JD to political reporters: Shove it!

Having spent most of my life in journalism at big-media publications, I often ride to the defense of journalists when they come under attack in the blogosphere without good reason.

But I almost never defend big media political reporters -- particiularly political reporters from the broadcast and cable networks. Here's why: They suck. And they've sucked for a long, long time. They should fire all the political reporters and replace them with bloggers.

I was reminded of the sad state of what passes for political journalism these days a few minutes ago when I had the misfortune to tune into cable coverage of the Democratic convention. During the 15 minutes I watched, this is what I saw on MSNBC.com:

Andrea Mitchell interviewing Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania.

Mitchell (annoyed that there won't be more fireworks and "news" coming out of prime time): You're saying strategy, tactics trump ideas.

Rendell: No, no, we're saying we want to focus--I'm going to have a lot of ideas in my speech, Andrea. My ideas are going to be about what John Kerry wants to do to promote alternative energy. That's crucial, and you know the Bush administration has done virtually nothing--

Mitchell: That's your take, not ours. Just to be down the middle here.

Then, a couple of minutes later, the execrable Chris Matthews of Hardball pressed Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan:

Matthews: Was President Clinton a good president?

Granholm : President Clinton was a great president.

Matthews: Then why was he impeached if he was such a good president?

Good God, what a bunch of jackals! What intellectual dishonesty! We all know why Clinton was impeached -- thanks to one man, Tom DeLay -- but Matthews is bringing up the events of six years ago to see if he can get a "gotcha" moment to trip up the positive message coming out of the convention.

Mitchell isn't much better. As soon as Rendell began talking about a substantive policy matter, she immediately interrupted him to point out that this was Rendell's view, not NBC/MSNBC's! (Viewers, obviously, couldn't figure this out themselves.) In the process, she all but undercut the legitimacy of Rendell's statement without shedding any light into whether it was true. Any impartial observer of alternative energy policy would tell you that the Bush administration has been a disaster for America's efforts to develop alternative energy sources. But such a conclusion is considered unobjective by big media's skewed standards. In Mitchell's alternative universe, being "down the middle" means not telling the public where the truth lies. Certainly, we wouldn't want to slow down the titillating discussion of tactics and strategy to wade into something that matters.

Matthews has been unwatchable for years -- a nominal Democrat who is all about bluster. (As I was turning my set off, he was haranguing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to condemn Teresa Heinz Kerry for telling a reporter from a right-wing Pittsburgh newspaper owned by Richard Melon Scaife to "shove it" after he had misquoted her.)

I say: Fire all the political reporters and replace them with bloggers. I hate herd journalism, and political reporters suffer from the pack mentality more than another other species I've ever encountered. I honestly believe this is why the public holds the "news media" in such low esteem: because of political reportes who pollute the townsquare of ideas. They deserve to be ushered off the stage as quickly and unceremoniously as possible.

It's a shame I had to trudge back to my computer to see what the political bloggers are doing -- which so far looks to be vastly superior to the muck we're getting from television.