Bill Clinton Is Right About the Campaign Coverage

I don't think 'horserace' accurately describes the type of vacuous campaign coverage that has sprung from this cycle. What we're seeing flourish this time on the trail is something else entirely. It's coverage that's often saddled with inane trivia about tactics and delivered with a faux breathlessness, in a way that traditional horserace coverage never was.

I'm almost nostalgic for the days when the press paid too much attention to campaign consultants since at least those dispatches had some substance to them. This is a new, more disturbing (immature?) brand of pseudo-journalism that's delivered with an extra dose of attitude and that informs and enlightens even less.

And that's why I fear it's going to be a very long 2008.

Read the full Media Matters column here.

Comments

[lovethesinner]

Sure, Eric and Bill Clinton are "Right About the Campaign Coverage", but neither really points to a cause.

You can read poll after poll about what voters "say" they want, but they're patterns of consumption say different.

Sure, a lot of coverage is shoddy or manipulated, but most of it is a direct reflection of the actual interests of a completely dumbed-down electorate.

Has Olberman's ratings increased because voters are able to sift meaning from his dependant clauses, or are they responding to his nearly O'Rileyian rants against all things Republican?

If voters wanted thoughtful productive discussions of issues, why isn't PBS' "Bill Moyers Journal" or "Now with David Brancaccio" ever quoted even here at Huffpo?

And, if Bill Clinton wanted voters to focus on the issues, why did he lead voters into a $40 million soap opera that led to eight years of re-runs of him saying "I did NOT have sex with that woman"?

Sure, people care about the issues and they'd like to know what the Presidential candidates would do about dealing with them, but they just don't believe a word that comes out of the mouths of the people who could do anything about it.

Someone once told me, "there's more to the truth than the telling." It took me many years until I understood that the other part is people listening.

America isn't listening. The coverage reflects that.

[RAMHaiti]

Bloggers weren't so involved in the past. Bloggers can just say what they think. They don't have to interview anybody. They don't need sources. They don't have to answer to sponsors or advertisers. Thats bound to change the color of a campaign. Rupert can buy all the newspapers in America if he wants. We now have an alternative to MSM....,unless of course Rupert's buying Arianna too. Actually, I think Arianna prefers Oprah to Rupert.

[cloudy]

Clinton's complaint was NOT primarily about the lack of issue focus at all, but the claim that the media were favoring Obama, being much more critical of HRC than of Barack Obama, which is a basically bogus claim -- albeit on a subject open to considerable interpretation.

[jhNY]

The campaign season is way long. The reporters are bored with whatever they've done and seen before. They must entertain themselves first, and you second. They'd rather talk about how they feel about the candidates than discuss the positions taken or the statememnts made by the candidates themselves.

The mechanics of theatre criticism, as practiced by precocious high school journalists, is now visited on everybody who pays attention to political coverage. It's been said before-- Washington is the Hollywood of the ugly. Now we're stuck with the Hollywood reporters, resentful of anything that isn't boffo entertainment, ever ready to decry box office poison, envious and worshipful of the superficially attractive. As Jackie Gleason used to say, " a little traveling music, Sam." I'm out of here.

[soupcity]

Read the whole thing.. excellent, Mr. Boehlert.

[LizM]

Forget about 2008...it's shaping up to be a very long and hard next eight years...plus...if you know what I mean, and I'm not sure that you do.