What if Political Scientists wrote the news?

[Guardsman Bass]

Since this concerns both news and politics (and also contains some political information via the link I re-posted from within the article), I thought it would be best to post it here, even though it is clearly humorous.

The Only Politics Article You'll Ever Have To Read
What if political scientists covered the news?

By Christopher Beam

A new article in the Columbia Journalism Review discusses the differences between political journalism and political science. What if academics started writing the news?

A powerful thunderstorm forced President Obama to cancel his Memorial Day speech near Chicago on Monday—an arbitrary event that had no affect on the trajectory of American politics.

Obama now faces some of the most difficult challenges of his young presidency: the ongoing oil spill, the Gaza flotilla disaster, and revelations about possibly inappropriate conversations between the White House and candidates for federal office. But while these narratives may affect fleeting public perceptions, Americans will ultimately judge Obama on the crude economic fundamentals of jobs numbers and GDP.

Chief among the criticisms of Obama was his response to the spill. Pundits argued that he needed to show more emotion. Their analysis, however, should be viewed in light of the economic pressures on the journalism industry combined with a 24-hour news environment and a lack of new information about the spill itself.

Republicans, meanwhile, complained that the administration has not been sufficiently involved in the day-to-day cleanup. Their analysis, of course, is colored by their minority status in America's two-party system, which creates a strong structural incentive to criticize the party in power, whatever the merits.

At the same time, Obama's job approval rating fell to 48 percent. This isn't really news, though. Studies have shown that the biggest factor in a president's rating is economic performance. Connecting the minute blip in the polls with Obama's reluctance to emote or alleged failure to send enough boom to the Gulf is, frankly, absurd.

Democrats have also slipped in their standing among "independent voters." That phrase, by the way, is meaningless. Voters may self-identify as "independent" but in almost all cases they lean toward one party.

Poll numbers also confirmed that Americans are in an anti-incumbent mood. … Ha! Just kidding. The anti-Washington narrative was concocted by dominant media outlets based on the outcomes of a statistically insignificant handful of largely unrelated races. Sorry.

Still, Democrats hope that passing health care and financial regulatory reform will give them enough momentum to win in November. Unfortunately, there's little relationship between legislative victories and electoral victories. Also, what the hell is "momentum"?

Prospects for an energy bill, meanwhile, are looking grim, since Obama has spent all his political capital. He used to have a lot. Now it's gone. Why winning legislative battles builds momentum but saps political capital, I have no idea. Just go with it.

Possible "game changers" for Obama include plugging the oil leak, peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, and World War III, although these events would be almost entirely outside Obama's control.

Looking ahead to 2012, Republicans need a candidate who can shake up the electoral map, which currently consists of "red states" and "blue states," even though there's not much difference.

The GOP—a stupid acronym we use only so we don't have to keep repeating the word Republican—will have to decide between a moderate "establishment" pick and a more conservative Tea Party favorite. In reality, both candidates would embrace similar policies in the general election.

That candidate will then face off against Obama, whose charisma, compelling personal story, and professional political operation will prove formidable. Actually, Obama will probably win because he's the incumbent. And because voters always go with the guy who's taller.

Amusing, although parts of it are undoubtedly true (the role of economics and jobs as a driving factor in elections).

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's always nice to see someone give a good, hearty "fuck you" to the news media in this country. It is amazing how utterly incompetent many journalists are.

[Molyneux]

It's always nice to see someone give a good, hearty "fuck you" to the news media in this country. It is amazing how utterly incompetent many journalists are.

I'm trying to compile a list of fairly non-biased, reliable news sources in America.
So far, I have the Daily Show. I'm a bit at a loss for additional entries.

[Temujin]

Well I would add BBC America (even though technically it be British ), and you might also consider Olbermann and Maddow (particularly the latter). While some people will say that they're biased towards the left, I would argue that at least they focus on the facts pertaining to the issues, call people on their bullshit, and are quick to correct their own mistakes. Also, it has been said that reality, or alternately the truth, has a liberal bias.

As for the OP, I don't think political scientists would necessarily be a good replacement. In their own writings they can at times get caught up in their own particular ideological leanings, not to mention showing a degree of verbosity comparable to many long winded 18th and 19th century writers.

What I think you need is something like the BBC that gets away from the multimedia for profit /ratings mentality that ends up over sensationalizing everything in a constant game of one-upmanship. Of course it will never work in capitalist America.

[General Mung Beans]

PBS Newshour is fairly accurate and detailed.

[Johonebesus]

PBS Newshour is fairly accurate and detailed.

