Letters to the Editor
kevred
Published Letters: 92 Editor's Choice: 8
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This story perpetuates the problem
[Read the article: Clinton rocks the vote in the Granite State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The headline and subhead on this story is another example of what's so stunningly awful about the media coverage of the campaigns. It's being written like some kind of soap-opera melodrama, with hyperbole favored over substance. I cringed at the similarly purple prose on the front page of MSNBC.com this morning. It's simply childish.
This result wasn't stunning; it was a 3% margin of victory (about 8,000 votes) and resulted in both front-runners getting the same number of delegates. And this was a race Clinton was 'supposed' to win in the first place, before the Iowa results forced the media off their pre-determined narrative.
Neither the Iowa nor New Hampshire results are anything but the people of those states expressing their will, in decidedly mixed ways. The result is pretty much a draw between the two front-runners, the tail-enders dropping off, and questions for those who are left. Similar tale for the Republicans. It's only "stunning" to people who thought they knew what was going to happen, which no sensible person should.
If the media would just focus on telling us what's happening, with careful and mature analysis, instead of trying to assert its relevance through all this prediction and contrived, imposed narrative, then we'd all be better off.
I think the country will be better off with either Obama or Clinton as president. But I'll be wincing at the media's framing of it, every step of the way.
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Thank you Tom, thank you Glenn!
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is so completely spot-on. It was amazing to read Brokaw's quote, because it's a line that's commonly heard among the common man, yet absent--forbidden, even--from the media itself.
Thank you, Glenn, for sharing and supporting this message, and stating it so directly and strongly. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Don't let go of it!
I can only speculate what's really behind this behavior by the media. Having worked in a corporate environment for a long time myself, I've seen the slow, suffocating effect it can have on true analysis and asking the fundamental questions. It's not so hard to imagine journalists, jockeying for favor and position (and job security), choosing the path of least resistance and least potential offense to those whose power they wish to be near and for whom they want to be conduits to the outside world. With the trickle-down pressure of advertisers and executives further stifling any boat-rocking, the result is little more than celebrity gossip.
It's sad, because what the media should actually be doing is very simple. Asking the kinds of basic, fundamental questions that Greenwald poses as examples here. Approach things from the perspective of reporting and analysis, not hyperbole and prediction.
In short, they should approach their roles with a sense of responsibility to the civic structure of this country. Instead, we get a mainstream media whose approach to Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton is indistinguishable, and radio filled with right-wing hatemongers telling us all how we should be thinking and behaving, and demonizing those who don't agree. And this is the state of thought in our country. Shameful.
Consider this one call for them all to shut the hell up and focus on the world as it is, not on their oversimplified, melodramatic, soap-opera imagined reality, where they can take shortcuts, never ask the hard questions, and still be seen as Serious Authorities.