Covering a presidential campaign has never been an easy beat, even for veteran political reporters, but there are a number of factors at work this election cycle making it harder than ever. The press, already stretched thin from budget cuts and newsroom layoffs, has to report on the longest, most expensive primary season in memory. Add in the host of challenges the next president will inherit, and it's clear the Fourth Estate's job has rarely been tougher or more important.
Mike Hoyt is executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, which for decades has covered the coverage and advocated for higher standards of journalism. In a pair of interviews with NationalJournal.com's Kevin Friedl, Hoyt discussed the challenges of following the long and winding campaign trail and the press' performance thus far in the race. Edited excerpts follow. For previous Insider Interviews, click here.
Q: Of the many criticisms leveled at the campaign press corps, one of the most enduring is that it focuses too much on the horse race and not enough on the issues. What's wrong with that kind of coverage?
Hoyt: We all want to know who's ahead, and we all want to know something about the tactics. It's a contest, and you want to know the score. But it seems to me that it's the proportion. First of all, it's very, very early. The race is still fluid, and it's largely driven by name recognition at this point. The excessive attention to the horse race this early just reinforces existing patterns: If somebody's ahead, they get more ahead. Somebody's perceived as being ahead, it gets written that way and then the funders give them more money and this whole cycle begins. And it really seems not fair to me.
Q: Do you see that happening already with the presidential race?
Hoyt: Oh yeah. Do I see the press anointing front-runners? Sure: Hillary [Rodham Clinton] and Rudy [Giuliani]. We're already skipping the rest of the other guys, essentially. It's too early for that. First of all, anything can happen. Second, this should be a conversation about the issues. For example, you get all these stories about who's ahead in fundraising. That's easy to do. You just look at the numbers and write it up, who's ahead and so forth. But you see far fewer stories about which particular group of funders is favoring which candidate. It's harder to do. It takes more effort.
You do see some of it. I saw a piece today about how Hillary's getting a lot of the health care money that went Republican not so long ago. There's some of that, but I'd like to see a lot more rather than just who's ahead. Edwards is disdaining bundlers. Well, what's the reason for that? What kind of money is he getting? Is he really getting Joe Six-Pack more than the big law firms, big companies? It would be a little harder, but I think that's what we ought to be doing at this point.
Q: Something that makes this race unique, though, is the large number of candidates from each party. With such a big field, how can reporters hope to cover them all?
Hoyt: Well, it's hard, because there are only so many resources, but by ignoring all these folks, I really think it's a missed opportunity. There are a lot of ideas out there, and if you're a reporter and you're trying to talk to [Sen. Joseph] Biden [D-Del.], or one of the lower-level ones, they're going to give you some time. The object of the game ought to be to get a conversation going here about issues and let the voters do the winnowing. I think sometimes the press thinks their job is to winnow, but let the voters do that.
Q: But doesn't horse-race coverage also give voters insight into the process behind the campaigning? Is it ever worthwhile?
Hoyt: There's some value to it. If someone runs a tight organization that's running on all cylinders, that tells you something about how they'd run a government, and that's worth knowing. If their staff is battling and there's no morale and they're uncoordinated and so forth, that tells you something about the candidate. I think it has value. It's just a question of the proportion. Especially this early, but also throughout, we ought to try to focus more on what they would do about some of these big problems. And, of course, it's harder. The candidates all have these prepared sound bites. You have to dig under that and find distinctions. I'm not against horse-race coverage -- I'm kind of an addict myself -- but I think it's like eating too much ice cream.
Q: A recent Pew Research Center poll [PDF] found that voters say they want more hard news stories in campaign coverage. To put it bluntly, do you believe them?
Hoyt: Well, not totally, because we all say we want serious issue stories: issues, issues, issues. And then when some candy is passed around, we grab it. If those stories were done well and with a lot of energy and some creativity, people would read them. It's true that people are dissatisfied, because when you're on a junk food diet, part of you knows it and you don't feel right. That said, it's easy to say I want issues and serious stuff, but it's really up to the press to make that stuff really clear and interesting and creative. It's not easy. Journalism is pretty easy to do, but good journalism is difficult. Good political journalism is very hard.
Q: The Project for Excellence in Journalism just reported that 63 percent of campaign coverage during the first five months of the year focused on political tactics, while only 1 percent was on candidates' records in office.
Hoyt: It's pretty abysmal. That's pretty awful, actually. It's been said before, but there ought to be a lot more beat reporters put on the race as opposed to political reporters. It's part of the problem of objectivity: We're objective and fair and balanced and all that, therefore it's a lot easier to look at strategy and tactics, which don't touch over on ideology. If you start talking about what to do in Iraq or what to do about Social Security and so forth, then you're edging into more ideological and philosophical areas.
But, you know, that's what this thing is about, so I wish they'd put financial reporters on the Social Security beat and science reporters on the global warming beat and let them use their insight into what the candidates are actually about, here.
Q: Have attacks on the media's impartiality put pressure on reporters to lean toward those supposedly value-neutral topics?
Hoyt: I do think it's possible; I think it's actually probable. It also encourages reporters to just sort of transmit: Candidate X said the moon is round and Candidate Y said the moon is square. And without reporters to have expertise to know that the moon is not square, they're loathe to challenge it, they're loathe to say in fact that this candidate is leaving out a whole lot of information that you should have, or this candidate is one-third right and two-thirds wrong. There's just a reluctance in our journalistic culture to challenge and to assume the mantle of authority, and I think to some extent that tension is a good one. We don't want journalists spouting off and telling us what to believe. But journalists really should challenge what's challengeable and put things in context, not just artificially balance things that are patently misleading with things that aren't.
Q: Is it the journalists' fault that they aren't doing more original or interesting reporting, or is it more systemic?
Hoyt: Well, it's both. Political reporters get a little bored. They're with this story for a long time and they're doing stuff early on on the issues, and six months later, they're a little bored with it. They're interested in the race, so they write about the race. I guess one solution to that would be to rotate them. Rotate them out of there and get some beat people in there. Move them around. I would think editors need to get a little creative. In journalism, there's a lot of going into the default position: How'd we do this four years ago? I'm not saying journalists don't try, but there are some systemic problems.
And then of course you've got the larger problem of declining resources. Some of these topics -- to be creative or to dig deep into fundraising, to go into who these funders are -- that takes manpower and time. And to think creatively about how we get at the gender thing. Or how do we get at the race thing? What do people really think? That takes time and effort. Time is one thing that unfortunately we have less of because we have fewer people.
Q: Are modern campaigns simply too powerful and media-savvy for journalists to cover effectively?
Hoyt: They're going to do it -- they're going to try to control their message.... I wish they could come up with some sort of penalty to be paid for lack of openness. It's kind of ridiculous that you're running for president and you won't even take questions. That should be hammered on. It should be made clear that Candidate X is not taking any questions and is saying the same exact thing day after day. Those that are more open should be rewarded. This should be a conversation about ideas, and those that don't play along with that should be pointed out.
Q: What kind of stories would you like to be seeing this early in the campaign?
Hoyt: It's probably asking for the impossible, but I'd actually like to know what we do about Iraq. It's a really huge question. I'd love just a quiet conversation about it, a probing but serious conversation. You can say there are some things you don't know yet, but what is your thinking? How do you look at it? Or any of these problems. Global warming. I'm not looking for one big "Jim Lehrer's NewsHour" -- it's got to be more exciting than that -- but I wish it were more about ideas at this point. It's way too soon to worry about who's ahead.
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