NY Times Doesn’t Get It On Horse Race Coverage: Says “It’s Instinctive…Easier”

The New York Times provided an answer to a reader about why they focus so much on horse race coverage. I do not appreciate their answer. It’s the same kind of mentality that helped drive us into the Iraq War. I wish they could be more concerned about being informative and about the well-being of the nation than simply about selling newspapers and their own self-aggrandizement.

They write:

It’s a good question that we don’t stop often enough to ask ourselves. But a recent study has documented what you believe to be true. In the first five months of this year, almost two-thirds of the mainstream media campaign coverage was devoted to the horse race (and subsidiaries thereof, like polls, tactics and fund-raising).

Why do we do it? Lots of reasons. I’ll start with the obvious: We can’t help ourselves! It’s instinctive. The term horse race reflects what everyone wants to know: who’s winning? [sagereader: I don't want to know that. I want to know who is best for the country!]

Another reason: It’s easier. It takes time and patience to dig through records, to get answers from candidates that go beyond spin and talking points. And often, candidates don’t want to be pinned down, especially on where they will find the money to pay for all of the wonderful plans they are proposing. [sagereader: It takes time and patience to dig through records??? If we can't expect people who are paid to investigate and dig through records to do it, then who will do it? Did they really teach y'all that in journalism school??]

But sometimes, the horse race is more than just a horse race. When you see how someone runs a campaign, you can find clues about what kind of people the candidates are, what kind of people they surround themselves with, how effective they are at managing a staff and raising money (a test of persuasiveness, an important political trait).

The horse race is about issues too: Who has a better plan for Iraq? Whose health-care plan will help my family? Whom can I trust?Voters are making those “horse race” judgments all the time, and we try to address them in a variety of ways — in the detailed backgrounds of the candidates’ lives, in our heavy coverage of the debates, in stories where the reader can compare the candidates’ views on a single subject, the way our own Marc Santora did recently in examining the Republicans’ views on torture and national security.

Sure, after the debates there’s an element of “who won?” Like everyone else, we want to know if Obama gave Hillary the knock-out punch that some supporters and commentators in the media have been egging him to do. [sagereader: By the way, the media should stop egging candidates and just report the news.]

But those are all pieces of what makes up the campaign, and the campaign is a race — for the hearts and minds of voters. And that’s a horse race at this point. It’s where the thrill is, and the mystery. And it counts.

Let me also add that they clearly don’t get it when they say that the horserace is about the issues too. It’s not. Horserace coverage of the issues focuses on how people’s stances on an issue play out politically. On the other hand, informative coverage of the issues focuses on how candidate’s stances affect the nation’s well-being.

For example, Barack Obama’s comments about Pakistan several weeks ago should have never been played out in the media as “naive” given the many national security experts, CIA officials, and others who have said the same thing he said and supported his comments. Informative coverage of the issues would have caught that. Yet, the horse race coverage did not. It was all about how it was going to hurt him in the polls and who won the debate. The media never did get around to figuring out what was actually the best strategy for the country on this issue–which the national security experts say was Obama’s view.

The media screwed us over on Iraq. I don’t want them to screw us over on selecting our next President too. There’s too much at stake.