{"id":3714,"date":"2008-09-15T10:29:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T16:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/09\/the-media-must-put-country-and-democracy-first\/"},"modified":"2008-09-15T10:29:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-15T16:29:00","slug":"the-media-must-put-country-and-democracy-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/09\/the-media-must-put-country-and-democracy-first\/","title":{"rendered":"The media must put country and democracy first"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Christopher M. Adams<\/span><\/p>\n

For the last week or so I\u2019ve been watching the media grow more and more distracted by the Palin<\/a> fever that has suddenly infected its 17-month and, at times, quite interesting campaign coverage. But in the past week I\u2019ve seen the media, once again, fall \u201chook-line-and-sinker\u201d to the Republican juggernaut of keeping the focus off the issues and on the \u201cpersonality.\u201d 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<\/a> Part II.<\/p>\n

I know, I should have known it couldn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

What is truly disheartening and nauseating, however, is that the same media that allowed Sen. Obama<\/a> 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 (\u201cWe\u2019re above scrutiny\u201d and accountability) hood-winking machine. <\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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 \u201cAmericans,\u201d or most of the people I know anyway, truly care about. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s no alternative to holding them accountable then is there? They\u2019ll 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 \u201cfix\u201d them. Just so we\u2019re clear, I am not requesting what I\u2019m mentioning herein of the media; I\u2019m demanding it. Got it? Moving on…<\/p>\n

The media must engage the public<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than serving to deflect attention away from any serious challenge to authority or power, the media should always put \u201ccountry\u201d and \u201cdemocracy\u201d \u201cfirst,\u201d as its primary responsibility, versus that of \u201centertainment\u201d and\/or the spreading of \u201cdisinformation\u201d that only serves to create the illusion of democracy at best. Or better yet, hold Sen. McCain<\/a> accountable to his own words. (Notice I didn\u2019t preface that with \u201coh yeah, ugh… we honor his service to our country.\u201d His being a POW doesn\u2019t give him a license to do what he\u2019s done in the last eight years in siding with Bush<\/a> and making the rich richer and the poor poorer, and the additional damage he will do if elected.)<\/p>\n

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 \u201creal\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

I thought media had learned its lesson in spreading Bush and Cheney\u2019s lies about WMDs, but what I\u2019m seeing isn\u2019t all that promising. But… I\u2019m trying… really hard… to believe.<\/p>\n

Adams is a doctoral student at New Mexico<\/st1:placename> State<\/st1:placetype> University<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place> focusing his research primarily on critical multicultural education and democratic education. He has lived in New Mexico<\/st1:state> for 10 years but was born in Kentucky<\/st1:state> and spent his teenage years in Venezuela<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>, where his parents worked in social and community development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Christopher M. Adams For the last week or so I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve seen the media, once again, fall \u201chook-line-and-sinker\u201d to the Republican juggernaut of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}