Post-Health Care Hooplah
The last hour and change feels like a blur from the nonstop coverage of health care reform legislation passing the House of Representatives. I’ve switched between three news stations, tweeted furiously, and timed my Diet Coke breaks between votes. This is the kind of adrenaline rush that made me so passionate about the news industry in the first place. But at what point does that adrenaline get to your emotions and possibly usurp journalistic duty and coverage?
Actual on-air coverage of the votes didn’t sway too much from what I would have expected. MSNBC brought in Ed Schultz to spearhead coverage, Fox News seemed to fire off to multiple Conservative correspondents, and NBC continued airing “Celebrity Apprentice” like neither health care nor Rod Blagojevich’s hair were pressing issues.
If TV coverage was relatively predictable, the Internet was the Wild West. Ezra Klein would offer procedural explanations while at the same time sending out snarky Tweets blasting Republican use of the very same procedures. Facebook statuses and message boards were instantly clogged with feedback on feedback. Personally, I lost two followers in the middle of live-Tweeting the votes (you know who you are).
It just goes to show that in the era of by-the-second news, not even journalists always have the time to process what’s going on around them. While the web gives us unprecedented access, it also gives us an unprecedented opportunity to launch knee-jerk reactions into the info-sphere. Such an emphasis on immediacy downplays the importance of context and objectivity in journalism.
I mean this in the most objective way possible; when President Obama urges Americans to “[Rise] above the weight of [their] politics”, journalists should take it to heart too. And that consideration needs to happen as instinctively, as immediately, as the impulse to get the information out to the public.
