by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: February 05, 2008   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

Our primary season is definitely too long these days. We are inundated with opinion, polls, news bytes and endorsements. Every cable news channel feels they must make news' enough to fill at least 15hrs a day with political rhetoric. Candidates spend millions upon millions of dollars clawing their way into the public eye. The process has actually become detrimental to our representative republic.

The danger in this extended and over-hyped extravaganza is that it all detracts from true democratic process: media has taken upon itself to determine the candidates and select the winners. This process has gone on for at least 30 years, but the advent of the dedicated cable news channels has allowed it to become considerably worse. Forty years ago, the American people were bamboozled by the likes of Walter Cronkeit and Eric Sevareid twisting the truth to promote their personal political agendas. When this was exposed, the citizens were shocked, dismayed and rightly felt betrayed. Now, the viewing audience-and that means most of us-naively accept the right of the news stars' to promote their own agenda and don't even question this bending of the truth to achieve political ends. The upshot of forty years of opinion-as-news has resulted in two generations of Americans who no longer appear capable of formulating an opinion of their own based on their own beliefs and value systems: they are incapable of differentiating news from political posturing.

Unfortunately, this over-emphasis on political positions tends to make the voter numb. After endless months and never-ending campaigns, the voter naturally tunes out everything but the carefully-crafted sound byte. And the sound bytes are deceptive, over-simplified and mis-leading. Advertising costs on major media are hugely expensive, forcing candidates with the biggest dollars behind them to the top of the fray. Candidates with better ideas, but less money naturally get less media coverage. The length of the election season' ups the ante in terms of advertising dollars-and dollars garner exposure. This forces less well-financed candidates out of the race before their message can be heard. The force of big dollars tends to buy influence in areas that benefit certain segments of society to the detriment of others. It can safely be said that our top elected officials for the past 20 years have been elected primarily by self-serving business and financial interests to the extent that the harm to the country is now quite evident

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