by
Rosemary and Walter Brasch
A Facebook video of a woman wearing a
Chewbacca mask and laughing almost hysterically in her car has drawn more than
140 million hits from numerous sources in the past two weeks.
Candace Payne, a 37-year-old mother of two
from Grand Prairie, Texas, has had to hire a publicist to help field the
numerous calls from the media—and, perhaps, wookies who want to have an affair.
Why so many people have been intrigued by
the three-minute video may be because people just need to laugh in a year in
which political hate and the media have come together to annoy anyone with a temperature.
It may also be because the people realize that the media have been abysmal
purveyors of information, and the political conventions and what passes as TV
news have become circuses of mediocrity.
The presidential primaries are filled with
candidates attacking each other, with lies and half-truths fogging the
political debate, all of which are faithfully recorded, published and aired but
seldom evaluated and challenged by the media.
The mass media, especially television,
have devolved from in-depth reporting to entertainment news, erroneously believing
that’s what the public wants and needs. And so, TV leads off with whoever makes
the most outrageous statements, with the opposition countering with even more
outrageous statements. The media focus upon Trump’s outrageous statements and
the protests by Hispanics and liberals at his rallies; for the Democrats, the
media focus upon Hillary Clinton’s scandals, all of which are trumped-up
exaggerations without facts.
Only in the past few months has Sen.
Bernie Sanders received any acknowledgement from the media. Still far behind in
media coverage are Dr. Jill Stein (Green Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian
party), Bob Whitaker (American Freedom party), Darrell Castle (Constitution
party), Gloria LaRiva (Party of Socialism and Liberalism), Jim Hedges
(Prohibition party), Mimi Soltysik (Socialist party), and dozens of other candidates
who have ideas that America should at least have a chance to hear, but are
placed into a black hole by the media, which believe they have no chance to win
the presidency.
Because the media have become the
megaphones for outrageous behavior rather than communicators of information,
Donald Trump has spent very little for print or electronic media
advertising. As long as Trump puts on a
big enough dog-and-pony show, he gets coverage, forcing his rivals to spend ad
dollars to match the free TV time he wallows in. But, after Trump and Clinton
finally secure their parties’ nominations, their campaigns, the Republican and
Democratic National committees, and dozens of Super PACs, all proclaiming they
want to cut governmental programs and spending, by the November 8 general
election will have spent more than $2 billion on political advertising in the
mass media.
The pretend-journalists who cover the
campaign lean to insipid “objectivity,” afraid to challenge the candidates and
terrified of delving into substantive issues. Many just don’t have the
intellectual depth to know enough to challenge the lies and half-truths, so
they lob easy questions at the candidates and then believe that by tossing
bland questions to the public, they are getting “the pulse of the people” who
fulfill the media expectations by responding with equally useless answers—“Uh,
like, I kinda like him [or her] because he [or she] says what I believe and
what I, y’know, want to hear.”
For most reporters and their editors,
there is the fear that if they get too intellectual, if they challenge the
candidates, those candidates will not grant them access while their audience
tunes them out, preferring the reality entertainment that now passes as
political coverage. It is a reality where a woman in a Chewbacca mask makes
more sense than the political candidates and the news media that cover them.
[Rosemary
Brasch is a former secretary, labor union grievance officer, and instructor of
labor studies at Penn State and UMass. Walter Brasch is an award-winning
journalist, professor emeritus from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher
Education, and author of 20 books; his latest one is Fracking America.]
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