Dhadwal is a fourth-year political science student with a minor
in Chicana/o studies.
By Andy Dhadwal
If there is any truth to the statement that ignorance is bliss,
then the mainstream American news media has made this country a
proverbial paradise. While our newspapers, magazines and television
programs are credited and assumed to be informational tools, in
reference to the political institutions of our nation, they often
do more to cloak the issues pertinent to the majority of the public
rather than to expose them.
What we see on the evening news is the perspective of those in
political and economic power who have interests in concealing facts
that would threaten the status quo. In this age of the rhetorical,
media-run election the issue of media bias takes on new importance
as it has new and profound implications on the current and future
state of American democracy.
This fact is no more prominently illustrated than in the
mainstream news media’s recent coverage of the Gore/Bush
election fiasco. Hanging chads and butterfly ballots topped the
evening news, while questions regarding the legitimacy of the
election results and the electoral system stayed in the
background.
The events surrounding the election confusion indicate that
something other than mere coincidences were responsible for the
final results; but, this fact often remains unreported by the
traditional mainstream news sources. First of all, the fraternal
relationship between the presidential candidate and the governor of
Florida cannot be overlooked, and when combined with
Florida’s history of consistently being among the earliest
states to submit its polling results, more cause for question
arises.
Illustration by ZACH LOPEZ/Daily Bruin A second peculiarity is
that the Bushes, upon hearing the first election results in Florida
(in Gore’s favor) calmly got up in the middle of their family
dinner and made a trip, not to the governor’s mansion where a
concession speech would be made, but to Jeb Bush’s hotel room
where a phone call to Florida was made. Within a few hours
Florida’s results were announced in Bush’s favor.
And what about reports of racially biased police arrests and
detainment of African Americans and Latinos in Florida and other
southern states? In Florida, eight out of 10 people stopped for
traffic violations on election day were black or Latino. This
statistical figure, when compared to the proportion of
Florida’s minority population and to the fact that such
disproportionate figures were previously unheard of in the state
except for on this day, points to more than simple coincidence.
Can these occurrences be magnificent strings of coincidence that
just happened to favor one candidate over the other? Maybe so, but
the public was never given an opportunity to seriously consider
this question due to the biases in the media’s coverage.
Besides the election results, the issue of the election process
and how it was handled must be considered as well. The exclusion of
Ralph Nader from the presidential debates is an example of blatant
censorship and an undermining of the democratic process. It was in
effect an endorsement and defense of the “lesser of two
evils” electoral system that exists in the nation.
The point of these examples is not to rehash questions regarding
the election and its results, but rather to point out how the media
strategically neglects to report certain facts that lead to
important questions regarding the current nature of American
democracy. Such crucial questions must be asked and criticisms made
if our democratic system is to be held accountable to the public
instead of simply to the corporate will.
When Americans are forced to choose between two candidates who
are both extremely moderate caterers to the corporate and
upper-class interests of America, we must ask: are we really given
a choice? For example, IBM donated the maximum possible amount to
both the Republican and the Democratic candidate’s campaigns.
Ultimately, the “democratic” choice that the public is
left with is between two differently classified parties, both of
which answer to the same corporate masters. Is this really
democratic?
The interests of the majority of the public regarding labor,
civil rights and social welfare issues (among others) are at odds
with the interests of the corporations and interest groups that
fund the political candidates’ campaigns and the media
budget. But the funding power that corporate and interest group
America have over politicians and the media affords it
disproportionate influence over the political candidates and the
media conglomerates that frame election coverage.
The questions to ask here are several: are the principles of
democracy being truly realized when the public is strategically
misinformed by the media? Does the public have an actual freedom to
choose when the information and choices available are limited by
corporate and interest group funding in the media and politics?
Should corporate and interest group influence over the media ever
be substantial enough to outweigh the influence of the public will?
Finally, is it the responsibility of the media to protect the
status quo at the expense of democracy, or to give the public the
tools and information to hold the representative bodies and
individuals of our nation accountable to the public?
As it exists today, the mainstream news media in America remains
a business, and as such, it remains more loyal to the profit margin
than to the public. Therefore, it remains the responsibility of the
public to not only uncover the unreported truths, but more
importantly, to ask why and in whose interests such truths have
been concealed in the first place.