Media to blame for lack of voter interest

by Michelle Singer
Daily Bruin

University of California-Los Angeles (U-WIRE) — The voters blame the politicians. The politicians blame the voters. Nobody takes responsibility for the uninformed, uninterested population. And nobody blames what may be the largest source of voter ignorance yet: the media.

A joint study completed this fall by USC and the University of Washington analyzed 2,454 local news broadcasts to find out how much election coverage they provided. The astonishing results were that in an election year, with both the House and the Senate up for grabs, over half of the broadcasts carried no election news.

During the broadcasts that did cover campaigns, the average story was 80.5 seconds long. Less than 20 percent of those stories contained any sound bites, and the average sound bite was only 9.5 seconds long.

That's about long enough for someone to say: “I support (insert issue here) because it is important to the (insert interest group here) and to Americans that (said issue) is passed on a bipartisan basis.”

What can a citizen learn from that?

No wonder politicians run more and more campaign ads; it’s the only way they can get their message across. They have learned how to use — and abuse — the media through advertisements. They pour precious money into running thousands of campaign commercials, which are then repeated to instill the message in the viewer’s mind.

It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re factual or truth-stretching, whether they’re attack ads or issue-oriented. To the voter, it’s all the same. And to the politician, it is propaganda at its best: “If people see something enough times, they’ll believe it.”

It’s appalling that the news has paid such scant attention to the upcoming pivotal election. But the twisted process that finds politicians grasping for airtime in a television-oriented world that doesn’t pay enough attention to them is what’s really wrong. It’s not that voters don’t want to discuss the issues, it’s that they aren’t able to find a forum for them. Yet.

Campaign finance gurus Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold have teamed up with Sen. Richard Durbin to begin the next phase of their uphill struggle to reform the political process in America.

Their new bill, known as the Political Campaign Broadcast Activity Improvements Act, would require television and radio stations to air at least two hours a week of candidate- or issue-centered programming in the          time period before an election.

This programming would have to be in the form of debates, interviews or something similar. In other words, something substantial that would give viewers (and hopefully voters) a real chance to learn about the candidates.

Some people would of course take issue with the fact that this bill attempts to regulate the media’s ability to choose its own programming — limiting the cherished First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. But this bill would not inhibit that freedom; it would help the media exercise it in ways that would also facilitate another freedom — the right to vote.

Instead of arguing over the lack of separation between politics and the media, the focus should be put on why politicians are reduced to running their mindless ads in the first place.

McCain said it best, “By increasing the flow of political information, free air time can better inform the public about candidates and invite viewers to become more engaged in their government by learning more about the individuals seeking to represent them.”

It’s too bad McCain’s argument won’t show up on any local news broadcasts — it’s too long for them to bother.