By Kirk Ross
Let me disabuse you of a notion floating around that somehow something called The Media wants to see a long drawn-out slugfest in the Republican presidential primary.
First, a few definitions:
• “Notion†is a word people who learned how to keyboard on typewriters use for “meme,†which in less than two short decades has become one of the most overused words in puffery.
• “The Media†is a non-existent entity used by people who cannot discern the differences between a television, a newspaper and a person who operates one of those Twitter machines. Nor can they tell the difference between the many variations among these various publishing mediums.
• A “slugfest†in this case means the process by which delegates are gathered to determine a candidate. Depending on the year and the way in which the process evolves, the alternative term for this is “horserace.â€
You may have heard this notion about the monolithic media rubbing its hands with glee and laughing maniacally about a big, messy primary process. That’s because conspiracy theories abound in presidential election years are much easier to use to explain something than reason, which tends to require some kind of basis in fact.
Reporters who spend every waking minute covering campaigns have always looked for ways to make them seem far more interesting than they are, preferring to cover the horserace rather than the horses and what comes out of them.
This year, with the nomination process drawn out a little longer than usual, gaming out scenarios, speculating on a late entry in the race and the fascination with fluctuations of various poll numbers have drowned out much of the reporting on the views of the candidates.
Such behavior is detrimental. As we progress toward choosing a president, a few other things – like, say, the candidates’ ideas and the intentions of various billionaires playing with our political system – probably ought to be the focus.
After weeks of hearing essentially the same speech several times a day for weeks, reporters might become numb to what candidates are actually saying. But most of the rest of us aren’t numb to it at all and find some of what’s being kicked around downright frightening.
Candidates now appear willing to say almost anything to appear more conservative. And the more over the top, the better the coverage.
That may seem like just part of the game, but in the process some dangerous ideas are being put into wide circulation. With the focus on who is up and who is down, too many of these ideas are going unquestioned and unchecked. This has allowed all sorts of truly awful things candidates are tossing out to remain in the public dialogue long enough to do real damage. You have to wonder how many young women aren’t going to get an HPV vaccine or how many state legislators will base a vote on the false assertions that pre-natal care causes abortion or abortion causes breast cancer simply because a candidate said these things and no one called them on it (or if they did call them on it, treated the issue in an “on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand†fashion).
Politics has always been an ugly business, but these days it is so rife with lies that the dialogue has become dangerous. We can’t just throw our hands up and say everybody does it or let the liars off with a wink because they are just playing to their base.
Like most folks with a pundit license, I think once the primary season is over there will be a move to the center and away from appeals to ultra-conservatives. But the damage from ideas based on getting their votes and not based in reality will linger for years to come.
Most of the people in the news business have pretty good BS detectors. But fewer and fewer seem to know what to do when the alarm goes off.