WASHINGTON, USA - A veteran American journalist has hauled his colleagues over the coals for focusing on trivialities instead of substance in the current presidential campaign, arguing that the media have not pressed Barack Obama and John McCain on the controversial issue of the Unitary Executive doctrine adopted by President George W Bush.

According to Bill Kovach, founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the issue has not been discussed in this campaign, therefore voters don't know whether the next US president will continue the doctrine.

"The major unresolved issue, and we won't know until either Barack Obama or John McCain becomes president, is what the next president will do about the Unitary Executive policy," Kovach told a group of 50 journalists from different countries invited by the International Centre for Journalists to cover the US presidential elections.

The Unitary Executive policy undercuts the ability of Congress to regulate the executive branch of the US Government, and Bush has been asserting from the outset of his presidency that the power of the president must be unilateral.

The doctrine, an invention of the Meese Justice Department during the Reagan administration, is controversial because the US Constitution explicitly empowers the Congress to make rules and regulations for how the executive carries out its work.

Bush is reported to have used the doctrine 95 times when signing legislation, issuing an executive order, or responding to a congressional resolution.

Kovach, who has been a journalist for 50 years, displayed his disappointment with the US media in his discussion with the visiting journalists at the Foreign Press Centre on Thursday.

He said that although the policy has been challenged by virtually every constitutional lawyer in America, Bush continues to function under the doctrine.

"I think it's the first question that needs to be asked of the next president, and I think that a large number of the American people are going to be very upset and may even try to file lawsuits to make sure that the Unitary Executive does not become the law of the land simply because no one is willing to challenge it," said Kovach.

However, later on Thursday, Howard Wolpe, a former congressman and diplomat who has close links with the Obama campaign, told the Sunday Observer that Obama has addressed the issue.

"The good news is that he's a constitutional lawyer," said Wolpe. "He cares about the constitution and one of the most profound changes that we will see under an Obama administration will be a new respect for and adherence to the constitution. That means not only ending this nonsense, it means ending torture and closing Guantanamo, it means ending a lot of things that have so compromised America's standing in the world, and that I am very confident about."

Earlier, in his discussion, Kovach lamented the use by mostly US television stations of so-called experts with special interests to explain the news to viewers.

"I don't know why I need them to tell me what to think to begin with," he said in a post-discussion interview with the Sunday Observer. "I want the reporters to find out what the candidates are saying and doing and tell me. Let me decide, don't give me a political figure to tell me what to think. Journalism is to give me the facts on which I can decide."

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