The media and the art of the possible

[babylonsister]

Hard to do justice to this w/snipping required; read the whole thing if you're interested.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201010180016


The media and the art of the possible

October 18, 2010 11:28 am ET by Jamison Foser

snip//


Remapping Debate's web page adds:

The heart of our work will be original reporting. We take seriously the idea that the job of journalists is to question and to illuminate. We believe that we need to question ourselves as much as we question others.

We think we need to reject the mental borderlines that leaves "mainstream" reporters generally speaking to "mainstream" sources, and "alternative" reporters generally speaking to "alternative" sources.

We insist that it is probing – not stenography – that can illuminate and inform, and that challenging a policy maker or policy advocate to engage with alternatives to a pre-scripted sound bite represents not commentary but an essential element of real reporting.

This is all spot-on.

snip//

For reporters, that all adds up to something fairly simple: When they treat something as "impossible" or "inevitable," they are helping to make it so -- and, thus, constraining the debate. To return to the stimulus example, the public would have been better served had the media focused on determining and describing what was needed rather than limiting themselves to what they thought was possible.

Anyway: back to Remapping the Debate. The journal's web site doesn't yet feature much content, but this "story repair" piece in which Greg Marx re-writes a Politico article offers a promising glimpse of what they're trying to do.



http://remappingdebate.org/article/47-house-dems-keep-lower-rates-rich-dividends-capital-gains

47 House Dems: Keep lower rates for rich on dividends, capital gains
Story Repair | ByGreg Marx

From the Editor:

In this feature, we select a story that appeared in a major news outlet and take it in for repairs. The stories we choose are not necessarily “fatally” flawed; on the contrary, in many cases, they’ll bring genuinely newsworthy information to light. But our goal is to show how, with a similar investment of time, a different set of interviews or line of questioning could have produced a different — and, we hope, more illuminating — article.

The source material this week: “Dem letter: Keep tax cuts for rich” (Politico, Sept. 28).
more...

http://remappingdebate.org/article/47-house-dems-keep-lower-rates-rich-dividends-capital-gains

[Joanne98]

1. Great article. K&R

[Supersedeas]

2. Two Words come to mind: Chuck Todd