Mike Hicks

Where's the Expiration Date?

I know a lot of people don't want to acknowledge the presence of Ralph Nader in the presidential race this year, but the amount of coverage and the slant it is at is pretty awful. In most news articles and stories, he's just mentioned tangentially (i.e. “Public Citizen, a group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader…”). The rest of the coverage is usually found in commentaries and Op-Ed pages, areas where bias is tolerated (well, issues are meant to be debated there, so everyone is always trying to make their case).

Real articles about stuff Nader is doing are often prefaced or appended with a note about theoretical spoiler status (if such status isn't the entire focus of the article), reducing the useful amount of coverage. Many articles are hardly better than what you'd find in editorials, often stating facts in a diminutive manner (for instance, saying “Nader has just five percent support in recent polls” rather than dropping the unnecessary adjective).

I think some news organizations do actually go through the articles they get over the wires and clip out the extra cruft, but it would be nice if the original article authors would write more substantial stuff…

Well, at least C-SPAN tries to be fair.