American Democracy and Journalism Ethics Face Scrutiny

The very bru­tal pol­i­tics to elect the next U.S. pres­i­dent has left mil­lions of peo­ple in the U.S. and around the world spelled bound. It’s been espe­cial­ly rough on the bat­tle­field where the Repub­li­cans (GOP), and Democ­rats to a less­er extent, are wag­ing a new kind of politics.

Also, it’s been said that this is a con­se­quen­tial elec­tion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, with ram­i­fi­ca­tions that touch on many areas of pub­lic life, domes­tic and for­eign. As the process heads into the next phase, the dra­ma, as some have called it, is get­ting intense, inter­est­ing, and full of suspense.

When Two Elephants Fight The Grass Takes a Beating

The elec­tions remind me of the African say­ing that when two ele­phants fight it is the grass that gets hurt. The grass, sym­bol­ized in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process–law and order, an inde­pen­dent and crit­i­cal media, the elec­tions process, etc., is hurting.

I’ve writ­ten about how media in the U.S. is an enter­prise with an unbri­dled appetite for prof­its, to the detri­ment of news that ben­e­fits the com­mu­ni­ty. What is hap­pen­ing in the elec­tions, at least from the report­ing, con­firms these con­cerns. The media con­tin­ues in feed­ing a cycle of mis­in­for­ma­tion, greed, pro­pa­gan­da, and fear.

With some exam­ples that have piqued my inter­est, I’ve embed­ded links to the orig­i­nal sources with­in this post, and for oth­ers; I’ve includ­ed a read­ing list at the bot­tom for you to check out to learn more.

Advanced Democracy or What? 

But let’s begin with this ques­tion: Is this the advanced democ­ra­cy that Amer­i­ca is sup­posed to be or is it crazi­ness on the part of the can­di­dates and the U.S. elec­torate? Is this “the gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple, by the peo­ple, for the peo­ple,” we often hear about?

The U.S. often prides itself to be excep­tion­al. That is true. But some of the ingre­di­ents of that excep­tion­al­ism, its democ­ra­cy, elec­tions, and the inde­pen­dence of the media, are under scruti­ny because of the “big­otry” we’ve seen in the 2016 campaign.

If Amer­i­can demo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards have dete­ri­o­rat­ed, one might ask, what more of African democ­ra­cies, the ones who often get lec­tured about democ­ra­cy and elec­tions by Amer­i­can politicians?

It’s not just “Trump­ma­nia” that is plagu­ing Amer­i­ca, we’re hear­ing and read­ing, but a lot of West­ern coun­tries are now faced with author­i­tar­i­an­ism that is sym­bol­ic of a larg­er prob­lem, accord­ing to this piece from the Wash­ing­ton Post.

It’s not clear who the ref­er­ee is sup­posed to be here– the media, the Amer­i­can vot­ers, or the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. The ter­rain where the war is tak­ing place has been soiled, mas­sive­ly, and is in need of cleansing.

Journalism and Elections

Journalistically–the report­ing of the elec­tions can be framed from the per­spec­tive of lan­guage, and the choice of words by reporters, writ­ers, politi­cians, and ana­lysts, who have expressed many points of view about what is hap­pen­ing. The process has led to the pro­duc­tion of some of the most inter­est­ing jour­nal­is­tic lit­er­a­ture imaginable.

What exact­ly do the writ­ers mean, what are they say­ing and what con­clu­sions can we draw from what is happening?

From the start of the pri­maries in 2015, there were an esti­mat­ed 11 can­di­dates in the GOP slugfest, and three can­di­dates on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, bat­tling for the nom­i­na­tion of their respec­tive par­ties. Every­one; Repub­li­can, Demo­c­rat, Inde­pen­dent, par­tic­i­pant or spec­ta­tor, has been mud­died, if not blood­ied, as the field win­nows down.

Emo­tions con­tin­ue to run high!

The elec­tions have been pre­sent­ed, to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess and fail­ure, by the ana­lysts and pun­dits, on social media, in the pages of the Wall Street Jour­nal, the Wash­ing­ton Post, and The New York Times, and on broad­cast news, radio and TV. The descrip­tions shown in this post, and many oth­ers, it must be not­ed, come from all shades of the polit­i­cal spec­trum; left, right, cen­ter, and what have you.

Trump and the GOP 

Writ­ing in “What Repub­li­cans Can Learn From George Orwell — It’s Not What You Think,” James Lang, a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Assump­tion Col­lege says Orwell’s nov­els, Ani­mal Farm and 1984, help explain the phe­nom­e­non of Don­ald Trump.

In the satir­i­cal nov­els, Orwell, a British writer, and demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist wrote to lam­bast Stal­in, tyran­ny, and a reign of ter­ror in Rus­sia dur­ing the ear­ly 20^th century.

