Political coverage

After a semester of actively following the news of the upcoming elections, I still don’t like politics. But, at least, I know now that political stories can be fun and interesting. Another thing that I learned was that anything can make a headline at CNN or the NYT.

Now, that I’m reading my older postings on political coverage, I see an interesting tendency: I almost never wrote about the “political” sides of candidates. I never really discussed who supports what and what their plans are. I wrote mostly about those typical “anythings” that make headlines. And, for people like me, who are absolutely not interested in politics because they think politicians are boring, corrupt and tend to lie, so, for these people, only those funny, interesting or shocking stories are compelling.

For example, what do voters’ brain functions, candidates’ diets or Obama’s acting skills have to do with how the country is governed? Exactly: nothing. But that’s what the NYT offers to its readers as news besides those highly political articles with headlines that turn down an average reader with having big bald words like “legislation,” “endorsement,” “immigration” and “criticize.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t read news with such headlines.

I think my generation has developed immunity against political news. Maybe even against news in general. I don’t know anyone (except for those geeky journalism majors at Park) who’d read the news. I mean entire articles every day. And this is terrible. Our future lies, sort of, in the news. The problem with the elections is hat people will vote for those candidates they saw a lot on TV without knowing what their programs are.

Another problem that I realized back at home, in Hungary, was that people voted “just because.” Of course, this has a lot to do at home with out history and what kind of family a person was born into. But as I heard people speaking about elections both here and at home, I realized that no matter what they see on TV or read in the newspapers, they will vote for the person they had decided to vote for in the very beginning.

So, is it worth writing about politics at all?? Yes, it is! First of all, journalists are there to help the public by monitoring those nasty politicians. And, of course, there are several people from older generations out there who do read the news and do think about issues. I guess journalists should just figure out something to involve young readers, too.

Those “anythings” I mentioned earlier are good teasers to at least inform people on who the candidates are and sort of what they want. If I ever end up having to report on politics, I’ll try to find interesting and new angles. I guess one way is to make politics personal. For example, if an article talks about higher taxes or lower interest rates, my eyes are moving along the lines, but after a while I’ll probably start thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner or how I could do my hair tomorrow. But, if the article starts out by stating that I’ll have to pay $1000 more in taxes and I’ll get $100 less after my savings, well, I guess I wouldn’t start thinking about what I’m having for dinner but whether I’m having dinner at all!!
So when the NYT article talks about Hillary going on a diet, I can be like: “Yeah, I feel you.”