Why Political Reporters Ought to Consider Not Voting

In April 2016 less than seven months before the presidential election of 2016 CNN anchor Anderson Cooper appeared on The Howard Stern Show In response to Stern39s question quotWill you reveal who you39re voting forquot amp8212 which assumes that journalists do indeed vote amp8212 Cooper replied quotI don39t think I39m going to vote I don39t think reporters should vote A lot of reporters don39t vote It39s a thingquot Explaining himself to an incredulous Stern and cohost Robin Quivers Cooper indicated his belief that refraining from voting was another small step in the constant battle waged by goodfaith reporters against letting their own biases cloud their journalismCooper39s comments attracted a perhaps unanticipated amount of attention and were received on the whole rather critically Perhaps most notably the theatrecriticturnedHuffPostcolumnist David Toussaint blasted the CNN anchor under the headline quotAnderson Cooper39s NonVoting Arrogancequot and continued on to declare rather harshly quotUntil Anderson Cooper votes I don39t want to hear him voice his opinions I don39t want to read about his endeavorsquotCriticisms in the vein of Toussaint39s raise the typical points that people around the world are willing to endure great hardships to fight for the right to vote that to forgo this civic responsibility is to be complicit in the rise of a political movement that one might oppose and that it is some variety of quotunAmericanquot Or least imaginatively that everyone is biased including reporters so who are they kidding by thinking that failing to cast a ballot actually changes anythingBut for a long list of reporters from Cooper to CNN39s Chris Cillizza to Axios39 Mike Allen refraining from voting has become a tradition Allen who recalls voting only once in his life to support his college roommates who had devoted every waking hour volunteering on a certain primary campaign argues that quotwe owe it to the people we cover and to our readers to remain agnostic about elections even in private I figure that if the news media serve as an imperfect umpire neither team wants us taking a few swingsquotTo those who argue that even if Allen Cooper and Cillizza don39t actually go into the voting booth they39re still biased that39s both true and not the pointEveryone has biases and as I frequently contend it is neither feasible nor desirable to eliminate bias entirely Journalists are informed by ideals they hold to be valuable books of import in their lives and life experiences and it is perfectly fine to let a worldview or journalistic style inform one39s reporting To do otherwise would be to reduce journalism to nothing short of the boring amp8212 dryly naming quotwho39squot quotwhat39squot and quotwhen39squot instead of putting forward the type of analysis and storytelling that makes news reporting interestingBut this is only true up to a point Refraining from voting is a step towards darkening the demarcation line between having a journalistic style and being overtly biased It is to guard against letting one39s personal beliefs unduly inform one39s reporting and thus initiate one39s descent from an objective journalist to an activist with a penIndeed there39s nothing wrong with having writers in the news space who are clearly conservative or liberal actually they ought to exist This is because the world of ideas is as important amp8212 if not more important amp8212 than tracking the daytoday quotwhodunitquot of breaking news reporting But these writers are not what most of us think of when we refer to quotjournalistsquot and they should clearly be identified as such For true news reporters amp8212 versus commentators or opinion journalists amp8212 not voting is another dividing lineAt its core the issue is that once someone votes or amp8212 even more so amp8212 is a registered member of a political party they begin to see events ever so slightly through that lens I recall for instance my interview earlier this year with then2020 presidential candidate Mike Gravel who was a steadfast inhouse critic of his fellow Democrats After railing against endless wars special interests and Washington insiders I remarked to the former Senator that he sounded a lot like President Trump on the campaign trail He cast aside the comparison with the sort of vehemence that only underscored a political reflex where he couldn39t possibly admit to sharing similar core ideas to the current standardbearer of the opposing political party Even for a committed critic of the DNC establishment such as Gravel he was still viewing politics through the lens of a partisanTo be clear the existence of political parties amp8212 for all the demonization they receive in our polarized times amp8212 have tremendous benefits in a democracy for example providing voters with information about a candidate they never heard of and allowing voters to hold party leaders accountable over time by rewarding or penalizing their parties But our wellfunded two major parties have enough activists strategists and consultants They don39t need journalists tooJohn Baer the longtime Philadelphia Inquirer writer used to tell the politicians he covered that he wasn39t there to be quottheir PR agentquot The new crop of journalists coming up today would be wise to listen to that advice To get started not voting might be a fine first stepClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

APPLY FOR JOBS | SUBMIT YOUR RESUME | REGISTER FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT

Why Political Reporters Ought to Consider Not Voting

Author

Publish date

Channel

Erich J. Prince

APPLY FOR JOBS | SUBMIT YOUR RESUME | REGISTER FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT

Why Political Reporters Ought to Consider Not Voting

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Erich J. Prince

Cookies