-Caveat Lector-
Democracy, the election, and the news media
By Carla Binion
What is democracy, and how has it changed during the nation's history? What
did the open stealing of election 2000 have to do with weakening democracy,
and how would a genuine, truth-telling news media make democracy stronger?
On January 6, Democratic senators cut a deal with senate Republicans. In
exchange for such concessions as equal authority on committees, Democratic
senate leaders agreed not to join House Democrats in protesting Florida's 25
stolen electoral votes.
Cokie Roberts said on ABC's Sunday morning news talk show that the senators
made the right decision, because it would have "thrown everything into chaos"
to bring the voting irregularities into the open for debate. Roberts said
the country would be better off if Democrats had an equal share of power in
the senate.
Mainstream news commentators often serve as mouthpieces for our paternalistic
leaders. Both the mainstream media and parental congressmen have just patted
the public on our little heads as if we were five-year-olds and assured us we
are better off with a stolen election than with the "chaos" of examining the
truth about our failing democracy.
Before exploring how an honest, vigorously democratic news media might
bolster democracy, let us think about what American democracy is -- both
historically and now. Rightwing media propagandists often attack democracy.
For example, Rush Limbaugh repeatedly says the U. S. is a republic instead of
a democracy. He and other like-minded media folks often remind us we do not
have direct democracy -- meaning, for example, the public does not vote on
every proposed piece of legislation. What Limbaugh and his ilk leave out is
the fact that America is a representative democracy.
One dictionary definition of democracy is "government by the people, directly
or through representatives." Our representatives are (supposedly) elected to
represent the interests of the people. However, the meaning of the term "the
people" has evolved over time.
When the Constitution was first drafted, women, blacks, and the very poor
were not considered "the people." Only white, male property owners were
thought to be "the people" at that time. A more egalitarian version of
democracy came about slowly, with eventual Constitutional amendments,
including the Bill of Rights.
Nat Hentoff has written columns for the Washington Post and the Village
Voice. In "Living the Bill of Rights," Hentoff writes that he once told
Supreme Court Justice William Brennan that he was on his way to speak about
the Bill of Rights in a series of Pennsylvania schools.
Hentoff told Brennan he wanted to explain to the kids what the Bill of Rights
meant to their personal lives in terms of their right to free speech, their
right to be protected from unreasonable searches by police, and other civil
liberties. Justice Brennan said, "You've got to tell them stories. It's not
enough to tell them what their rights and liberties are. They need to know
-- and this will get them interested -- how these American liberties were
won, and what it takes to keep them alive."
Democracy, the egalitarian verson of democracy -- where women, minorities and
the poor gained the right to be represented by elected officials -- was won
through the sweat and blood of those very women, minorities and poor. Some
news media pundits and politicians exhibit contempt for that kind of
democracy. In fact, the mainstream press and elitist politicians have shown
that same kind of contempt since the founding of the country.
Some of the founding fathers took their "fatherhood" very seriously. For
example, John Adams took a paternal attitude toward the poor when he said,
"Men in general...who are wholly destitute of property, are also too little
acquainted with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent on
other men to have a will of their own." (Eric Foner, "Tom Paine and
Revolutionary America," New York:Oxford University Press.)
Writer Jerry Fresia points out in "Toward An American Revolution," that:
(1) Founder Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts complained that "the evils we
experience flow from an excess of democracy." Gerry, a wealthy merchant,
argued against electing a new national government by popular vote.
(2) Alexander Hamilton of New York, admirer of monarchy, referred to the
general public as "a great beast." Hamilton thought government should be a
tool to assist bankers and wealthy financiers. He recommended suppressing
"the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit." (His concern
resembles Cokie Roberts' fear that open discussion of the anti-democratic
Florida vote suppression might throw everything into chaos.)
(3) Rufus King of Massachusetts, wealthy merchant and director of the First
United States Bank, thought the judiciary should be allowed to curb political
tendencies among "common people." He helped give the very wealthy a leg up
when he added a clause preventing the passing of any law "impairing the
obligation of contracts."
(4) James Madison of Virginia at one time held 116 slaves. Madison said he
wanted to keep the majority of people from "discovering their own strength"
and from "acting in unison with each other."
(5) Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania once said, "there never was, nor ever
will be a civilized society without an Aristocracy." Morris argued that
voting should be only for property owners, saying, "Give the votes to people
who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich who will be able to
buy them."
