http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071030-potus-2008-are-you-ready-for-some-football.html
The study [ ] paints a clear picture of what’s wrong, laying out how the media focuses obsessively on the “horse race” aspects of political campaigns [ ] while almost completely ignoring critical issues like the candidates’ actual records and the likely impact of the candidates’ policy positions on citizens’ lives.
This is one thing that I’ve always HATED about our current media. Reading this today, though, I realized the probably cause of the “sports reporting” style. If journalists started reporting the negatives and positives of candidates, they’d get some jerk who got a bad rap on TV to say “wait a minute, that’s biased reporting.” Then the media company would be sued for giving unfair advantage to a candidate.
So what’s wrong here? Is it the media? Maybe its our current system of political campaigning. For those who aren’t aware, media law is currently set up so that radio/tv stations (i’m not sure about newspapers) have to offer equal face time and rates to all candidates. My guess is that our journalists fear doing an actual news report on someone because of the possibility that another candidate will yell “Unequal airtime!!” There’s just too many candidates around the country to give free airtime to.
Also, “Jane Doe is in the top Democratic spot with Nixon close behind,” is just a whole lot easier to write and report.
