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All right, it’s over now. No more debates, no more political ads. We can move on, right?
Of course not. We will never move on. It’ll just get more and more aggravating, and we’ll do the ads and debates and recriminations all over again in two years for the midterms. Lucky us.
With the change in administrations and what we can project will be happening in the new term, it’s important, whatever your political position is and whatever you do in the news business, to remember that even if you’re part of the partisan media, it’s incumbent upon you to ask tough questions, hold the powerful accountable, cut through the rhetoric and report on whether campaign promises are being kept or forgotten.
You are the representative of your audience with more access to political leaders than they have. They’ve been promised things; it’s on you to report on whether those things are coming true. That’s what I hope you were doing for the current administration, and the one before that, and the one before that, and all the way back to your first days on the job.
Wait, you say, what if I’m a talk radio host or cable TV pundit? Aren’t we supposed to be partisan? Isn’t that partisanship what our listeners, viewers, and readers expect from us? Won’t they react, um, poorly if we dare to question their political heroes? Yeah, they might, but if they voted expecting, say, grocery prices to come down, they want to know how that’s going to be accomplished, and if it doesn’t happen, why not.
If they’ve been promised tax cuts, they’ll want to know when they’ll see those cuts. Partisanship is partisanship, U.S. politics is much like sports fandom (Blue vs. Red, who ya got?), and those will likely not go away in our lifetimes, but whether espousing your opinion or reporting on the facts, people still want to know whether their own interests are being promoted and protected. Hero worship goes only so far. When the audience is looking for a payoff, it’s you, the news media, who can find out whether there’s progress or whether the little guy is getting screwed again. In your talking or reporting, nobody should be above scrutiny.
That, of course, is a pipe dream. Talk radio, with few exceptions, thinks their guy can do no wrong. We know from the first time Donald Trump was elected that reporters from legacy media are careful to underplay negative stories in order to preserve access (I believe this is scientifically categorized as the “Haberman Effect”) or to save for a book that will be published years after the fact (the “Woodward Rule”).
I’m assuming most of you aren’t planning a book or getting access to the President, but you still can get to party officials and Congress and local politicians, and part of making those people interesting is to challenge them and get real answers. You can do that, right? Because that, and not promoting a politician or party, is your job. (Okay, it’s not a pundit’s job, because… what IS a pundit’s job, anyway? Because if there’s anything everyone can agree upon, it’s that we don’t really want to see or hear Scott Jennings or David Axelrod ever again. Enough.)
That should get the news and talk media through the next four years, at least job-wise. The rest of us? Can we just, you know, not talk about that right now?
Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
