This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celist Hedley. Political journalism is an extraordinarily polarizing field, even and maybe especially among people who are not in the industry.

You definitely have feelings about how the news covers elections.

Broadly, Americans are suspicious of the mainstream media

and election years shine a spotlight on our best and frankly

worst practices you've probably heard the term horse race journalism the

practice of focusing on polls momentum campaigning, campaigning, who's winning, it's not about policy and substance.

The question is, as we evaluate the role of the fourth estate in 2024, do people even want to hear about policies or is there a role for the Horst Race?

I don't think Horst Race journalism should be the only kind of political journalism that has done in the campaign. It's just that a lot of people want that, which is not the media's fault.

Chris Silesa, writer and commentator, joins us in just a moment. stay with us.

Welcome back to Hear Me Out, I'm Celeste Hedley. So, in the interest of full disclosure, let me get this out of the way right at the top.

I really hate horse race election coverage. I hate

hearing constant polling numbers, questions about messaging instead of about

policies. I hate that reporters care about likeability.

I find it irritating that coverage of Ron Desantis talked about his plan to defeat Trump,

and rarely if ever mentioned that his positions on the issues were nearly identical to Trump's.

And we should note, for those of you who are not super plugged in

to the media and journalism discourse, I'm not alone. A lot of thinkers and advisory groups in our

industry are moving away from horse race. of happening, less of is it popular, and more of is it good. So a defense of horse race

journalism at this moment in time would be a relatively unpopular opinion.

And luckily that's what we have for you today.

Chris Silesa is a commentator and writer, and he joins us now.

Welcome.

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