Acerbic media critic and NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen (PressThink and Assignment Zero) says right out loud what most thinking journalists merely, well, think: our campaign coverage sucks and it’s nobody’s fault but our own. Our horse-race approach to election coverage yields a diet of ‘news’ that is shallow, misleading and quite often ends up being just plain wrong. Meanwhile critical issues about power and policy, about right and wrong, and often about life and death, go unexamined, unreported, and so remain out of the public sphere precisely at the moment when the public has a voice in those issues and desperately needs information. 

It’s not a new complaint — and it’s one often voiced by members of the political press themselves — but Rosen’s piece goes deeper than complaining, and takes a run at explaining what seems like mindless behaviour: we all know it’s wrong, but we do it over and over and over.

"By mindless I generally mean: No one’s in charge, or “the process” is. Conventional forms thrive, even if few believe they work. Routines master people. The way it’s been done “chooses” the way it shall be done."

Rosen points to some of the usual reasons: fear (of missing ‘the’ story), arrogance (believing we have some special expertise or knowledge about politics) and a convergence of judgement among journalists on the campaign trail.
But then he makes an insightful addition to our understanding of the problem: we focus so much on "pre-empting" the voter’s decision because it’s the only safe thing to do, the only easy way we can maintain our distance from the process, and cling to our much-vaunted objectivity.

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