Jay Rosen offers a compelling dissection of the political-junkie school of political journalism, which he describes derisively as “the cult of the savvy,” or an “ideology and political style” that “severs any lingering solidarity between journalists as the providers of information, and voters as decision-makers in need of it.”
This kind of journalism, as he makes clear, is about power relations and the kind of winner-and-lower coverage that focuses on whether Chris Christie will still be able to run for president in 2016, rather than on the impact that alleged misuse of Sandy relief money might have on the people who live in areas badly damaged by the 2012 hurricane.
The impact of this kind of journalism, as Rosen says, is the disempowerment of voters. The “savvy in the press”
Cultivate the political junkies. Dismiss and ridicule the activists, the “partisans.” Assess the tactics by which the masters of the game struggle to win. Turn the voters into an object, the behavior of which is subject to a kind of law that savvy journalists feel entitled to write.
Voters should be subjects (the doer of the action) rather than objects (which receive the action), and politics should not be a game. There are too many real consequences at stake.
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Hank Kalet 