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It has become a truth, all but universally acknowledged, that the final Democratic presidential debate, broadcast on the Disney-owned ABC network, was a journalistic disgrace and a political disaster. George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson alternated between the incomprehensibly trivial and the demonstrably false, giving the two-hour session the feel of a two-hour Republican infomercial, but with breaks for genuine corporate sponsors.
Stephanopoulos appeared to have allowed himself to be scripted by Sean Hannity, who earlier that day suggested the scurrilous line of inquiry that sought to tie Barack Obama to terrorist acts of the Weather Underground that took place when the candidate was 8 years old. It was hardly an improvement when, after almost an hour of smarmy and substanceless insinuation, the debate finally turned to real issues. Remarkably, the moderators -- each of whom enjoys compensation in the millions -- chose to berate both candidates for talking too tough to rich folk. "Can you make an absolute, read-my-lips pledge that there will be no tax increases of any kind for anyone earning under $200,000 a year?" Stephanopoulos demanded, this time sounding as if he was scripted by anti-tax evangelist Grover Norquist. Gibson, who had embarrassed himself at an earlier debate with the comically misinformed assertion that two University of New Hampshire faculty members could expect to enjoy an income of $200,000, also went to bat for Republican-style voodoo economics, insisting that the candidates pledge not to raise capital gains taxes. According to the most recent Census data, median income for an American family was $58,526. Just 5 percent of families enjoy annual incomes over $191,060. The average salary for a history professor, according to the American Historical Association, is $76,145. Remember, moreover, that this debate was occurring at a moment when, according to the Pew Research Center and the Gallup organization, "fewer Americans now than at any time in the past half century believe they're moving forward in life." It is, they say, the nation's "most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in nearly half a century of polling."
And no wonder. For working people, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since these data began to be collected more than sixty years ago. In 2005 the wealthiest 1 percent of the country earned 21.2 percent of all income, according to IRS data, while the bottom 50 percent of all Americans earned just 12.8 percent of all income, down from 13.4 percent a year earlier. That the two anchors felt it necessary to focus their questions for the candidates on lifting a tax that hits only the wealthiest 3 or 4 percent of Americans speaks volumes about the detachment of our plutocratic political class. It is perhaps no coincidence that the only support voiced for the wealthy anchors' line of questioning has come from such noted defenders of working-class interests as David Brooks, John Fund, Dorothy Rabinowitz and Lawrence Kudlow.
Of course, the shrinking state of working people's paychecks is not the only issue the networks and their cable affiliates have ignored during the debating season. As Media Matters' Jamison Foser has observed, "Through 17 debates this year, roughly 1,500 questions have been asked of the two parties' presidential candidates. But only a small handful of questions have touched on the candidates' views on executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil liberties concerns.... Only one question about wiretapping. Not a single question about FISA.... Not one question about renditions. The words 'habeas corpus' have not once been spoken by a debate moderator. Candidates have not been asked about telecom liability.... No moderator has asked a single question of a single candidate about whether the president should be able to order the indefinite detention of an American citizen, without charging the prisoner with any crime." (And remember, Disney/ABC used as its backdrop Philadelphia's National Constitution Center.)
What other topics might have proved illuminating in helping voters cast intelligent and informed votes for their next President? I'm sure we can all think of a few. Leaving aside the ones that are already dominating our headlines -- if not our debates -- any number of alarming problems in our society are going entirely unaddressed in this campaign and hence will likely remain so on Inauguration Day 2009. What, for instance, about the crisis in our criminal justice system? The United States jails roughly six times as many of its citizens as do most nations and nearly ten times that of comparable democracies. Do both candidates support the harsh sentencing guidelines and punitive drug laws that lie at the root of this disturbing trend?
And what of the fact that for first time since the flu epidemic of 1918, life expectancy is falling for many women in America, particularly in the Deep South, Appalachia, the Midwest, even parts of Maine? Simultaneously, the World Food Program explains that the worst food crisis since the end of World War II threatens the lives of 20 million of the world's poorest children. Food prices have risen 83 percent in three years, and the price of rice has more than doubled in just the past five weeks. Do the candidates wish to explain what they see as the root of these problems and the scope of responsibilities of the government in seeking to sustain human life here and abroad? Is, for instance, ethanol really the most efficacious use of corn, given its increasing scarcity where it is needed most?
Of course, the very idea of so sober and serious a televised debate in the current corporate media landscape puts one in mind of a feel-good fairy tale. And unfortunately, it's not the kind they specialize in at Disney.
Eric Alterman is a Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also "The Liberal Media" columnist for The Nation, a senior fellow and "Altercation" weblogger for Media Matters for America, (formerly at MSNBC.com) in Washington, DC, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, where he writes and edits the "Think Again" column, a senior fellow (since 1985) at the World Policy Institute at The New School in New York, and a history consultant to HBO Films.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
19 Comments so far
Show All"They know they are being propagandize[d], and just accept it. They don't seem to want to fight back, and just seem to be willing to accept the matrix."
And THAT'S where the real problem lies.
I don't think Americans are naive as some would like us to believe.In a recent poll taken on the MSM,60% of people asked said that they do not believe what they told in MSM.
Personally, what bothers me most, is that people seem not to care.They know they are being propagandize, and just accept it. They don't seem to want to fight back, and just seem to be willing to accept the matrix.
