There have been 4 US presidential elections so far this century without a GOP incumbent. Iowa caucuses picked the eventual Republican nominee a grand total of once, 24 years ago. I am utterly baffled why anyone pays attention to them.
No, @nprpolitics they are not 'important'. They are overhyped by media desperate to have some voter "data" to report, even though the data is meaningless.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/11/1222881162/how-does-iowa-caucus-work
#USPolitics #Iowa
Well, you kind of answer yourself: they ARE important... to folks like NPR who want to tell stories and get clicks and maintain their public presence.
Folks pay attention to the caucuses for the same reason they pay attention to reality TV stars. Because it makes for dramatic stories that so many in the public lap up.
It's just journalism. Gotta fill the new cycle.
@volkris @nprpolitics Fortunately, most reality TV shows aren't touted as important beyond entertainment. There's nothing wrong with entertainment! (I'll be spending a good chunk of my weekend watching NFL playoffs.) The problem is pretending entertainment is useful news. Giving rural white voters in Iowa (and NH) outsized influence means urbanites, people of color & others have less than they should.
@smach right, but that's my point: so much of what we call news is really, effectively, just entertainment at best, that's being labeled as news.
It reminds me of hearing an NPR station doing a funding drive where the hosts kept emphasizing that listening to NPR just makes them FEEL informed. They really stressed that phrasing for some reason.
So news stations focus on things like Iowa and NH because those stories create compelling--if misleading--narratives that get attention and make people feel certain ways.
It's really unfortunate, but when so much journalism is effectively mere entertainment, well that causes all sorts of bad things in society. We see the longterm impacts of that every day.
@smach yeah, and well, a lot of it is informing the audience about WHY the important thing is important, WHY they should be interested in it.
But that's hard, it takes more work and more effort.
In the end, I guess we get the journalism that we demand. If we don't demand honesty and a focus on the really important things, well, we're currently getting the low quality reporting that comes from a population that doesn't demand higher quality.
Until we all start demanding better, I think we'll just keep getting this.
@volkris @nprpolitics I think it's helpful for journalism to be engaging! But the way to do that is to figure out how to make actually important things interesting, not to cover entertainment as if it's news., or politics as if it's a horse race. Ah well. We talk about this every 4 years and it seems the lessons aren't learned.