They still fall into the trap of insisting on "balance," giving guests the opportunity to spout their talking points without offering any original investigation to help the viewer figure out which talking head is telling the truth. They also spend too much time on politicking and not enough on policy.

Olberman has the same problem. After a brief racap of the facts. he brings in a guest that usually just discusses political strategy.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Very illustrative of how vulgar political culture and media institutions stoke a misleading image of a highly-dynamic society-wide, broad-based political culture and political system where public opinion is a coherent and constantly shifting, meaningful force, that actually influences policy makers and forces them to constantly navigate it's treacherous and demanding waters. Versus the reality that much of what is happening or going to happen is marginal, predictable, and corresponding to institutional factors outside of public influence. It gives the illusion of a participative, substantive democracy where it is actually formalistic, participatorally limited, and institutionally deformed. To use an example: the whole BP Hate is a purely meaningless media theater, obscuring all actual treatment of the issues and the intrinsic assumptions and policy prescriptions which established the framework by which this event occurred. And of course, the public is atomized and alienated, and has no meaningful social and civil society institutions with which to develop a political consciousness in organization and interaction with their peers, so they sit in front of the tube, and the pundits pretend to be mad, Obama pretends to be doing something, and BP pretends to care. All informed, and educated participants -- the powerful, influential ones -- already know -- and it seems were briefly early and have known -- what the likely outcome would be, that this would probably only be finally mitigated with an August relief well. But still we get this instead. We don't want the stupid public -- stakeholders they are in society and the natural world -- to think about anything and to ask questions. We have well-paid experts belonging to the industry-regulator complex who will tell us what all the options are.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Honestly, local reporters/journalists tend to be better than the ones at the large, nation-wide organizations. The latter tend to be stock full of people who get their jobs based on connections rather than any skill or experience. Hell, staff at the D.C. bureaus are notorious for this. Smaller scale papers/TV stations often have rather sharp commentators. The key is knowing where to look and who to look for.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I agree with that. Some of them break some truly interesting stories, and against the will of the Big Ones they have to cover it.

[Starglider]

It is amazing how utterly incompetent many journalists are.

You seem to be under the delusion that 'competence' for a journalist means accurate and useful reporting. What a quaint notion. In reality journalism is a subset of entertainment media and competence means bringing in and keeping the maximum viewers or readers. Competence is writing whatever the target market wants to hear. Only in a few niche parts of the market does this demand happen to align with the traditional goal of reporting, i.e. accurate and useful.

[Zixinus]

What I think you need is something like the BBC that gets away from the multimedia for profit /ratings mentality that ends up over sensationalizing everything in a constant game of one-upmanship. Of course it will never work in capitalist America.

They also shouldn't be a 24 hour news network, because then you have a pressure to fill that 24 hours with whatever is possible.

[Temujin]

PBS Newshour is fairly accurate and detailed.

They still fall into the trap of insisting on "balance," giving guests the opportunity to spout their talking points without offering any original investigation to help the viewer figure out which talking head is telling the truth. They also spend too much time on politicking and not enough on policy.

Olberman has the same problem. After a brief racap of the facts. he brings in a guest that usually just discusses political strategy.

That's one of the reasons that I'm preferring Maddow more and more these days to Olbermann. Olbermann was fine as an attack dog against Bush, but has lost something since the election. Maddow seems to be doing more actual investigative reporting investigating the C-Street crap, actually going down to the gulf and going out onto the water and into the wetlands, etc.

[Temujin]

What I think you need is something like the BBC that gets away from the multimedia for profit /ratings mentality that ends up over sensationalizing everything in a constant game of one-upmanship. Of course it will never work in capitalist America.

They also shouldn't be a 24 hour news network, because then you have a pressure to fill that 24 hours with whatever is possible.

I think that's unavoidable now in an information age society. However, they don't really try to fill it with actual news. It's usually at best just two hours of actual news (if not a slow news day), with a lot of filler (i.e., chit chat, human interest crap, etc.). They leave out a lot of stories from around the world and even many domestic ones that could be reported on. Aside from mainstream news, they also concentrate on certain genres like sports and entertainment to the detriment of others like science. Realistically, they should have no problem filling a 24 hour news cycle; in fact they should have trouble trying to find space to fit in all the stories on a typical day.

But the news cycle in America is now revolving around at least a 15 minute recap/update period, feeding the population the same 'popular' stories over and over whether they have anything to actually add or not. Meanwhile, plenty of other stories go unreported or under reported, and the public doesn't seem to mind.

