为什么选举赛马报道是媒体黄金却是民主的毒药

: By 理查德·托马斯（Richard Thomas）等

感谢造访 InnerSelf.com，哪里有 20,000+ 宣传“新态度和新可能性”的改变生活的文章。所有文章均翻译为 30多种语言. 订阅每周出版的《内在自我》杂志和玛丽·T·拉塞尔的《每日灵感》。 InnerSelf杂志 自 1985 年起出版。

为什么选举马术报道是媒体的黄金，但却是民主的毒药
图片由 Arek Socha

2020美国总统选举 campaign is moving quickly and the news media are valiantly struggling to keep abreast of what's happening.竞选活动进展迅速，新闻媒体为与时俱进竭尽全力。 Day in, day out there's a relentless source of material to report.日复一日，有不计其数的材料来报告。 It's hard enough for journalists, let alone the people they are striving to keep informed ahead of polling day on November 3.对于记者来说，这已经足够困难了，更不用说他们正在努力在XNUMX月XNUMX日的投票日之前通知他们的人们了。

有报道称，总统唐纳德·特朗普一直在暗示，他可能不会默许权力的平稳过渡。输了票。 Then came allegations about Trump's然后是关于特朗普的指控避税，然后他声称乔·拜登正在服用增强性能的物质在第一次电视辩论之前。

And what a debate it was, anarchic and devoid of serious discussion.那是一场辩论，无政府状态，没有认真的讨论。 This was followed by the news that the president and first lady had tested positive for COVID-19 and that – on debate night – their wider family refused to wear face masks when随后，有消息称，总统和第一夫人对COVID-XNUMX的检测结果呈阳性，并且在辩论之夜，他们的大家庭拒绝戴口罩。要求这样做.

Then, of course, we've had the saga of Trump being hospitalised, which again has been fraught with controversy.然后，当然，我们将特朗普的传奇故事住院，这又充满了争议。 Conspiracy theorists, of which there appears to be an ever-growing number, are even suggesting it has all been a ploy to阴谋理论家的人数似乎在不断增加，他们甚至暗示，这一切都是对重新生成举报活动.

问题在哪里？

重点关注人物，竞选活动，不幸事件和民意测验，具有很高的新闻价值，但对关键问题的有意义报道以及候选人制定的政策被边缘化了。

For anyone who has analysed the coverage of the past few elections, this is unsurprising.对于任何分析了过去几次选举的报道的人来说，这都不奇怪。 The book这本书报告选举：重新思考竞选报道的逻辑由我与加的夫大学的斯蒂芬·库西恩（Stephen Cushion）于2018年合着，引用了美国新闻分析师安德鲁·廷德尔（Andrew Tyndall）在2016年美国竞选期间收集的数据，该数据显示，在投票日之前的两周，这三个机构几乎“不存在”问题主要电视新闻网络CBS，NBC和ABC。

的确，他们对问题的综合报道只有32分钟，而且似乎与希拉里·克林顿的电子邮件和唐纳德·特朗普的个人生活等方面的非政策重点斗争是徒劳的。

Intuitively – particularly in the middle of a global news story such as COVID-19 – issue coverage in 2020 is likely to be shallower still.凭直觉来看，尤其是在全球新闻报道中（例如COVID-XNUMX），XNUMX年的报道范围可能会更浅。 But while the policy versus process news imbalance is more extreme in the US, it is a但是，尽管政策与流程新闻的不平衡在美国更为严重，但这是一个广泛现象大多数民主国家。

While researching Reporting Elections, we found that TV viewers are likely to see more policy coverage in countries with public service broadcasters.在研究《报告选举》时，我们发现电视观众在拥有公共广播公司的国家中可能会看到更多的政策报道。 But even then, the overwhelming conclusion from looking at dozens of studies examining the nature of election coverage is that “who is going to win?”但是即使如此，通过对数十项研究选举覆盖面性质的研究得出的压倒性结论是：“谁将赢得胜利？” is a more compelling question than “what will they actually do when they win?”比“当他们获胜时他们实际上会做什么？”是一个更具吸引力的问题。

