Chicken Or Egg?
Oct 29th, 2007 at 9:59 am by Susie
This is an interesting study. I don’t think the central question is quite as confusing as they make it out to be - the standard media treatment has simply trained the casual news reader to react to the media’s cues. Also: People are simply too busy to make political choices a priority. Hence, the effectiveness of TV advertising in a political campaign:
The report is the most thorough analysis yet of media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign and offers both a sober evaluation as well as a dash of guidance on how to improve. But the report’s authors are not necessarily optimistic. They note that a study of the 2000 presidential election reached similar conclusions.
They argue that this election could represent a generational struggle in both parties, but that early media coverage failed to capture that fundamental tension.
“If American politics is changing,” the report concluded, “the style and approach of the American press does not appear to be changing with it.”
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said journalists face a conundrum: In a campaign that started as early as this one, why spend resources in a detailed analysis of candidates views and stances when the public is not that engaged? Or is the public not engaged because the media is focusing on tactics and insider stories that don’t affect readers, viewers and listeners?
Well, let’s hope those journalists are hard at work preparing in-depth reports on the candidates’ positions for later publication, spending more than a week to prepare a story could be a good thing.
I sure hope that glass is half full….