The 2020 presidential election must be about issues. Daily Kos asks the Democratic field to go there

The pitfalls that plagued the 2016 elections were numerous, including everything from a Russian incursion into our electoral system to the media's Hannibal Lecter-like obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails to the FBI inserting itself into the process a little over a week out from voting. But the most glaring journalistic breakdown, beyond the boundless coverage of a carnival barker spewing a stream of unmitigated lies, was the near-complete lack of substantive reporting on policies. Indeed, a 2017 Columbia Journalism Review article called the lack of policy coverage "incredible" in light of research showing the dearth of front-page articles devoted to policy in the closing two months of the 2016 cycle.

"In light of the stark policy choices facing voters in the 2016 election, it seems incredible that only five out of 150 front-page articles that The New York Times ran over the last, most critical months of the election, attempted to compare the candidate’s policies, while only 10 described the policies of either candidate in any detail," Duncan Watts and David Rothschild wrote in December 2017.

A broader study of campaign coverage among outlets including the Times, theWashington Post, CNN, and the Huffington Post characterized reporting on the Clinton campaign as "defined by negative media coverage," while Watts and Rothschild wrote of the Times specifically, "In just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election." In short, coverage of Clinton’s so-called scandals was pervasive and dominant, while outlets devoted only a sliver of space to the actual policy proposals from the candidates and what they would mean for Americans.

At Daily Kos, one of our greatest fears is that we could watch a repeat of that misguided reporting flood the 2020 election cycle to the great detriment of the American people and our republic. Precisely because of the consequences of those journalistic failures, we have resolved to use our robust platform, along with its highly dedicated liberal readership, to set a different tone in 2020. In the past, we have regularly used that platform to hold mainstream outlets accountable for promoting bias, false equivalencies, and sometimes just plain sloppy and even indefensible reporting. While we will continue to do that this cycle, we also hope to proactively nurture a media ecosystem in which policies are valued, contemplated, and explored, with an eye to what they will mean for voters, their families, and the future of our country. With that in mind, the Daily Kos editorial team formulated its first presidential candidate questionnaire for the wide field of talented Democrats who are just now beginning to stake out their policy positions in pursuit of the nomination.

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