Two Scholars Offer Ideas For Improving Horse Race Reporting on Elections
When journalists treat political campaigns like horse races — with the emphasis on who’s winning or losing based on opinion polls – voters, candidates and news outlets suffer, according to a growing body of research. This type of reporting is called “horse race journalism.” While it’s unlikely that journalists will stop reporting on elections as a game, two scholars offer ideas for at least improving so-called horse race coverage.
The first step, says anthropologist and historian Denise-Marie Ordway, is to understand how horse racing has been used to construct social identities. Then, she says, we can see how this history intersects with the present-day horse racing industry and its relationships to issues such as racism, animal cruelty, inequality and white supremacy.
In addition to a thorough knowledge of racing history, Ordway suggests journalists should read reports from the equine advocacy groups that focus on the sport’s abuses and exploitation of horses. She says these stories have the potential to inform and shape how audiences perceive and respond to horse racing today.
Those stories include revelations of the trainers’ abusive training practices for young horses, drug use, and transporting those horses to slaughter in foreign countries. They also report on the 168 horses who have died this season and the thousands more that disappear from the tracks without trace, as well as the countless injured and sick horses who are put down or euthanized.
In her book, “Fancy Hat Veneer,” University of Maryland professor Joyce Anderson writes that despite improvements in equine welfare, horse racing still fails to address serious concerns about its treatment of horses. She describes the industry as a business that is growing increasingly competitive, but that also relies on the participation of fans and a large audience for its success.
Anderson notes that there are a number of factors that have contributed to the decline of horse racing in recent decades, including competition from other forms of entertainment and growing awareness about its abuses and exploitation of horses. The latter has fueled an increase in animal rights activism and a movement to ban the sport.
The earliest recorded s of horse racing date back to the Greek Olympic Games between 700 and 40 B.C. Racing has since spread to other parts of the world, with some countries regulating it more strictly than others. It is now a global industry with many fans and participants, despite the growing evidence of its problems.
