Off Target Political Reporting

OFF TARGET
As bad as the media consensus has been during the year's Presidential primaries, it's perhaps more remarkable how little remorse and reflection it has inspired. In one of the few journalistic mea culpas after the New Hampshire debacle, the top editors of the Politico, John Harris and Jim VandeHei, wrote, "If journalists were candidates, there would be insurmountable pressure for us to leave the race. If the court of public opinion were a real court, the best a defense lawyer could do is plea bargain out of a charge that reporters are frauds in exchange for a signed confession that reporters are fools." Which raises some basic questions: Why have so many been so wrong so often during this campaign? Why the urge to predict and prognosticate the course of events rather than simply describe them? And what, if anything, should anyone do about it? At bottom, says Andrew Cline, political reporters need to remind themselves about the fundamental value of their calling, something becoming increasingly lost in the blizzard of opinion-happy bloggers and shoot-from-the-hip cable pundits: Reporters can still hold candidates to account. "If you're a reporter covering a presidential campaign, you're in a privileged position," Cline says. "You get to ask questions that the average voter can't ask the candidates. You're the eyes and ears of the citizenry. You ought to be that curious citizen. Take a step back, and ask yourself this: What does a voter want to know about, not a political insider."
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4489

* Why did it take reporters so long to refute Clinton's Bosnia story?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0308/Hillary_and_Sinbad.html