If you were to turn on any news channel, you would be blasted with wall to wall coverage of the election cycle. Whether you’re getting your information from NPR, The New York Times, Fox News, or MSNBC, the focus is on the upcoming primaries and the odds of each prospective candidate winning their party’s nomination.
The shift seemed to happen overnight: from the minute the clock struck twelve and rang in the new year, the media stopped referring to candidates in the hypothetical, they started considering the upcoming primaries and the eventual results. As late as early January, there was still widespread media coverage about international affairs as well as the goings-on in Washington, but it all changed after the first primary. Now, it’s almost impossible to avoid talk about the election. With the drama coming from both parties that has made this election cycle unique, it is hard to distance ourselves from politics when it fills our Facebook and Twitter feeds, and dominates television commercials.
This is not to shame the endless coverage of the election, but more to ask the question of: what happens to the rest of it? The stories that journalists anxiously followed are now swept under the rug and resigned to the back pages of newspapers in order to favor the ongoing election that will happen months from now. The issues that were in the front in our minds vanished overnight so that we focus on Donald Trump’s racism and continuous scrutiny over Hilary Clinton’s email account. What happened to the refugees, the fragile state of the European Union, Putin’s looming over the Middle East, and the rising tensions with North Korea?
The United States is intimately involved with the affairs of other countries. It isn’t just our presence in the form of ambassadors and diplomats: in some cases it has been our involvement or lack thereof that has shaped the history of some nations. To disregard our involvement in these nations is irresponsible and short sighted; to refuse to address the news surrounding the issues we have created is to deny our own responsibility. Whether or not we should be involved further in the issues we have created abroad is a matter of personal opinion, but the necessity for journalists to cover the story transcends party lines and edges on the side of moral responsibility.
Unfortunately, our blindness to issues other than the election does not apply strictly to foreign affairs. Domestic issues are also neglected. Since January, discussion of Black Lives Matter, the immediate repercussions of relaxed gun laws, and the Flint water crisis have all been relatively ignored. What happens when we refuse to discuss our own shortcomings? Our ignorance may be our downfall.
And this seems to happen every election cycle. We, the public, refuse to acknowledge the other side of the news. We neglect the stories that need to be told in order to have a full understanding of the world around us. It may be hard to believe, but there is more to politics – both domestic politics and international affairs – than the election. We may get to November and find ourselves in a dire situation that we had previously been blind to because of our preoccupation with the polls.
While Obama’s current trip to Cuba has allowed the media a breath of fresh air in the otherwise repetitive coverage of the election, the lack of coverage on other important stories is a pressing issue. We must be able to shift our focus outwards and onto other issues to maintain a semblance of educated awareness, lest we find ourselves with our heads in the sand post-election.