Occasionally, when I forget that CNN IS POLITICS and not, as one might guess from the acronym, some sort of news network on cable, it seems shocking how much space is devoted by Anderson, Wolf and Friends to the campaign as opposed to the election. You might well ask what I mean by this. After all, the campaign leads to the election, which undoubtedly will have consequences that are news-worthy. Congress’ actions are news, therefore Congress is news, therefore getting a Congress together is news and so on. So why shouldn’t we (on the east coast) all be obscenely well informed about the day-to-day progress of the California governor’s race? Why isn’t it perfectly admirable that as responsible citizens (of the other 99% of the country), we take pains to inform ourselves about the educational background of the candidates for Senator from Delaware? First, because it doesn’t really matter. Second, because it doesn’t really change anything. Third, because it detracts from the things that do matter and do change things.
One of the most surreal things about travelling to the United States is that the news changes. And it’s not just that everyone puts down Le Monde and picks up USA Today on the plane. Good old-fashioned news outlets like CNN, The New York Times and even Fox serve up different websites, different broadcasts, and in some cases, even entirely different publications overseas. The articles are more or less the same, from the same sources and the same correspondents. The difference is in the order the information is presented. Example: The top-of-the-page article for the New York Times right now is “Traditionally Democratic Ohio Town Shifts Uneasily.” Now, take a sip of your espresso, put on your beret and click the link in the top left-hand corner. Voila! You’re now reading the Global Edition. At the top of the page, you read “Indonesia Struggling in Aftermath of Disasters.” Now, I’ll grant that an upset of the Democratic establishment is news. And Ohio is an important state, politically speaking. But the total number of people in Defiance, Ohio is roughly the same as the number of Indonesians who lost their homes in West Sumatra Province alone. Now tell me again – what’s the most important story of the day?
Perhaps even more bizarre is when we move to the US Section of the Global Edition. Sure enough, here’s the Ohio article, but in smaller print, and over to the side. Top story: “Needing Students, Maine School Hunts in China.” Now while you might argue that it’s reasonable (if a little cold) for Americans to be more concerned about their own backyard than about a disaster halfway around the world, we should look to what parts of the backyard deserve the most attention. The claim that a running narrative of the midterm campaign is necessary is based on the awareness that it will affect issues like education, health care, immigration and the economy. So why (in the US Edition) is the campaign story a good two pages above the education story? It seems just a little like taking your car to the mechanic, and instead of asking why your car won’t go, demanding a detailed account of their hiring and recruitment policies. (This, while several houses down your street are being ripped apart by a tsunami.) Issue B certainly relates to Issue A. That doesn’t mean it’s just as important.
There’s another reason why spending your time tracking voter preferences in Defiance, Ohio is a little ridiculous. Namely, you (almost certainly) don’t live in Defiance, Ohio! The election (there) is (for you) a foregone conclusion. In fact, you can even find out what the conclusion is, ahead of time. Thanks to the advanced computer modeling of The New York Times’ 538 Blog, you can know that the Republican candidate for Ohio’s 5th Congressional District has a 99.9% chance of winning. Likewise for the Senate race. Well, thank goodness you knew that the Democrats were slipping! Now, what are you going to do about it? Obviously, you could go and vote Democratic to prevent something similar happening in your home state. Or you could go vote Republican and try and turn that slipping into a landslide. In other words, you can exercise the democratic rights that you should be exercising anyway and that’s about it. Campaign reporting and poll numbers don’t give you valuable tools to choose a candidate or better understand a position. At best, they give people an impetus to vote, at worst, they skew results by discouraging turnout. The fact that we have so few meaningful ways to respond to campaign “news” shows just how little meaning this information really carries.
Obviously, the story is different for political professionals. Campaign volunteers and employees use these numbers to allocate resources and focus their own efforts. In this sense, they are a valuable strategic tool. A story about shifting voter opinion in Ohio makes perfect sense on the front page of Politico or CQ. But what strategy does the average viewer of CNN have that he or she is going to adjust because of information gathered from The War Room?
The same might be said for academics and students of public opinion. The Defiance situation might make an interesting case study in the pages of Political Communication. The fact that that study might later get cited on Fox on MSNBC gives the eerie impression that political science has become some sort of spectator sport. Which is not to say people shouldn’t be interested. But what we’re talking about here is a theoretical education – talking heads going back and forth and maybe the audience picks up on how the system works – not unlike what you might find on the Discovery Channel.
So if CNN is the political equivalent of Discovery Channel, what’s the problem? Millions of people watching educational TV daily hardly seems like a bad thing – and it’s not. The problem is when a theoretical education replaces instead of supplements news. You know, that thing that tells you what’s going on in the world, what issues are being faced and what’s being done about them. Where are the articles that tell us what a problem consists of and not just the ads being run on it? Where are the stories that cover legislation instead of legislators? Political news in America has oft been compared to a horse race – more concerned with who’s ahead and who’s behind than what it all means. Knowing a thing or two about horses isn’t a bad thing, nor is having the latest results in the paper. But when poll data comes 4 stories above airport security, when campaign spending gets bigger print than a glitch that affected the nation’s nuclear arsenal, when who’s running the country becomes more important than how they’re running it - then we lose awareness of the issues that should guide our individual decisions and give way to the pull of the statistical masses. When we watch the horses instead of the track, we might know who’s ahead and why, but we no longer get to choose where they’re going.
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