On the Media – Even Our Media – and the Election.

Now that the gnashing of teeth in New York over the election results seems to have quieted a bit, I thought I’d take a look back at one element of the recent presidential election. Thanks to an event hosted by my college this week, I feel like I should at least share some of the stronger nuggets.

Gathered together at the National Press Club in D.C. to discuss media coverage of this election were an august group of alumni that included: John Carroll, editor of the L.A. Times and chair of the Pulitzer Selection Committee; Juan Williams, senior correspondent for NPR and Fox News, as well as the author of “Eyes on the Prize”; Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief for Time Inc., and David Espo, a political correspondent for the Associated Press.

The panel explored whether or not the media is in crisis, what role the Web played in this election – specifically blogs – and what lessons this election may hold for us in the future, among other questions.

While there were many worthy items that emerged from this 90-minute panel, one that really sticks out for me is a discussion that I have heard in many offices lately. How can our country be so distinctly divided into coastal/Democrat states and heartland/Republican states? And did the Web actually serve to polarize voters instead of informing them?

Well, that’s what this column is about. Because the fact is that while the United States is divided along these lines, it is not divided that way anywhere near as distinctly as the mainstream media would have us believe. The fact is, the divide is mostly a media construct.

The experts said it themselves on this panel.

“But for less than 100,000 votes in Ohio, we would be having a very different discussion,” said Mr. Pearlstine. And he’s right, of course. Our national media is mostly focused on stories about conflict. That’s what has always sold in the broadcast age, and it’s also what got “The Daily Show’s” John Stewart so fired up that he chewed out the panelists on CNN’s “Crossfire” last month.

The Pew data I wrote about two weeks ago also makes it clear that voters accessed far more divergent viewpoints than people would have suspected online. As a nation, we have more information than ever before, and we seem to be accessing it more than ever before.

So, with all this information at our fingertips, how divided is a nation when a couple of states were all that it would have taken to change the outcome of the whole election?

Next time you hear about this red state/blue state concept, think about how close the elections were in most of those states, and read David Brooks’ stellar op-ed in The New York Times from November 9th.

Sure, it’s clear that coastal states are more urban and more Democrat-laden. This is no surprise. But, the margins in states neighboring these states were not what the media would have us think. This election was extremely close. For a country with less than 5 percent of the population holding a valid passport, maybe it was even surprisingly close.

One of Brooks’ provocative suppositions is that most voters today don’t even get their “facts” from media anymore anyway. They get it from their churches or elsewhere. This was along the lines of the question that kicked off last week’s panel in D.C. – just what is media these days?

We have an administration that has held less than half as many press conferences as its immediate predecessor. Yet, somehow, they manage to get voters on their side in record numbers. As one of those in our business who follows the news closely, has clear opinions, and tries to stay informed online in real time, I have to wonder: What are we missing here? Is all the reading we do on conflict missing something really essential that most voters in our country aren’t missing?

Or, is it just like college, where if you actually do the reading, you’re probably way ahead of everyone else?

I think of films like “Minority Report” all the time because I think that our present already looks more like that in terms of marketing than people are willing to admit. But, I have continually pointed to the genius of the Bush Adminstration’s communications machine because they clearly know something that we do not.

They don’t need the media.

By Mark Naples
Courtesy of http://www.mediapost.com

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