What An Interesting Idea

I couldn't resist this headline: "Some reporters should drop out of the campaign." It fronted an op-ed piece written by a reporter (Martin Schram of Kight-Ridder) which appeared in today's Sacramento Bee in which he criticises his colleagues on their refusal to provide the electorate with any meaningful information about the candidates.

Along with the handful of presidential candidates who dropped out so far, voters might be better served if a hundred or so of my political-reporter and pundit colleagues dropped out as well – and were replaced by journalists whose beats are about national security, economics, environment and health care.

For our coverage has not been serving the public interest by providing the sort of information voters really need to know – especially in the last weeks when many voters make their decisions.

Much of the blame goes to the editors who apparently are satisfied with the sort of poll-driven horse-race journalism that we have gotten in the final weeks.

...in a week in which America's news media – such as the prime-time TV network news, the nonstop cable news and, of course, the front pages of virtually all U.S. newspapers – were dominated by stories covering every nit and nuance about Sen. Barack Obama's surge in Iowa and New Hampshire, not the U.S. military's surge in Iraq.

Indeed, on Tuesday, the day of the New Hampshire primary, The Washington Post's lead editorial focused on the Democratic presidential candidates and the surge in Iraq. "Why do the Democratic candidates refuse to acknowledge progress in Iraq?" asked the sub-headline above the editorial. Perhaps the editors at the Post should have been asking each other why they had not sent their paper's defense-policy experts out to the campaign trail to grill the candidates and inform the public about just that.

Mr. Shram's criticism of the editors who promote the horse race approach is well-placed, but surely some of the reporters who cover the campaign should bear some of the blame as well. How sad is it that the emphasis on the last few days of Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire was solely on her tearing up and what that portended in a president rather than on her policy statements (admittedly still a bit fuzzy) on the economy and health care?

How sad is it that very few questions are ever asked of any of the candidates just what precisely they have in mind when it comes to extricating our troops from Iraq? Defense policy experts might ask more pointed follow up questions, but surely the initial question could be asked by the political reporter just to get the ball rolling.

Instead, we get stories about the subtle jabs in the fight between the Clinton and Obama forces and the digs that are flying between the Romney and Huckabee camps, which while titillating to the press corps, tend to disgust the electorate to the point that people actually throw their hands up in dismay and stay home on election day.

The press has let us down the past seven years and continues to do so. At least one reporter has noticed and has been honest enough to report it.

Nicely done, Mr. Shram.