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Four Prescriptions For An Ailing Body Politic
The TV News should be non-profit subdivisions of their networks in return for airways access for the Corporate Parent.
For those readers who did not grow up in the “golden age” of clear, useful, unadorned “news” reporting, delivered by composed and dignified news-people like Huntley and Brinkley, Edward R. Murrow, and Walter Cronkite, it might be useful to know that there was once a time in America when the news hour was nearly unequivocally trusted. When Walter Cronkite soured on the Vietnam War, so did the Nation. Each network news division was equivalent to the elegant hood-ornament of a stately car symbolizing the quality and probity of their corporate parents. In the 1960s, William Paley, Chairman of CBS, once addressed his news division and told them not to worry about money saying, “I have Jack Benny to make money.” In that day and age, the Church of the news was safely separated from the State of entertainment.
Of course there was never a perfect America without conflict and compromise, but generally the news was a sacred trust, which most people understood to be the critical link in a functioning democracy. Indeed, how could an uneducated or misinformed public possibly understand public policy or discriminate which candidates were sincere and which were lying and posturing if they did not understand the issues? However, in the 1970s and ‘80s those once sacred barriers eroded and collapsed.
The unexpected success of “60 Minutes” changed everything, and most pertinently it changed the nature of American news broadcasts into entertainment-disguised-as news. The public’s need-to-know was not a factor in magazine reporting on events that might be years old. In those decades, facing more competition, networks now demanded that news shows contribute to their own support and, as a consequence, Donald Trump is President. A leap, yes, but which only asserts that news networks forced to turn profits, inevitably (and unerringly) lower the bar to concentrate on ‘drama,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘suspense’—if it bleeds, it leads— stories with sure-fire hooks to grab distracted and over stimulated eyeballs. The elevated audience numbers are used to wrest higher prices for ad-time from and it is precisely this dynamic that generated the vast (and free) amounts of airtime for Donald Trump that supported his run for President. The obvious culpability of the news media in his victory accounts for the nearly hysterical non-stop criticism, of Donald Trump from all those bright young talking heads which serves the purpose of making him the only story in the news and keeping a malignant narcissist in the seat of American power.
What Is To Be Done?
It’s in the deepest, long-term interest of the American people to have news they need to know presented in the most objective, least hysterical manner possible. It seems fair to say that given it’s critical nature, the People might bear the burden of the cost by allowing networks to make their news divisions non-profits (and less ad-saturated) and giving them a tax break for doing this, It might be one way for the People to reclaim some modicum of control over their own airwaves. It would certainly contribute to less rapid-fire, opinion-heavy dialogue between men and women who appear consistently shocked-by-the-ordinary.
PUBLIC FUNDING OF ELECTIONS
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If calm, objective news reporting contributes to the health and well-being of the body politic and for that reason could be supported by taxpayers, (as we support public schools), it certainly follows that political elections ought to be paid for by tax-payers, weaning candidates’ loyalty from the 1/10th of 1% currently paying for the majority of both campaigns. The responsibility of candidates in today’s system has been reduced to simply getting elected and winning the keys to the public treasury. Then, they can begin their “real work” of repaying their donors with invisible (to the public) tax law advantages. To this end they compete to run focus groups and discover the buzzwords and issues that will get them to Washington. The endless political reporting of our National news media fills their revenue buckets, but tells us very little besides the drama of the horse race and that polls can be constructed around anything. During our endless election season, it becomes virtually impossible for Americans to get in-depth news reporting on any global events that should concern them, and when they do it is once again reformulated as entertainment-disguised-as-news.
In most European countries each candidate is given the same amount of money for their campaign, from government coffers. For that money, they appear on every television network in unstructured debates (no minders, handlers, they can ask one another questions). The public watches for six weeks and three weeks before elections all polling ceases. Nearly 70% of Europeans vote as opposed to the paltry 55.5% that voted in 2016, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. It does make one wonder how many of the outraged Americans marching in the streets actually vote.
If our Representatives and Senators require more money, let’s raise their salaries and free them from the rounds of endless begging. But then, while they’re in office we should prohibit them from accepting a candy-bar, tickets, free flights, extravagant speaking fees, free junkets and every other form of barely disguised bribery. Let us prohibit them from working for any corporation or agency they ever supervised for 5-8 years, so that their first post-government employment is not the pay-off for years of Congressional favors. [1] If elected representatives work for the people, WE should pay them.
THE END OF GERRYMANDERING
Both Democrats and Republicans of our professional political class have colluded in common interest to rig election districts to include only their own party members of the same political spectrum. It protects reelection for over 90% of incumbents— a reelection rate rivaled by the Soviet Union. We need to insure that voting districts resemble as closely as possible the makeup and diversity of the American public so that candidates are forced to seek compromise, rather than preach to the choir. What incentive to compromise is there for a candidate preaching only to their choir? It makes ALL voices more radical and obdurate and has produced the vitriolic atmosphere corroding our political process.
Furthermore, as a Nation, it is an urgent need to make it simpler and cheaper for candidates to qualify when seeking public office—say $1,000 filing fee and 500 names on a petition? That would bring new ideas, fresh faces, and more economically diverse souls into the political dialogue. Of course many would shake out, and there would be the usual assortment of wing-nuts and dim-bulbs, but we have them anyway, they’re just better dressed. Besides, that’s what primaries are for.
Alternative voting systems exist and we should (perhaps on the news) discuss and analyze Single Transferable Vote, the Borda Count, Cumulative Voting and several others which offer voters either a number of votes to cast for different candidates, or rank their preferences so that if their first choice fails, their second might win— are more democratic than our current system and prevent minority populations from being kept consistently out of power. Some alteration would also diversify and simplify run-offs and primaries. They each have flaws (as does our own system) but since our last two Presidential elections did not represent the will of the majority, discussion of how we vote and how we protect the integrity of the vote are overdue.
Prohibiting corporations from Spending Their Treasure Influencing Public Policy for the Benefit of their Shareholders.
Any employee of a corporation who is an American citizen is free to vote and contribute to any candidate. Why, however, do we allow Corporations (not humans) to dedicate their treasure to alter public policy to serve the interests of their shareholders? It may be consistent with their fiduciary responsibilities to investors, but it plays hell with public life when a corporation can evade their responsibility, fiscal and social, money by dumping poisons in the creeks, destroying public watersheds by fracking, adding potentially dangerous substances to food, and filling in valleys with mountain tops that block corporate access to coal-seams. One might also mention blocking investment in public water systems so that people will have little option but to buy corporate plastic-wrapped water (and consumers will remain exempted from responsibility for dealing with the land-fill and ocean-clotting waste.) Obviously this has come to pass because our addiction to privatized elections skewed the advantage to those with the most money. Cutting the Gordian knot of this disenfranchisement of the majority by Federal funding of elections might solve myriad problems.
Obviously, there is no system to clever that clever humans cannot foil it. Nothing will ever buy us perfections, but that does not mean that we cannot analyze the weak-joints, and design-flaws of our democratic system and struggle to correct them and make it operate more perfectly. Why not try? Only those currently benefitting from such flaws will be opposed.
[1] When Benazir Bhutto was self-righteously attacked by our news media for corruption in her home country of Pakistan, her cool rejoinder was sliced to the bone. In so many words she said, “In Pakistan we take money at the beginning of a deal. In America, you take it at the end.”