The Campaign Challenge

The polls for the 2008 presidential election may not open up for another year-and-a-half but you'd never know that by watching television news. Television stations and cable outlets have already commenced their wall-to-wall campaign coverage.

As presidential hopefuls such as John Edwards, Hilary Clinton, John McCain and Mitt Romney have already started making the rounds in Iowa and New Hampshire, the media has been there every step of the way.

Last week, Elizabeth Edwards' struggle with cancer seemed to be the top of most news broadcasts and just yesterday the media switched its focus to campaign fundraising as Clinton and Barack Obama revealed the enormous amount of money they both have received through contributions already.

The Associated Press recently reported that this year’s campaign stories through Feb. 27 have used 95 minutes of coverage on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. This is not counting the campaign coverage on 24-hour cable news networks.

Furthermore, according to the AP, the network coverage this year spans more time than in comparable periods for the previous four presidential election cycles combined.

I have to stop and ask...is every campaign stop newsworthy? So what if Clinton was in Michigan kissing babies, shaking hands, and giving the latest version of the same old campaign speech? Candidates are media trained and have a team of professionals crafting their every move.

In what is shaping up to be the longest presidential campaign season ever--how can we as journalists dig beneath the painted on smiles and keep the important issues relevant? Our biggest struggle will be finding the freshest take on the same old campaign news.

I've seen too many stories on the mundane life details of the presidential hopefuls. I can tell you Mitt Romney's favorite food and where John Edwards' likes to vacation, but I know very little about their voting records on a number of issues. I want to see more informative stories about their previous political decisions.

However, conversely, I don't want to see a repeat of the Dan Rather swift boat disaster, where one network's quest for the scoop led to extreme embarrassment, not to mention the demise of a few careers.

Don't rely on the campaign stops in and of themselves to produce news. In every interview and at every speech, you can almost guess what you are going to hear from the candidates, where is the news in that?