(6) Edmund Randolph of Virginia owned some 200 slaves. He complained about
what he believed to be the "turbulence and follies of democracy."
(7) Roger Sherman of Connecticut, signer of the Declaration of Independence,
claimed, "The people immediately should have as little to do as may be about
the government. They want information and are constantly liable to be
misled."
The list goes on and on, demonstrating that many of the founding fathers did
in fact see themselves as harsh, contemptuous, dismissive "fathers" in
relation to the general public. Is it any wonder their modern day heirs --
today's media pundits and politicians who also oppose democracy -- think they
are entitled to rule over the public as if we were children?
Even the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, did
not protect the civil libeties of women and blacks. The 15th Amendment was
added to the Constitution in 1870. It says, "The right of the citizens of
the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude."
However, civil rights and civil liberties came slowly for blacks. The
original, unamended Contitution legitimized slavery, and many years after the
15th Amendment was passed, African-Americans were still brutalized by white
supremacists.
Women won voting rights in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was added to the
Constitution. That amendment says, "The right of the citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
state on account of sex."
In the years leading up to women's suffrage, as Ira Glasser says in "Visions
of Liberty," (Arcade Publishing, 1991), "The prevailing social view was that
women were the property of their husbands, and this was in part reflected in
the new Constitution. The very language of our early declarations of
principles was exclusionary."
Glasser says that in 1973, the Supreme Court heard the case of Myra Bradwell,
a women certified by the Illinois state board of legal examiners as qualified
to practice law. When Bradwell applied to the Illinois bar, she was denied
admission only because she was a woman. Upon denying her claim, the Supreme
Court "added a wave of gratuitous remarks," says Glasser, including the
statement that women were "timid" and "delicate" and therefore unfit to
practice law.
The stealing of election 2000, and the disarray of U. S. elections in
general, mean that although women, blacks and the poor have gained the right
to vote, our votes have been devalued. Politicians once responded to public
opinion, because they feared being voted out of office if they antagonized
voters. Without the vote, average citizens have no influence on our
"representatives" in Congress.
Our senators might not represent average Americans, however they do represent
moneyed corporations. Many leaders of those corporations debate the future
of the country in various think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the
American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution.
Some media and political leaders ridicule any mere mention of the Trilateral
Commission, (a right-of-center think tank made up of many of the nation's
leading corporations and media organizations) as if to bring up its existence
is to espouse a "conspiracy theory" about it. However Holly Sklar, who holds
a doctorate in Political Science, examines the think tank in her strongly
documented "Trilateralism" (South End Press, 1980.)
Sklar quotes from "The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of
Democracies to the Trilateral Commission:" The think tank's report said:
"The vulnerability of democratic government in the United States (thus) comes
not primarily from external threats, though such threats are real, nor from
internal subversion from the left or the right, although both possibilities
could exist, but rather from the internal dynamics of democracy itself in a
highly educated, mobilized, and participant society."
In other words, corporations and media organizations belonging to this think
tank were advised that democracy within a highly educated, mobilized,
participating public equal a bigger threat to "democratic" government than do
external threats or possible internal subversion. Obviously, this think tank
does not define democracy as the egalitarian civil liberties version of
democracy -- the version represented by the Bill of Rights, for example.
Michael Lind ("Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America," The
Free Press, 1996) writes that the Council on National Policy (CNP) is another
highly influential think tank. In the CNP, writes Lind, "mainstream
Republicanism now blends imperceptibly into far-right extremism."
The CNP is a strange mix of anti-democracy hard rightists, such as R. J.
Rushdoony and former KKK member Richard Shoff, and allegedly mainstream
Republicans such as Dick Armey, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay and Bush campaign
adviser, Ralph Reed. Rushdoony once gave a speech before the organization in
which he referred to democracy as a "heresy."
The fact that members of influential think tanks sometimes characterize
democracy as a threat or a heresy explains why certain Democratic senators
and members of the mainstream media are openly hostile toward democracy. The
Democratic senators were brazen enough to dismiss democracy by not joining
members of the House in protesting Florida's stolen votes. Why? Because
they know that according to the Beltway's conventional wisdom, democracy of
the egalitarian-civil-liberties variety is the official enemy of
corporate-aristocratic rule.
