I've been trying to make this point throughout the week, but Paul Waldman is pithier than I am.Reporters will choose to write about flag pins. They will choose to write about whether some catastrophic, heretofore hidden character flaw has been revealed by a comment a candidate made, or by a comment somebody who knows the candidate made. They are not merely conduits for the campaign's discourse, they create the campaign's discourse, as much as the candidates themselves.
Ah, but didn't Hillary Clinton criticize Barack Obama over his "bitter" comments? Doesn't that justify a week of relentless, repetitive discussion? Yes, she did (as he has criticized her before on matters equally trivial). But on that day, she probably held half a dozen campaign events and talked about a hundred different things. Had reporters wanted, they could have written stories about what she said about health care, the economy, Iraq, or just about anything else. They chose instead to write about this. The time is long past for them to stop pretending they have nothing to do with how trivial a campaign becomes.
On some level, the media gets this -- it's the essential conflict of interest that runs like the San Andreas fault line right through the center of the profession. But because they haven't figured out a way to it, they by and large refuse to talk about it, because if you talk about it, then it's real, and you're both open to the criticism and obligated to figure out a transparent fix.
What is "the media"? It's cable television network news. It's local television news. It's national news magazines and papers, and local news magazines and papers. It's advertising companies. It's film, it's radio. Talk shows, commentary. It's even blogs. (No longer are they so marginalized as to be able to avoid the "mainstream" label.)
And this media shapes the discourse in this country, in this state, in this neighborhood.
They do not control every detail, but they provide the basis, the foundation, upon which the populace builds its conventional wisdom.
They know this, obliquely. They know it deep inside, but they can't allow themselves to acknowledge it, because that would oblige them to pay attention. It would make clear their burden. They would have to take responsibility for every small thing they say. And that is too far-reaching an implication for them to accept it.
And so they don't. They detach themselves entirely. They say that the people dictate their coverage; they don't dictate the people's thoughts. They willfully ignore that this is not a one-way transaction, but a complicated interaction in which all sides feed, and feed off, one another.
But that's too much to consider. And tomorrow we will undoubtedly hear about the color suit Clinton wore during her campaign events on election night. And it goes on.
