We’re Awash In Political News, and That’s A Problem

The lead story on the front page of my NY Times the other day was a poll that shows Donald Trump far ahead in the race for the Republican nomination. Inside the paper was extensive coverage of all the Republican candidates. On the same day, the Washington Post devoted a full page ranking the chances of ten GOP contenders.

That day’s political news was little different than what you find most days in the Times, or the Post, or CNN or the other cable and TV news channels. The media is giving blanket coverage to presidential candidates as if we’re on the eve of an election.

But we’re not. The Iowa political caucus won’t be held until January. The first primary elections won’t begin for six months. The general election to determine the next president is 15 months distant.

Now, I’m a big fan of democracy and the media’s role in elections. But this early? No wonder the voting public greets actual election day with a sense of thank-heaven-it’s-over exhaustion. Extensive coverage of the 2024 election began about a minute and a half after results were in from the 2022 election. CNN held its first TV candidate town meeting last May. There’s feverish media obsession with a Republican TV debate scheduled for August.

All of this journalistic attention so early drives campaign behavior. If a press scrum is following a candidate, the natural reaction from the campaign is to do or say something that grabs a headline. That often prompts being more extreme than your competition. News people, after all, are expected to find stories, even if they hang on fragile threads. Yesterday’s news is seldom today’s lead story.

This results in an unvirtuous cycle. Media intervention results in a lot of manufactured, made-for-TV news. The news affects the polls. The polls affect perception of who’s ahead or behind, who has a chance to win and who doesn’t.

Why does the media help create a perpetual campaign and become a factor in determining its outcome? For TV particularly it’s good for business. As the CEO of CBS crassly said early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump may be bad for the country, but the TV audiences he drew and the ad money spent to reach them was great for CBS.

But there’s more to it than that. From the reporter’s standpoint, campaigns are fun to cover. Especially presidential campaigns. There’s the travel. The boys on the bus comradeship. The elbow rubbing with important people. The almost guaranteed front page by-lines or on-screen reports. It’s glamorous and often a stepping stone to bigger things and higher pay.

And, I’ll be as charitable as I can be about this: you really don’t need to know much to be a political reporter. Sources come to you trying to spin your stories their way. Everyone wants to be your friend if you’re in a position to write about them or put them on camera. Most of the early chatter is about political jockeying, not policy. How much background does a reporter need to interview people in local diners?

It’s not like having to cover climate change, or artificial intelligence, or DNA editing, or agriculture, or the economy, or other news beats where you actually do need enough knowledge of a topic to be able to interview subject matter experts and translate complex information into publicly understandable stories.

As I said earlier, when it comes to democracy, count me in. I’m a big fan. And I love journalism and value its role in helping the public to be informed about the candidates and issues. But media overkill on marginally useful political developments is distorts the focus of campaigns and diverts media resources away from things that are far more timely and important.

Overdosing, even on good things, is seldom a good thing.

That’s my opinion. What’s yours? Comments are invited and encouraged.

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