In her April 1 column, Maureen Dowd condemns James Fallows’ new book “Breaking the News,” apparently without having read it. She seems to think that Fallows criticizes the press for exposing the workings of government and for not being civil while dealing with government officials.
Fallows’ book is not about the media’s incivility, though he mentions reporters’ attitudes in passing from time to time. His thesis is that the press reports political events as a horse race, discussing winners and losers instead of disseminating information.
For example: On pages 28-29, he describes coverage of California’s Proposition 187. Fallows complains that the national press “ran a trickle of stories (which) examined what this would mean for California’s economy” but that a “flood of stories examined the political impact of the immigration `issue’–how the Republicans might exploit it, how the Democrats might be divided by it, whether it might propel Pete Wilson to the White House.”
Fallows argues that the public is interested in the substance of issues, not the operational strategy of politics. He maintains that democracy is not served by journalists’ misleading emphasis on “sportscaster-like analysis of how politicians were playing their game” (p. 269).
Fallows’ book is fascinating, and his arguments are well documented, and, yes, he criticizes Maureen Dowd by name, which no doubt explains her apparent reluctance to read anything beyond the book reviews.
