Carolyn Lewis: Shallow Campaign Coverage
Posted at 11:32 am, May 16th, 2008
Of course Hillary Clinton won big in West Virginia. She was the only one who campaigned there. I waited and waited for somebody in television-land to take note of that fact, to put it in context, but waited in vain.
The victory was reported as a triumph, although it was also indicated that according to the delegate count it would make little difference to the final result. Missed was the point that Clinton’s victory was garnered without her facing any competition. Perhaps in retrospect Obama should have campaigned in the state, but he chose instead to pursue the man he is likely to face in November, John McCain.
The media bought Clinton’s spin. She argued that she won not because she was the only person who campaigned in the state, but because she was the person who could attract the votes of white working class citizens. (Didn’t Obama win white voters in Wisconsin and North Carolina?) Absent in the discussion was the idea that the West Virginia vote was not so much against Obama as it was in favor of the only candidate who turned up.
In light of this, one could be forgiven for believing that experienced political people at MSNBC and CNN too easily fall prey to spin from one side or the other. Perhaps it’s because of the pressure of time to be filled night after night as the news cycle spins round and round, but if on-air people feel pressed and overwhelmed, perhaps somebody behind the scenes - a producer perhaps? - can be assigned to re-think and assess the information as it arrives.
Another case in point: The McCain campaign invoked a statement by a Hamas spokesman that he would like to see Obama in the White House, suggesting to the McCain people that Obama is soft on terrorists. Obama called the suggestion a “smear,” and added that McCain, who was promising a clean campaign, had “lost his bearings.”
The McCain campaign promptly charged that it was Obama who was fighting dirty, by disparaging McCain’s age. Almost immediately the subject of the discussion was the candidate’s age and whether it was appropriate to bring it forward in a political campaign. All but lost in the talk was the original attempt to paint Obama as a friend of terrorists.
Enormous power resides in the hands of those who are granted air time in this political season. It’s dismaying when the power is so shallowly employed, so apparently mindlessly purveyed, to the detriment of public understanding. Viewers in search of deeper analysis are too often left bitterly disappointed.



