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Zooming out a little, political news is repetitive, except for the names, and most of it is just mud throwing: - This is the most important election of our tim

Zooming out a little, political news is repetitive, except for the names, and most of it is just mud throwing: - This is the most important election of our times. The other candidate wants to send you and your children to the gulag. - Person X had sex with person Y and laundered PAC money. - Government shutdown unless item X gets funded and item Y doesn’t. X supporters say Y supporters are holding the country hostage. Y supporters say they just want America to get back to work. - ...

danans 3y ago
The news organizations didn't make any of that stuff up though. Those are the actual rhetoric and the hypocritical or criminal acts of the politicians you are alluding to. You've just genericized it by replacing names with X and Y. However, it's anything but generic, and there are real patterns to it, so the names behind the X and Y matter. It would be journalistic malpractice not to report those things when there is evidence to support the allegations.
- ARandomerDude 3y ago
  Nevertheless, it raises the question of “how often is this relevant to me?” If I already know a person needs to be replaced or reelected next time at the polls, reading all the details is a waste of time and personal happiness. What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions.
  - danans 3y ago
    > What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions. The OP was making a statement about what journalists should report on, not what people should choose to read. Of course anyone can individually choose to not read a repeated story, just like they can choose not to watch the same weather forecast repeatedly.
galdosdi 3y ago
You must be rather young or only started listening to the news recently after a lifetime of ignoring it. The news only started sounding like that very recently. You can check this for yourself, go look at some archived newspapers from the early 1990s.
- Kye 3y ago
  The post-Fox News polarization of cable news (small but influential like Twitter was), consolidation of local TV news, and collapse of local newspapers happened so fast we're still reeling from it and just starting to notice the effects.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  The 90s were a constant Clinton sex scandal from the time he started running for office through his impeachment and people still talk about it. Simultaneously, there was the Harken energy scandal, featuring influence peddling by not-yet-President G.W. Bush. Etc. Vox claims "the most important election ever" started in 2000 and has continued since, but I think that has more to do with when the author became politically aware than anything else. https://www.vox.com/21504729/most-important-election-bush-gore-kerry-trump https://www.vox.com/21504729/most-important-election-bush-go... Consider Johnson's TV spot from the 60s, tacitly telling Americans that the election was a contest between L.B.J. and nuclear apocalypse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU I encourage anyone to look back further for more extreme elections. The peaks of the unrest seem to happen near times when there's a shift in "Party System." We're currently in the US's Sixth (or is it Seventh?) Party System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System#Campaign_finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System#Campaign_fi...
  - galdosdi 3y ago
    > The 90s were a constant Clinton sex scandal Yes, I know, I lived through it. If you did too then you'll recall that the difference is that it wasn't considered important by average people, nothing like today anyhow. We paid plenty of attention to it, but it was like rubbernecking at a carwreck -- very interesting in the moment, but not earth shattering. It was important in an "oooh, fascinating hahaha" way, not in an "oh no, how anxiety inducing" kind of way, and that summarizes the difference between the 90s and the 20s.

danans 3y ago

The news organizations didn't make any of that stuff up though. Those are the actual rhetoric and the hypocritical or criminal acts of the politicians you are alluding to. You've just genericized it by replacing names with X and Y. However, it's anything but generic, and there are real patterns to it, so the names behind the X and Y matter. It would be journalistic malpractice not to report those things when there is evidence to support the allegations.

ARandomerDude 3y ago
Nevertheless, it raises the question of “how often is this relevant to me?” If I already know a person needs to be replaced or reelected next time at the polls, reading all the details is a waste of time and personal happiness. What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions.
- danans 3y ago
  > What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions. The OP was making a statement about what journalists should report on, not what people should choose to read. Of course anyone can individually choose to not read a repeated story, just like they can choose not to watch the same weather forecast repeatedly.

galdosdi 3y ago

You must be rather young or only started listening to the news recently after a lifetime of ignoring it. The news only started sounding like that very recently. You can check this for yourself, go look at some archived newspapers from the early 1990s.

Kye 3y ago
The post-Fox News polarization of cable news (small but influential like Twitter was), consolidation of local TV news, and collapse of local newspapers happened so fast we're still reeling from it and just starting to notice the effects.
drewcoo 3y ago
The 90s were a constant Clinton sex scandal from the time he started running for office through his impeachment and people still talk about it. Simultaneously, there was the Harken energy scandal, featuring influence peddling by not-yet-President G.W. Bush. Etc. Vox claims "the most important election ever" started in 2000 and has continued since, but I think that has more to do with when the author became politically aware than anything else. https://www.vox.com/21504729/most-important-election-bush-gore-kerry-trump https://www.vox.com/21504729/most-important-election-bush-go... Consider Johnson's TV spot from the 60s, tacitly telling Americans that the election was a contest between L.B.J. and nuclear apocalypse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU I encourage anyone to look back further for more extreme elections. The peaks of the unrest seem to happen near times when there's a shift in "Party System." We're currently in the US's Sixth (or is it Seventh?) Party System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System#Campaign_finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System#Campaign_fi...
- galdosdi 3y ago
  > The 90s were a constant Clinton sex scandal Yes, I know, I lived through it. If you did too then you'll recall that the difference is that it wasn't considered important by average people, nothing like today anyhow. We paid plenty of attention to it, but it was like rubbernecking at a carwreck -- very interesting in the moment, but not earth shattering. It was important in an "oooh, fascinating hahaha" way, not in an "oh no, how anxiety inducing" kind of way, and that summarizes the difference between the 90s and the 20s.