谁上了，谁下了？

There are some logical reasons for the emphasis on process over policy.有一些逻辑上的原因来强调过程而不是政策。 First, as political commentator首先，作为政治评论员伊莎贝尔·奥克肖特（Isabel Oakeshott）表示，政治新闻与体育新闻有一定的协同作用-无疑是到处都是民族痴迷-并且对“谁在上升，谁在下降，谁在替补席上”和“谁在犯规方面遇到麻烦”的迷恋。

其次，尽管美国没有这样的法规要求，要求广播新闻工作者必须争取公正性（例如在英国），但报告民意测验数据比剖析可能会使广播公司容易受到指责的政策建议更为安全。在一个聚会上太过努力，或在另一方上太过温柔。

此外，更琐碎或卑鄙的竞选细节在当代24/7新闻周期中发挥作用，一种看法是，它们无需引起任何政策建议的深入，法医就可以挑起故事和观点。

But this isn't simply about any journalistic failure.但这不仅仅是新闻业的失败。 Reporting Elections reveals frustrations felt by TV editors and reporters that politicians often don't wish to engage with policy and are invariably happier talking about, for example, opinion polls – switching seamlessly between: “look how well we're doing” if they are winning, and: “these polls don't mean anything” if they are losing.报道选举揭示了电视编辑和记者的挫败感，即政客们通常不希望参与政策，并且总是热衷于谈论民意测验。例如，在民意测验之间无缝切换：“看我们做得如何”获胜；如果失败，则“这些民意测验毫无意义”。 Meanwhile, the awkward questions about policy detail are avoided.同时，避免了有关政策细节的尴尬问题。

To emphasise this point, at one stage in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump's campaign identified seven policy proposals taking up around 9,000 words on his website.为了强调这一点，在XNUMX年竞选活动的一个阶段，唐纳德·特朗普的竞选活动确定了七个政策提案，这些提案在他的网站上占了大约XNUMX个单词。 Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's website discussed over seven times as many issues and spent同时，希拉里·克林顿（Hillary Clinton）的网站讨论了七倍以上的问题，字数超过12倍 describing them.描述他们。 But across the three main US networks, Trump still attracted但是在美国的三个主要网络中，特朗普仍然吸引了覆盖量的两倍克林顿做到了。

人格政治

This might be at least partly explained by the reality that some candidates – by which in this case we mean Trump rather than Joe Biden – are fundamentally newsworthy.至少部分可以通过以下事实来解释，即某些候选人从根本上具有新闻价值这一事实，在这种情况下，我们指的是特朗普而不是乔·拜登。 Even when his actual activities and controversies are in recess, the president creates his own virtual news agenda via Twitter.即使他的实际活动和争议仍未解决，总统仍会通过Twitter创建自己的虚拟新闻议程。

The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, might be said to sometimes enjoy a similar – some would say accident-prone – existence.可以说，英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊有时会享有类似的生活（有些人会说容易发生事故）。 But both were the winners of their most recent electoral contests.但是，两者都是最近一次选举比赛的获胜者。 In the 2014 European elections in the UK, the similarly non-conventional and controversial Nigel Farage – and thus the things he wanted to talk about –在XNUMX年英国举行的欧洲大选中，类似的非常规和有争议的奈杰尔·法拉奇（Nigel Farage）–以及他想谈的话题– 占主导地位的电视报道在他的政党在民意测验中做同样的事情之前。

So, if politicians, editors and journalists prefer coverage about polls, gaffes, controversies and incidents, coverage of policy issues inevitably makes way.因此，如果政治家，编辑和新闻记者更喜欢对民意调查，混乱，争议和事件的报道，那么对政策问题的报道就不可避免地让步了。 Such coverage might even help the politicians it relates to.这样的报道甚至可以帮助与之相关的政客。 But what interests the public is not necessarily in the public interest – and election coverage might not be helping citizens make sense of the policies that will affect their lives after polling day.但是，公众的利益不一定符合公共利益–选举的报道可能并不能帮助公民理解将在投票日后影响其生活的政策。