Re: How does political writing affect voter perceptions?

Description: Matt Drudge drives the media.

Question:  How does political writing affect voter perceptions?

Transcript: It’s interesting.  It affects voters . . . The writing affects voters on so many levels.  One, you can’t overemphasize that television essentially takes its daily content from newspaper writers and web sites like Politico.com, and I think a little Slate.com.  So it drives the TV coverage so much.  And Drudge Report – it’s amazing to see what goes up on Drudge, and then turn on the cable news networks – especially FOX – and you’re gonna see the same news judgment as Matt Drudge on these networks, which is at times disturbing.  That said, Drudge is extremely influential and he does have pretty good news judgment in a New York Post kind of way.  It’s hard to say.  Political writing clearly affects the conversation.  Clearly when you interview a semi-informed voter, you can see that they’ve been filtered through information through television.  You see the same talking points.  If I could tell you how many hundreds of voters use the words “change” and “experience” for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama from Iowa to South Carolina, it’s stunning.  So you do hear, like, the same talking points from voters.  But that’s not their fault.  They have jobs.  They have children to take to soccer and school.  And they simply can’t, you know, read like the wonks out there like the people who do this professionally or the political professionals.  But it definitely still has a power to influence politics.  It definitely still has the power to check government.  But that power is waning because simply there are less jobs for those reporters who are doing investigative work because there’s less money in news organizations.  I think there is also a huge dearth of news analysis out there.  In other words there’s not nearly enough perspective.  Because what happens is – and I say this often – I think today reporters are such slaves to the news cycle that it’s lateral.  So you’re forced every day to have such a lateral understanding of the news; to know what’s on the five papers.  It used to just be the five papers.  Now it’s like five papers, five web sites, key influential blogs, television.  It’s just . . . It’s become so much that journalists are . . . have to exhaust their minds simply to stay up to the minute on what’s relevant in the news.  And I think the effect is there is far less reading, I think, of books among reporters.  There’s far less depth in their reportage.  That’s not necessarily the reporter’s fault, but I do think if you take Time magazine today or in the last few years, and then you compare it to Time magazine in the 1950s or ‘60s, what you’ll see is an immense frame of reference gap. 

Question: How should citizens consume political reporting?

Transcript: That’s very difficult.  If you’re talking about national political journalism and how they consume it, I think there are several wonderful news link web sites.  I think RealClearPolitics.com does an excellent job in winnowing out every day about 10 to 25 stories that are really . . . give you quite a good look at the day’s content.  And they do put an emphasis on perspective, so they’re not really throwing down breaking news.  I do think MSNBC, to be frank, does the best job covering politics – national politics.  And I know that there’s a lot of MSNBC for veering left in response to FOX being veering right.  And I really do think that that is a separate issue.  I do think that they have the best and most wide . . . wide ranging sort of political coverage.  And it’s more consistently on their monitor, on the screen than it is on FOX and CNN, because FOX and CNN have to decide to cover many other things as well.  And fair enough.  CNN has the best international reporting.  So I would say, you know, as far as reading, there’s so much out there.  I would . . . If they could, you know you would like to read like the Atlantic Monthly.  It’s the best magazine with perspective on sort of American politics by far.  And I would also say the Economist does an excellent job covering the United States, especially politics, in a very clear, concise, laconic way.  Outside of that of course the New York Times, the Washington Post, and certainly Politico.com are the three . . . For the wonks out there; for people who really wanna keep up with the day’s news, really Politico.com, the Washington Post, the New York Times do the best job in covering daily, national politics.  And there really isn’t a clear second tier up to those three.  I do believe that.

Question: What issues are missing from the dialogue?

Transcript: There is a lack of investigative journalism.  Again I think it’s the budget and losing profits in the print media especially.  There certainly is a lack of perspective, as I said, by reporters.  And so there’s a gap between sort of the daily punditry, which is one thing, and you know insight.  And so I would say I wish there was a lot more insight in the news.  But the truth is that we’re a free market, and I’m not sure that there is such demand for that.  And I don’t know if . . . And sometimes demand is based on what people viscerally want and what they also need in their . . . sort of in the moment.  And then there’s the things they might want if they were offered it.  And so possibly if they were offered more, they would want it more.

Recorded on: 2/5/08