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| Yes | 83% | 252 votes | Total: 305 votes | |
| No | 17% | 53 votes |
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Add to FavoritesIn the midst of information overload, we seem to be suffering from a dearth of information in this Presidential election cycle. All we seem to be able to access is canned, pre-programmed questions and incomplete answers that leave the voter puzzled and annoyed. If we ever hope to have a fully-informed electorate, we must devise a better method of ferreting out the complete answers to questions of policy, budget and philosophy. Both campaign staff and the media appear to be complicit in maintaining this control over information, much to the frustration of the voters.
Early in this election cycle, when minor candidates attempted to bring an issue they felt strongly about to the fore, they-and we-were sternly told, "That is not an issue". They were then prevented from getting their solutions, or a comparison of solutions, before the people. Control of the issues is as unfair as control of the candidates we are allowed to hear. It is un-American and an affront to the democratic process we hold so dear. The pretense that issues are not issues and candidates are not "viable" is an obvious attempt at collusion by the major parties and the media to control access to information and prevent the electorate from making an informed choice. The People are angry-and they have every right to be.
Carefully choreographed speeches and "debates" are fine-they all have their place. But, the actual questions the voters want answered are nowhere on the agenda. Deciding what the issues will be is not the job of either the candidates or the media. This is the natural purview of the voter-only the voter knows what his concerns are. We now are treated to "town hall"-type meetings in which all questions must be approved in advance. Those that touch on highly partisan issues and on areas the candidates wish to keep hidden are never allowed to be asked. The campaign format must be changed to allow the public unfettered access to answers from candidates-answers to the questions THEY want answered.
For several years, NAFTA and world trade and its relationship to job loss have been of major concern to middle America. And, for the same number of years, we have been informed that it is "not an issue"! Obviously, it IS an issue-and no candidate who expects our votes should be allowed to weasel out of the tough questions the voters want answered. When major candidates refuse to talk about important issues, and media limits our access to candidates who ARE willing to talk about these same issues, we have what amounts to a sham election process. In this, I must fault the media more so than the major parties as media has the final approval of which candidates get coverage. The arrogance of the partisan politics so evident in most major media must be balanced somewhere; there must be open and copious access to ALL candidates for major and minor office in order to assure free elections. Only an informed electorate can make a knowledgeable decision.
For over a year, as prices rose and incomes fell, we were told by both major parties that the economy was "not an issue". Obviously what the voters saw as a major issue truly was major-and we are reaping the unfair burdens of this non-issue in our daily lives. Because of this, we have been force-fed a solution that penalizes the common man while removing a large portion of our sovereign rights, likely forever. If better solutions had been allowed before the people in a timely manner by other candidates, perhaps the electorate would have had stronger grounds on which to demand a better solution. Likewise, we have been prevented from asking about what plans are in the offing to control illegal immigration as we see our lives being impacted by it in many ways. Again, we are told it is "not an issue". In both of these examples, the will of the voters are being circumvented via having our only allowed choices refuse to discuss the issues in depth, and where both candidates secretly hold very similar-and unacceptable- views. We are right to fear the outcome as both major Presidential candidates appear to hold views that conflict dynamically with that of the majority of Americans. Certainly, whoever is elected will profess a mandate from the people to do what he intended to do anyway, simply by virtue of his election. And he will be elected simply because we were not offered a true choice. Our information has been limited. None are allowed to ask the right questions.
A free press is the linchpin of a free people. It appears we have lost access to free and non-partisan media coverage. Because of this, our election processes, at least for the Presidential election have been taken from us. Our current election choices differ from the typical communist one candidate/you must vote for me' elective farce only in that we have two candidates with minor differences and who differ not at all on major "non-issues" that determine our future and that of our children and grandchildren. This could never have happened without the active collusion of the major media, with which our access to candidates was un-Constitutionally limited. The Republic will be lost because of non-issues. No one except the media is in a position to ask the questions we want answered-and they won't ask them.
Learn more about this author, Linda Sunkle-Pierucki.
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No
One of the most dangerous ideas to come with the invention of the printing press is that a writer has an absolute right to know everything about everybody. When books were difficult to reproduce this tendency was kept under control, and the reading public was only assaulted occasionally by mindless gossip diguised as "investigative journalism." Procopius' "Secret History," composed of every bit of prurient tripe that came the author's way, is a case in point. With the explosion of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio, television and, finally, the internet, the alleged right to know everything has spiraled out of control.
Journalists like to think of themselves as the "Fourth Estate" (without most of them knowing what an "estate" is), another branch of government that is unaccountable to anyone except their own whim and advertisers in whatever medium they infest. An "estate," however, was not a branch of the government, but a division of the legislature in France. The legislature as a whole was the "General Estates," or the three groups representing the common people, the nobility, and the Church. By positing journalism as a "Fourth Estate," the verbal papparazzi claim the right to representation on their own account, not on behalf of any social group or division.
That being said, the press does serve a useful purpose, although not quite an inflated one as the press itself would have us believe. William Randolph Hearst might disagree (in fact, he did), but the job of the press is not to create the news, but to report events. To demand that candidates for public office be required to hold press conferences (especially as a news event in and of themselves) is a form of creating the news, not reporting it, particularly as the favorite game is to try and trick the candidate(s) into saying something ill-considered or stupid that can be blown out of proportion, and giving the esteemed representatives of the press an ego boost for having "uncovered" yet another manufactured scandal.
The only thing worse than the coercive power that the press wields (which requiring government candidates to hold press conferences and answer questions from the media and the public would only increase ... and when was the last time a member of the public without press credentials was permitted to ask questions in a press conference, or even attend?), is the power that the media have to censor the news to make certain the public sees only what they want to be seen, and think the way the press thinks they should think. Mandating press conferences on the part of candidates for government office is bad - but worse is the power that it has to ensure that legitimate points of view remain unheard. A reporter's chief weapon is not his or her writing or investigative skills, but the ease with which he or she manages to dodge issues, or even corrections of fact that call into question something a reporter has published.
Should government candidates be required to hold press conferences and answer questions from the media and the public? Absolutely not - any more than they should be forbidden to hold press conferences or that the media should silence them in their perverse quest for perfection in everyone but themselves.
Learn more about this author, Michael Greaney.
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