One descrip­tion from The New York Times calls the prospect of a Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­cy a “Dan­ger for democ­ra­cy.” “His­to­ri­ans could not recall anoth­er time in the last cen­tu­ry when the Repub­li­can Party’s pre­vi­ous nom­i­nees had so harsh­ly attacked a would-be successor.”

In a March 7 edi­to­r­i­al, Charles Blow describes the March 3 GOP debate in Detroit and what took place as “the zenith of a car­ni­val of absurdity.”

“The coun­try is still a mil­i­tary super­pow­er and an eco­nom­ic and inno­va­tion pow­er­house, but so many of our insti­tu­tions are prov­ing to be either fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed or deeply bro­ken,” Blow writes.

Media Analysis 

Michael O’Hanlon, a spe­cial­ist on defense and for­eign pol­i­cy issues at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion writes:

“The GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry process has tak­en us to places we couldn’t have dreamed mere months ago. Don­ald Trump’s appar­ent­ly ever-grow­ing lead—and the founder­ing of more main­stream can­di­dates like Ted Cruz, Mar­co Rubio, and John Kasich—carries seri­ous impli­ca­tions for America’s role in the world,” In the piece which focused on the pur­port­ed dan­gers of a Trump for­eign pol­i­cy, “America’s role in the world,” O’Hanlon was in favor of a tick­et pair­ing Mar­co Rubio, who has since dropped out of the not just the GOP pri­ma­ry race, but out of pol­i­tics, with John Kasich, the gov­er­nor of Ohio.

The edi­to­r­i­al pages of the Wash­ing­ton Post won­der if Democ­ra­cy is in retreat.

While point­ing to some recent demo­c­ra­t­ic bright spots, includ­ing a “peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er in Nige­ria,” the writ­ers believe the U.S. has played a role in the dimin­ish­ment of democ­ra­cy that we are seeing.

It is inter­est­ing to note that Nige­ria is con­sid­ered a bright spot as far as democ­ra­cy is con­cerned. Good for Nigeria!

“Auto­crats and even some West­ern politi­cians open­ly traf­fic in fear, xeno­pho­bia, and para­noia. The ene­mies of democ­ra­cy are grow­ing bold­er by the day. The Unit­ed States is part­ly respon­si­ble for let­ting this hap­pen. It should step up to the auto­crats of the world and con­front their dan­ger­ous illiberalism.”

Along the way came sur­pris­es, such as the sud­den demise of Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin Scalia. And then the bat­tle for his replace­ment emerged, fur­ther inten­si­fy­ing what now seems like an eter­nal quest for the U.S. presidency.

Surprise, Surprise! 

Writ­ing about the con­se­quence of the death of Scalia, George Will, an ana­lyst for Fox News as well as a colum­nist for the Wash­ing­ton Post, states, “The Unit­ed States today is one Supreme Court vote away from a rad­i­cal trun­ca­tion of the First Amendment’s pro­tec­tion of free­dom of speech.”

The writer is wor­ried that, with Scalia gone, the Democ­rats will make attempts to kill “free­dom of speech” which he says, is enshrined in the U.S. con­sti­tu­tion. Will’s inter­pre­ta­tion of free speech, in this case, is the right and abil­i­ty of peo­ple and cor­po­ra­tions in Amer­i­ca to con­tribute unlim­it­ed sums of mon­ey to polit­i­cal campaigns.

At the heart of this is the 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed V. Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion ver­dict hand­ed down by the Supreme Court. That deci­sion is under enor­mous threat, is the argu­ment that Will seems to be making.

“A Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent in 2017 would nom­i­nate to replace Scalia some­one pledged to con­strue the amend­ment as per­mit­ting Con­gress to reg­u­late polit­i­cal cam­paign speech, which would put First Amend­ment jurispru­dence on a slip­pery slope to regard­ing all speech as eli­gi­ble for reg­u­la­tion by the admin­is­tra­tive state.”

It is Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, that 5–4 Supreme Court ver­dict which many say, opened the flood­gates of  “Dark Mon­ey,” in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, Bernie Sanders has pitched his cam­paign on this sub­ject to a resound­ing response from mil­lions of his sup­port­ers. Sanders and his fol­low­ers have raised plen­ty of objec­tions to what they say is a vast amount of mon­ey that has been used to influ­ence the elec­tion process. Hillary Clin­ton, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic front-run­ner has faced a lot of ques­tions about her ties to Wall Street.

Money in American Politics

Super PACS, spe­cial inter­est, and the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of mon­ey in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics are also the sub­ject of “How Dark Mon­ey Boomeranged on the GOP,” writ­ten for Newsweek by Kurt Eichenwald.

Mean­while, Norm Orn­stein, a res­i­dent schol­ar at the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, and Thomas Mann, a fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, present a sting­ing cri­tique of the cur­rent U.S. demo­c­ra­t­ic process:

“To a large swath of Amer­i­cans and most of the rest of the world, Amer­i­can pol­i­tics have careened out of con­trol, lurch­ing from a role mod­el of sen­si­ble pol­i­cy­mak­ing and civ­il dis­course to grid­lock over even mod­est pro­pos­als with bipar­ti­san buy-in, and to a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign with the kind of angry pop­ulist blus­ter, coarse lan­guage and sec­tar­i­an divi­sion for­mer­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Per­on-style banana republics.”

