Tag: mainstream media

The Truly Crucial Election 2024: “Not the odds, but the stakes”

Michael Matheron1 Comment

Elections Have Consequences, Let’s Report Them With That In Mind

Months ago, Joe Rosen, an NYU journalism professor and writer for PressThink, coined a valuable phrase, well-aimed at the media, about our upcoming 2024 election: “Not the odds, but the stakes.” A concise phrase, easily memorable, it’d make a great tee shirt. And it ought to be repeated, hopefully helping to create a national “organizing principle,” as he calls it. We most certainly need an organizing principle to replace the near universal betting sheet analysis of election 2024 by media outlets.

Personally, I enjoy and like MSNBC’s Steve Kornacke, yet he epitomizes the genre, and in his case, his on-air delivery at breakneck speed resembles nothing less than the running of the Kentucky Derby. This approach creates a sense of emotional excitement that short circuits viewers’ more considered thinking about the election. As a country we often view elections as sports events, in candor, there is more than a scintilla of horseracing about elections. But in a crucial election, when this characterization becomes primary, as it is in this upcoming election, it can have a numbing effect on the mind’s ability to view elections soberly: too much adrenalin as an election year lifestyle.

Now, Perhaps More Than Ever Before

Most importantly, this election is truly, explosively, undeniably crucial. Though it’s trite to say so, a trite observation isn’t always and forever wrong, particularly when Donald Trump is the likely GOP candidate. As I wrote in “Is This Election “Crucial”? You Bet It Is!”:

We don’t need to wonder if this election is crucial. No waiting for hindsight is required. Drop the debate about it. Use time, especially air time, more productively. We’ve already witnessed Trump and company at work; they openly showed their cards to the entire nation. He earned two impeachments, 90 some odd criminal charges for actions he feels entitled to, and near universal disdain here and abroad for using the nuclear option against our electoral college and his own Vice President. If this was the warm-up act, imagine the main event. Despite my admission that hindsight plays an important role in labeling presidential elections “crucial,” we don’t need hindsight to label this election crucial. We’ve been to the circus and we saw the elephants.

Hopefully, Professor Rosen’s memorable phrase will explode off the Twitter/X page and infiltrate editorial and producers’ weekly meetings of media actors everywhere. Let’s replace the odds with the stakes, and soon.

Supercommittee Failure – Super Dooper Hysteria Mongering

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

November 27, 2011

It’s commonplace now, but still astonishing, the sense of panic consistently created by our news outlets, most recently, supercommittee madness. When the dire consequences then fail to emerge, pundits and newsheads wonder how such hysteria ever occurred. Case in point: the supercommittee sequestration deadline.

I’ve been aware of this falsely created hysteria for some time now, but, like the media I’m about to criticize, I haven’t written about just how false the “deadline” was. Its significance flew over my head. Classic fly-by. Mea culpa. What the mainstream media pundits and newsheads seldom mentioned is the most salient fact about the Supercommittee: it’s lack of recommendations, the “trigger” for sequestration of mammoth proportions, were, by statute, slated to begin in January 2013. That’s more than a year – and a complete session of Congress – from the statutory “deadline.” Yet, our newsheads kept the words “deadline” and “sequestration’ closely tied. Is this laziness? No (or let’s hope not, that would be even worse than their hysteria mongering). The newsies and their staff were aware of the practical “non-eventness” of the sequestration deadline. Then why the shell game?

It’s simple, as most of us know. Media thrives on creating ticking clocks, now more than ever. So, rather than mentioning that sequestration would not begin for another year, if at all, they deliberately “forgot” to mention that tidbit. Also, the yearlong (new) sequestration enforcement “deadline” leaves ample room for negotiating entirely new “deadlines,”  budget cuts, or (hopefully) tax increases on the you-know-who. Moreover, despite President Obama’s veto threat, Congress can game play a bill that amends the entire idea of sequestration in such a way that Obama will be unable to use his veto for political or other reasons. 

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer – the worst of the hysteria-encouraging newsheads – is notorious for this. He does it unreservedly. Once a pretty good reporter, he’s now a shill for CNN’s ever more rightwing take on events. (Last night, he waxed lovingly about Newt Gingrich.) Other networks fared little better. So, the civics-undereducated American public (through no fault of their own) was, for the most part, consistently kept in the dark about what a superdupercommittee failure would bring in its immediate wake. Many folks were counting off the seconds, fearing immediate cutbacks affecting everything from Medicaid to defense spending. What a show! And that is what it’s all about in the era of entertainment news. Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, Edward R. Murrow, rest in peace, you’re all in a better place.