In my
previous post, (“Reality TV Eats American Politics’), I described how the
Republican Presidential campaign has assumed all the theatrics of reality
TV. In thinking further about the role
of television in our civics and politics, I was reminded of what critic and
communications theorist Neil Postman said in the 1980s.
At the time,
another group of proto-reality TV personalities were hitting the airwaves: evangelists
such as Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Robert
Schuller, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and others. A pioneer in the field of Media Ecology,
Postman was frequently asked to comment on the appeal of the bible-thumpers who
were bringing a new combination of fire, brimstone and fundraising into
American living rooms. While he pointed
out that the brand of religion being peddled was second-rate and a disgrace to Judeo-Christian
traditions, Postman said he was not overly concerned about the effect of religion
on TV. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he said that “the danger is not that
religion has become the content of television shows, but that television shows
may become the content of religion.”
Postman’s
prescience is obvious when one looks at what is going on in Mega-Churches and
other religious institutions today, with their mammoth video screens and
emphasis on social media. What I was
trying to get at in my essay was that, in this same way, television has become
the content for politics. The
orientation to ratings and advertising, and the philosophy of dumbing down
information to the lowest common denominator, has permeated the civic
arena. The subtitle of Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death was “Public
Discourse in the Age of Show Business.”
He had no idea how low things would go in the era of Trump and a new
generation of political bible thumpers such as Ted Cruz.
But the Democrats,
while certainly more adult and respectful, are also reduced to sound bites and
personal attacks. Only in comparison to
the idiocy of the Republicans could the debates between Sanders and Clinton be
considered educational, enlightening, or inspirational. The larger problem lies not with the
candidates, but the system they are part of and the failure of the media to
fulfill its duty to expose it rather than facilitate it .
Of course,
one of the reasons this year’s campaigns have been so surprising and entertaining
is that the insurgent campaigns of Trump and Sanders have challenged the party
orthodoxy and hegemony. This would be
all to the good if it weren’t for two factors:
First, the
parties are not independent institutions being guided by political ideology and
competition alone. They are subservient
to the campaign finance system just as much, if not more, than the candidates
(at least some candidates, like Sanders, refuse to take corporate and PAC money). And the parties serve as the primary cog in
the fund-raising machinery, requiring elected officials to spend much, if not
most, of their time fund-raising; funneling money to certain races; and
maintaining the absurd fiction that candidates and PACs do not coordinate their
campaign strategies. It is also worth
noting that over the past couple of decades, the parties and networks have
wrested control of political debates away from the non-partisan League of Women
Voters and other non-partisan, good government groups, with predictable results. The debates can be revealing, but there isn’t
a college debate team that doesn’t put these candidates and the mamby-pamby
moderators to shame.
Second, the
media is not performing its journalistic function of probing and fact-checking. This is obvious when you consider the
now-popular refrain that Trump and Sanders are tapping in to the same well of
anger and disaffection, just from different asides of the well. Perhaps there is some small percentage of
mindlessly angry voters who honestly can’t make up their mind whether to
support the Democratic Socialist Sanders or the neo-fascist Trump, but even
that would be less of an indication of
voter ignorance and more of a reflection on media coverage that treats affords
both candidates roughly the same level of scrutiny and respect, which is to say
almost none at all.
Speaking
recently about the Trump candidacy at a conference of media executives, CBS executive
chairman and CEO Les
Moonves, said "It may not be good for America, but it's good for CBS."
Wow. OK, many Americans
understand the reality of ratings and advertising, but to have the head of a
network admit, without apparent embarrassment, that the quest for profits
completely overrides the obligation of his news organization to ask tough
questions or provide reality-based analysis is astounding and horrifying. Ever since the Communications Act of 1934 established
the system of commercial broadcasting in this country, mainstream media institutions
have had to rely on advertising to pay for news reporting. But we have reached a dangerous tipping point
when the head of a once-respected network shrugs off the fact that what he is broadcasting
is doing real damage to the Republic.
One last
point: if television has had a deleterious effect on public discourse, as Neil
Postman noted more 30 years ago, it is nothing compared to the Internet. All those impacts of TV – the spreading of
false or misleading information, the illusion of audience involvement and
democratization, the emphasis on personality and bombast rather than substance
and logic – are magnified many times over on the Internet, especially social
media. Winston Churchill and Mark Twain
are both credited with saying that a lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth gets its shoes on; in the age of Fox News, Twitter, Instagram, Vice,
and Gawker, lies blanket the world instantly while the truth just sits there,
unreported.
-- Gary Kenton
