Guest Perspective by Ralph Nader
The
media coverage of the Presidential campaigns is a dreary repetition of past
coverage. Stuck in a rut and garnished by press cynicism and boredom, media
groupthink becomes more ossified every four years.
This
massive mental motion-sickness confines reporters, editors and producers to the
following all too predictable patterns:
1. They
follow the money, whenever disclosed, but don’t diligently pursue the quid pro
quos which NBC’s David Brinkley described as “deferred bribes.” Like a constant
posting of a basketball game’s score, this reporting of cash register politics
goes on and on.
3. The
horserace is closely connected to the punditry’s facile fascinations –
especially on the cable shows and the Sunday morning news programs. Who is
ahead in the polls? Who is slipping? Who may slip? How will the candidates
confront the next hurdle?
4. Then
there are the gaffes! The population of gaffedom is growing and is the ultimate
titillation for the reporters. It’s a gotcha moment that comes from the
candidates or their chief honchos so that reporters cannot be accused of
initiating trivia. Michael Kinsley once described a Washington, D.C. gaffe as
someone really telling the inconvenient truth inadvertently.
Then there are gaffes manufactured by unscrupulous
political consultants who neatly slice off the words that would have explained
away the purported gaffe.
Gaffes don’t have long legs but they can crowd out all
other communications by the candidate for several days. Gaffes provide
reporters leisurely comic relief and require little work. (See links to this
year’s political gaffes below.)
Gaffes proliferate when there are political vacuums that
should be filled with reporting on substantive policies and agendas. After all,
the campaign trail is usually a mind-numbing daily routine of déjà vu right down
to the contrived quips, laughs and the same three or four issue lines that make
up the repertoire for the faithful.
5. Then
there is the Morton Mintz admonition that should haunt any conscientious
reporter. Mintz was a great reporter for the Washington Post for about thirty
years. After he retired, he issued a series of questions the press should but
does not ask of candidates running for federal office (www.mortonmintz.com/work1.htm).
Here are some samples from 2000: “Whether Congress should
rescue 13.5 million American children from hunger”; “whether ending poverty in
America is as important as tax cuts for the middle class and the wealthy”; and
“whether it would be wise or unwise to adopt the nonprofit, Canadian-style
‘single payer’ system, which would provide health insurance for all Americans,
enable every citizen to choose his or her own physician, end insurers’ interference in the
doctor-patient relationship, improve the overall health of the American people,
and save $127 billion in administrative and billing costs in 2001 alone.” Lest
you think the latter is a loaded question, Mintz always cited reputable studies
and sources, in this case the General Accounting Office and a prominent Harvard
Medical School professor.
Another question Mintz asked was “whether the federal
government should stop doling out more than $125 billion a year to
politically-wired corporations and industries – corporate welfare that costs
the government as much as it collects in income taxes from 60 million
individuals and families.” Mintz put forth question after question and reporter
after reporter ignored them while covering the campaign. So too did the eminent
columnists and editorial writers.
6. Given
that the two major parties superficially contend more and more over fewer and
fewer subjects or redirections for the country, it should be incumbent for
reporters to once in a while look at what third parties are putting forward for
voter choices in a two party tyranny that obstructs them at every step – from
ballot access to exclusion from the debates.
I’ve kept my website from 2008 open for this comparative
purpose (See: votenader.org) and today’s Green, Justice, Libertarian and
Constitution Party websites also present their priorities.
Because the media views third parties as “can’t win”
alternatives, they avoid them, forgetting their pioneering contributions in
American history (anti-slavery, women’s right to vote, labor and farmer
protections). This blackout assures that fresh seeds and saplings in American
politics do not have a chance to sprout, as they have in Parliamentary systems.
7. Finally
there is the suffocating self-imposed conformity of reporters and commentators.
No one is stopping them from asking Presidential and other federal candidates
about important issues, like cracking down on corporate crime (See: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/),
raising the federal minimum wage to that of 1968 adjusted for inflation, or the
war in Afghanistan and the use of drones anywhere a President chooses to send
them, even over sovereign countries.
Defining news as largely focusing on charges or
assertions generated by the candidates produces a narrowing of meaningful
public debate. Instead, the presidential election, when the public’s attention
peaks, should produce a widening public reporting and discussion. Imagine twenty presidential debates around
the country with tough questioning by informed reporters and engaged
citizens. (See George Farah’s book No
Debate at http://www.opendebates.org.)
Mintz, never jaded into giving up, wrote an article titled
“The Sound You Hear Is Silence,” noting that “when the subject is corporate
immorality, nary a judgmental word is heard.... it’s Fleedom of the Press.”
The media should engage in some serious introspection!
Political Gaffes:
President Barack Obama: http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/barackobama/a/obama-isms.htm
1 comment:
Very interesting article.
Mark de Zabaleta
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