FREE ESSAY ON MEDIA DISGRACE

MEDIA DISGRACE

More coverage than O.J. More coverage than Diana. More than Oklahoma City, and more
coverage than even Monica Lewinsky. You guessed it, Election 2000, and the media loved
every minute of it. Savoring the proverbial field-day, U.S. journalists greatly assisted
in dividing the country, destroying the people's respect for the American legal system,
embarrassing the world's superpower, and simply annoying the crap out of everyone. To put
it simply, the media didn't do it's job, especially when it came to the really focal
points of the recent election: pre-election coverage, election-night coverage, and
post-election coverage including the Florida recount.
In order to obtain more ground to cover, the media started off by telling the people just
how different the two major candidates were (always relishing partisanship), when in
truth, they aren't that polarized. Of course, they have vaguely different views on how to
accomplish certain goals, but for the most part, those goals are the same. It's the
usual, strengthen our economy, preserve social security, improve education, yada yada
yada; the candidates just occasionally differ on how to do so -- leading to an enduring
joke about the American people not really wanting either candidate. 
The candidate's are also similar in that they both exaggerated and skirted around lying
in pre-election campaigning. The media compounded these problems by not being able to
decide whether to be responsible enough to analyze these campaign claims and when they
half-heartedly made any attempts they were often off the mark. Unfortunately, we a
tendency to remember the few hits and forget the innumerable misses. For example, the
media showed a keen interest in Gore's recounting the story of a Sarasota, Florida
student who was forced to stand in her science class due to overcrowding. While many
reports chalked it up as another Gore embellishment, few journalists acknowledged that
the story was essentially accurate, and could have been easily confirmed through a local
newspaper. In contrast, the media seem less interested in Gore's distortions when they
are directly connected to public policy issues. During the second debate, Gore claimed
that for 24 years I have never been afraid to take on the big drug companies. In fact,
one of the first major issues of the campaign involved Gore's efforts on behalf of drug
companies to get South Africa to stop manufacturing affordable versions of patented AIDS
drugs-- a life-saving move that is allowed under international trade laws, but would have
threatened pharmaceutical industry profits. In contrast, media seemed uninterested in
Bush's distortions across the board, whether the issue was Bush's personal record or
important policy matters. In the second debate, Bush claimed that We spend $4.7 billion a
year on the uninsured in the state of Texas. But we turns out not to mean his state
government-- it means anyone within the boundaries of Texas, including federal government
officials. The state of Texas actually spends less than $1 billion on the uninsured, with
the rest of Bush's figure coming from private, local and federal spending. Also not
caught by the media, the discrepancy of Bush touting his support for a patients' bill of
rights in the third debate. Bush said: As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and
Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of
rights through. In fact, Governor Bush vetoed the Patients' Bill of Rights the Texas
State Legislature passed in 1995. When it was passed again in 1997, the bill's support
was strong enough to withstand his threatened veto. 
Moreover, of course, neither Gore or Bush is trustworthy-- in the sense that their
statements should not be taken on trust, but the media failed to take note of that when
reporting campaign claims. Nor should reporters accept what candidates say without doing
the essential journalistic task of checking the facts. But all too often, media behave as
though applying skepticism to a politician's words is something that one does only in
unusual circumstances. This pre-election irresponsibility threw everything off-kilter
and, simply, it got even worse. 
In a performance that will live in journalistic infamy, television's most famous news
personalities subjected the nation to an emotional, unnecessary, and irresponsible roller
coaster ride election day. The farce that unfolded on television on election night
revealed that, as much as the networks may try to pitch themselves as experienced and
professional news organizations, they are anything but. Early Tuesday evening, Dan Rather
invited viewers to join CBS News for what the record shows over the years has been the
most accurate presidential election night coverage. Later, in primetime, Rather assured
his audience, if we say somebody's carried the state, you can take that to the bank.
Instead, did the national media help put us in Palm Beach Punch-Card Hell with their
irresistible urge to call the state for Gore ten minutes before the polls even closed on
the Panhandle? Did the media's biased bad manners discourage last-minute Bush votes? And
why did the networks lunge to call victorious states for Gore at the top of the hour,
while eventual Bush states sat colorless for hours on end? These questions can be
answered only with speculation about media's political bias and Gore-prioritized agenda
setting. Yale professor John Lott estimated that 10,000 voters in the Florida panhandle
could have been discouraged from voting by the networks' premature Goregasm in Florida.
The moderate Republican Leadership Council reported it found 2,380 voters, in those ten
Panhandle counties, who were discouraged by the network calls. David Eisenhower of the
University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center found a curious pattern of networks calling
Gore states quickly, but Bush states slowly. Take the Florida call and compare it to
Alabama, which Bush won by 15 points, yet took almost a half an hour to color in for
Bush, and the people noticed these discrepancies. Asked in a CNN/Time poll not long after
the election, Did the media act responsibly on election night?, 79 percent said 'no' , 17
percent replied 'yes' -- CBS News anchor Dan Rather claimed: I would rather walk through
a furnace in a gasoline suit than be inaccurate about anything. Rather must have a lot of
burned skin, but he and other important media figures continued to add fuel to the fire
during the post-election or Florida recount coverage.
Bordering on pop culture, the phrase "The Florida Recount" has been branded into the
minds of almost every American. We still hear the now old catch-phrase "I'd like a
recount". Well, we can levy a sizeable portion of the blame on the media for all those
bad jokes, because rather than allow their mistakes to temper the feeding frenzy, they
continued to add fuel to the fire. Bold post-election headlines, including "The Florida
Circus: Election by Lawsuit", "Gore's Last Stand", and "537", enthralled American readers
to the point where it snowballed and the inevitable occurred: we stopped caring. We
became so agitated and impatient that we stopped caring whom the most powerful man in the
world would be. It is amazing to hear people exclaim "I don't care who the next president
is, I just wish they'd pick someone". Of course you care! Or at least you should. But,
not surprisingly, the media exerted its particular talent to sow antipathy amongst the
American people, and embarrassing scorn around the world. That issue, upon which the fate
of the election hung, was too important to be reported in terms of partisan charges and
counter-charges. Yet this is how the issue has been covered in the media, particularly on
the network newscasts. Despite pledges to cut through all the smoke and spin television
coverage did not do so. There was very little discussion of the core issue of the
recount-- whether hand counts or machine counts are the most accurate method of gauging
the will of the electorate. Coverage that relied on language like score one for the
Democrats did a disservice to viewers, not only in reference to the recount by the
election as a whole. The media failed to satisfactorily perform their duties this
election, if anything they compounded upon the chaos.
Now, solutions to these problems aren't as straightforward as the media is. However, a
positive outcome of this election might be the wonders of hindsight, in both the media
and the public. On a whole, Americans are more aware now of the power of the media and
it's ability in shaping the opinions of millions of Americans. That power needs to be
handled with more respect and more responsibility because independent, aggressive and
critical media are essential to an informed democracy. Maybe the ignominy won't have been
forgotten by the time we realize the error of our ways, and, hopefully, put a stop to
this perpetuation of journalistic malpractice, otherwise, that elections only come every
four years is the only thing we'll have to be thankful for.