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The Election and the Press: Great Job!

LOS ANGELES -- Yes, I still use AOL as my home page, probably because I'm too lazy to move on. And, yes, I start many days growling in hazy anger because folks in cyberspace seem to think Britney Spears is to the United States in 2008 what Winston Churchill was to England in 1940. But last Wednesday, I was even madder than usual when the first headline that popped up was: "Media Gets It Wrong Again."

The subject, of course, was the presidential primaries of the day before, Super Tuesday. The headline referred back to an item on the Web site The Huffington Post, quoting The New York Times and former network anchormen to make the point that the "mainstream" press had misled the nation one more time about how we are choosing our next leader.

That is total nonsense. The press -- or the media, if you prefer -- is doing a good if not great job in covering one of the most exciting and difficult political races in decades. There have been mistakes, as always. Covering a campaign is like describing the design of a jet plane as it takes off; you miss some important details blurred by noise and speed. A good deal of the press misunderstood the last-man-standing strength of Sen. John McCain in the Republican Party -- usually because they quoted Republican "consultants" who didn't get it, and because they reported on primary polls that often proved to be wrong. (Although it should be said that newspapers and television routinely ended those stories by saying that primary polls often prove to be wrong.)

What the press got right, though, and still is getting right, is that this is an amazing race, a transforming time in American history, the biggest thing we have seen in a long time. If you wrote a few years ago that a former president's wife would be the favorite to take back the White House for the family, people laughed behind your back. If you wrote that an unknown black guy might win it all, you'd lose your job. Those plots were movie scripts, not real-life politics.

But it's happening, isn't it?

The major gripe of press critics right now seems to be that the black guy, Sen. Barack Obama, has gotten more favorable coverage than he deserves by traditional standards. So? This is obviously not a traditional year. Why are there record turnouts in most primary states? Because of the excitement created by Obama and the size of the crowds and money he is attracting. The press caught that early on. More power to a new generation of reporters, producers and bloggers. My God, the new generation even made candidate debates marginally interesting -- practically reality television.

A variation on the "too much attention" paid to Obama and to Sen. Hillary Clinton is that there is too much mention of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and all the other things that make human beings what they are. That was formalized last month in The Miami Herald by Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. His proposal: "Embargo 'diversity' and its misbegotten offspring from campaign coverage. Ours are the elections of a sovereign republic, not some ragtag assemblage of tribes and sects. Cover individuals and issues. And may the best man or woman win."

Fine words. Many years ago, when I was the chief political correspondent of The New York Times, the publisher of that great paper, Arthur H. Sulzberger, came downstairs to see me, not a usual occurrence. He said he noticed that my copy was punctuated with references to "Catholics in places like Queens," to "blacks in northern New Jersey," to "Jewish voters in rich suburbs."

"Isn't there another way to do this?" he said. "Economics or some other way of identifying voters?"

"If we walk down a street in Scarsdale and we know how much money each family makes, I can't tell you how they'll vote," I said nervously. "If I know their religion or where their parents came from, I can get pretty close to the answer."

He looked at me for a long minute and then said, "OK, keep up the good work."

People a lot younger than me are doing good work this time, some of it very good indeed, but to do it they have to deal with the citizens of the Republic as they really are and as they really think, not as we wish they did. This is a hell of a year in American history, and voters know that. We should be celebrating the excitement and the coverage of it.

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Related Topics: clinton | election 2008 | mccain | media | obama |

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