KRUGMAN: New Year's Resolutions

[dw]

In The New York Times

During the 2000 election, many journalists deluded themselves and their audience into believing that there weren't many policy differences between the major candidates, and focused on personalities (or, rather, perceptions of personalities) instead. This time there can be no illusions: President Bush has turned this country sharply to the right, and this election will determine whether the right's takeover is complete.

But will the coverage of the election reflect its seriousness? Toward that end, I hereby propose some rules for 2004 political reporting.

• Don't talk about clothes. Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean was a momentous event: the man who won the popular vote in 2000 threw his support to a candidate who accuses the president of wrongfully taking the nation to war. So what did some prominent commentators write about? Why, the fact that both men wore blue suits.

This was not, alas, unusual. I don't know why some journalists seem so concerned about politicians' clothes as opposed to, say, their policy proposals. But unless you're a fashion reporter, obsessing about clothes is an insult to your readers' intelligence.

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[RamboLiberal]

1. This is a keeper - I'm going to keep this one on file

and whenever a pundit skewers our Dem candidate with one of these - if possible I'll email that pundit the rule he's broken. This election we got to smack the media whores up side the head when they do to the Dem candidate what they did to Gore in 2000.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Blue suits?

Why don't they write about Repugs wearing red ties most of the time?

[Beetwasher]

3. Thank You Mr. Krugman

To bad your sage advice will fall on the deaf, painted, hooped ears of whores and sows who will gladly bend knee and suck for the king and wallow in the mud for whomever the Dem challenger will be...

[tom_paine]

4. Afraid I agree, beetwasher

I cannot see anything changing the Media Whores from what they are into what they were.

Of course, during the Days of the Old Republic it probably seemed impossible that the "Free Press" of America could ever morph into the Techno-Third-World collection of trash TV and infotainment we have now.

Bottom line, you are right beetwasher...