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Sat 6 Sep, 2003 09:30 am
Could it be possible that there is a relationship between the Media's lust for ratings (read that money) and the Media's news coverage support of political candidates with the most money to spend on political ads? Heavens to Betsy, would they stoop that low? :wink:
---BumbleBeeBoogie
The 30-Second Democracy
By Richard Cohen
Friday, November 8, 2002; Page A31
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
I stayed up very late Tuesday night to see who won and who lost. I learned that George Bush won and Tom Daschle lost. The Republicans won the Senate and the Democrats lost it; and Karl Rove, the White House's political guru, has been anointed a genius -- which he very well may be. But not mentioned in anything I watched was the real winner of the 2002 campaign: the television industry. It came away about $1 billion richer.
That was the cost of airing those 30-second political spots, many of them odiously negative, that inundated television throughout the campaign season, especially in its waning days. It was also about double the amount spent in the last midterm election (1998), when things were bad enough already. This year, about 1.5 million of these ads were aired.
In fact, surveys tell us that your chances of seeing one of those ads while watching local TV news were four times greater than your chances of seeing actual political coverage. At the same time, your chances of seeing a political story on a network news show was declining -- down about 72 percent from the 1994 midterm election. Increasingly, what average Americans know about politics they get from some 30-second spot.
So what? So this. These ads are often distortions -- some of them outright lies. They are often exercises in miniaturization and simplification, a sort of political sniper attack. Politicians have learned to fear their effect. Voting for tax increases of almost any kind -- no matter how urgently needed -- can be lethal: "Jones Voted for Tax Increases 13 Times."
Yes, he did. But did he vote for a whopping increase in the income tax or a modest increase in the cigarette tax? Was it a penny on the property tax or a penny on the telephone tax? And what about the "taxes" that are not called by that name -- like allowing the cable company to rip you off?
The content of these ads is one thing, their cost something else again. A spot in the New York market goes for as much as $20,433; in Los Angeles it's $16,682. The least expensive of the top 10 markets is Boston. The cost of an ad there is $9,502. As you can see, this can soon get expensive.
The ads and the cost of them have polluted and distorted the American political system. They not only weaken the backbone of your average politician -- how will that vote look on TV? -- they also saddle him or her with the burden of constantly raising campaign funds. This year the California governor's race cost something like $90 million -- much of it for TV. Your average House member is dialing for dollars almost every day of the week.
And who is he or she calling? People, organizations and companies with money. If there is a single reason Democrats and Republicans sound the same, it's because they both rely on the same sources of money -- the rich.
So now we come to yet another of Tuesday night's unheralded winners -- Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican will soon become chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Along with Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), McCain has introduced a bill that would require radio and TV stations to air a minimum of two hours a week of political programming in the campaign season. The proposal is the brainchild of Paul Taylor, executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns.
Does the bill have a chance? Not in the immediate future. The owners of local TV and radio stations are a powerful lobby. Two years ago, they made almost $7 million in political contributions. What's more, they are just the sort of people politicians are loath to anger. They own the 6 o'clock news, after all.
But the American people own the airwaves. The broadcast spectrum is limited. The broadcast media, unlike (thank God) newspapers, are licensed. The government assigns frequencies. It has the constitutional right to require that broadcasters give us something in return. They could start by devoting two hours to discussions of political or ideological issues.
Certainly, the McCain-Feingold-Durbin bill is no panacea for a political system that has the ethics of a hooker and the attention span of a goldfish. But if it weans candidates even a bit from the 30-second spot and relieves them of the burden of always having their hands out, then American democracy will be better for it. We can only hope that the new Republican congressional leadership gives it more than 30 seconds of consideration.
Hour of Media Shame
The Nation
Hour of Media Shame
by Kanak Mani Dixit
Katmandu, Nepal
One casualty of the war on Iraq has been the image of Western media as the exemplar of journalistic accomplishment. For decades, journalists worldwide, in the developing world in particular, looked up to the US press with awe (that word!) and respect, as models of probity, independence, courage and investigative zeal. Watergate was the catchword.
Well, it turns out that they just had not been tested. When the time came for American editors, reporters, studio anchors and producers to stand up to the establishment amid the mass expectation of the public, their feet turned to clay.
The March 30 New York Times had this headline in a piece by David Sanger: "As a Quick Victory Grows Less Likely, Doubts Are Quietly Voiced." When American politicians and journalists raise doubts "quietly," what distinguishes them from their peers all over the world, in countries underdeveloped or overdeveloped?
It started after September 11, 2001, when television, press and radio began to ply the American public with what it wanted to hear about the rest of the world. This was then force-fed to the rest of the world. In the run-up to Gulf War II, the American press did not question or caution, at one with the weak-kneed representatives and senators who gave George W. Bush carte blanche to misrepresent his way to war.
Perhaps the worst hour of Western journalism is when its embeds or operatives--hardly journalists--reported on heroics on the desert road to Baghdad, while displaying an unwillingness to present any direct connection between the blazing night sky on television and the death and maiming of civilians on the ground.
To save the sentiments of viewers at home, the channels prefer not to show images of dead, bleeding or destitute people. With its power and reach, Western satellite media dehumanize Arab men, women and children, which is why we do not feel heavier stabs of pain as rockets, cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs explode in inhabited cities.
An Iraqi missile harmlessly hitting a Kuwaiti shopping center received far more airtime than dozens of dead in a Baghdad market. Armored columns were hailed for the speed with which they rushed through the empty desert. American public relations generals talk down to reporters so submissive that it reminds one of the government press in tinpot dictatorships.
It seems time to cast aside America as media role model. American journalists are acting no differently from journalists in repressive societies when they cower before the vehement beliefs of the ruling elite. Fear of being labeled unpatriotic forces US reporters to toe the line, the same way it happens in, say, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Thailand...or Iraq.
As the contradictions and hypocrisy of the American media continue to unfold on television screens and downloaded articles worldwide, no one need feel any sense of superiority. For it is a tragedy when the tutor is found wanting. No one should presume to claim a moral ground higher than the reporters so thankfully picking up morsels thrown their way by Centcom.
The times call for humility--journalists everywhere have their insecurities and inadequacies. As we watch television reporters and anchors make a mockery of their craft, the only respectable response is to search within ourselves, and our motives, every time we file a story. With the Western ideal so blatantly exposed, we must now live in a world where we establish our own standards and then live up to them.
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