West Wing: The Media’s Mini-Truths – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News
A journalist’s twin points of references should be the real and the important. But for months the focus of the election coverage was on trivia. Every insignificant detail got blown out of proportion, with every chipmunk becoming a Godzilla. According to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, over 60 percent of election coverage by the US media has been focused on campaign strategies, tactics or personalities — but not on actual political content.
Reporters focused the most attention on such pressing questions as whether Barack Obama was wearing an American flag lapel pin, whether John McCain had a mistress eight years ago or whether former first lady Hillary Clinton was incorrectly recalling her 1996 trip to Bosnia.
Clinton claimed to recall hearing sniper fire as her plane landed in Bosnia. In fact, as archive TV footage later showed, Clinton was actually greeted by a young girl who recited a poem on the tarmac. That may have been embarrassing for Hillary Clinton, but it is insignificant for voters.
Even the eccentric pastor from Obama’s church, Jeremiah Wright, is not worth the fuss. “God damn America,” he preached. So what? The priest at my Catholic church was a reactionary, while my class teacher was a communist. Perhaps the mad and the blind to the right and the left of our path through life are there simply to show us where the middle way is.
Solid criticism from the Continent on the U.S. Presidential Campaign. Pretty striaghtforward criticism of the media focusing on the sizzle and not the steak. When the majority of political coverage involved how the pundits feel about the candidates, rather than what those candidates themselves stand for, it’s not a good thing, particularly.
This is more symptomatic of how the U.S. public has been trained to consume media than anythning else, IMHO. When the sizzle gets ratings and the steak makes people change the channel, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s the sizzle that gets the coverage.
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