Monday, March 10, 2008

Horse Race coverage

The Lehrer News Hour was discussing the goodness of press coverage of the primaries. A couple of reporter/pundits held forth on the essential goodness of "horse race" coverage. "That's what people want to see". I'm sure the newsies love horse race coverage, because they don't have to know anything to do it. Just flip the election results up on the screen, and throw out a few opinions, (opinions are cheap, everyone has one) about why so-an-so won, and somebody-else lost. No knowledge of politics, history, issues, election law, or the candidates is necessary, just the plain election results, available from the state election officials for free, and a few cheap opinions. Anyone can do it. In fact, most working reporters are so ignorant of nearly everything that all they can do is horse race coverage.

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