Page Visits Über Alles 2

And I thought it was just me. I'm delighted that James Fallows, too, noticed the online media's "audience-metrics-uber-alles" approach to the the Al Gore story on global warming.

Fallows writes:

Al Gore's new essay in Rolling Stone, about impending climate disasters, is mainly about the failure of the media to direct adequate attention to the issue, and to call out paid propagandists and discredited phony scientists. That's where the essay starts, and what it covers in its first 5,000 words. The second part, less than half as long, and much more hedged in its judgment, is about the Obama Administration's faltering approach on climate change. But of course the immediate press presentation on the essay has been all "OMG Gore attacks Obama!" For instance at Slate,* TPM, NY Mag, Huffington Post, the AP, and the Atlantic's own Wire site.

... the media's all-consuming interest in the "how" and "who's ahead" of politics, and "oh God this is boring" disdain for the "what" and "why" of public issues, has all sorts of ugly consequences. It makes the public think that politics is not for them unless they love the insider game; it makes the "what" and "why" of public issues indeed boring and unapproachable; and as a consequence of the latter, it makes the public stupider than it needs to be about the what and why.

Meanwhile, the ice is melting at the polar caps and the climatic threat to humankind looms ever larger. That's why this debate about media behavior is not a theoretical exercise.