Much is written about the lack of substantive coverage during election campaigns. I’ve certainly done so before.
Now the Village Voice has a piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates with the headline “Lazy Bums.”
Aly Colón, leader of an ethics group at the Poynter Institute, says he’d like to see stories that balance coverage of the competition with some analysis of what the campaigns represent. “Both approaches can be done, even if it seems that the horse-race approach is the norm,” says Colón. “It doesn’t mean that a story couldn’t provide more coverage, in addition to that horse-racing aspect, to create a fuller picture of how the candidate might act in office.”
Of course this would require more work, more research, and more sourcing. “We’re lazy,” says [William Saletan, chief political correspondent for Slate]. “We’re really, really lazy. First of all, we’re cowards because we are afraid of being not objective. We’re also just lazy. There may be two reporters in the country who understand tax policy. The rest of us are talking to our friends and reading each other in the paper.”
Well said.