Covering the elections here in the US isn’t just an American activity. The US presidential election has a significant impact worldwide and is being heavily covered by the global media. Reading the media from another country gives Americans interesting perspectives on the process.

The coverage of the first presidential debate, held last night in Miami, Florida, is a good example. Libération.com, the site of the French Socialist newspaper Libération, has several articles about the debate this morning. In one of them, this quote:
Le «spin» a commencé jeudi dans la nuit, dans une salle prévue à cet effet. Dès la fin du débat, les principaux conseillers des deux candidats se sont rué dans cette «spin room», suivis par des aides portant des petits panneaux pour qu’on les repère: «Dr Madeleine Albright», «McCain», «Giuliani»… Les journalistes pouvaient aller de l’un à l’autre, comme s’ils faisaient leur marché.

Translated:
The spin started Thursday night in a room set up for just this purpose. As soon as the debate was done, the main advisors to the candidates lined themselves up in this “spin room,” followed by aides who carried small signs reading “Dr. Madelein Albright,” “McCain,” “Giuliani”… Journalists could go from one to the next, just as if they were doing their shopping.

The “spin room” needs to be described because this sort of thing doesn’t happen in other countries. It’s not that they don’t have spin, but they don’t encourage it or make it as obvious as it is in the US. And, in the description in this article, there is a note of judgment, “as if they were doing their shopping.” That certainly sounds negative, as if the author is saying, “journalists could ‘buy’ the opinions they wanted, and pass on the others.”

There are, of course, other important election differences between the US and solid democracies like those in Europe. One of the most significant, however, is this question of spin. Many countries, for example, have made it illegal to run political ads within a few days of the actual election. The theory is that it gives voters the chance to cool off from all the spin and thus they make more carefully considered, less emotional, choices. By contrast, in the US the ads go right up to Election Day, becoming, if anything, more numerous (and often more vehement) the closer to the vote it gets.

The question then is: why doesn’t the US do anything to control the spin or at least the effects of spin? It certainly seems reasonable to do something to try and encourage attention to the truth and the reduction of emotions prior to casting a globally significant vote. Instead, the US seems to do the opposite.