It has been an exciting, breathtaking, political season crammed with surprises and drama — and a seemingly infinite supply and variety of political reporting in both the “old” and “new” media. News consumers can become overwhelmed — and Dick Meyer has some sage advice.
Meyer previously worked on CBS web operations and did a popular centrist “Against The Grain” column. Now he has moved to NPR and is doing the column there (and it still runs on the CBS website). In his latest titled “Consuming The 2008 Campaign” he has some suggestions for political news readers. Here are some highlights:
Gratitude. Few intense partisans will like this: In this election, more than any I have covered, the voters have much to be grateful for.
I think independent and moderate voters — that is, about 75 percent of the electorate — understand this already. For hard partisans, it would be prudent and satisfying to suspend the shackles of party, ideology and pet passions for a moment and look at John McCain and Barack Obama as vying for an impossible job. I believe these are two good men who have both spent their adult lives in service to their communities and country. I don’t think either is greedy, power-hungry or trivial. I know that is corny, but that is my argument….
He says they are failing at using less spin, claptrap and phoniness than in past campaigns but “they are at least trying.” Meyer’s comment is an important one. It also flies against the grain of 21st century politics where the whole style seems to be to go after candidates, or groups or even writers that dare to advocate something different and try to discredit them and demonize them. People try to take out the SOURCE of the idea rather than debate the idea. But he is correct: unlike in some other years, independent voters are going to feel that no matter who wins the county has had a choice between two honorable individuals.
And then he offers two must-follow bits of advice for those following political news:
Personal Accountability:.…My strong counsel is to go on a media diet until Election Day. Consume less television, radio, cable, and print political news (especially cable!). Focus on hard news reporting. Most important, try to read and hear the candidates’ unmediated words. These are two statesmen who use plain English and avoid what linguists call “crafted speech,” that is, market-savvy sound-bite talk.
News reports and blog posts (such as this one) are MEDIATED words. There’s nothing wrong with reading words someone else puts into context for you, but it’s truly shocking when you travel the country and talk to people who say they get ALL of their news from Rush Limbaugh or Randi Rhodes or from this weblog or that weblog. As much as we’d love for you to feel you get all news you need from TMV, as Meyer says, you need to listen and read what the candidates say themselves and judge for yourself.
Most important, accountability means being as tough on yourself as you are on the candidates. This means asking if you really are so convinced that people who disagree with you on, say, abortion, gun control or global warming are evil rats. Is it true that people you disagree with “just don’t get it” or are “just biased”? Are you really as confident in the righteousness of your positions as you think you are? When you get into a heated political argument, are you able to keep listening?
Actually, much of political debate these days consists of partisans who know what is right trying to tell others that what they believe is wrong, before the other side even says it. This is operative on both sides of the political fence. It’s more focused on seek-and-destroy those who don’t agree with you and discredit them (define them in most cases) than engaging on issues, which would entail talking, actually listening and actually responding to an idea with another idea.
And then he offers this bit of advice, that should be written in stone. Since we can’t do that, we’ll boldface it:
Diversify…..If you lean right, make it a point to go beyond Fox News and The Wall Street Journal op-ed page. If you lean left, go beyond Huffington Post and The Nation. I hope my bosses aren’t reading, but if you are an NPR fan, find some other regular destinations. Do that no matter what your favorite news source is.
In short, take some time to see the campaign through someone else’s eyes.
Political empathy, the capacity to tolerate and even embrace the radically different views of others, is perhaps the cardinal civic virtue in a wildly pluralistic, diverse society. Remember what the money says: E Pluribus Unum. Radical tolerance is a skill of citizenship and statecraft that has atrophied in recent years.
Read the entire post in its entirety.
Then get about the business of reading and listening to a variety of candidate viewpoints and even (gulp) reading viewpoints you might not agree with.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.