The Washington Post published my letter to the editor this morning: "Coverage Without Content," in response to Howard Kurtz's article on recent findings of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "First the Good News, Hillary."
Howard Kurtz's Oct. 29 Style article, "First the Good News, Hillary," about a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, confirmed what many already know: Polls drive campaign coverage and vice versa. I appreciate project director Tom Rosenstiel's view that the findings indicate that the media's "horse-race lens" has little to do with the candidates' merits.
It's worth considering whether the media have undermined the democratic process by (a) declaring probable nominees solely on the basis of the "money primary" and media-influenced polls and (b) giving voters little chance to learn who the candidates are, let alone what they stand for. (An exception, according to the study, is PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," which Mr. Kurtz wrote was credited with giving "the lesser-known candidates about as much attention as the front-runners.") It's no wonder that, during each presidential election postmortem, the media bewail the usual horse-race coverage and resolve "next time" to offer fair coverage that informs citizens about the candidates.
Surely it's time to admit that the system of primaries has broken down.
MARY A. ANDERSON
Vienna, Va.
FYI, they lopped off the last sentence I had written (for space and probably because they thought it repetitive): "Massively unequal coverage makes it harder for citizens to even know they have choices, let alone what those choices are." In my view, the last sentence in the published letter seems almost a nonsequitur to what precedes it without a bit more context), but whatever.
In response to one snark-ish comment online, "Let's go back to the smoke-filled rooms where professionals selected the candidates," I responded:
Ah, but the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms" are alive and well, all the more so when the media coverage eclipses if not preempts a primary process that now might be no more than a formality. This occurs on a couple of levels.
First, when money = media coverage = poll results, the money frontloads the process all by itself. If you define the "smoke-filled room" as the establishment (of either party, of corporate or other moneyed interests, or all of the above), that establishment knows that money drives the process and steps up early to anoint its (or their) first choice. That's exactly how George W. Bush came to be nominated in 2000, beginning with a big $50 million boost long before the caucuses and primaries.
Second, the mainstream media have become ever more "corporatized," as large corporations have consolidated their media holdings. Whatever the intent of rank-and-file reporters and producers, they have to sell their stories to superiors, and their efforts also depend on adequate resources and staff to do substantive journalism (both of which have been drastically diminished in recent years, to increase profits or just to ensure financial viability in competition with Internet information sources).
So, in tandem with horse-race coverage, the new "smoke-filled rooms" not only influence that coverage heavily but also turn the mainstream media into another, modern equivalent of the smoke-filled room.
With so much seemingly determined before anyone even casts a vote, the primary process becomes less and less relevant -- which, in part, is what has caused states to frontload the primaries as they struggle for their own relevance.
Get it?
I happen to believe that the caucuses and primaries remain crucial as the closest thing the American people still have to a voice in this process. I hope they confound the conventional (i.e., MSM) wisdom in a huge way this January and February, if not beyond.
I'm concerned, however, that the ever-increasing role of money in this process not only has lengthened the primary process beyond all reason but may also have rendered even the first caucuses and primaries to be mere formalities. People are pushing back by moving their state primaries earlier and earlier, such that relatively few states have any clout at all.
I don't know what the ultimate answer is (unless the people do take their power back by seeking the truth and by thinking and voting independently). I wish the MSM would get a clue about their own role in the slow weakening of democracy, which relies on an interested, let alone informed, citizenry.
Or do they not see that, as mere mouthpieces for Money and Power, their own relevance to the public interest will die?