Why do the media's debate postmortems always focus on intangibles?

[jpgray]

http://www.thechrismatthewsshow.com/html/transcript/index.php

Matthews: We got to go right now to the debate Thursday night. Let's take a look. Many were watching Hillary Clinton to see whether she could show that calm authority that Americans look for in a president.
...

Did she have the right modulation? Was she calm and grown up? Or was there a little bit of stridency in the voice still?

Why is -this- the provided analysis? Americans can judge for themselves whether or not a candidate "sounds nice"--they are just as equipped as Matthews is to do so. What they are not readily equipped for, as Matthews's -news room- is, is detailed analysis of her policies, her ideas, how they stack up against the other candidates' views, what her voting history indicates about her possible perfmorance, etc.

One of his pundit guests had this to say:

I must say, I sat and listened to her, and I wanted to say, “Hillary, just stop shouting,” that there was something in the tone of her voice that still made me think, “I'm not sure I want this voice in my living room for four years.” And yet, what she said on policy, the substance of what she said, she out-passed (sic?) all the others on the panel.

So she had the substance, she had the experience. It came across. It was—it was tonal.

The substance was... what exactly? It came across... how? The "tonal" factor can be judged by any American viewing the debate or the clips--what is not so easily judged is just how that substance stacks up, how that experience is shown. Why would do news rooms nation-wide focus on superficial analysis that American Idol viewership would make you fit to judge?

[Jim Sagle]

1. Because that's the way to spread Republican chickenshit bullshit and still pretend to be reporters.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Because it's not about content or meaning, you ninny.

It's about image. Image is everything. There is no reality. Reality is a pesky little inconvenience that the Special Effects people are supposed to handle. That's why Reagan was such a great President. He was all image. He never concerned himself with reality. Ya want a big umbrella to protect us from those nasty Russian missiles? Call in the Special Effects people and Bingo! You have Star Wars. Reagan lived on a movie set. He knew all about special effects and image. And Carter was a poor President. He lived on a peanut farm. He was all substance. He did a lousy job of managing image. All those helicopters crashing in the sand. All those hostages being held day after day.

[jpgray]

3. I'm convinced a lot of it has to do with cost--actual journalism is expensive

As someone on Moyers recently said, it's cheaper to hire a thumb-sucker and a panel of pundits than it is to actually have a research staff and investigative reporters.

[bridgit]

4. cause the american free press is an up/down, back/forth, in/out, black/white...

on/off, salt/pepper battle royal smack-down proposition and it has very little to do with what is not tangential to ratings & demographics...imo of course