STUMP: media and politics

Conventional Wisdom

Dennis Myers, a Nevada columnist, writes:

The ascendancy of Howard Dean has illustrated many of the peculiar traits of the national press corps and the political system.

The Washington Post in July said Dean "is seen as the most liberal of the major Democratic candidates." Notice here the weasel words "is seen as." This sentence represents a campaign press corps (with the Post's own reporters in the forefront) portraying Dean as liberal and then describing the effect of its portrayal.

Well, it was The New York Times, not The Washington Post, that wrote this sentence, and Myers' selective quoting ignores the context (the thrust of the article is that Dean isn't actually all that liberal), but Myers poses a valid question about the echo chamber of politics coverage nonetheless:

How often does the press invent conventional wisdom, then fall back on it?

For example, in 2000, the media stereotype of President Bush had him pegged as unintelligent, despite early polls indicating that respondents saw Bush as more intelligent than Al Gore. Whenever he defied this "soft bigotry of low expectations," it was news. (I'll cite Bob Novak for this, asserting that all Bush had to do to pull off a successful debate performance against Gore was talk about foreign policy for 42 minutes without a hitch.)

When we're dealing with vague intangibles like the perception of a candidate, when is it fair or helpful to cite conventional wisdom?

From Poynter to Newsroom to Readers

Following up on the good work at Poynter by colleagues Andrea Nemitz and Andrew Russell, Portland Press Herald Editor Jeannine Guttman outlined the paper's plans for election coverage in her Sunday column.

It will be interesting to see how readers/voters respond to the questionnaire included at the bottom of the column. Andrew and Andrea, please keep us posted on what you hear and how the paper responds.

The Focused Profile: USA Today on the Death of John Edwards' Son

Jill Lawrence of USA Today has written exactly the kind of candidate profile that the Washington Post 's David Von Drehle encouraged at the recent Poynter politics seminar.

Lawrence profiles John Edwards by exploring the impact of the death of his 16 year-old son, Wade, in a car accident seven years ago. I wonder if my encounter with the story might mirror that of many readers: I was paging through the paper (Thursday Nov. 20 edition) in search of something else but stopped at the Edwards headline and read the whole piece.

Shouldn't we be doing more of these targeted profiles, on state and local as well as national candidates?

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Update at 12:45 p.m. Friday: For an earlier (and more detailed) targeted profile on the same subject, see the remarkable piece by Rob Christensen of the Raleigh News & Observer, pasted below. (Just click on Continue Reading beneath this item.)

Conference on Media Reform

The first National Conference on Media Reform featured some pretty high-wattage speakers, including Jesse Jackson, Bill Moyers, and Studs Terkel.

The focus of the conference was how to give alternative, independent, or dissenting voices a bigger presence in the media, especially in politics coverage. The phrase "corporate media" pops up much, much more than once on the official blog of conference. (Hey! They stole our idea! Only they did it first!)

See also Poynter's Convergence Chaser report on the conference.

The Media Do, Indeed, Matter

Most of us assume that media coverage of politics can affect voters' behavior, but is this conventional wisdom really true?

Yes, says a Canadian study.

Phew. I was worried there for a minute.

Politics Seminar Wrap-Up

Poynter's Pam Johnson, a co-director of last week's Election Coverage Workshop, has written some concluding thoughts about the conference. Take a look.

Covering Elections in the Wired Age

While we were blogging the election coverage seminar last week, Poynter's own Steve Outing was penning this piece for Editor and Publisher, on planning ahead to make news websites useful for voters during Election '04.

Presidential Powder Puff Piece II

I ask again, should this be encouraged?

News Judgment

Take a gander at this blogger's coverage of the Iowa Democratic Party's annual fundraiser. Then check out the "official" coverage of the event by the media.

On the one hand, from the random blogger who sat in the balcony, we get colorful details about how organized the different campaigns were, the Iowa Democratic Party Chairman's jabs at the two candidates who've decided to ignore Iowa in the primary season, and each candidate's speech.

On the other hand, I'm generalizing here, but the official story pretty much goes, HILLARY CLINTON SPOKE AT THE EVENT, and apparently a few Democratic presidential candidates were there as well, bickering with each other or something like that.

About the AP version of the evening, the blogger asks, "Were we at the same event?"

I'm inclined to wonder myself.

Note: The Washington Post's account of the event, while treading dangerously close to puff-piece territory, is hilarious enough to be an Onion article.

Presidential Powder Puff Piece

In the name of attracting younger or disinterested readers, should articles like this be encouraged?