In my first post about Bad Stories, I briefly mentioned Steve Almond’s thoughts about the role the media plays in bringing bad stories to our eyes and ears. Today I’ll take a very quick look at some more of what he wrote about this topic.
I agree with Almond’s fundamental belief that good journalism can – and should – hold wrongdoers accountable. What I remain unclear about is the methods employed by the media to accomplish this task. The final two weeks of the campaign are a good example. The coverage from the media about Clinton’s emails surely put enough doubt in voters’ minds and possibly influenced their decisions at the polls. In itself, this type of focused coverage isn’t a problem, but without balanced coverage regarding questions about Trump’s candidacy the media becomes a participant rather than a spectator in the election.
Another angle to the point regarding accountability is that its power only extends so far – a longform ‘think’ piece interrupted by ads, photos, and tangentially related hyperlinks is very unlikely to awaken a conscious or prompt a wrongdoer to start making amends. There’s a reason Scrooge was visited by three ghosts rather than a magazine subscription. This fact doesn’t excuse the way the media will play up the theater, drama, or pageantry of a national election at the expense of policy coverage. Almond makes a comment that I think fit well here – he notes that the role of good journalism is to see beyond the theatrics. This didn’t really happen in 2016, or at least it’s so suggested by some studies that estimate as little as ten percent of national election coverage focused on policy.
