One of the articles in yesterday's Chron strikes me as a clear example of what's wrong with American political reporting. It's about Mitt Romney.
If you don't already know, Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts; he's running for the Republican presidential nomination next year. He's a Mormon.
Now, knowing what you know about the history of the Mormon religion, and assuming that Romney's family has been Mormon a long time, what might you think vis-a-vis the Mormons' most notorious (former) practice?
Yes, of course. Most likely, one or more of Romney's ancestors were polygamous. This isn't news.
No, wait, let me repeat that: Anything that is both predictable and irrelevant is not news.
As it turns out, yes, one (out of eight) of Romney's great-grandparents was a polygamist, and his father before him.
This just in: Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's great-grandfather owned slaves. John McCain's great-grandfather used the N-word. Hillary Clinton's great-grandfather thought the Irish were dirty thieves.
There's no question in my mind that this article was a hatchet job commissioned by one of Romney's opponents, designed to make people aware that Romney is a member of a different religion in order to play off their prejudice against anyone who's not a mainstream Christian. This just in: New Mexico governor Mike Richardson practices his faith in a cannibalistic rite.
The real problem, the core problem at the heart of modern American political reporting, is that some editor somewhere said This is a story. Somebody handed them a press release and they published it. In what way is one great-grandfather a "key role in Romney's family tree", as the headline blares? Romney is a member in good standing of the mainstream LDS church, which repudiated polygamy more than a century ago, so how is his great-grandfather's primordial orthodoxy relevant to Romney's current religious practices or (in the only thing that's actually relevant to his candidacy) to his moral values and guiding principles?
The editor didn't do his job.
That's the problem with modern American political reporting: Editors aren't editing.
Posted by Greg at February 26, 2007 9:33 AM
While everything you say is true, Mitt's an unmitigated jackass. So I'm torn.
Well, sure. I think Romney's a jackass, too. But I'd rather he go down to a grinding, humiliating defeat because of his awful politics. It'd be tragic--a tragic status Romney does not deserve--if he were defeated instead because his great-grandfather was an orthodox Mormon.
Your assertion that the editor didn't do his job presupposes that their job involves presenting items that do not violate your "predictable and irrelevant" prohibition. I do not think that is what they actually do. My impression of modern journalistic editing is that it must counterbalance between "reasonable" and "popular" - which do NOT coincide. Journalism in a capitalistic society is, by it's nature, dependant on the demands of the public.
The degree to which a presumably honest news organization sacrifices reasonableness for mass appeal is a reflection of the current social climate, not the integrity of the organization or it's employees. I would offer that the editor in question did his job especially well. Such stories are part and parcel of the current American political process.
I believe the real problem, or "core problem", that you seem to be trying to pinpoint is sociological, not journalistic. The problem isn't with American political reporting. It's with the American political process, and the culture that fosters such a process.
But then again, I'm a cynic.
Mjt!