Quality Time: "NPR has become a conservative propaganda outlet;"
Yes, since about 1986 or '87. You noticed twenty years too late.
I don't believe what the MSM says about China, Israel, the weather, US federal government, Britney Spears, etc etc etc.
No one should.
So, if a majority have a negative opinion of the media and discount what they say, then how come that majority tend to believe what that same media says about China?
Just wondering...
The media is as much a joke as the two dominant political parties. Although 82% of readers polled were disinterested in Barbara Walters' past sex life, the media gave it priority over the longshoremen's anti-war strike on May Day. Some didn't mention the latter event at all. What's the use of adding to this list. One consistently gets better and more fair coverage of the world on CBC, CCTV and Aljazeera than one gets from the U.S. media or the BBC. We in the U.S. do not get news - on TV we get biased two-minute blurbs, most of them self-promoting or given to the publicity games of inept entertainers; NPR has become a conservative propaganda outlet; and the newspapers, which do at least cover local matters such as car crashes and house fires, only skim the surfaces of the real issues. There has yet to be an honest debate over the issues of the presidency, and I doubt there will be, not in my time, maybe never, not on the U.S. media.
Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, perhaps Ron Paul (whoever can get 270 electoral college votes) need to be in the debates in the fall. We must agitate, write letters, make phone calls, and start planning NOW. We must get tens of thousands willing to go to where the debates are held and protest if our demands are not met. I don't care about Barack Obama; I care about democracy. The time to start this proces is NOW.
Funny thing. Ralph Nader would agree with a lot of this article. Yet the author is spiteful toward Nader(as is obvious from Alterman's appearances in "An Unreasonable Man") and will, with self-rightous enthusiasm, support Nader's inevitible exclusion from the so-called presidential debates on the Mickey Mouse media(ok, so maybe it could instead be CBS or NBC) that Alterman so rightly complains of.
Common Dreams should be ashamed of itself for printing articles from such a man.
I've decided. I want to be elite -- it is a good thing. It means being exceptional, and at the height of whatever the category is that you are elite at (maybe not at English). I want my president to be elite, because it means that he/she is smarter than most other Americans. I want my president to have had a stellar SAT score. I think I'll have a T-shirt made with the word "elite" in sparkles on the front. I think being elite is something we should be proud to be (aren't the best athletes "elite?"). It's either that or get a T-shirt with "bitter" on it.
I thought you'd like to check out the political allegory of mine that I just found a literary agent for. It's a story set in the context of a teacher discussing with his class all of the evidence that the Bush administration is as corrupt as it is incompetent….and how to rectify the Constitutional crisis we face. It's couched in a discussion about the urgent need to stop abusing Mother Nature. I wrote in 3 dozen celebrities to play the students, so it's very funny despite how infuriating it is. You can read it at www.stoplittering.com/theswitch.htm and, yes, StopLittering.com is my site.
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-E-D-I-A
Kloro:
The only way to keep the internet open and free of Gov restrictions is to take it out of America. If all heck breaks out as some have suggested in different stories I am sure restrictions to the internet and what is said will happen overnight.
Daniel Ellsberg has always been a very smart guy. You don't get to be an analyst for RAND Corp without being a very smart guy.
Mickey Mouse Democratic Party to go with the Mickey Mouse media. Eric "Mickey Mouse" Alterman, the bourgeois Demo shill. Vote for Ralph.
Bernice (3:44) - it's been even longer than that, since the LWV stopped sponsoring debates.
"...Control of the presidential debates has been a ground of struggle for more than two decades. The role was filled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV) civic organization in 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1987, the LWV withdrew from debate sponsorship, in protest of the major party candidates attempting to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_debates#Debate_sponsorship
At my precinct caucus, I submitted a resolution calling for the Democratic Party (with or without other parties)to return intelligence, relevance and fairness to presidential debates by begging (GROVELING, if necessary) the League of Women Voters to again be the sole debate managing-and-moderating resource. I hope it makes its way through our state convention and the Dem national convention.
It has only been since either 2000 or 2004 that the two major parties agreed to let the corporate media be in charge of this extremely important contribution to democratic elections. We have all seen the incredible (but to be expected?) results. Whose idea was that - Karl Rove's?
We need to build the internet as an alternative media. It is worthwhile, to take an example of such work, to write quality material for forums like this one.
America is a fascist state. Anybody with a real chance of changing that is assassinated aka Paul Wellstone or J.F.K. Junior or pushed to the sidelines like Dennis Kucinich. Speak the truth on mainstream media and you're fired at best.
Even that bastion of the "liberal media," NPR, spends far more of it's time drooling over what Obama's pastor said than investigating why we have more empty houses than homeless people.
There are certainly smart Americans but America, as a whole, is a drooling idiot.
Daniel Ellsberg said a while ago, "The coup has already happened". Could he be right? No questions about civil liberties, habeas corpus, FISA, or torture because the corporate candidates and media are in on it? I hope not. I'd prefer it to be just the result of "dumbing-down" and "greeding up". At least, we progressives would still have the same old chance of fighting against those factors. If the plutocrats have achieved complete mastery over manufacturing consent, then it's all over, short of a catastrophe that allows civilization to go to square one.