TV Anchors Shouldn't Lecture About Democracy
By Brent Bozell
TownHall.com
On the Sunday before the
election, CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer
unloaded one of those pompously "progressive"
end-of-show commentaries about how our democracy is
being ruined by money. "The right to vote is our
proudest possession, but the way it has become
debased by money shames us all."
He claimed "Congress hasn't done anything in years,
yet these midterm elections will be the most
expensive in history, just like the last one -- $4
billion this time around. That's billion with a B,"
he lamented. On one level, he is correct. Special
interests are purchasing candidates right and left
and spending money at a dizzying pace. Consider: the
North Carolina Senate campaign this year will cost
more than all candidate spending in the presidential
campaign of 1980.
Still, wouldn't it be fun to throw back in his face
the idea that candidates are buying more and more TV
ads in part because there's less and less TV news
about politics? Who could possibly be an informed
voter if they just limited their diet of political
information to ABC, CBS, and NBC?
People quickly get sick of campaign ads, but they
couldn't accurately claim they're sick of campaign
news stories. The networks have been almost
completely absent in this campaign season, obsessing
over Ebola and violent football players instead of
politics. ABC's "World News Tonight" didn't air a
single story on the midterms from June 11 to Oct.27.
That somehow did not make Schieffer's sermon on the
abuse of the democratic process. Deliberately
refusing to report on a campaign is every bit as
bad, or worse, than overspending on it. .
CNN's Brian Stelter insisted on Sunday that the
dearth of network coverage of this year's midterms
wasn't liberal bias -- avoiding the "bad news" of
Barack Obama's unpopularity and the resulting
decline of the Democrats' appeal. "To me, it's not
about bias, so much as it is about priorities. They
decide to prioritize other stories, in many cases
more entertaining stories, because that's what the
public seems more interested in."
Taking Stelter at his word, we conclude that maybe
democracy is falling apart because the viewers have
voted with their remote controls for "priorities"
other than politics. They want more "news" like this
example from ABC's "Nightline": "Have a sexy selfie?
So do they [celebrities]. From celebs to the new
nude reality stars, it looks like everyone is baring
it all. Why we're stripping down now more than
ever!" That led the show, followed by a segment on
"Royal Baby Mania" in Great Britain.
Sensationalistic garbage is winning. The same is
true of local TV news, which likewise avoids
political news as a ratings loser. Nobody in TV news
is going to force-feed the "vegetables" of politics
to viewers when they can make money focusing on nude
reality stars.
But in Schieffer's estimation, politics has been
ruined by politicians and campaign consultants,
transforming "what used to be an amateur sport into
a professional business where the jobs that
volunteers used to do for free have been outsourced
to professionals. ... And in the process winding up
with an inferior product, a government that remains
in permanent gridlock."
True again -- but hypocritical coming from
Schieffer. TV "news" has been taken over by
accountants and consultants who create an inferior
product where politics is squeezed out in favor of
weather news, tabloid material, and feel-good "human
interest" stories. Anchormen lecture that our
government is broken while they would rather pull
out their own eyebrows than cover a congressional
hearing.
The way these networks largely ignored the 2014
midterms was journalistic malpractice. They are the
last people to lecture America about why our
elections are debased.