The Amazing Disappearing Election

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/why-news-sounds-same/615070

 This year may be a good chance for the United States to consider whether we really need an 18-month-long presidential election. Elections in Japan are limited to 17 days of campaigning for seats in its upper legislative house and 12 days for the lower house. In many parliamentary democracies, snap elections mean that campaigns rarely run much longer than a few weeks. With the need to focus on the coronavirus and the Trump administration’s response to it, 2020 may demonstrate an uncomfortable truth: The months of coverage of conventions and debates is more helpful in providing advertising revenue to the news industry than it is in informing citizens about the political decisions they are asked to make.

Even if losing wall-to-wall coverage of the 2020 presidential race turns out to be a blessing, the compression of the media agenda should worry us as citizens in a democracy. The protests about Floyd’s killing are a concrete demonstration that protest, media coverage, and social change have an interlocking and synergistic relationship. When important stories, such as the genocide of Uighur Muslims in China, go undercovered, the potential for protest and change are reduced.