Will the media show real spine?

[Commentary] For a while, it looked as if U.S. politics had entered a new era in the way presidential campaigns were conducted and covered. For people who grieved over the decay of electioneering into bloopers and bites, it was an encouraging moment. Time and again, a strong field of presidential aspirants stood on stage and spoke at length, to the public and to each other, about what they hoped to do and how they proposed to lead the country. True, it got tedious and predictable, and nobody watched every one of the innumerable debates. But in the end we ended up with two sturdy candidates and a tail-wind that seemed to be driving the campaign toward civility and substance, without loss of passion. That was then. Since the nominating conventions last month, we've entered a different period, of casual smears and innuendos that have only the remotest bearing on the problems the electorate faces. And the news media, instead of acting as proxies for the public, have become the enablers of a discourse that seems destined to grow evermore destructive.

(Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.)