Just wondering how you decide what to post about... Is it political importance or worthiness? Or does this not apply to blogs who try to get their narrative into the MSM?

Maybe we need a little sincere subjectivity. Gibson could ask:

"I'm an American. I vote. I don't give a shit about flag pins. Nobody I know gives a shit about flag pins. Most of the country doesn't give a shit about flag pins. But your political opponents are trying to make it a big deal. What the hell is that all about?"

Great, the Swiftboaters could have saved all that money by just thinking to themselves "It's an issue" and not even running ads. If we play by 2008 rules, all the media is required to slime a democrat is that Ann Coulter could possibly wish them to.

Somehow I doubt that McCain will get the same treatment. We can see if Stephanopolous calls up Rude Pundit to get a list of questions that would be worth asking

So what happens if Obama loses Pennsylvania by less than eight? Or, in a shock upset, he wins? Will the press stop elevating gaffe stories to A1?

While I agree that it's not nec. EASY to solve, neither is it HARD to solve, either.

Essentially, it comes down to listening to what people are interested in, and asking questions based on those interests.

This means continuously profiling groups of actual Americans (not polling, that's directed towards answers) about what they want to know from candidates, and generating profiles based on actual quantitative and qualitative data.

TV ratings are an increasingly short-sighted heuristic for this sort of thing, further distorted as they're based on pleasing advertisers over viewers.

Unfortunately listening takes time and effort, which costs $ and slows down the news cycle, so a good businessman would be needed to figure out how to incentivize this.

clarifying my initial point, by "not hard to solve" I meant "not so hard that we should pretend its impossible", which I think is the current cw among those in the press who are willing to acknowledge- but not to engage - this issue.

i think you're giving the media too much credit when you imply that they're in a bind about it. certainly, when they say something will be important in November, it's because they will make it important, but that's not to say that it's a judgment call they make based on "political importance", because we know they have no stake in the game. when CNN decided to cherry pick youtube questions that conformed with their predetermined themes of questions they wanted to ask of the candidates themselves, they weren't judging what would become politically important after a "gotcha" moment, they were merely hoping to have that "gotcha" moment just to say they can, and to point to it later as some fine moment in journalism. it's all ego and grandstanding and has nothing to do with any sort of navel gazing judgment calls.

this is the reason that female moderators often conduct debates standing up, away from behind a table, so that they and their new dress can be center stage. it's the reason that Anderson Cooper furrows his brows and says, "they're not OUR questions..." and it's the reason that George Stephanopolophalanx repeated a question that Sean Hannity asked him to. later, at some cocktail party, he'll bump his elbow into Hannity saying, "eh? eh!? "

Since I don't watch TV, I don't have any suggestions for how the TV news people should handle it. But newspapers - no problem.

Remember how, during the runup to the Iraq war, all those great Walter Pincus stories were buried on page A-17 of the WaPo?

That's where 'gaffe' stories go, until it's clear that the public, as well as the political junkies, care about a particular gaffe. Then it can be moved to A3.

If it's clear that the public cares about it A LOT, it goes to the front page.

There. Was that so hard?

I don't question the validity of the questions. These should be asked in a one on one interview.

Wright, Bittergate and Tuzla are not debate questions.

Rev. Wright would have been a fair question when initially raised if the soundbytes hadn't been taken so far out of context, and in contrast with how Hagee, Robertson and Falwell have been treated. I might go so far as to say it was fair anyway. Flag pins on the other hand is ridiculous. Tuzla, however, is a little different. That was not a "misstatement" that was blown up and taken out of context. It was a deliberate falsehood repeated multiple times as a part of an effort to portray Clinton's time as First Lady as relevant foreign policy experience. She explicitly contrasted her own and McCain's experience with Obama's.

We can see if Stephanopolous calls up Rude Pundit to get a list of questions that would be worth asking

Or Ted Sampley, for that matter. Since individuals with personal animus are chosen to ask questions (or dictate questions) by ABC, Snuffleupagus is duty-bound to treat Sampley's vendetta against McCain with high seriousness.

No?

As I said in your folowup post (working my way down) - eh. I think this is rather abstracted from the way news writing actually works - it sorts of assumes this "meta" filter that for many reporters simply isn't there, and for many editors simply isn't a choice; you're likely covering a "gaffe story" because it's already a story, and in the day-to-day context of campaigning, it's news (I'd point out that a number of the gaffes have, really, amounted to something, if not as much as some news organizations played them up to be. I think there's a conflation here, too, between the work of pundits (The Dowd/ Brooks/ Krugman effects, etc) and commentators (i.s. almost all of Fox "News") and the work of reporters. I think one of the most debatable aspects of "cable news" is this blending of reportage and commentary into the same animal (it's one reason why I hate "The Situation Room"), so that they're reporting the story and evaluating it at once. We need the story... and then later, we need to evaluate it. And one organization (i.e. separating news from "editorial/commentary"), really, shouldn't necessarily do both. But that's more complicated than what Ezra's presenting here, and I think this subject deserves more scrutiny... but also more rigor.

The solution is judgment - what's newsworthy and what's not. But the media is like pro sports. Too many franchises have diluted the talent. Good news judgment is apparently in short supply.

I think it's pretty easy to solve. Quit promoting imbeciles.

Do you really believe that a debate moderated by, say, Jonathon Chait and Rachel Maddow would have sucked that badly?

There are plenty of "opinion journalists" in the ranks of newspaper columnists and cable TV commentators that someone, anyone could tell the public what *ought* to drive their votes. Indeed, that's what they do now. They're just doing it in a way that's harmful to democracy.