As the government shuts down fundamental services — everything from day-care centers to health-care clinics — we need journalists to help us understand and adapt to this crisis.

We need reporters who will hold our leaders accountable. We need newsrooms to help us see how the shutdown will impact us and our neighbors. And we need journalism that pays attention to our voices at a time when Congress doesn’t seem to be listening.

Unfortunately, coverage of this crisis has been a mixed bag, much of it embodying the worst of horse-race reporting. There is some great reporting out there, but so far it’s been the exception, not the rule. Most stories in the mainstream press ask who’s winning instead of exploring what’s at stake.

 “As a matter of journalism,” wrote James Fallows in the Atlantic, “any story that presents the disagreements as a ‘standoff,’ a ‘showdown,’ a ‘failure of leadership,’ a sign of ‘partisan gridlock,’ or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism and an inability to see or describe what is going on.”

Journalist Dan Froomkin has best captured what’s at stake. Horse-race journalism and the political extremism it enables, Froomkin notes, feed off each other:

With no consequences for extremism, politicians who have succeeded using such conduct have an incentive to become even more extreme. The more extreme they get, the further the split-the-difference press has to veer from common sense in order to avoid taking sides. And so on.

The political press should be the public’s first line of defense [but] journalists have been suckered into embracing ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’ at all costs, and the consequences of their choice in an era of political extremism will only get worse and worse.

When two branches of our government are in crisis, we need the checks and balances a strong press can provide more than ever. This is a moment for journalism to rise to its highest calling, serve communities, hold power to account and help people access the information they need to create a stronger democracy.

Original photo by Flickr user Edward Vissert