Media and The Democratic Primary
This weekend I was at a work party where I ran in to Auren Hoffman. He made a comment that I hadn't blogged in a while, and so today I found something to talk about: his recent post comparing Howard Dean to Pets.com.
While I can't say that Mr. Dean is as silly as that stupid sock puppet (plus the puppet never got that craaaazy), I am amazed at how quickly he went from 60 to 0, and Kerry from 0 to 60. The part that interests me the most is how the media coverage shifted so dramatically. I don't know if it was public opinion tipping the media, or the media tipping the public opinion, but some changed almost overnight.
In the last few weeks, every news story I've read says that Kerry is getting votes because voters believe he has "best chance of defeating Bush". What drives me nuts is that it is almost the same quote over and over again. In fact, news reports that just build off of a previous report seem way too common these days. It makes me wonder: how easy would it be for a news story to get "out of hand" and begin to make news rather than report it?
For example, CNN's general manager said yesterday that they overplayed Dean's famous "scream" (which, by the way, I've heard the various remixes but never have seen the original thing). What is to prevent a single seed of a news story from sprouting in to a chain reaction, like in the case of Kerry's "reason for winning" or Dean's crazy red-faced scream? It really seems all too easy for the media and the public to get carried away in what Auren called a "feedback loop".
Now, even though I am a Democrat, I want to make it clear that I don't think anyone in the media (for the most part) is pushing any political agenda. I'm not saying people were "out to get Dean" or that Kerry has some evil empire working behind the scenes. I am not suggesting that there a right-wing slant in the media (nor a left-wing). I'm merely using this political situation that is unfolding so quickly before our eyes as an opportunity to examine how these news stories came to be.
This situation is more unique that previous current event new stories, primarily because of the dramatic shift in perceived public opinion as portrayed in the news. Usually these mutations happen over months or even years, but this one happened in days. If I didn't have about 10 million better things to do, I'd be curious to see what reading day-by-day recaps of the first primaries would reveal in the attitude and writing, including where that first seed was planted that led to the idea that Kerry has the "best chance" of defeating Bush. Did the news story cause the polls to change, or were the polls truly just the news story? Or is it a little bit of both and the media has always been that way?