The Media-Crit Beat. Again.

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

"Eight modes of transportation, the kindness of six strangers, random conversations with twelve more, and nobody brought up Bartlet versus Ritchie but you" —Donna Moss, The West Wing

I realize I did this last week, but then Tim Russert had to go Rudy Giuliani about Bernie Kerik without bothering to assessing the truth value of Giuliani's response. Instead, the roundtable focused on how Rudy's defense might fare politically. Matt Yglesias provides the appropriate snark, and Paul Krugman cries woe. This isn't the first time this happened, either; Giuliani kept citing bogus prostate cancer statistics, and almost got away with it, but there was enough pushback that the news outlets were willing to run decent fact checks, with some even (correctly!) putting clinically accepted figures in the lede rather than the ninth paragraph.

There's a saying that good journalism reduces uncertainty. Somehow that mantra has meant that political reporting should focus on "who's going to win", even though the answer changes every month or so. But there are other forms of uncertainty in politics. Most of the public knows little to nothing about how the candidates' administrations might affect their daily lives, which is the primary frame of most questions people ask during town hall style debates (which are more subtantive than the questions journalists ask!). So if the primary frame for political journalism were "if candidate X wins, how would it affect the country?" rather than "how does event X affect candidate Y's chances of winning?" we would all be better off, and I would stop feeling the need to link to Why Americans Hate The Media every damn week.