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LOOKING IN How Foreign Journalists View American Media and the Election November 6, 1996 |
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Here's how Martin Walker of The Guardian and Peter Cave of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation responded to your questions.
RELATED LINKS
The NewsHour looks at new trends in American television news.
Frontline takes an inside look at the Washington media elite.
Britain's The Guardian Online.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation site.Correspondents from foreign publications and visitors from abroad often express amazement at U.S. politics and the media that covers it. Americans seem eager for comprehensive election coverage, but it shocks many reporters from Europe and Asia that a single issue, like abortion, can overwhelm a candidate's other ideas. During this campaign, journalists have come under fire from those being covered and from their foreign peers. In the last week, Bob Dole has taken the media to task over being "liberal apologists for the Clinton administration." Dole argued that the coverage of the Presidential campaign has been unfair.
Foreign reporters who cover Washington have criticized the American news coverage for being too interested in the sound bite or prediction. Others argue that political and foreign coverage is being increasingly driven by public relations organizations and spin doctors rather than the issues.
Some Americans have given up on American media all together. The very question, "Is the Media too Liberal or Conservative?" seems irrelevant to those who have turned to Canadian papers, the Times of London, or other international sources on the Internet for their news of what's going on inside their own country.
Of course, much of the world has no free press, and the American media, for all its faults, is still considered by many to be the best in the world, without which no one would have heard of John Huang, Watergate, or DDT.
Our guests are two foreign media correspondents who cover the U.S. They are Martin Walker, U.S. Bureau chief for Britain's The Guardian, and Peter Cave, Washington Bureau Chief for the radio arm of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Questions asked in this forum:
A question from Jaime Dickson, of Sydney, Australia :
During the recent campaign, why didn't the American media seem to 'grill' the respective candidates about the very fine detail of their policies like the media in other places seem to do? Are American audiences trained to fear depth? Is negative campaigning such that candidates are afraid to speak at length?
Martin Walker responds:
There was an interesting experiment in North Carolina, for a kind of public interest journalism, focusing on themes and issues, rather than on the horse race. One of the horses, Jesse Helms, did not co-operate. Result - his opponent was disadvantaged. Further result - don't hold your breath for candidates to co-operate with this idea again.
The candidates like to show they are in charge - witness the way Clinton declined formal press interviews in the last weeks of the campaign. The TV system is in charge. The 30-second ad bite is a killer. In Britain, where the parties get free TV time, they get ten minute slots each evening in prime time. In ten minutes, you have to SAY something. You can't just be negative. If any single reform could improve U.S. politics, it would be this.
Peter Cave responds:
The candidates did not make themselves available to be "grilled." President Clinton in particular avoided giving interviews and did not hold news conferences. Bob Dole chose to give a handful of interviews to tame outlets like CNN but on the whole limited his answers to shouted questions from reporters and one liners.
A question from Evan Parks of Slinger, Wisconsin :
How do citizens of other countries feel about the people of the United States constantly complaining about their taxes? Do they feel that we should stop complaining about our taxes? Or do they have similar concerns, such as welfare and medicare equivalents?
Martin Walker responds:
You bet. You generous Americans allow me tax deductions on all my mortgage - in the UK, I could only deduct the interest payments on the first $50,000. And every time I fill up my car, paying $1.30 a gallon, I have to chuckle. I'd be paying $4 in Britain, and $6 in France or Italy. Of course, there are extra costs involved in cheap oil, like the defense costs of the 5th Fleet and the other U.S. military deployments in the Gulf.
In taxes, you get what you pay for. Europe pays more taxes, and gets better public services, but may pay a price in flaccid economic growth. But the high and progressive income taxes of the USA in the 1950s and 1960s paid for an excellent public school system, an explosion in college education, and the Interstate system - all of which proved to be highly astute investments in the public interest.
Peter Cave responds:
Taxes in the United States are low compared to most other countries . Taxes pay for services like health care and welfare and you can't really have one without the other. The health system in the United States is extremely expensive and does not meet the needs of the majority of the population. With government you get what you pay for on the whole. I happen to believe that governments should be there evening out the bumps and helping those who cannot help themselves.
A question from Ed Kammerer of Oregon City, OR :
What influence and counter-influence internationally is associated with Rush Limbaugh's transmissions in the vicinity of U.S. military bases worldwide?
Martin Walker responds:
I don't know about his impact on bases overseas, but it seems to me that the Rush balloon has deflated somewhat, thanks in part to Al Franken, thanks also to the GOP congressional victory in 1994, which made Rush less of an anti-everything voice.
Peter Cave responds:
I think this may be similar to the effect that methane from cows passing wind has on global warming and destruction of the ozone layer. A little noise, a little breeze and a briefly lingering bad smell which will not give sunbathers melanoma.
