Media, Heal Thyself

Today Politico Arena asks:

Are reporters justified in being fed up over the shallowness of the presidential campaigns?

My response:


Oh, this is rich—the media complaining about the shallowness of the two campaigns! Paul Ryan gives a substantive convention speech, but what leads the news afterward, day in and day out? Clint Eastwood’s performance the next night. Todd Aiken makes a gaffe, and two weeks later the media is still obsessing over it. Romney makes a substantive trip abroad, but his alleged “gaffes” are about all that’s reported.


Politico’s Dylan Byers complains that presidential campaigns are supposed to be “infused with big ideas and historical import,” yet this contest is “so far defined by gaffes, cynicism, knife‐​fights and rapid‐​fire news cycles.” Whose fault is that? Who’s doing the “defining”? Even the so‐​called respectable media go barely an inch deep on “big ideas” with “historical import”—of which there is no shortage this year.


To think that the Federalist Papers appeared in the newspapers of the day. I’ll bet not one in ten of today’s journalists has ever read them! You can’t report what you don’t see. And you can’t see what you’re unprepared to recognize.