Elizabeth Edwards on the Press

Photo credits: Getty Images

Throughout Campaign 2008, I’ve done my share of complaining about the media, especially since the Democratic debate last October in Philadelphia hosted by MSNBC. That’s when Tim Russert and Brian Williams launched the media’s sustained effort to knock Hillary Clinton from her frontrunner status and sweep Obama to an early coronation.

Evidently, Elizabeth Edwards from her front-row view during her husband John’s campaign also noticed how much power the media has in picking our president. In an op-ed in today’s NY Times titled “Bowling 1, Health Care 0,” Mrs. Edwards critiques the media’s disservice to the American people in Campaign 2008.

Mrs. Edwards begins with the most recent primary:

“For the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?

“Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, 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. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, John Edwards, I’m not surprised.

“Why? Here’s my guess: 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.”

Mrs. Edwards’ observations about how the media chose the characters and constructed the story line for the campaign are obvious with hindsight:

“Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for 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.”

The astute Mrs. Edwards asserts:

“News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.”

Members of the electorate who wish to be better informed owe it to themselves to first read Mrs. Edwards’ op-ed in its entirety and thereafter continue to call the media to account.

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