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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (80494)	10/25/2004 6:38:21 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793916

A lot of the questions on this list are ones we try to answer. Too Much Reality: Is There Such a Thing? Yesterday I was interviewed by a reporter from BBC television about everything happening in politics and the media these days, the closing days of the 2004 campaign. I had to apologize several times for being so inarticulate, letting my sentences run on and on without coming to a clear point-- despite his polite request for short answers.... ... During the interview, I was tripping over my words, repeating myself, messing up and starting over, or just talking without making sense. There were no short answers. And there were no good answers. There were lots of confusing and hopelessly abstract answers. It was embarrassing because I'm supposed to be a professional; I've done several hundred interviews like this. So what happened, just a bad day? I don't think so. There's too much happening. The public world is changing faster than we can invent terms for describing it. Here are some of the things the BBC reporter and I were trying to discuss: Political attacks seeking to discredit the press and why they're intensifying Scandals in the news business and the damage they are sowing The era of greater transparency and what it's doing to modern journalism Trust in the mainstream media and what's happening to it Bloggers, their role in politics, their effect on the press: their significance How the Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news The collapse of traditional authority in journalism and what replaces it Amateurs vs. professionals; distributed knowledge vs. credentialed expertise The entrance of new players of all kinds in presidential campaigning The producer revolution underway among former consumers of media Jon Stewart and why he seems to be more credible to so many "He said, she said, we said" and why it's such an issue this year The "reality-based community" thesis and the Bush Administration The political divide and the passions it has unleashed this year Why the culture war keeps going, this year reaching the mainstream press Why periods of intense partisanship coincide with high involvement The problem of propaganda and the intensity of its practice in 2004 Why argument journalism is more involving than the informational kind Assaults on the very idea of a neutral observer, a disinterested account And then there's this: the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters Every one of these things is related to all the others. But there is no over-arching narrative to contain them all. I spend much of the day trying to figure out what the connections are, and how best to phrase them. It's exciting; it's exhausting. What I really wanted to say to the BBC guy was: There's too much reality rushing over us every day just now. And it's pushing me to the limits of my own vocabulary. Can anyone help? Do you even know what I'm talking about? Hit the comment button and tell us: what connects the items on my list? journalism.nyu.edu