by Music Gal

Created on: November 07, 2008

Having lived in the USA my entire life, enjoying the inherent freedoms that go along with citizenship here, I find that the easy answer to this question is, "Yes." Citizens have a right to access those who would represent their interest in government; consequently, press conferences and other public forums (such as Townhall Meetings) are the obvious method for such access.

Politicians (aka, Public Servants, paid by the Public) need to have some guidelines on how they present their platform. It seems completely unbalanced when a candidate is allowed to raise several million private-sector dollars so that they can air a glitzy, professional thirty-minute commercial. Surely, we know how and why commercials are made: a lot of money goes into a production in order to sell us something we really either don't need or shouldn't have. Political commercials are no different. In fact, perhaps all ad-spots for candidates should be eliminated. Call me crazy, but I have a difficult time getting anything worthwhile from these ad campaigns.

But for our media to work for us in this arena, we as citizens need to know there is an even playing field for the candidates. If it is skewed in any way, we might as well go back to drawing straws or casting lots to determine who we might vote for. This brings me to my concern over using media as our information mechanism.

There is an inherent problem in the news. For those of us who have not been asleep over the last several dozen years, we have sadly noticed a trend in media representation of truth.' It has become a question of whose truth we will hear as we follow media reporting. In order to get a clear and truthful press conference run by the media, perhaps we need new players to replace the corrupted old-timers.

Take, for instance, the Dan Rather Fiasco of several years ago. Dan Rather's political leanings were no secret to anyone. In fact, he was so inclined to the left that one wondered whether he would topple at times. At any rate, the incident involved several forged letters implicating President Bush, but presented by Rather as fact. Of course, Mr. Rather claimed it was all an innocent mistake and that he was a victim. Yet because Dan Rather had become synonymous with leftist journalism, observers noted Thou protesteth too much, Dan.'

Actually, Dan was a product of his genre. ABC, NBC and CBS have for too long been marred by those who have forgotten that journalism should not be replaced with personal political views. Then, along came FOX.

From its first appearance on the horizon, FOX was the recipient of claims from the TV Trio's collective mouth that FOX was prejudiced. It is interesting that the Mainstream Media Moguls were fearful that another voice be heard. Could it be they had something to hide? For while they claim that FOX and its affiliates are the mouthpiece of the Republican Party, most people will agree that for years, Conservative issues have not held a high position in the news from the Powers that Be-unless, of course, it was negative. Is this the way to fairly present all the news?

Getting back to the question at hand, I submit that the degree to which a nation is informed relies upon the degree of truth in reporting. It may be necessary to reform the Media in order to reach the Nirvana we deserve in political reporting. The press is fundamentally guaranteed their position to impart news to the people. This Right (from that Bill you may remember, from back a few hundred years ago) is paramount to an informed public. If and when we are able to gain a higher level of ethical standards in the Media, the People will truly benefit from political press conferences and forums.

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