by Zach Bigalke

Created on: November 03, 2008

From the alderman of a city ward to the county legislators at state capitols across the country to the candidates for the presidency of the United States, one of the seminal tenets of representative democracy is that those who represent are beholden to the wishes of their constituency. As the 2008 election cycle draws near its momentous close, television advertising ramps up to a fever pitch. Voters are inundated with a range of ads both seemingly benign and openly malevolent toward opposition candidates. Debates are conducted with little input; candidates come off sounding largely polished, already privy to everything which could possibly come up in the questioning. That minority of citizens which have not become apathetic to the entire political process will enter voting booths with little more than a donkey or an elephant guiding their decisions.

As our society migrates away from interpersonal relations, the entire concept of a press conference becomes antiquated in many American minds. Indeed, with people looking increasingly toward alternative news sources for their information, the means by which press conferences are run HAVE largely become antiquated. The past several decades, which have seen a technological boom which allows people to look farther and wider across the journalistic spectrum to keep up to date on current events, have coincided with the consolidation of major media outlets. Even as more people turn to a broader variety of media in the Internet age, the reporting pool which covers our elections and gains admission into press conferences remains a largely insular world.

Because of this, press conferences have become little more than sounding boards where the message often comes off as mere propaganda. But press conferences and forums which allow both the media and the public to question candidates running for elected office - and who will ostensibly represent their interests - are essential to promote healthy democracy.

When a public is forced to depend on the sound bites propagated by both sides campaigning for an office, they will invariably fail to grasp the full political philosophy upon which a candidate stands. People are reduced to voting for caricatures when the campaign process devolves into a matter of competing media quotations and a laundry list of misrepresented votes from previous elected posts. The polarization of politics leads to a system whereby a person is reduced to checking off on a candidate not because of the platform

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