The press and the people…
The Democrats running for president will debate next week in South Carolina. Howard Kurtz doesn’t think citizens are interested, although a few political reporters are happy to have something to do.
Kurtz’s column this morning is an excellent example of two interesting phenomena. First, he demonstrates the narrative bias of journalism:
One thing that too early means, with such a large field, is that there’s no clearly defined plot line, no front-runner to be taken down, no rhetorical shootout between two leading contenders. It’s a challenge for reporters to be fair to all nine contenders, and a 90-minute debate leaves everyone from Joe Lieberman and John Kerry to Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun with less than 10 minutes apiece–not exactly the stuff of high drama.
What about policy? What about the very real stuff that affects the lives of average Americans? Now’s the time to be asking those policy questions and exploring the ramifications of the answers.
Second, Kurtz’s column clearly demonstrates that he believes the average citizen isn’t interested in an early debate or the campaign at this point. An assumption related to the fiction that the press and the people have similar interests. How does he know this?