[Zixinus]

However, they don't really try to fill it with actual news. It's usually at best just two hours of actual news (if not a slow news day), with a lot of filler (i.e., chit chat, human interest crap, etc.). They leave out a lot of stories from around the world and even many domestic ones that could be reported on. Aside from mainstream news, they also concentrate on certain genres like sports and entertainment to the detriment of others like science. Realistically, they should have no problem filling a 24 hour news cycle; in fact they should have trouble trying to find space to fit in all the stories on a typical day.

But the news cycle in America is now revolving around at least a 15 minute recap/update period, feeding the population the same 'popular' stories over and over whether they have anything to actually add or not. Meanwhile, plenty of other stories go unreported or under reported, and the public doesn't seem to mind.

I find that a paradoxical: why do you think a lot of stuff doesn't get reported? Because they are wasting non-airtime resources (manpower, money and whatever else necessary) on doing those filler shows instead of establishing infrastructure to report more stories, get more interviews, get experts in and make them talk and so on.

[Master of Ossus]

On a tangent from the actual discussion, what the fuck is the difference between a "political science" student (or grad) and a "politics" one?

[Illuminatus Primus]

The two groups being discussed are political science students and grads, and political journalists, which are educated in, and have degrees in journalism. The most idiotic and useless students on campus, in my experience.

[Temujin]

There are some colleges that offer degrees in 'Politics' in addition to Political Science, though they are rare. One of my professors had one and said it was more akin to International Affairs. My experience with Political Science courses, aside from the rather basic ones, is that they really should be referred to as Political Philosophy in that a lot of Political Scientists write loads on their pet theories of how the world works, yet never have to back up their claims with facts and are never called on their predictions when they are wrong.

[Temujin]

I find that a paradoxical: why do you think a lot of stuff doesn't get reported? Because they are wasting non-airtime resources (manpower, money and whatever else necessary) on doing those filler shows instead of establishing infrastructure to report more stories, get more interviews, get experts in and make them talk and so on.

That's one of the great mysteries.

I think that a lot of the ignored stories (which seem to be predominately international or science oriented) are due to the fact that they feel that the average American would just not be interested.

They do waste a lot of resources on fluff, though I think a lot of their resources are just poorly allocated. They waste too much time focusing on the same small set of stories, even when they obviously have nothing new to really report. I don't know many times I've seen them interrupt programming and stay on a story for sometimes hours even, and yet have little if anything to report except the preliminary headlines of the story. They just keep hemming and hawing when all they really need to do is mention the basics and move on.

[Teebs]

On a tangent from the actual discussion, what the fuck is the difference between a "political science" student (or grad) and a "politics" one?

None as far as I know. I think it's just a national thing. In the USA political science seems to be more favoured while in the UK courses seem to be titled 'politics'.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I always find Adam Curtis has a good way of summing up my qualms with such things these days.

[Temujin]

Agreed. Curtis is fantastic and has even been a bit of an inspiration for my own aspirations at writing.

While the idea of getting camera or video footage from an event can be very useful, the media really has taken to bending over for their audiences. How many time they turn to snap web polls, email comments, phone calls, etc., it just makes them seem so ineffectual, yet kind of patronizing at the the same time. It's kind of like a pat on the head to their viewers.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Speaking of viewer opinions...

EDIT: And because I fucking hate TV news, here's the M.O. for every news report ever made now.

And how to end such news shows.

[Alyrium Denryle]

PBS Newshour is fairly accurate and detailed.

They still fall into the trap of insisting on "balance," giving guests the opportunity to spout their talking points without offering any original investigation to help the viewer figure out which talking head is telling the truth. They also spend too much time on politicking and not enough on policy.

Olberman has the same problem. After a brief racap of the facts. he brings in a guest that usually just discusses political strategy.

That's one of the reasons that I'm preferring Maddow more and more these days to Olbermann. Olbermann was fine as an attack dog against Bush, but has lost something since the election. Maddow seems to be doing more actual investigative reporting investigating the C-Street crap, actually going down to the gulf and going out onto the water and into the wetlands, etc.

She is actually a case in point for the OP.

She has a PhD in Political Science and is a Rhodes Scholar

[Steel]

Yes, the 24 hour news channels are shoddy, but I think people are missing the point. They are meant to have a quick summary of the news that you can find out at any point in the day. You should not ever watch for more than 15 minutes at a time. Once the cycle starts again go away and do anything else.

Doing anything else is like buying 4 newspapers in a day and complaining it hadn't changed. The quality of the news they give in the segment is not the same as the way they format the channel.