Media should promote substantive debate on issues

I wish we could have honest debates about the issues in America.

Too often, the 24-hour news cycle instead drowns us in controversy with only cursory examination of anything substantive. That’s a disservice to Americans.

The latest example is the controversy over Barack Obama’s recent comment about Pennsylvania voters. For those who missed it, Obama said at a private fundraiser in San Francisco that many rural Pennsylvanians respond to their economic plight by becoming bitter and clinging to guns, religion, hostility toward people who are different from them and anti-immigrant and anti-trade sentiment.

Instead of fostering a substantive examination of the issues Obama raises and the stereotype his comment may reveal about himself, the media is covering the issue in a way that encourages that presidential race to degrade into a food fight. Hillary Clinton and John McCain have been happy to oblige, using the opportunity to try to one-up Obama.

The result is Obama being called elitist, out of touch with average Americans and a fraud. The focus of the media isn’t on whether Obama is right or wrong, or on a serious examination of the effects of globalization on American workers. And Obama isn’t showing any more maturity than the other candidates. He has readily joined in the food fight the media helped create.

The media is obsessed with controversy, with keeping people watching and reading. So for days it has had constant but superficial coverage of Obama’s comment, talking about it until there’s nothing new to talk about, then recycling the same, tired discussion again.

Substantive coverage would take too much time and bore viewers, so the media instead focuses on the food fight.

And we watch. It’s one of the grossest parts of our human nature that we get satisfaction out of seeing Britney Spears go crazy and check into rehab, Pastor Ted Haggard resign amid allegations involving a male prostitute, and the presidential candidates tear each other apart. How often do we examine the difficulties of being a teen girl who is an obsession of adult men, or of leading a church where people don’t hold you accountable because they assume, since you’re the pastor, that you’re above temptation?

How often to do we seriously examine the issues the presidential candidates raise, instead of merely judging them based on one-liners played over and over again by the media?

America rarely has the attention span for such complexities. That’s why the media instead seeks to stir up controversies like the current fight over Obama’s words – because it gets us to watch. It drives up ratings and sells newspapers.

Losing sight of the issues

Meanwhile, Americans lose sight of the issues. The constant focus on the negative by the media filters down. Americans cling to their distrust of each other and stay in that place because it’s comfortable. And we don’t get any closer to reaching the understanding that is necessary to solve our problems.

People of all ethnicities and genders and sexual orientations and political affiliations live every day with negative stereotypes about others they don’t understand. It’s the human condition.

The media could be a catalyst for understanding, for exploring the complexities of situations and challenging people’s comfort zones, of pushing us to put aside our prejudices. Though it sometimes does this, the media spends more time oversimplifying issues, perpetuating stereotypes and allowing people to cling to beliefs that need to be challenged.

America deserves a serious discussion about the effects of globalization. We need an examination of its effect on people who have lost their jobs. We need an honest discussion about the attitudes toward those people by others who aren’t similarly impacted, including the liberal elite and corporate executives. We need presidential candidates who will honestly talk about complex issues and challenge us to put aside our stereotypes.

We need a media willing to devote its resources to such efforts and to helping create a better America.

A version of this article was published today on the Diary of a Mad Voter blog published by the Denver Post’s Politics West and the independent Web site NewWest.net.