The weakness of the leader
For another class I am reading James Fallows' Breaking the News. In the book Fallows is extremely critical of the media for only focusing on politics in the horse race sense and glossing over policy to look at how it will affect the politics behind it. Granted the blogs do focus a lot on the horse race aspect, because their audience consists of political junkies, but they also seem to spend a lot more time talking about the issues in detail. Blogs of course need to drop some of the stupidity like the Kos/Darr stuff, but their different approach to policy may be exactly the way to grow, by focusing on the market leader's weakness.
2 Comments:
Isn't that book interesting?
That story about how Peter Jennings changed his answer about ambushing U.S. troops was unbelievable and disgusting.
It is funny (and sad) to think that perhaps Jon Stewart and the Daily Show actually is the only responsible journalism out there.
On the redistricting issue, I certainly appreciate your opinion on it and you make a valid point about increased competition. However, I still believe that the current system only hurts our political discourse and contributes to the polarization of voters.
For me, that is what I hold as truth. Anything that has the potential of increasing positive discourse and bringing disillusioned Americans back into the process is worht exploring.
I think we will just have to agree to disagree...for now!
On the Peter Jennings piece -
I was really upset at first, too. It seems like Jennings was just like the corporate jerks, but instead of putting profit ahead of people, he put the story ahead of people.
Then, however, I talked with a friend about it, who brought up some good points. For instance, would the N Koreans then kill all of the other imbedded journalists? Would Jenningers really be able to save anyone anyway, or would both sides suffer the same causualties? Was it more important that people back home knew how horrible the war was, and got the info they needed to make decisions? Did he have a responsibility as a journalist to be above country and see the deaths on both side?
I am still really mad that they didn't bother brining up any of these points, but just acted like being a journalist excused them from any kind of human duty.
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