In The Progressive, October 2000, journalist John Nichols reported that in
the mid-1980s, the Democratic Party was taken over by the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC, according to Nichols, is now "at the
center of a web of think tanks, lobbying groups, and electoral activity
designed to create a new-model Democratic Party." It is that new model
Democratic Party which yielded so easily to the Republican stealing of
election 2000.
The new party, says Nichols, favors the interests of Wall Street over those
of average Americans. The DLC receives contributions from Citigroup, Bank
One, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, the Health Insurance Corporation
of America, Microsoft, Occidental Petroleum, and many other such companies.
The Democratic Leadership Council has urged the Democratic Party to favor all
the things Republicans support, including corporate-friendly regulatory
reforms, privatization of public services, so-called free trade, and school
"choice." Joe Lieberman is the current president of the DLC.
Nichols writes that Lieberman told a Wall Street Journal reporter that Al
Gore's campaign attacks on corporations had been merely "rhetorical
flourishes." Gore was present at the DLC's founding and is still loyal to
the organization, according to Nichols.
Luckily, not all Democrats are DLC loyalists. The House Democrats who had
the courage to stand up for our voting rights are on our side. We should
encourage them to take back the Party.
In "For the Common Good," (a book Library Journal describes as "a profound
critique of conventional economic theories and policies") Herman E. Daly and
John Cobb, Jr. point out that contemporary economic theory has a problem
adjusting "discontinuities" between needs of corporations and needs of flesh
and blood people.
The authors say, "We want...not to disparage the lifelong efforts of many who
have advanced the discipline of economics....But at a deep level of our being
we find it hard to suppress the cry of anguish, the scream of horror -- the
wild words required to express wild realities."
Daly and Cobb say that because our political leaders yield to corporate
interests over human interests in the current global system, "We human beings
are being led to a dead end -- all too literally. We are living by an
ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and
killing the planet. Even the one great success of the program that has
governed us, the attainment of material affluence, is now giving way to
poverty."
In the December 2000 issue of The Progressive, journalist Eduardo Galeano
writes about today's global-corporate centered politics. He laments "Crimes
against people, crimes against nature: the impunity enjoyed by the masters of
war is shared by their twins, the voracious masters of industry, who eat
nature and, in the heavens, swallow the ozone layer. The most successful
companies in the world are the ones that do the most to murder it."
When the leaders in both major political parties, and the mainstream news
media, serve corporate interests over human interests, how can average
Americans hope to revitalize democracy -- the egalitarian-civil-liberties
variety? One thing that would help is for average citizens to empower
ourselves by creating our own news media -- especially a people's TV news
network.
Unlike C-Span, the closest thing we have to such a network today, we need a
network that reports the facts about current events 24-hours a day -- in a
way that consistently serves the interests of average Americans over the
interests of corporations. Because most Americans get all their news from
television, and most mainstream news media organizations are owned by large
corporations, the American people can not easily stay informed about what
goes on in the country.
A test to find out whether the news media have done a good job reporting any
given news story is to ask, "Do most Americans know the details of this
story? Is it common knowledge?"
How many Americans do you personally know who can explain the details of the
savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s? Are details of Iran-contra or
Iraqgate common knowledge for most folks? Why not? Because the mainstream
news media do not explain those news stories in an effective manner.
How might a truth-telling, public-interest-promoting TV news network (a sort
of people's network) enliven democracy? Such a network would insure that far
larger numbers of Americans were well informed. Thomas Jefferson once said
that democracy could survive only with a fully informed electorate.
I recently watched a program about so-called "dot com millionaires," or new
"venture philanthropists" who enjoy donating huge sums of money to relieve
social ills. I can not think of a better social cause for those
philanthropists to support than the creation of a truth-telling people's TV
news network. Although it is unlikely to happen, generating the idea of such
a possibility has the potential to stimulate dialogue regarding other methods
of funding a people's news network.
An informed public could make better choices when it comes to (1) voting for
political candidates, (2) building stronger political organizations, and (3)
steering money toward helping human beings instead of helping corporations
destroy democracy and the natural world.
Democracy -- the egalitarian, civil-liberties enhancing version -- is the
worst nightmare for some of our founding fathers and today's paternalistic
politicians and media pundits. However, that kind of democracy is the only
thing that can transform the civic myth of the America we all believed in as
children into flesh and blood reality.
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