Election spotlight turned on media

Election spotlight turned on media
Instead of discussing presidential candidates, analysts probe the campaign coverage

By Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Staff Writer

The venomous tenor and bewildering twists and turns of this presidential election have led observers inside and outside politics to call it a historic, sea-change race that will be studied for decades. Long-held assumptions about how to win have been upended as celebrity businessman Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, sit at or near the top of their primary fields.

When it comes to the business of reporting on politics, however, some things haven’t changed. Every four years, complaints about the media’s coverage of presidential elections routinely bemoan a perceived decline in substantive reporting and an abdication of journalism’s watchdog role.

With roiling anger and distrust of the powerful animating voters in both parties, attacking the media has become an easy and effective political strategy. Every Democratic and Republican candidate still in the 2016 race has accused the political press of some sort of malfeasance: unfairly advocating for an opponent, pushing grossly inaccurate or misleading reporting, failing to challenge false statements or vague assertions, being overly solicitous of some while ignoring others, or focusing on food fights rather than policy ideas.

But some longtime political journalists say that while the profession certainly has its share of lapses, good and important work still is being done.

“I detect a real feeling of press failure in this election cycle,” said Jill Abramson ’76, a former investigative reporter and executive editor at The New York Times until 2014, during a recent talk at the Shorenstein Center on the Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). “Why, when I turn on CNN, isn’t there on-the-ground footage, more talking to voters, rather than just another set of people arguing? We can do better.”

Abramson, who started in politics in 1976 covering the New Hampshire primary campaigns of former Ambassador Sargent Shriver and Sen. Fred Harris for Time magazine, now teaches journalism writing as a visiting lecturer in the English Department at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

“Especially in political reporting, a lot of what we the media focus on just … doesn’t touch people, it isn’t part of their daily concerns,” she said. “Like many institutions in the country, the gulf between the citizenry and the press has become wider. I am telling you I’ve traveled quite a bit around the country. I went to many, many towns in New Hampshire: No one is talking about Hillary Clinton’s email.”

This is “maybe the most interesting presidential election I’ve ever seen,” said CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist, who leads the network’s political coverage. “There’s something happening in this country that has caused an interest among Americans in this election. I’m not going to pretend to know what it is, but it’s not restricted to the Republican side.”

Feist batted down the idea that political journalism is withering during a separate Shorenstein talk about political news coverage last week. “There are a lot of people who think that journalism in America is broken, that we don’t do our jobs. I would argue that we’re actually doing our jobs as well or better than we’ve ever done,” he said, later adding, “I honestly believe that political journalism has never been more important, and this election is a perfect example of why that is.”

CNN’s job is to provide the best information possible about the candidates to the public so voters can make informed decisions, not to foment or bridge the nation’s growing partisan divide, he said. “It’s not to push the country apart or to bring the country together — that’s up to the country and to the voters,” he said.

Feist countered criticisms that the network unfairly gave too much time and attention to Trump by airing lengthy phone interviews with him or showing his daily pep rallies live and uninterrupted, often at the expense of other candidate news. The extensive Trump coverage, he said, is a result of his unique willingness to do as many interviews as requested, unlike other candidates. (“We call; he says yes.”)

“I think that taking candidate rallies unedited is actually a valuable service,” giving voters who do not live in early caucus and primary states a chance to see them speak at length. “I don’t think we should interrupt them in the middle of it to annotate what they say,” he said.
and the fact that Bernie Sanders was forced out of the election just shows how corrupt the current political system has become. just watch the reporting bias.