Elections matter: The problem with political reporting, campaign consultants and the coal industry
Ken Ward, Jr. hits it out of the park again!
I'm making an exception here by breaking the four-paragraph rule but I thought Sen. Jay Rockefeller's quote needed to be presented in its entirety.
The Charleston Gazette
Elections matter: The problem with political reporting, campaign consultants and the coal industry
October 24, 2014
by Ken Ward Jr.
Over the last few months, I’ve actually enjoyed avoiding the parachute journalism that’s always done this time of year by people with titles like “national correspondent” or “political editor”. The television ads are bad enough, and now we’ve got to endure career campaign consultants insulting each other via social media. So it would be nice if we had more actual journalism — the kind that gives voters the sort of information that helps make good choices.
But last evening, I couldn’t help but point my browser over to The New York Times when I saw that they were promoting their latest take on West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District race between longtime Democratic Rep. Nick J. Rahall and sometimes-Republican challenger Evan Jenkins. The story was headlined, “Race Tests Democrats’ Viability in West Virginia,” and written by Trip Gabriel, whose Twitter profile identifies him as “New York Times national correspondent covering politics and all things mid-Atlantic.”...
... But the story never really tells reader what’s really going on: Huge advertising campaigns, first by the coal industry and then by coal-backed candidates, have created such widespread fear — based on false descriptions of what’s really killing the mining industry — that coalfield residents will back any measure, action or candidate that they think might save jobs that simply aren’t going to be saved.
Retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller did a pretty decent job of saying at least significant parts of this right in his major coal speech two years ago:
Carefully orchestrated messages that strike fear in the hearts of West Virginians and feed uncertainty about coal’s future are the subject of paid television ads, billboards, break room bulletin boards, public meetings, letters and lobbying campaigns.
A daily onslaught declares that coal is under siege from harmful outside forces, and that the future of the state is bleak unless we somehow turn back the clock, ignore the present and block the future.
West Virginians understandably worry that a way of life and the dignity of a job is at stake. Change and uncertainty in the coal industry is unsettling. But my fear is that concerns are also being fueled by the narrow view of others with divergent motivations – one that denies the inevitability of change in the energy industry, and unfairly leaves coal miners in the dust.
The reality is that many who run the coal industry today would rather attack false enemies and deny real problems than find solutions....
MORE at http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2014/10/24/elections-matter-the-problem-with-political-reporting-campaign-consultants-and-the-coal-industry/
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