A Challenge to Political Journalists: Get Over The 'Horse Race'

The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus

An Open Letter to Paid Political Reporters On The 2008 elections:

A few weeks ago, the Shorenstein center reported initial findings about coverage of the 2008 campaign. They were very disappointing.

Just 1% of your stories to date examined what citizens most want and need to know: the candidates' records or past public performance. The study found 63% of your stories were horse race stories. In the month of waterboarding, the water bill, and the droughts around the world, I add another lament to the flood: water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. We are adrift in polls and strategies, and are parched out here for the news we need about the men and women who would be our President.

To a degree which you may find daunting, your reporting matters, both individually and collectively. One or two of you striking out a new path in political reporting elevates the entire process. Together, you bear enormous responsibility for the shape, nature, and tenor of our collective discussion about our next President.

Here are some hopes I have about how you will spend the next two months, perhaps the months in your own lives when you have the greatest influence that you will ever have on American democracy.

A. DO write comparative, contemporary pieces about the candidates' past on contemporary issues

Yesterday I went to Lexis and searched for the name of one of the candidates for President ("Hillary Clinton") within the same article as two of the big issues this week that she would deal with if she were President ("farm bill", "Pakistan"). I searched the LA Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, seeking stories from the prior week. None of these three papers included information about her response to the Farm Bill or Pakistan, her thoughts on the Farm Bill or Pakistan, her history with the Farm Bill or Pakistan, or a comparison to other candidates. This is a major failure of communication. When a major bill hits the senate, you should immediately respond with a story on the candidates and the bill; how they've voted in the past, connections to funders, what they have said. When Iran is in the news, do the same. I tried to "cover" these comparisons as a citizen and learned that this is really hard work; I'm a professor with lots of unstructured time, and I still can't do it. It takes too much time, and takes deep knowledge of the candidates' comparative histories, and it takes working fast. We need you to do this for us. This kind of reporting--where the political meets the Political--does a few things. First, it places candidates in the appropriate context by forcing a series of ongoing decisions on issues that are not necessarily of their choosing. It takes them out of an inappropriate context for decision making--singular campaign issues created by them. It enables readers to learn, and it connects the reality based community to the community of illusions. 30 minutes can find what Clinton said today about Pakistan, but it is much harder to find and verify past involvement, connections to donors, connections to key players, and compare them across candidates.

In fact, whenever possible, compare candidate's stated positions to each other. You do a pretty good job of this, but be more comprehensive. As voters, we have to make a choice between options, not between positions and absolutes, and we want to know what the options are. Also, it creates tension around issues, instead of around non-issues. Take advantage of and build up policy differences for good drama.

B. DO use your own Images

Images are good--this is material not accessible to us at home--good quality images of the setup, the press around the candidate, other reporters. BUT do not use any images that are set up by the campaign. If you have to, include in the accompanying report the way in which that image was forced, i.e., "Romney's campaign bussed x farmers in to sit in the front row." Failing to report this circumstance is no more useful to the reader than actually using images created by the campaign and given to reporters as stock footage. Also, feel free to use images not of the candidates or supporters. For example, when reporting on the candidates various attitudes towards the farm bill, feel free to use images of lobbyists, industrial farms, etc; they will attempt to have all their farm bill images relate to small farmers, but you have the liberty to take pictures of the impacts of their policy decisions.

C. Polls & Strategy

Poll results should never be a story in and of themselves. Ever. Your friends on the bus, your friends at the bar, they like talking about polls, but we are bored with them. "Thompson jumps 5 points" is not a story. It is an addition to a story. It belongs at the end of the inverted pyramid. It is especially not a story because all the comments you will get on this "development" are from insiders who want to shape the news more than they want to understand it. They will not actually improve the story. Polls are easily available online for the junkies, and for non-junkies, you have a special responsibility to treat us as citizens, and assume we are more interested in the candidates. The next great political reporters of this generation will not be those who spend much time on polls; writing about polls will warp your thinking and your capacity to experience politics. As for strategy, mention it, but not as the story, except once a month or so. I can handle two more major strategy pieces--any more than that is a failure of imagination. Polls & strategy are crack; you know that. But be a little disciplined. You disserve us if you aren't, you disserve the country, and you probably get less readership.

D. Re-introduce the Biographies

You've done great work developing the biographies of these candidates over the past several months. I've loved that work. But don't let it get lost in the archive. Re-introduce that work now, as more people start to pay attention. Try to remember what really interested you as you started following your candidate, and introduce that again to us; the stuff your editor thought was irrelevant in July, or that you printed in July, but in a tiny footnote in an article no one read.

