What’s Needed in Coverage of GOP Candidates

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Unlike a lot of people, I don’t have a problem with certain kinds of superficial campaign coverage. Take, for example this recent Boston Globe story that analyzed the “Leave it to Beaver” language used by Mitt Romney on the campaign trail.

“Whoop-de-do!” he says of John Edwards’s proposal to let Americans save $250 tax-free. “Gosh, I love America,” Romney said during one GOP debate. After hitting a long golf drive in one of his campaign videos, he shouts, “Holy moly!”

Romney often sounds as if he has stepped out of a time machine from 1950s suburban America…

Okay, fine. That’s not really interesting, but whatever. If a reporter and an editor want to put in the time to dissect this sort of stuff, that’s their choice. If you or I, as serious consumers of news, want something more substantive, we can just find it somewhere else. Right?

Wrong! This campaign season, we have not seen the Globe or anyone else publish a dissection of Romney’s language one day and a dissection of his Iraq policy the next. No one is paying attention to the complete and utter lack of substantive issue positions from the Republicans. They have no serious ideas on Iraq, on health care, or on climate change — they’re running on rhetoric, personality, and resume. The Democrats have all of that, plus incredibly detailed plans for America’s most pressing priorities. Until that truth appears in the mainstream media regularly, superficial coverage like the Globe‘s remains troubling.

One possible exception here, by the way, is the American Prospect, which has written about this once and blogged about it as well. (We’ve noted it too.)

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate