Is all this publicity of the 2008 Presidential Campaign good for America, or much less the electoral institution every four years? After watching what seemed like the 100th presidential primary debate Wednesday evening, I started wondering whether the saturation of media markets with 24-hour news on every candidate’s most mundane move is really beneficial to the American public.
People would assume that this saturation is good. Besides, isn’t one of the most important aspects of voting understanding exactly what you are vote for? With this saturation and all the information readily available, there is almost no way unless you’re living under a rock that you won’t find out something about each and every candidate that could help you reach a decision.
For those who want more, information is available on hundreds of Web sites, blogs, videos and other forms of media as accessible as turning on the TV or surfing the Internet. The constant coverage should encourage transparency in the process and a complete shakedown of each candidate. Transparency is obviously good because we want open, honest and ethical people leading our nation.
But is all this attention good for the process as a whole?
Personally, when I turn on the news and see coverage of the election, I find it hard to take seriously when the next story on the station is coverage of Britney Spears’ custody battle with Kevin Federline. With all this attention, we’ve bastardized the process and turned it into another component of pop culture.
Yet the irony of it all is that the demographic pop culture stereotypically targets — 18 to 24 year-olds — continually provides the lowest voter turnout of all age demographics, as measured at 47 percent in 2004. Another correlation I noticed was a steady decline in overall voter turnout from 1960 to 2004. Overall voter turnout has steadily dropped from 63 percent in 1960, before the era of the Internet and 24-hour cable news networks, to 55 percent in 2004, during the era of immediate information.
Through the attempt to provide constant coverage of the election, the media have done two things: created a more informed voting bloc and created a more disillusioned group that stays away from the polls.
So therein lies the question. Is the constant information and pop culture-style coverage of the election good for the overall turnout for elections? The media have to come up with a better way to present this information to the public. I believe that their attempts to inform the public are noble and good, but the way they do it sacrifices the dignity and respect of the election. As it stands now, this attempt to make it fit into the pop culture attitude is doing nothing but harming the electoral process.
What do you think of the way the news is covering the current presidential election? E-mail your comments to [email protected].
