This election season, will media learn from past mistakes?

KCRW's Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An election rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump became official after the two clinched the nominations for their respective parties this week. Media outlets have experience reporting on the two of them, but the stakes seem higher this time around. Will covering 2024 like a traditional election create the same pitfalls journalists have fallen for in the past?

Some of the flaws the media will have to confront were on full display following Special Counsel Robert Hur’s congressional testimony. The amount of focus on Hur’s assessment of Biden’s memory overshadowed coverage of the report and its accompanying transcripts. Our panel shares the issues they saw with the hearing.

New York Governor Kathy Hocul proposed several new plans for addressing public safety in New York City’s massive transit system. One proposal included sending 1,000 National Guard members and state troopers into the subway to check passengers’ bags. Hocul said the decision wasn’t based on rising crime numbers, but on the perception that the subway had become unsafe for everyday riders. Is it a smart political move to rely on perception to create a policy? And how does it highlight the hypocrisy in responses to similar proposals in 2020?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody this is left right and center I am David Green and thank God the
0:06.5	suspense is over we now know that Donald Trump and Joe Biden have clinched
0:11.8	their party nominations and will be running in a rematch for the presidency
0:16.0	this fall.
0:17.0	This of course really wasn't news.
0:19.9	It's been obvious for months and months, but it was still all over the news and you know that
0:24.4	was largely force of habit for news organizations also probably the lure of
0:29.2	ratings for some cable channels and if it annoyed you it is far from the only complaint out
0:35.2	there about how the media is treating these candidates that they have had years
0:40.0	of practice covering in 2016 safe to say it seemed like the media didn't
0:45.4	really know how to cover Donald Trump in the run up to that election as we went
0:49.3	through the primary process, the conventions, the debates, a lot of people really never seem to take
0:54.8	Trump all that seriously.
0:56.7	The focus really was on Hillary Clinton, this career politician running a flawed campaign
1:02.0	and the flaws were put on full display in the media.
1:05.0	Well now 2024 a lot has changed and dare I argue a lot has improved in the press since then but Democrats are still seeing
1:15.8	reporters in their view making the same mistakes again when it comes to
1:20.0	Biden's age and you also have a lot of Republicans
1:23.4	who see reporters worried about doing or saying
1:26.8	anything that could favor Donald Trump.
1:30.1	So with that, here I am, the reporter,
1:32.2	the journalist jumping into the
	...

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