COMM 317: Making the marketplace work

Evening up the balance, giving credit to the media where credit is due ...

After shooting rockets at the media Tuesday for superficial "horserace" coverage of this year's presidential campaigns, I went home and read Newsweek. On the last page was something that made me stop and think a little harder about what I'd been saying.

It was a set of questions for Democratic front-runner Barack Obama in George Will's opinion column. They were solid, substantive, detailed questions ... althought they did have a partisan edge to them. Fair sample: The last two questions:

• You denounce President Bush for arrogance toward other nations. Yet you vow to use a metaphorical "hammer" to force revisions of trade agreements unless certain weaker nations adjust their labor, environmental and other domestic policies to suit you. Can you define cognitive dissonance?

• You want "to reduce money in politics." In February and March you raised $95 million. See prior question.

But coming next, questions for John McCain.

Now George Will is a partisan Republican who delights in showing off his vocabulary. Unless he's writing about the Chicago Cubs (he grew up in Illinois, and he's a diehard fan), his column usually gives me heartburn. I don't even think his promise to take on Republican nominee-to-be McCain shows much objectivity -- McCain isn't conservative enough for him. Sometimes I think Will is the last of the 18th-century Whigs, born 200 years too late. But he does write about issues. And he's an important voice for the old-line right wing. Since he's writing an opinion column, he's allowed to do that. In fact, the system wouldn't work if guys like that didn't do that.

So ... score one for the marketplace of ideas. George Will is out there selling his product.

On the liberal or progressive side of the political spectrum, one of my favorite columnists is E.J. Dionne Jr., who writes for The Washington Post and Commonweal (he's a liberal Catholic). On Tuesday, his column in The Post lamented the trivial tone of recent election coverage. Dionne said:

Before the battle for Pennsylvania, the 2008 presidential contest looked as big as elections get. The country's deep disillusionment with Bush, akin to the disillusionment with Jimmy Carter in 1980, portends a wish by voters to move in a different direction, albeit one quite unlike the path chosen 28 years ago. The issues discussed in debates and on the stump were the important ones: an Iraq war in which victory is elusive, an economy falling into disarray, a health-care system failing employees and employers alike.

No one benefited more than Barack Obama from this sense of historic moment. Change, not experience, was the order of the day. Sweep, not a mastery of detail, was the virtue most valued in campaign oratory. A clean break with the past, not merely a return to better days, was the promise most prized.

Then something happened. Specifically, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And he keeps happening ...

Dionne's premise, which is very partisan, is that a "big" election oriented to big ideas will help the Democrats this year. He concluded:

Contrary to those who are cynical about democracy, voters themselves are rarely manipulated into thinking that big elections are actually small ones. But the candidates and the media, with some help from Jeremiah Wright, are doing all they can to run this election through an Incredible Shrinking Machine. Obama and Clinton should not make it harder for Americans to have the election they want.

Agree with him or disagree with him, Dionne is out there in the marketplace of ideas. In fact, it may be the only free market he really approves of!

There's no lack of substantive stories in the papers, either. They don't all make the front page, but they're there. I just looked at the Google news page, and it displayed stories on an airstrike in Somalia, a car bombing in Baghdad, the disputed election in Zimbabwe, developments in Pakistan, Exxon profits and, yes, the election (two headlines tell that story: "Obama says public tired of hearing about his former pastor" and "[Hillary] Clinton Talks to Fox TV about Obama and Wright"). If we have time left after reading the stories on incest in Austria, "American Idol" and a TV actress who posed nude for a magazine spread, there are plenty of what Dionne would call "big" stories to choose among.

One particularly courageous effort by a newspaper, and one that takes maximum advantage of "new" media, is a forum on race and racial attitudes moderated by columnist Dawn Turner Trice of The Chicago Tribune. When Obama delivered his March 18 speech on Rev. Rice and race, Trice, who is black, wrote:

Barack Obama'srecent speech about race touched on a number of important themes: The fact that in America there is still so much about race simmering below the surface; that we have for years chosen to go into our respective corners rather than really deal with what lies beneath; and the fear that where race and opportunity intersect, the tide will lift one group, but only at the expense of another.

Over the last several months, Obama's campaign has revealed a side of the race picture I never thought I'd see during my lifetime. (I'm 42.) A man of color with a real shot at becoming the president of the United States? This still blows me away. Some folks younger than 35 seem to be less shocked by this. That in itself is interesting.

So I wonder: Where exactly are we with race relations in America? Is it possible that what we see of racial matters highlighted in the media is a distorted picture?

Let's start a discussion. ...

That forum is called "Exploring Race." It's still running on The Trib's website, and it's well worth checking out.