Watching the Democratic Party’s Denver convention on commercial television’s cable channels was not edifying. I hopped around among MSNBC, CNN and Fox for five hours or more each evening with the fascination of someone watching a train wreck in slow motion. Every night each cable channel trots about twenty five people – anchors, reporters and so called analysts – most of whom are hacks actually being paid by each cable channel to spout his or her party’s line. They pontificate for hours but tell us very little of genuine importance.
Tuesday night was devoted almost exclusively to what Hillary had to do- to save Obama’s candidacy or to preserve her own political viability for another run for the presidency. I’m not suggesting that was not a worthy subject for discussion, But fifteen hours? MSNBC chose to make their chatter even less comprehensible by putting its anchors out on the street in front of a small crowd of supposed delegates who shouted mindlessly, often drowning out the commentators. I assume the shouters were meant to reflect the divisions at the convention. But as anyone in television knows, you can get a crowd five times that size to watch a haircut – just by setting up a TV camera in front of a barbershop.
However, on that same evening, these were some of the other stories in the news:
The Russians officially recognized the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, thereby raising the ante in a dangerously escalating dispute with the United States and Europe. Cold War II may be in the making.
Afghanistan demanded a new agreement that would regulate American and NATO forces after it was determined that an American air strike against the Taliban over the weekend killed 90 Afghan civilians, 60 of them apparently women and children.
And in Baghdad the government of Prime Minister Maliki toughened the terms of its draft security agreement with the U.S. , saying there must be a fixed date for the withdrawal of American combat forces from Iraq – probably 2011.
At a time when most Americans are finally paying attention to the political process, the conventions provide a golden opportunity to give people some understanding of important issues at stake in the coming election. Those foreign developments could have been used as a vehicle to examine the latest respective positions of the two presidential candidates on foreign policy. Likewise, there is plenty of air time to do what we used to call explainers – a series of three minute, non-partisan reports explaining the candidates’ basic differences on issues such as health care, taxes, climate change and energy policy.
Informing the electorate is the news media’s mission. But unfortunately the coverage is all about the horse race between Obama and McCain – or the cat fight between the Clintons and the Obamas. There is almost nothing at all about the choices average Americans voters must make in November – too often it seems, based on little or no credible information.