This is the archive blog of Journoz.Com, the Guide to Internet Information Sources for Ethical Australian Journalists. To view the main website, click here:

Ethical Australian Journalists Guide



Archive:

February 20, 2004

Election coverage

The excellent Poynter organisation has a Centerpiece on Election Coverage 2004, which would be interesting reading for any journalist who covers elections. While the Poynter piece talks about the US Presidential race, the ideas it raises are applicable everywhere - namely, "It's no mystery why journalists generally ignore outsider candidates: We don't want to lend credence to people with no chance, while giving short shrift to those who may actually win... What bothers me about this justification is that it assumes the only thing that matters in a political contest is who wins. Issues, in other words, are not very important." All too true. The piece goes on to say "... [while] we have no trouble covering the front-runners enough, we have trouble covering them well." Hear hear. This gets to the nub of what is wrong with a lot of coverage here - we know who's in front but very little about what they stand for. Yet if we can't get into issues at election time, when can we? Read the piece at http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=61133 Posted by belinda at February 20, 2004 11:52 AM
Email this
Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):


Comments