In the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank says the reporting from Washington gets so caught up in political concerns it misses the real story about the economy and what the stimulus will do.
“We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton’s, or Abraham Lincoln’s?”

I think the problem could be addressed by covering the White House with a few wire reporters or a pool that would write up notes and distribute them to the major outlets – the TV networks slavishly follow the NY Times front page anyway, as a comparison of the paper’s coverage and the evening news will show – and send the rest of the gang out to cover the real world.

“Never has Beltway orthodoxy looked as clueless and futile as it does today. Confronted with the greatest failure of economic ideas in decades, it demands that the president make common cause with people for whom those failed ideas are still sacred. To think we can solve our problems in this way is like hoping to chart a route to the moon by water.”
Frank Rich made some of the same points in the Sunday New York Times, arguing that the country was in favor of the Obama plan, the President remains hugely popular, and the Washington press was obsessed with the inside political game.

Partly, I suspect, because they don’t want to do the work of understanding and analyzing the economic issues.

It’s not just American journalists … the BBC’s Andrew Marr spoke at a SIFMA event in London recently and was clearly ill at ease with the economic issues, although quite amusing telling political anecdotes.  The crisis needs journalism that will challenge politicians on the issues rather than reporting that falls back on the usual political score keeping.

Filed under: Technology