It's supposed to be a political campaign, not a horse race, but you wouldn't know that by paying attention to the news media and the cable TV talking heads. Their coverage is all about gotchas and sound bites and who's up (or down) and the perfectly useless poll result du jour. It's really hard work trying to stay informed about the policies, programs and philosophies of the candidates. The media and the talking heads should be making the job easier, not harder.
They're making it harder because they don't give much ink or air time or bandwidth to the issues. A respected study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that political coverage across all media has been mostly of the "horse race" variety beginning last November.
Almost 65% of media reporting on the primary campaigns has been about polling, advertising, fundraising, campaign strategies and which candidate was up or down on a daily basis. About 12% of the coverage looked at the candidates' personal backgrounds.
How much of the news content was focused on the candidates' stands on issues that affect our country? Only 11%. That's pretty close to zero. Almost 90% of the time, the political news you were reading or watching was about stuff that really has almost nothing to do with deciding which policies and programs are right or wrong for America and for you and me.
Instead of keeping up with the talking heads, try reading the books the candidates have written.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is a project of the Pew Research Center and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. I think the Pew Center is about as close as we can get to an honest, unbiased source of information.
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