Reporting Problems

A former city alderman (i.e., council member) once told me that he though it was pretty straightforward in municipal governance to deal with issues of highest priority -- he used the term A to C. But he lamented that local governments rarely adequately addressed important issues at the back of the line -- D to L. This could obviously be a problem in terms of news reporting. Thoughts?

My thoughts on this topic is that ideally, we would like to elect people who will deal with the issues of highest priority first. However, a lot of times promises are empty and people are left with a candidate who has nothing to show for his or her campaign.

I think this could be a problem for news reporting because people depend on journalist to report the important issues, because they feel politicians are not honest. I think if local governments are only focusing on less important issues, leaving news reporters hanging, and an angry public.

I believe politicians deal with the less important issues first, because they need to show the public that they are successful in office. For example, Obama and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Or Obama wanting states to push the dropout age to 18 instead of 16, so more kids will graduate from high school.

I know these do not seem like super important issues, but election season is arriving and he needs to be able to argue points of success during his presidency, so he people will elect him another four years. Same with Edna Jackson of Savannah. City Council spent the majority of time talking about the African American festival. This is not by chance, but the city of Savannah is mostly African American, so it looks good to talk about topics regarding the city's majority.

This becomes an issue for reporters, because they end up only reporting the less important issues and the public ends of feeling cheated with both politicians and journalist.