By Christopher M. Adams
For the last week or so I’ve been watching the media grow more and more distracted by the Palin fever that has suddenly infected its 17-month and, at times, quite interesting campaign coverage. But in the past week I’ve seen the media, once again, fall “hook-line-and-sinker” to the Republican juggernaut of keeping the focus off the issues and on the “personality.” Just as I was beginning to think that the media was finally taking a turn for the better, to provide people with the knowledge and information as well as discussions necessary for us to be able to govern our own lives more effectively — swoosh! — All that was gone. Enter the distraction phase of political campaigning or, better yet, Karl Rove Part II.
I know, I should have known it couldn’t last.
What is truly disheartening and nauseating, however, is that the same media that allowed Sen. Obama to be raked over the coals, scrutinized, tested and analyzed probably more than any candidate in the history of campaign coverage is (still) cowering to the Republican (“We’re above scrutiny” and accountability) hood-winking machine.
If the media is not willing to hold the un-accountables accountable then, at the very least, it should keep the coverage about the issues that really do matter such as jobs (good-paying ones), the economy (poverty, housing, food prices) and education (access to good schools and good education – which, by the way, you never hear anything about the increasing student-loan defaults that have occurred alongside the housing foreclosure crisis). Such matters are really what most “Americans,” or most of the people I know anyway, truly care about.
Concentrated media coverage on the above can better serve the health of our democracy by better educating the populace about the candidates and helping them hold their future and present leaders accountable (whoops – I guess there’s no alternative to holding them accountable then is there? They’ll just have to get over it). But at the same time, such coverage can serve to empower all Americans to be able to better judge which candidate has a better understanding of the problems we the people are facing in this country and elsewhere and to determine which candidate has the better solutions to “fix” them. Just so we’re clear, I am not requesting what I’m mentioning herein of the media; I’m demanding it. Got it? Moving on…
The media must engage the public
Rather than serving to deflect attention away from any serious challenge to authority or power, the media should always put “country” and “democracy” “first,” as its primary responsibility, versus that of “entertainment” and/or the spreading of “disinformation” that only serves to create the illusion of democracy at best. Or better yet, hold Sen. McCain accountable to his own words. (Notice I didn’t preface that with “oh yeah, ugh… we honor his service to our country.” His being a POW doesn’t give him a license to do what he’s done in the last eight years in siding with Bush and making the rich richer and the poor poorer, and the additional damage he will do if elected.)
If democracy is to survive, the media has a definitive role to play. That is, it must serve to engage the general public in political debate and action about “real” issues — period. Moreover, at the very least, media coverage must serve to demand transparency and accountability and to expose any apathy and/or inability of either of these two candidates to not only empathize with and understand the struggles of all Americans but to test them on their abilities and willingness to do what is necessary to take action and assist us in these struggles.
I thought media had learned its lesson in spreading Bush and Cheney’s lies about WMDs, but what I’m seeing isn’t all that promising. But… I’m trying… really hard… to believe.
Adams is a doctoral student at