A question from Derek Brown of Boston, MA:
With the nineties has come the dawn of what some have called 'infotainment'. Stories are discovered (or if all else fails choreographed) to hit emotional hot buttons such as anger, fear, and jealousy. All this is done under the guise of 'journalism'. Is this a trend unheard of by the press in your own country? If not, does it exist now and what has been the reaction to it? Have any other countries seen an end to infotainment?
Martin Walker responds:
We all have this, to a greater or lesser extent. Look at the publications that are booming in Russia. The worthy old literary journals of Soviet days have almost collapsed, and sensational sex 'n crime sheets are selling like hot cakes.
In Britain, our Infotainment has been the Royal family, which has helped the tabloidization of the 'quality' newspapers and the BBC. Papers like my own Guardian and the Independent used to ignore Royal news; now we cannot afford to.
There is a logic to this process. The end of the cold war means that international news does not carry the same life-or-death urgency. The primacy of free markets, free trade and the erosion of government dominance over national economies means that this kind of news is no longer as central as it used to be. Serious journalism developed with the growth of the state, the growth of big government, and our terrified fascination with their geo-strategic rivalries. As big government shrinks, so does that kind of journalism, creating room for fun 'n games to enter.
Peter Cave responds:
Sadly it is not unheard of in my country although it has not reached the depths it has in the United States where whole cable channels are devoted to it. I don't think it is anything new. For hundreds of years small newspapers have run supplements which are nothing but a vehicle for advertising, and infotainment is just an electronic enhancement or debasement.
A question from Mark Gorman of Malden, MA :
Compare the topics of discussion in the U.S. presidential dialogue with the typical dialogue for the highest office in your country. Are the U.S, elections focused on different issues? Smaller ones? Broader ones?
Martin Walker responds:
Not really. The U.S. had a spirited debate over entitlements during the fuss over the GOP budget and the government shutdown. There were debates over global warming, over the U.S. role in the world, the U.N., over the right size of the military, over the rights and wrongs of welfare reform and during the Republican primaries this year, over the merits of trade protection and a flat tax. The political debate may have been disappointing during the Presidential campaign - but aside from such extraordinary events as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1860, I guess it always was. These day, thanks to C-Span and the Net, interested citizens can get as much as they want.
Note that there has already been a more thorough debate in the U.S. over entitlements reform than we have yet seen in Europe or Japan, even though the U.S. is less at risk from the demographics of baby boom retirements. In the U.S. in 2030, you will have five people of working age for every three retirees. In low birthrate Germany and Japan, they will by then be uncomfortably close to one worker for every retiree. They should be talking far more about this.
Peter Cave responds:
My country has a parliamentary system where people do not elect a president but instead, members of parliament to represent them on a local level, and senators to represent them at a state level. The Prime Minister is elected by the members of his party.
If the electors see an election as taking on "Presidential" characteristics, that is seen as a negative. Many of the issues are similar but on the whole the focus must be much more on local issues that here in the U.S.
A question from Slawomir T. Fryska of Granger, Indiana :
Do you think that U.S. media is primarily responsible for limiting the scope of the election to just two, or two and a half, candidates?
Martin Walker responds:
Not entirely. the other responsible factors are:
- The candidates. Determined people can always make a mark - look at Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996, or at Jerry Brown's inventive primary bid in 1992.
- The huge costs of TV advertising access.
- The party machines. Look how tough it was for Steve Forbes to get onto the New York ballot, or the crazy way the front-loading of this year's primaries virtually disqualified people with less than $15 millions as an ante bet, or the kind of passionate support Buchanan had built.
- The U.S. political tradition. The only 3rd party that has ever endured in the U.S. was the Republican, which took over what was left of the Whigs in the mid 19th century. The historical role of 3rd parties has been to signal that the 2 main parties are in real danger of missing something fundamental - like the way George Wallace showed the loosening Democratic loyalties of Southern whites after the Civil Rights reforms, or the way Pat Buchanan showed that trade protection was a potent political force this year.
I don't want to let the media go free of our share of blame. But we cannot cover everything, and if God is on the side of the big battalions, so are most political journalists, largely because we and our editors assume that is where the most interest lies, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if a new movement develops, we tend to spot it quite well - e.g. the growth of Green parties in Europe in the 1980s. If the U.S. cannot generate a grass roots movements of this urgency, that is another matter. But the Gay and Lesbian lobby have managed to get themselves taken seriously as a political force.
Peter Cave responds:
No, I think that is a function of the electoral system and the costs involved. The rules are complicated and the electoral college system, particularly its winner takes all provisions in all but two states, almost guarantees that there will be no diversity.
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