E. Please, do not

Do not write an article about what insiders say. Do not analyze the debate only in terms of the "top candidates". Do not call insiders for comment after the debate. Insiders are not experts. Unless you have some good reason to think they know what they are talking about--a surprising track record of predictions--their predictions are not worth anything; if there is some reason you actually think they can predict, then include that reason. Being a paid strategist should automatically disqualify someone from any prediction. Do not mention "the big boys" in any context. It's a really grating phrase, and has the tendency of making the writer sound like a man with a very big napoleon complex. Do not judge a candidates' likelihood of success based on the fundraising. You add no information in so doing; all you do is make it more likely that money will influence the election. (Increasingly, the point of raising money is to get earned media; some campaigns treat you like prostitutes, assured that you will dutifully report that raising money makes them viable, depending more upon your so reporting than on the ads themselves.) Do not use any staffers for commenting on the other campaigns choices. You wouldn't do that if you were reporting on companies, but more than that, it disconnects you from your readers, as you start to report about (and then, inevitably, for) a very insular and weird culture, the political campaign culture. If the staffers think your reporting is off, it's a good sign you are in the right direction; if they think you have it all right, it's a good sign you are doing something horribly wrong. I was a staffer. I like staffers. But their interests, vocabulary, and set of measurements are not the interests, vocabulary, and set of measurements of your readers or the country. Do not use anonymous sources, even if the anonymous sources are masquerading as "key democrats" or "strategists working for Clinton." This is not Watergate, this isn't even Food Lion. We want to know who you are depending upon.

Conclusion

We rely on you deeply--perhaps more than you are comfortable with. You are, for the next few months, the linchpin of the democracy. We rely on you to resist the candidates creating the coverage; most of the leading candidates, in different ways, share an interest in diffusing the debate about current issues and keeping the conversation on grand plans (unveiled on their own sweet time) and strategies and polls. Most of the citizens want to know how candidates will react to the world as it unfolds, on its own bitter, difficult schedule. The good news is that citizens like stories that bring the political and the Political together. If you write about the candidates on Pakistan when Pakistan is in the news, your readership will grow; if you write about the candidates past relationships with Federal Contractors when Blackwater is in the news, your readership will grow. If you write about polls and strategy, you'll get lots of feedback, but from the wrong community: political consultants and strategists. The rest of us are bored silly by polls & strategy stories. We may read them, but they do not grab us.

I believe political reporting is hard. So I offer this letter to you in sympathy, as an effort to encourage political reporting that will add much more richness to 2008 than we've had in the past. As a paid reporter covering 2008 candidates, you are in a uniquely powerful position. The internet allows you to take an extraordinarily deep array of data--especially including past performance--and bring it together in a compelling set of stories that will help us make good decisions about the future of our country.

Comments

[KRANKY]

Today's political reporters and pundits are lazy. Too lazy to read this article or follow its suggestions.
Many of them got that way...being toadies, by seeing their more ambitious colleagues that did do serious journalism get stressed and bludgeoned by zealous publishers wanting their line in print, or superficial drivel taken up ink.
With exceptions, the best political writing is on the blogs. More pertinent, contemporary, and dynamic. The dead trees are only useful as fuel.

[NoPCZone]

I'm with you on this, but if you expect the 'bubble headed bleach blond that comes on at five' to actually do some basic journalistic work, you are going to be disappointed. The dumbing down of our news has extended into the hiring process and has been the case for quite some time.

The bulk of today's net reporters came up through local TV newz and passed through that filter. They can 'tell you about the plane crash, with a gleam in their eye'.

(With apologies to Don Henley)

[Opus007]

I totally agree. Talking about the polls and frontrunners all the time is just force feeding us the top tier candidates. This may backfire on the media since we all remember their fear mongering for the Iraq war. I am so sick about hearing about Hillary that my opinion has declined from neutral to negative. I feel like I am being "worked".

[GloriaFeldt]

An excellent post. Send it directly to all the political reporters you know.

I hold the New York Times responsible for the election of George W. Bush in 2000 as a result of just this kind of non-reporting. They bought and repeated and thus influenced the rest of the media's framing of W's West Texas good-ol-boy persona and never brought to the light of day his positions on issues. The latter should not have come as a surprise to any of those voters who today wring their hands and say "If I knew then what I know now, I would never have voted for him."

