Ezra Klein Calls for the Total and Immediate Removal of America's Mainstream Political News Media

Makes sense to me:

Ezra Klein: A campaign without the 'gotchas': Gore was seen, in 2000, as a condescending, exaggeration-prone prig. But in the ensuing years, he stepped out of campaign journalism. He began sending his speeches out directly over MoveOn.org's e-mail list, made a movie that asked people to sit down and listen to him for the better part of two hours, and did his rounds on interview shows on which he could have fairly lengthy conversations with hosts.

The result? A massive rehabilitation of his reputation, including in the eyes of the very political pundits who once spurned him.... Ask those pundits about the new Gore, of course, and they will sigh and search the heavens and moan that, oh, if he had only been this way when he was in politics, how different it all could have been. But he was.... He was a substantive global-warming obsessive with a penchant for long disquisitions on meaty topics.... [H]is pipeline to the public was a gaffe-hungry media looking for ways to humiliate him, that didn't turn out so well. When he was able to speak directly to the public, those traits were considerably more attractive....

The problems for the media are structural.... [T]he shows are really run as a type of soap opera. Campaigns become ongoing stories with a cast of characters and a history that can be referred back to. That requires the daily construction of a story line. Characters need definition and catchphrases and frailties... clips that can be easily and endlessly replayed to remind viewers of what they're watching and what happened in past episodes... the media hunger for out-of-character gaffes and missteps -- those moments are crucial to the business model.

But politicians increasingly have alternatives.... And now the campaigns of Obama and McCain are broaching the idea of Lincoln-Douglas-style debates -- a series of unmoderated debates that would leverage the public interest in the campaign to force the media to cover debates without imposing their own narrative or needs on the structure. It's campaigning as politicians, rather than the media, would have it. Weird as it sounds, that might be better for the process. And, for the candidates, it certainly sounds like more fun.

Not just the TV shows: the campaign coverage of the newspapers and magazines as well.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[howard]

prof, i know you like the rhetorical nature of the question, but ezra answered you: it's the business model! (not that you didn't already know it).

interestingly enough, although they appear, on some level, to grasp that the business model is declining, it appears that the members of the press corps themselves, with few exceptions, doesn't realize that they are part of the problem: their habits of thought and work are already too well-established.

[jerry]

Sigh, at this point, I think the Ezra Kleins have as much to apologize for as the mainstream. The past six months have seen "respectable liberal blogger" one after another link to people they use to call wankers and worse. They would link to drudge link to politico, link to anyone that had some sort of important and relevant anti-Hillary smear.

About the only voice still believably independent is Drew Curtis', who does at least point out which links are sponsored but whose forums are overrun by so many people from so many different perspectives, ALL of whom are anonymous, that a lot of different truths come out. And considering that with the exception of Wil Wheaton everyone else there is anonymous, it puts to shame the legions of self-proclaimed sophisticated, educated bloggers who somehow feel that a very strict and harsh moderation is required in order to have a productive dialog appear at their blogs. I think what FARK shows is how many bloggers are scared of having a message arise from an dialog they can't control.

(And looking back on this rambling comment of mine, I wasn't even thinking of the somewhat minimal moderation that seems to exist around here, although I do think your posts would be just fine without any.)

[ed]

There's a movement afoot to refer to this as the "Corporate Media". I like this, since the other team says MSM too. Corporate Media is not only more accurate, but may cause Michelle Malkin to wince a smidge. Please adjust your usage accordingly. Thanks.

[howard]

jerry, i think you're probably a little unfair to young ezra, whom i don't think has behaved in the way you've described, but i will note that our host, of all people, summoned greg mankiw, of all people, as a witness to make a character argument against hillary clinton. it was an astonishing low point on the prof's part, given that mankiw sold out any right to be respected by his performance as a bush administration shill, but guild membership overruled the prof's normal good judgement on that matter.

[Barry]

And, of course, Ezra could (and should) have mentioned that Obama did NOT want a lincoln / douglas style debate with Clinton. And I think he was right to do it. He would have lost.

[Jonny]

It isn't clear to me Obama would have lost a lincoln/douglas style debate with Clinton. Her most substantively dominant debate performance was sullied by her unprompted dismissal of Medvedev, a sophomoric attempt at establishing Foreign Policy credentials which instead revealed her instinct for club-footed and divisive statecraft. Other than that, she relied heavily on the substance free nature of the media moderated debates. Without Fred Armisen and Charlie Gibson, her main advantage over Obama is his somewhat stilted cadence. I suspect he developed this stilted delivery as a hedge against the Pat Buchanan's of the world, who would somehow map one of the most ponderous moments in american public discourse into a shakedown by some street hustler. Obama is wary of appearing too smooth- appropriately so, as the flag pin questioner grounded her distrust of Obama in what she perceived to be his ease and effortlessness. He is aware of the dangers of being too smooth. But make no mistake, it wasn't a Lincoln/Douglas style debate Obama turned down. It was a Katie Couric moderated debate. There is, to say the least, a significant difference.

But even if he would embarass himself in such a debate, such debates would be a welcome change of pace- as the debates this campaign season have thus far been an embarassment to America.

[smaug]

A Lincoln/Douglass debate would be great -- there would be no "moderators" asking questions. The *candidates* would debate.

But Klein misses one of the key problems with Gore and Kerry. Gore ran as a vice-president. His campaign insulated him from reporters and rarely allowed him to mingle with them. Bush, by contrast, frequently talked on-the-record with the campaign reporters on the plane. This gained him a good deal of cred.

Likewise, Kerry adopted the you-press, me-candidate pose. It was suicide.

Don't believe me: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E0DE1438F930A2575AC0A9669C8B63&scp=19&sq=gore+plane+reporters&st=nyt

For the media, they have to cover the campaigns, and so Gore's team figured that the media would have to use their message or have nothing. So, when Gore gaffed, it was jumped on because it was, from the media's point of view, a candid moment.

Likewise, the Kerry campaign decided to try and "manage" the media. But the more you manage, the more obvious it is.