Jay Rosen answers this in his most recent essay on PressThink.

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/

To a certain extent political reporting today is unable to cover policy because (but not limited to):

1. lack of understanding about what it is and how it works.

2. general cynicism about politicians

3. too difficult given the time and recourses necessary to do cover it correctly.

I’ve been noticing newspaper articles recently that reference policy specifics only as a horserace point. Something like “Sen. Obama hopes to quiet the accusation of lacking policy specifics by releasing a white paper on X. But will it be enough? Sen. Clinton’s campaign representative says no. Prof. Ouinibeani at Nearby University says that it isn’t clear whether the voters care about the specifics. And Republican pollsters say that all this squabbling is good for Sen. McCain.”

And so on. Without any mention of what the specifics are. So here’s my question: are they doing it on purpose, just to annoy me?

Thanks,
-V.