[Mb-civic] FW: The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Triumph of the Trivial

[Michael Butler]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "John Michael Cox, Jr." <graphics at verizon.net>
Organization: Grayscale Graphics & Design / Man-Age Press
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 12:00:16 -0400
To: 2 <graphics at verizon.net>
Subject: The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Triumph of the
Trivial


http://nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&po
sition= 
<http://nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&p
osition=>

 
 

July 30, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST 
Triumph of the Trivial
By PAUL KRUGMAN
 
  

nder the headline "Voters Want Specifics From Kerry," The Washington Post
recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John Edwards talk
about "what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or
lower-income people.  I have to face the fact that I will never be able to
have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don't
seem to address that."

Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to
lower-  and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can't
say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard about it?

Well, I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places four
out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major
cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I couldn't even
find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income
tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports
mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis - how
it's playing, not what's in it.

On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to
"shove it," though even there, the context was missing. Except for a brief
reference on MSNBC, none of the transcripts I've read mention that the
target of her ire works for Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire who
financed smear campaigns against the Clintons - including accusations of
murder. (CNN did mention Mr. Scaife on its Web site, but described him only
as a donor to "conservative causes.") And viewers learned nothing about Mr.
Scaife's long vendetta against Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself.

There are two issues here, trivialization and bias, but they're related.

Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies,
and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their personalities. We
hear about Mr. Kerry's haircuts, not his health care proposals. We hear
about George Bush's brush-cutting, not his environmental policies.

Even on its own terms, such reporting often gets it wrong, because
journalists aren't especially good at judging character. ("He is, above all,
a moralist," wrote George Will about Jack Ryan, the Illinois Senate
candidate who dropped out after embarrassing sex-club questions.) And the
character issues that dominate today's reporting have historically had no
bearing on leadership qualities. While planning D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower had
a close, though possibly platonic, relationship with his female driver.
Should that have barred him from the White House?

And since campaign coverage as celebrity profiling has no rules, it offers
ample scope for biased reporting.

Notice the voter's reference to "these millionaires." A Columbia Journalism
Review Web site called campaigndesk.org, says its analysis "reveals a press
prone to needlessly introduce Senators Kerry and Edwards and Kerry's wife,
Teresa Heinz Kerry, as millionaires or billionaires, without similar labels
for President Bush or Vice President Cheney."

As the site points out, the Bush campaign has been "hammering away with
talking points casting Kerry as out of the mainstream because of his wealth,
hoping to influence press coverage." The campaign isn't claiming that Mr.
Kerry's policies favor the rich - they manifestly don't, while Mr. Bush's
manifestly do. Instead, we're supposed to dislike Mr. Kerry simply because
he's wealthy (and not notice that his opponent is, too). Republicans, of all
people, are practicing the politics of envy, and the media obediently go
along.

In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of
TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year's
presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic
betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq.

P.S.: Another story you may not see on TV: Jeb Bush insists that electronic
voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St. Petersburg Times says
the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to
use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot
"verify your vote."

P.P.S.: Three weeks ago, The New Republic reported that the Bush
administration was pressuring Pakistan to announce a major terrorist capture
during the Democratic convention. Hours before Mr. Kerry's acceptance
speech, Pakistan announced, several days after the fact, that it had
apprehended an important Al Qaeda operative.

Copyright 2004 </ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>  The New York Times
Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  | Home <http://www.nytimes.com/>  | Privacy
Policy <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/privacy.html>  | Search
<http://query.nytimes.com/search/advanced/>  | Corrections
<http://www.nytimes.com/corrections.html>  | RSS
<http://www.nytimes.com/rss>  | Help
<http://www.nytimes.com/membercenter/sitehelp.html>  | Back to Top <#top>
postamble();

------ End of Forwarded Message