Elizabeth Edwards Knocks Media's "Cliff Notes" Coverage
Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, thinks the media -- the mainstream media in particular -- spends too much time covering the rancor of the presidential campaign instead of the "the information about the candidates' priorities, policies and principles -- information that voters will need to choose the next president -- too often did not make the cut."
Writing in The New York Times, Edwards laments how little time the MSM spends actually talking about substance.
"The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country's inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.
"But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture."
Edwards says it's easier to find, say, Barack Obama's bowling score that what former presidential candidate Joe Biden's health care policy was. She writes that while she was campaign with her husband, she saw the media gravitate towards narratives, like characters in a novel.
"... on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn't fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities."
Edwards says that we have to keep demanding that the media do its job; not by screaming out the window as Peter Finch did in the film "Network," "but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can -- as voters -- do ours."
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UPDATE: Fox News interviewed Sen. Barack Obama Sunday. Host Chris Wallace asked him about "Rev. Jeremiah Wright, flag pins, and 60s-era radical Bill Ayers." Very few questions about actual policies.
11:52 AM ET | 04-27-2008 | permalink