What is not­ed here is the use of the word “Banana Repub­lic,” to describe this turn of events in America.

Banana Republics, often asso­ci­at­ed with bru­tal, cor­rupt, and failed regimes in South Amer­i­ca and parts of Africa, are sym­bol­ized not just by a fail­ing mid­dle class, ris­ing pover­ty, police bru­tal­i­ty, and oth­er ills, but also by tor­ture, and cor­rupt alliances.

Trump Wrecks Havoc 

Ezra Klein, the founder of Vox, a news web­site that aims at dis­sect­ing the news, post­ed this piece to explain the dam­age which Trump has wrecked on U.S. demo­c­ra­t­ic norms.

On Trump, Klein states that “Trump is the most dan­ger­ous major can­di­date for pres­i­dent in memory.”

Klein sounds an alarm bell and warns about Trump:  “He’s a man who could soon be mak­ing deci­sions of war and peace, who would decide which reg­u­la­tions are enforced and which are lift­ed, who would be respon­si­ble for nom­i­nat­ing Supreme Court jus­tices and rep­re­sent­ing Amer­i­ca in the com­mu­ni­ty of nations. This is not polit­i­cal enter­tain­ment. This is politics.”

Trump con­tin­ues to lead the GOP field, even while his utter­ances have offend­ed and alien­at­ed many. Yet, he is being embraced by many fol­low­ers, who think he is anti-estab­lish­ment. Anti-estab­lish­ment to these fol­low­ers is the equiv­a­lent of say­ing no to cor­rup­tion by many U.S. politi­cians and busi­ness peo­ple on Wall Street. It’s the equiv­a­lent of a repu­di­a­tion of pol­i­tics as usual.

While the report­ing is fas­ci­nat­ing, some of it is depress­ing and full of emo­tion as Raevyn Goates has point­ed out. Some of the writ­ers have decried what­ev­er hap­pened to the U.S. media establishment.

Journalism Takes a Beating

While the Amer­i­can demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem is report­ed­ly being under­mined, Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism is tak­ing a beat­ing from the dis­trac­tions and manip­u­la­tions by politi­cians.  The fourth estate, which is sup­posed to hold the can­di­dates account­able, may have been hood­winked by the can­di­dates, espe­cial­ly by Don­ald Trump.

Jack Shafer, a media crit­ic for Politi­co believes Trump has “put a spell on the press.” Shafer cau­tions jour­nal­ists and pro­duc­ers who have been hyp­no­tized by the candidate’s speech­es to find way to break the spell.

“Cable news has been hyp­no­tized into believ­ing that any will­ing­ness by Trump to appear—on cam­era or remote via telephone—amounts to news,” he writes.

“As for the hun­dreds of work­ing reporters who have been cov­er­ing him for the past eight months, my mod­est advice is to main­tain your patience. Jour­nal­ism is long, pol­i­tics is short.”

Writ­ing in The Nation mag­a­zine about how the U.S. media got Trumped, John Nichols states that “The past 20 years have seen rad­i­cal changes in the Amer­i­can media: the pan­dem­ic down­siz­ing of news­rooms, sweep­ing lay­offs of jour­nal­ists, and a des­per­a­tion for clicks and rat­ings that guar­an­tees that civic and demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues will always be trumped by com­mer­cial and enter­tain­ment demands.”

Conservatives Criticize Fox News 

Anoth­er casu­al­ty of the infight­ing among Repub­li­cans is Fox News. The media giant which is con­trolled by Rupert Mur­dock is under fire for help­ing cre­ate Trump, accord­ing to Jen­nifer Rubin who writes the Right Turn for the Wash­ing­ton Post. In “Heal Thy­self, Fox News,” Rubin, a con­ser­v­a­tive, cas­ti­gates Fox News for “end­less hours” that have been spent “spin­ning for him.”

“If Trump is out of con­trol, it is in large part because Fox News’s media enter­tain­ers have built him up and turned over their pro­gram­ming to him.”

Oth­ers have com­pared Trump to Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, because of his cam­paign style and tac­tics. The two Euro­pean lead­ers, because of their lead­er­ship in the 1930s, are large­ly blamed by his­to­ri­ans for start­ing Sec­ond World War II.

The can­di­date him­self is unabashed and glo­ries in the atten­tion he gar­ners from media around the world. Oth­ers in the #Stop Trump and #Nev­er Trump move­ments are pre­dict­ing dire con­se­quences, such as the col­lapse of the GOP if he prevails.

So—we’re learn­ing, that the Trump dra­ma has dimin­ished Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy as we know it, and chal­lenged the media in America.

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