Unsung

Much of the media criticism we've been performing over the past few weeks has centered around the master narratives that seem to guide this election.  Obama's inexperience.  McCain's age.  Palin's inexperience.  Biden's tenure.  As Stewart pointed out on Cross Fire, major media coverage seems to perpetuate these narratives.  For the most part the headlines have all been those few aforementioned words restated in countless ways complimented by evolving evidence and some polling data.  

Too infrequently have we seen the media harken back to the subversive fourth estate of, say, Woodward's Washington Post.  Nor have we seen much in the way of thoughtfully nuanced analysis (outside of the very occasional Obama lecture).  The question becomes why?  Why does the media feed the master narratives with hours of coverage?  What happened to thoughtful journalism?  And, in the same vain, is there any left?

Well, to take the last question first, I'd point to a recent Harper's article titled "Obama's Jews" by Bernard Avishai (You can't get the full article at the site without a subscription. I'll photocopy it for class if anyone is interested).  Now, Harper's is probably not mainstream media by majority opinion, however its circulation is around 220,000 .  It is the second oldest circulating periodical in the states.  And I'd be willing to wager that the vast majority of those 220,000 vote and/or contribute financially to campaigns, although I have no evidence.

Avishai's article is a tight, nuanced diagnoses of modern American Jews and their organizations.  I wont summarize the article here, but I will say that he uses Obama as a spotlight of sorts, to expose the gaping rift between the majority opinion among Jews (he characterizes it as the "we like SNL's Liberman more than Liberman" attitude) and the opinion of the neo conservative Jewish Leadership.  

One of the things though that Avishai does surprisingly well is that he subverts the master narratives using simple, available evidence.  For example, he breaks down the Jewish voting block by demographics and by issues.  He highlights that Jews don't vote based on the zionistic attitudes of the candidates - an issue which we all noticed during the VP debates.  He points out that the biggest issue for Jews is healthcare, even though 40% of American Jews make over 150,000$ a year.  And nearly 80% don't worry about healthcare on a regular basis.  

This sort of journalism is unsung, to angle back though, why isn't it the norm?  Well, the answer is nuanced, unsurprisingly.  The Washington Post still wins Pulitzer Prizes for good journalism.  It's 2008 story on the mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital is a good example of this.  Yet, it seems, that the problem lies with television more than with print.

As for the final question I posed (why does the media feed the master narrative), I'd like to submit one observation that I think captures the issue.  

It's all in the diction.

The McCain campaign has been labeling Obama as "risky" for months now.  So when the NBC/Wall Street Journal ran a poll about which candidate seemed more risky, it was, unsurprisingly, Obama by 16 points, validating riskiness as a storyline.  As well as placing the word risk into the public discourse with evidence, misrepresenting the origins of the word.

Imagine, if they had polled which candidate was more likely to start a war?