Enough with the "both-sides" phony equivalence drama, please. Now we need beat reporters who ......

[marmar]

Hey, political reporters — get lost! This is not your moment
Enough with the "both-sides" phony equivalence drama, please. Now we need beat reporters who actually know stuff

DAN FROOMKIN
NOVEMBER 11, 2020 3:00PM


Our top political reporters must be exhausted. I suggest they take some time off — like a year or two.

They are the worst people in the world to be setting the tone for a new presidency at a time of unparalleled challenges.

What the country needs now is a clean-slate, expertise-respecting, evidence-based, thoroughgoing examination of the policies required to address the pandemic, the crashed economy, climate change, systemic racism, crippling health care costs and our collapsing infrastructure — just for starters.

But political reporters hate writing about policy, because that demands actual knowledge of the subject matter. They also think it's boring, that readers don't care about it, and that it can come dangerously close to the dreaded "taking of sides."

Our top newsrooms should be focused on questions like: What are Biden's plans? Will they work? If they seem likely to work, what and who is standing in their way?

Instead, the nation's top political reporters — addicted to conflict and gamesmanship — find comfort only in storylines where there are two sides they can roughly deem equivalent. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/11/hey-political-reporters--get-lost-this-is-not-your-moment/