[GravelGirl]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this article! I really hope they listen to you, but I don't think they will. Mainstream media seems to be much more interested in making the news than in reporting what we, The People, need to hear.-- The truth.

[vbond]

This is a wonderful post.

My deep, stomach-churning doubt, however, is whether those who would benefit from such reporting in the formation of their views would actually read, absorb and apply it, and whether those who would read it would actually need it, given their existing curiosity, skepticism and critical thinking skills.

My churning stomach subsides, however, when I realize that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to political reporting, too.

Which is to say that political reporting - along with political discourse in general - is devolving (has devolved) into "info-chatter."

The brave new exceptions to this reduction in reporting quality will be and are being swamped by the whirling new dust storm of entropic voices crowding our airways and thoughtways.

My stomach-churning doubt will never be tested, because the reporting that Zephyr and I seek will not prevail.

So... stomach is safe.

Now... where is that aspirin?

[texanna]

Great suggestions. Unfortunately, I don't see anybody in the corporatist media that will take any of them to heart. First of all, the corporations that own the media have a huge stake in who is elected and that is the message that you will get until you can't read or hear anymore. The
'horse race' journalism will only be relieved by the sensational, breathless but completely irrelevant side stories of cleavage, bad tips, islamo-fascist early education and $400 hair cuts. The hacks that are in denial calling themselves journalists while taking their pay and editorial direction from the corporations that have a vested interest in who gets elected, are worthless. Not long ago a poll was taken of the way they reported the 2000 election and just about all agreed that maybe they hadn't done justice to the task -- clearly favoring Shrub in the face of glaringly obvious shortcomings over Gore who was clearly going to be a better President. And yet, they are back at it again in this election cycle! And, they wonder why no one buys their newpapers anymore.

[esquire07]

Political Hack writers work for Corporate Media. Selling ads is the game - not informing the generally ignorant beyond belief American Public.

No doubt the Corporate media will be shoveling out the same crap as always.

A dumbed down ignorant public makes it easier for the criminals in and running for office to lie, cheat, steal, and sell away America to the highest bidder.

America is over.

[pointblank]

To Levvittown

After the flap over Hillary's answer about the Clinton papers, CNN's Ed Henry investigated. He reported: The presidential papers, by law, are required to be catalogued by the National Archives. It does take many years to process. It will take years before the Clinton papers are made available.

We are just now getting new releases from the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Hillary's answer was correct and truthful.

This article is pure gold. However, I am skeptical that any member of the press will comply. Sadly, I no longer trust the press not to spin whatever drivel they report to us. Often, it seems, for their own entertainment. Too much gotcha!!!!!

[realistic2008]

I could add a long list of my views on the subject matter, suffice to say, political journalists are just opportunists with an agenda in order to gain ratings; with some minor exceptions most of them fall within my view of them.

[Centauri]

I congratulate you for a great article.

[cheforacle]

Most important post I've read in quite a while. My only complaint is when you analyze whether there was coverage of Sen. Clinton's positions on Iran and the farm bill you excluded mention of the cable news networks. All Wolf Blitzer and his colleagues (as well as Chris Matthews and his) do day in and day out is report on the horse race without providing new substantive information about candidates' positions.

Frequently I read posts on this and other sites and the writers invariably claim certain journalists are biased. Certainly some (particularly those at Fox and Chris Matthews frequently asserts his personal opinions as fact) are but overwhelmingly the problem most journalists have is they are lazy; hence they regurgitate on a daily basis the latest take on the horse race. Not only do they fail in their service to democracy they pervert the process and increase the likelihood unqualified individuals such as our current President can get elected.

[shimane]

Z,

Great post! Like many people trying to get political reporters to write about something that actually impacts voters (amazing, really) I've been blown away by the utter lack of interest in what I'm doing, even though most voters would consider "robo calls" a huge problem and something that needs to be addressed.

I actually had a WaPo reporter tell me that a Political "do not call" list was not of interest because she was a campaign reporter.

Regards,

Shaun Dakin
CEO and Founder
StopPoliti­calCalls.o­rg
A non-profit program of Citizens for Civil Discourse

[Ani]

Thank you so much!

We desperately need NEWS. We need journalism 101, rather than horserace 1a.

[Aurelius]

If we were betting on the outcome of a political race, the ubiquitous "horserace" commentary might be useful. But we are not bettors. We are an electorate. Unlike bettors at a horserace, we will actually play a role in deciding the outcome. For this reason, we need information about who is best qualified to win, and not merely about who is most likely to win.