Page 129 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

118 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Horton, the black murderer from Massachusetts who, freed on a routine
prison furlough, committed a brutal rape and was widely advertised by
the Republicans as a definitive product of Democratic policies (despite
the fact that, as Democratic ads belatedly pointed out, Federal furloughs
issued routinely under Reagan’s administration had freed still more
murderers to murder again); the ill-at-ease face of Michael Dukakis in
an oversized helmet as he drove a tank on a campaign stop designed to
make him look like the kind of guy who would be comfortable driving a
tank, and which succeeded in making him look like precisely the kind
of guy who had never before set foot in a tank and who really thought
the exercise ridiculous. The question I want to raise is whether these
sorts of ads and news stories have caused democratic politics to explode.
Although I pose the question in an extreme form, it is hardly alien to
1988’s endless campaign journalism. Indeed, the journalists were
obsessed with the question whether media images had become the
campaign, and if so, whose fault that was. That obsession is itself worth
scrutiny. But consider first the coverage itself. According to the most
relentless of studies as well as the evidence of the senses, the main
mode of campaign journalism is the horse-race story. Here is that
preoccupation—indeed, enchantment—with means characteristic of a
society which is competitive, bureaucratic, professional and
technological all at once. The big questions of the campaign, in poll and
story, are Who’s ahead? Who’s falling behind? Who’s gaining?
This is an observation only a fool would deny. I recall a conversation
with a network correspondent in 1980. I criticized the horse-race
coverage of the primaries. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ve been trying to
figure out what we can do differently. We haven’t been able to figure it
out.’ To a great though not universal extent, the media still haven’t.
They can’t. The popularity of unexamined military and sports
metaphors like ‘campaign’ and ‘race’ shows how deep the addiction
runs. This is a success culture bedazzled by sports statistics and empty
of criteria for value other than numbers to answer the question, ‘How am
I doing?’ Journalists compete, news organizations compete—the
channeled aggression of the race is what makes their blood run. In the
absence of a vital polis, they take polls.
By 1988, the obsession had reached new heights, or depths: one
night, ABC News devoted fourteen minutes, almost two-thirds of the
news section of the newscast, to a poll—a bigger bloc by far than any
issue. In a perverse way, the journalists’ fancy for polls is a stratagem
directed toward mastery. Here at least is something they know how to
do, something they can be good at without defying their starting