News media fails to probe candidates on the issues
Posted on April 7, 2008
Presidential election years used to rile me up like no other. I loved turning on the TV and hearing the latest campaign updates: who said what, who was leading in the polls and so on. But college has been a huge wake-up call for me, as I have now realized that this country’s media is so devoid of constructive political dialogue that we viewers wouldn’t understand real issues if they hit us in the face.
We all know that sensationalism sells. Gossip, “gotcha!” moments and controversy bring in the highest ratings and therefore, they also bring in the most airtime. The recent debacle surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments has resulted in ridiculous amounts of coverage, as has Hillary Clinton’s gaff regarding the Bosnia sniper incident. The media also got a kick out of John McCain’s “Bomb Iran” musical number a few months ago.
Currently, the almighty delegate count seems to be dominating political journalism. I’ve never been good at math, but just from watching CNN this past month I think I’ve learned how to do 50 calculus equations to determine if Hillary Clinton can win the Democratic nomination. I’ve also learned that Barack Obama is “not black enough” for some people and that John McCain is old.
I consider myself an informed citizen, but I have no idea how any of those facts would help me decide which candidate is best to lead America for the next four years. I know how much money the candidates should raise, what groups they should target, what they should say, what questions they should avoid, how many delegates they have and whose endorsements they need in order to win.
The media tell us exactly how each candidate can get to the White House, but we have no idea what the candidates would do once they got there.
Bad things happen when we lose sight of the point of politics. When we forsake issue debate in favor of discussing the Clintons’ most recent tax returns (yes, that’s all over MSNBC), we do ourselves great harm. If the stock market crashed or we went to war with Iran under a Clinton presidency, would the American public really be clamoring for a public review of her charitable contributions?
When the media focus only on delegate counts, tax records, controversies and who insulted whom, we allow the candidates’ platforms to slide under the radar.
People aren’t asking tough questions about John McCain’s foreign policy because they’re too busy following Obama around rural Pennsylvania. People aren’t asking Obama what “Yes We Can!” really means because they’re having too much fun watching his charisma kill Clinton’s hopes for the presidency. People aren’t asking Clinton how she would stimulate the economy because we’re too preoccupied with her tax returns.
One of our biggest problems is that rather than going directly to the candidates to discuss the issues, our media relies on a plethora of talking heads. Networks will broadcast snippets of candidates’ speeches about healthcare, the war in Iraq, social security or other issues — but just when the candidate starts to get to the meat of the topic, Chris Matthews breaks in and introduces five other “analysts” to discuss the implications of Obama’s skin color.
Once again, the media allows the candidates to escape actual discourse. The candidates won’t feel the need to talk about the issues if the media won’t cover the issues anyway. No doubt McCain, Obama and Clinton realize that personal attacks and simplistic slogans like “We need change!” are the only sound bites that make the nightly news. Even then, the only repercussion of those sound bites is a bunch of old bald guys arguing about delegates and polls.
No one is asking the candidates to fully explain their positions to the American people, and the candidates definitely aren’t offering.
I urge you to do some of your own digging, since the media obviously has no intention of doing it for you. Otherwise we’ll have a country voting based on Hillary Clinton’s tax returns and the salaries of John McCain’s political aides. And don’t lose sleep at night worrying about the delegate count; the major networks are doing that for you.
Kathryn Manning is a senior history and political science major.
