Monday, January 03, 2005
Winter 2005 Critics Poll: Election Coverage Hits a Sour Note with Critics
Source: TV Week Television critics dutifully selected those networks they felt provided the best and worst political coverage for the Winter 2005 Critics Poll, but many emphasized that nearly all the channels failed to adequately cover the election.
"The general lack of investigative reporting, the tiptoeing around campaign claims and the failure to question the need for war will haunt the major media outlets for years to come," said Joanne Ostrow of The Denver Post. "Shame on the 24-hour cable networks in particular for being an echo chamber for spin, false claims and for focusing on the horse race aspects."
Jonathan Storm of the Philadelphia Inquirer agreed.
"[Networks] were disgracefully caught in the expert (Republican) and unremarkable (Democratic) diversions of the candidates and their support teams," he said. "Fox News has successfully changed the definition of political coverage from analytical reporting to mindless pontification and all the other organizations are deplorably following suit."
As for the worst network coverage, some critics reiterated the common complaint that Fox News Channel is conservatively biased. "A bunch of talking heads saying the same thing at different decibels," said Mark McGuire of the (Albany, N.Y.) Times Union.
Critics gave PBS, NBC and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" the highest marks. Citing "NewsHour" and "Frontline," Melanie McFarland of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted, "Both programs go to the heart of the issue as opposed to focusing on the useless statistics in the horse race."
# posted by ATN @ 12:44 AM 
