Griping about how the media covers the Presidential campaign is as much a part of the quadrennial tradition as the Iowa State Fair Soapbox, or wooden eggs at St. Anselm’s in New Hampshire.
There is too much “horserace” coverage on poll numbers, the critics always say, and not enough focus on the issues. Too much inside-baseball obsession over fundraising, staff shake-ups, and out-of-context gaffes, and not enough serious vetting of the candidates’ background and character.
My WGBH News compatriot Dan Kennedy summed it up this week: “Media coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign is shaping up to be the same depressing spectacle that it always is.”
I respectfully disagree.
To be sure, there is plenty of very bad political coverage out there.
There are also systemic issues whose answers still elude the industry as a whole. Kennedy is right about the need to better contextualize the effectively unopposed-for-nomination incumbent into the coverage of the Democratic competition. The inherent preference for what’s new over what’s known continues to skew coverage. The economic collapse of local newsrooms has deprived many Americans of an important window into national politics. And, the news media still hasn’t figured out how to effectively report on and referee political claims simultaneously.
But, for all that, I want to step up to not merely defend the much-maligned 2020 Presidential coverage, but to praise it—and to rebut some of the most cherished criticisms of the genre.
Horserace coverage is good!
According to many of the critics, the media needs to do more to address the actual issues being considered by potential Democratic primary voters. Well, one of their top concerns, they tell us over and over again, is electability. You know what measures electability, albeit imperfectly? Polling.
More broadly, horserace coverage is a vital part of how voters process a crowded primary field. They need to know, at some point, which of the candidates have a legitimate chance, to narrow their own selections into something manageable and relevant. Without reported polls, they will use other, arguably much worse cues to determine the same thing, such as the number of ads a candidate can afford to place.
And anyway, the likelihood of somebody becoming President of the United States is really, really important—of course it’s newsworthy that Kamala Harris is gaining support in that process, or that Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t.
Coverage of polling, as with all journalism, should be cautious, smart, and laden with context. Increasingly, it is.
Coverage of policies is overrated!
Critics of campaign coverage tend to demand more “substantive” focus on governance issues, and candidates’ policies to address them. That’s important, of course—and has been getting more attention in this cycle than usual, thanks mostly to unusually policy-focused candidates.
But, policies aren’t generally what most voters actually respond to—especially in choosing an executive officer, such as a President. As long as a candidate doesn’t hold a disqualifying position on one of a voter’s key issues, the details don’t really matter that much.
Nor should they necessarily. Presidents rarely accomplish much of the legislative agenda on which they campaigned, even in the most favorable cases, and the details are generally determined by Congress more than the White House.
If anything, recent experience of the most recent White House occupants has reinforced for Democratic voters a truism that has instinctively guided voters all along: character, wisdom, empathy, and adaptability matter far more than specific plans.
Those qualities are far more difficult things to quantify, ask about in interviews, or compile in user-friendly charts.
The media can only convey them by, in a sense, emulating the process of analyzing a job applicant: showing the candidates campaigning; asking them a variety of different types of questions; digging into their personal and professional backgrounds; and observing them responding to pressure.
Coverage has been pretty great!
NBC Nightly News recently aired segments in which nearly all of the Democratic Presidential candidates explained their one “Big Idea”; the pieces were informative, serious, and engaging, with extended interviews posted online.
It’s just one example of how the national news media—even at this very early stage of the campaign—have been devoting time and thought to presenting the Democratic candidates to their audience.
The New York Times mixed serious and frivolous questions in a videotaped project. Matt Pearce, part of a beefedup Los Angeles Times 2020 team, solicits reader input to drive his coverage.
CNN has given candidates—including the long-shots—full hour townhalls in prime time. MSNBC has done several as well; so has FOX News, for candidates willing to go there. They’ve been substantive, informative, and relevant.
Regular viewers of CNN and MSNBC see Presidential candidate interviews frequently, on broad topics as well as responding to news of the day—though they have to sit through way too much inanity to get to it.
Some of the best, if not always deepest or hardest-hitting coverage, is happening where real people’s eyeballs and earpods are, but goes unnoticed by those focused on legacy media. NowThis is doing a 20 Questions for 2020 series. Podcasts, such as The Breakfast Club and Pod Save America, have done terrific candidate interviews and periodically broken news. Shondaland is running candidates’ answers to a series of questions prepared by Shonda Rimes herself. Daytime TV shows, notably Good Morning America and The View but many others as well, continually bring on the candidates and deliver reasonably good interviews.
And, while they’re not quite living up to their potential, women’s magazines including Cosmopolitan, Essence, Ebony, Glamour, Marie Claire, and Vogue are all covering 2020 politics for their millions of readers, who happen to be the heart of the Democratic primary electorate. Anybody not following them regularly can’t claim to judge political coverage as it’s being experienced by potential voters.
The political niche press isn’t hurting anybody!
While they’re missing what most real Americans read, watch, and hear, critics of campaign coverage tend to be among the small niche audience who seek out national political news from the likes of Politico, Axios, and Morning Joe.
Much of what you see there is heavily tilted toward inside-baseball, who’s-up-who’s-down, hot take reporting and analysis. That’s what their audience wants.
True, that stuff probably shouldn’t be the main political news diet for typical citizens. Which is fine, because typical citizens see very little of it.
The political niche media, unsurprisingly, has some outstanding journalism that can truly help you understand the evolving shape of politics and policy; and plenty of nonsense that we’d all be better off without.
But none of it is clogging the brains of typical voters, so it’s really not worth getting riled up about.
You don’t actually matter!
In fact, if we’re really honest about it, “typical voters” don’t even matter much right now. What matters is the coverage experienced by potential Democratic caucus and primary voters in a small number of early-voting states.
That’s why the candidates themselves spend nearly every waking hour in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina.
While the economic devastation to the local news business has hurt those places just as it has everywhere, there remains a lot of good outlets doing perfectly good work covering the races on their doorstep.
Some of the big-name papers, such as the Des Moines Register, Concord Monitor, and Columbia Post and Courier have developed excellent Presidential coverage over cycles in the spotlight. Small-town and ethic outlets, such as the Foster Daily Democrat and the Charleston Chronicle,
Those states also have a robust group of online political sites, including the Nevada Independent, Iowa Starting Line, and New Hampshire Journal.
For the vast majority of Americans who don’t reside in one of those four states, coverage of the Presidential election will start to matter roughly six months from now. Until then, umbrage at the quality of that coverage would probably be better spent on other pursuits.
