The voters blame the politicians. The politicians blame the
voters. Nobody takes responsibility for the uninformed,
uninterested population. And nobody blames what may be the largest
source of voter ignorance yet: the media.
A joint study completed this fall by USC and the University of
Washington analyzed 2,454 local news broadcasts to find out how
much election coverage they provided. The astonishing results were
that in an election year, with both the House and the Senate
up for grabs, over half of the broadcasts carried no election
news.
During the broadcasts that did cover campaigns, the average
story was 80.5 seconds long. Less than 20 percent of those stories
contained any sound bites, and the average sound bite was only 9.5
seconds long.
That’s about long enough for someone to say:Â “I
support (insert issue here) because it is important to the (insert
interest group here) and to Americans that (said issue) is passed
on a bipartisan basis.”
What can a citizen learn from that?
No wonder politicians run more and more campaign ads; it’s
the only way they can get their message across. They have learned
how to use ““ and abuse ““ the media through
advertisements. They pour precious money into running thousands of
campaign commercials, which are then repeated to instill the
message in the viewer’s mind.
It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re factual or
truth-stretching, whether they’re attack ads or
issue-oriented. To the voter, it’s all the same. And to the
politician, it is propaganda at its best:Â “if people see
something enough times, they’ll believe it.”
It’s appalling that the news has paid such scant attention
to the upcoming pivotal election. But the twisted process that
finds politicians grasping for airtime in a television-oriented
world that doesn’t pay enough attention to them is
what’s really wrong. It’s not that voters don’t
want to discuss the issues, it’s that they aren’t able
to find a forum for them. Yet.
Campaign finance gurus Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold
have teamed up with Sen. Richard Durbin to begin the next phase of
their uphill struggle to reform the political process in
America.
Their new bill, known as the Political Campaign Broadcast
Activity Improvements Act, would require television and radio
stations to air at least two hours a week of candidate- or
issue-centered programming in the time period before an
election.
This programming would have to be in the form of debates,
interviews or something similar. In other words, something
substantial that would give viewers (and hopefully voters) a real
chance to learn about the candidates.
Some people would of course take issue with the fact that this
bill attempts to regulate the media’s ability to choose its
own programming ““ limiting the cherished First
Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. But this bill
would not inhibit that freedom; it would help the media exercise it
in ways that would also facilitate another freedom ““ the
right to vote.
Instead of arguing over the lack of separation between politics
and the media, the focus should be put on why politicians are
reduced to running their mindless ads in the first place.
McCain said it best, “By increasing the flow of political
information, free air time can better inform the public about
candidates and invite viewers to become more engaged in their
government by learning more about the individuals seeking to
represent them.”
It’s too bad McCain’s argument won’t show up
on any local news broadcasts ““ it’s too long for them
to bother.