The media does a less-than-stellar job of covering American politics, but when presidential campaigns roll around, they always find a way to increase their usual level of irrelevance and asininity. Take, for example, this gem of a piece from Vox, which tries (and fails) to make a worthwhile story out of the typography Marco Rubio’s campaign is using. Or this bit of jackassery from The New Republic, arguing that Hillary Clinton should name Barack Obama as her running mate.
The thing is, this stuff is coming from media organizations that purport to be devoted to informing people about politics. Ezra Klein, the founder of Vox, claims to be a big fan of political science research – which almost universally finds that campaigns – not to mention campaign typography – matter very little.
So why all this worthless coverage? That’s pretty obvious – to pull in an audience hooked on irrelevance; an audience that, in most cases, can’t appreciate what a disservice this ‘news’ is to them. It’s one thing for this sort of stuff to come from reporters who may not actually know any better, but that’s not a true for either Vox or The New Republic.
In other words, they’re not being ignorant. They’re being manipulative. Which is why I hate presidential campaign reporting.