This summer I worked in a political campaign office. If I wanted peace and quiet, I should have worked in the engine room of an ocean liner.
Our office had four big plasma screen TVs. Each was set on a 24-hour news channel, and each played all day. It was like I was hooked up to a politics I.V. as I worked.
The tragedy is that I am dumber for having listened.
I learned that 55 percent of Americans prefer John Kerry's plan for health care, but I didn't learn a thing about the plan. About ten times every day I heard that both Kerry and Bush have a "swing state strategy," but I heard nothing about their plans for helping poor people in those states. A lot of people debated how much Bush should invoke the 9/11 attacks in his stump speeches, but not many debated the merits of his plans to keep us from getting blown up again.
That's because the American media covers the campaign but neglects to cover the choice.
Jonathan Alter writes in his latest Newsweek column that there are two kinds of issues the media covers in an election year. Campaign issues, Alter writes, "have little to do with how a candidate would perform as president ... they are manufactured by the campaigns to score points."
Then there are "real issues," like waging war, protecting our people, stopping genocide, and limiting nuclear arms.
Take a look at the front page of Tuesday's USA Today. Though Kerry released his plan for Iraq, the big story is about the authenticity of documents used in a "60 Minutes" report on Bush's National Guard service.
Kerry released his plan for Iraq that day, but it got much less space, and the sub-headline didn't concern the plan itself, but Bush's response to it.
Peruse the Election News section of the AP wire. Four of the five top stories are campaign issues. The headlines read "Kerry Stakes Out Opposition Stance," "Convention Timing Gives Bush Money Edge," "FEC Rules Created Loophole, Judge Says," and "Two Different Views on CBS Source."
Yesterday, as it did all summer, the media covered campaign issue after campaign issue, and ignored the real issues.
Of course, it's not fair to expect the media to ignore the back-and-forth of a campaign. And people who want to learn more should know where to go if they want in-depth analysis.
But the bias in favor of campaign issues at the expense of real issues is at the point where the media is failing the American people.
A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs shows that less than one of every five evening news stories about the election examined the candidates' stances or voting records. Over 70 percent focused on poll numbers and behind the scenes tactics.
And this is an election in which issues of war and peace are at stake. Things like school uniforms and V-chips are not on the table anymore.
Why have campaign issues gained so much traction? Maybe it's that the media always follows the path of least resistance and covers the stories that are easiest to cover. Maybe it's profit motive. Or maybe the media feels compelled to feed the old American passion for scandal.
I object to this coverage bias because I know that a free press can make democracy possible. But it must do more than just inform us; it must inform us about the things that matter.
One solution could be to create a major publicly funded news network like the BBC, or to fund public television at a level where it could do 24-hour news. Then we'd have a news organization that would escape the pressure on Big Media to "dumb things down."
The media could also follow the example of the Washington Post, whose editors got much tougher in their analysis of Bush and Kerry's claims after admitting they didn't challenge Bush on his claims about Iraq.
They went beyond crude reports of the candidates' strategies and analyzed the veracity of their ads, releasing stories with headlines such as "Swift Boat Veterans' Claims Don't Add Up."
Reporting on campaign tactics and scandals has its place. But in the end, there's nothing more to those stories than back-and-forth.
On the real issues, there is an objective truth. For democracy to work, the media must seek it, find it, and bring it to the people.
