Sometimes what the mainstream media fails to cover is as important as what it does cover. Ignoring nuts-and-bolts news below the surface means that people can miss things that matter to our future.
There’s something we can each do about it. More on that in a moment.
For now, we have a start in the right direction. Attention is growing on some mainstream outlets’ normalizing of extremist politicians; or overlooking moments when Donald Trump confuses when he was president versus when he wasn’t, how many world wars we’ve had, or who he is running against, while constantly hammering on Joe Biden’s age.
Here’s a suggestion: National political editors should be digging more into substantive stories, like how things went in 2023 bellwether local elections.
In August, Politico astutely called attention to the November 7 election in Bucks County, which was then two months away. The story predicted that the local race there could foreshadow results in the 2024 election, both in Pennsylvania and nationally.
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s statewide election of Democrat Daniel McCaffery to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court garnered some national media attention. That story, however, was largely buried beneath the avalanche of news about Democrats scoring major wins on abortion in Ohio, in Kentucky’s governor’s race, and in humiliating Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in his bid to win Republican control of the state’s legislature.
Not mentioned outside of Pennsylvania was the story that Politico had directed us to watch two months before. Democrats won control of Bucks County government for the second time in history, as well as multiple other formerly Republican Philadelphia suburbs.
But that story went largely untold.
What were the issues? Things like public safety, book bans in schools, and improving public health and other human services that didn’t draw attention nationally.
The media focus on abortion rights is completely understandable and appropriate. Voters have consistently rebelled against the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Folks don’t like losing a 50-year-old constitutional right.
Less understandable—or defensible—for objective journalistic enterprises is the failure to pick up on the other key issues that helped turn Tuesday’s key local Pennsylvania races. Those issues seemed to have mattered to independent-minded voters.
Such voters decide national elections. And Pennsylvania, we know, is a crucial presidential battleground.
How did Bucks Democrats win? The victorious Bucks County Board of Commissioners ran on shortening police response times and improving effectiveness of social crisis interventions by embedding social workers on police response teams.
What’s more, Democrats won all five Bucks School Board seats in play, flipping a 6-3 Republican majority to a 6-3 Democratic one. Reactionary book bans and anti-LGBTQ policies will no longer reign in the district.
Bucks County was not alone.
Democrats also maintained majority control of the local governing board in wealthy Montgomery County. There, Jamila Winder and Neil Makhija became the first Black and Asian-American commissioners in county history.
And in nearby Delaware County, another once reliably Republican jurisdiction, Democratic Councilmembers Monica Taylor, Elaine Paul Schaefer, and Christine Reuther prevailed; they ran on creating the county’s first health department and jail reform.
By contrast, the Republican had promised not to raise taxes. “I guess our message didn’t sink through,” lamented Tom McGarrigle, chair of the Delaware County GOP.
Tuesday’s ground-level issues and results in the Commonwealth hint at this future nationwide parallel, with a dysfunctional Republican House majority focused on tax and spending cuts threatening to shut the government down next week. Independents may see the GOP brand as out of step on the national level just as they did in Philly’s suburbs.
The savvy former Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once famously pronounced, “All politics is local.” If so, Tuesday’s results in a swing state like Pennsylvania suggest that Democrats should leverage their issue-based appeal beyond abortion.
Perhaps the national media that ignored the story of Democratic wins in the Philadelphia suburbs figured that local politics, even in pivotal counties, draws fewer “clicks” than clamoring aboard Fox messaging about Joe Biden’s age. Better to amplify negativity, they might be thinking, than to herald a national economy, which, in the words of Business Insider, is “doing way better than the rest of the rich world.”
That, however, is news that people should hear. Burying it in favor of stories on why Democrats should dump the guy atop an economy succeeding in challenging global conditions is less than responsible journalism.
Citizens writing letters to the editor or posting social media messages that say so can change coverage.
Editors listen to their audience. They not only want clicks; they also want subscribers.
Telling editors that their readers crave real news, not harping on populist memes, can improve what everyone is reading. Make no mistake: Using our voice, like voting, is among the most important ways every one of us can affect the future and help keep our Republic.