoned political junkie. For example I don’t think I have once heard tort reform explained on tv, just heard reasons for and against it, and why the other guy is an idot and obviously wrong. Everything I learned on the subject I had to research myself. I think the news format should be something like this, we will use last night as an example. The president makes an hour long speech, then the conservative side makes it’s response. Now what should happen is that the news should go over what the president said and EXPLAIN what it means to people who don’t follow poilitcs daily. Then after the subtext and pre-story and annalysis has finished then we can start arguing about it. Last night on MSNBC, you got the left wing response immediately follwoing the speech, and on Fox news, you had the right wing response, no actuall analysis on what the president said and what it means for you and me. The networks went staright into fighting the other side mode. This is very unhelpful, and as much as I live and die for political commentary, and argumentative fireworks, (think Dick Army vs Joan Walsh from salon.com on Hardball last week
it is only appealing to people who have a firm grasp on what the issues are and what they mean.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Very well said.
Obviously, this is more of a problem with TV, where it’s part of the culture. They don’t seem to know any other way.
But it seems like newspapers, the Internet and even NPR fall into the same trap.