Constitutional Law

Can the Political Press Self-Correct? Spinewatch Hopes it Can

By Ryan Sholin

Fellow IdeaLabber Jay Rosen, an NYU journalism professor and PressThinker, mounted a campaign this weekend to encourage the political press to grow a spine.

Rosen and others are calling for journalists of all stripes (professionals, amateurs, citizens, bloggers, etc.) to use a #spinewatch tag on Twitter and elsewhere to call attention to whether or not the professional press covering the home stretch of the 2008 presidential election is standing up to stonewalling candidates or sitting back and repeating their talking points.

In an IM interview today, Jay said:

"The premise behind spinewatch is more this: It's hard for me to see how you can have a more legitimate or consensus practice in campaign journalism than fact-checking the empirical claims candidates make -- in ads, speeches, interviews -- as they compete for votes. In other words, if the press cannot at least do that, what is it good for?"

The full IM transcript after the jump...

Full post as published by MediaShift Idea Lab on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).