Journalists discuss how to improve 2020 election reporting; Al Cross concerned about rural parachute reporting - Entrepreneur Generations

Journalists across the nation have been doing a lot of soul-searching since the 2016 election, concerned that poor coverage choices may have influenced the outcome.

"Nearly every major media outlet had spectacularly guessed wrong on the outcome, had failed to see the rise of the electorate that would elect Trump, and had not covered Trump as a serious candidate. Those sins, along with an obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails and a wrongful dismissal of Russian involvement in the American election, pumped oxygen into the toxic political environment that helped produce the Trump presidency," write the editors of the Columbia Journalism Review. "This time around, the press has pledged to do better. Yet, with eleven months to go before Americans go to the polls again, there already are signs that journalists will repeat the mistakes of 2016."

So, CJR and The Guardian US teamed up to talk to 30 journalists who cover elections or monitor election coverage. Here's a sample what they had to say about 2016 coverage and what changes they plan or hope to see in 2020 on a range of subjects. 

Al Cross, director of the University of Kentucky's Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog, discussed how to cover America between the coasts: "It’s not just boots on the ground. You can’t have a parachute mentality. You have to have some rural sensibility or an appreciation of rural sensibility. You deal with them as people and you have an appreciation for how they live their lives, and be respectful of that. And if you show that to them they will show that to you."

Margaret Sullivan, a media columnist for The Washington Post, said: "One of the things we didn’t do well covering the presidential election last time was that we failed to distinguish between the serious and not so serious – the term false equivalency comes to mind. So Trump and his financial situation, sexual assault claims, business record, history of racism – all those things were made equal to Hillary Clinton’s emails. Today we’re calling it a little better. When things are 'racist' we’re willing sometimes to use that word. We’re willing to use the word 'lie.' We’ve come a ways in that sense, but I’m still not particularly positive about how we’re going to deal with 2020."

Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, said: "It may not be easy for journalists as individuals to stand against the corrupted norms. It may be necessary to take some sort of collective action. During the first Gulf War, the Washington bureaus of major news organizations – spearheaded by Harper’s together with the networks and a number of major news organizations – said, 'We're not going to go along with the 'minders' scheme.' Such collective action is not beyond the bounds of the imagination for 2020. What would be required is for news organizations to understand that this president has declared war on them, that it won’t do to let him pick them off one at a time. They would have to understand they have a civic duty to act on behalf of a public good, which they are rather reluctant to do."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2QVe7qP Journalists discuss how to improve 2020 election reporting; Al Cross concerned about rural parachute reporting - Entrepreneur Generations

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