Press, Policy, and Poverty
My friend Joel Berg sent this observation about Saturday’s Obamafest and the ensuing press coverage:
'"Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America. Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills, and afford child care so their kids have a safe place to go when they work. Let's do this." - Barack Obama, Presidential announcement speech
Wow. Obama went even further than Edwards in declaring that our generation could actually end poverty in America. To my knowledge, this is the most expansive anti-poverty pledge of any major American politician since LBJ. Tens of millions of Americans live under the meager poverty line, so you would think this pledge would be huge news and one of the points most frequently highlighted by the media coverage of Obama's announcement, right?
Well, if you are a regular reader of these e-mail rants of mine, you already know the answer. The media all-but-buried the poverty pledge.'
Joel notes that our national paper of record published a 1512 word story, “mostly about insider campaign strategy”, and never mentioned poverty at all – meanwhile the AP put poverty in graf 20 and the Washington Post did a little better with a (bare) mention in the 4th graf.
Joel continues his critique of the press coverage.
'I'm not saying Obama deserves fawning, uncritical coverage for simply pledging to end poverty. The press should ask him what his plan is, and how his anti-poverty ideas compare to Edwards. They should be asking Hilary if she plans discuss poverty at length in her campaign. And yes, they should be asking Bush why he entirely ignored his post-Katrina promise for a major anti-poverty initiative. And they should be asking every Republican running for President why do they think it is that, in the 46 years since the federal government has started counting poverty, it has always gone done under Democratic Administrations and up under Republican administrations.
But at least they should be asking these questions-- and should spend at least as much space mentioning what he says on poverty and other issues than on how many days he plans to spend on Iowa and New Hampshire and how much money he has raised, don't ya think?'
I agree with Joel. The media has to balance campaign process coverage with articles about policy – and not just Iraq.