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Show Airing Democracy: Politics and Broadcast Television TYwuis Currit weaken the load on broadcast television, and the subscription nature of both services immediately discounts them from fulfilling true universal availability, and disqualifies them as replacements for the public obligations of broadcast television. As far as creating market pressure on television stations, C-SPAN's audience is far too small to pressure anyone, and the Internet is not truly in direct competition with television news. However, they do seem to be exerting real influence on the minds of broadcasting executives and news directors, and thus they can be chalked up as factors toward political broadcasting decline. Thus we see a parade of possible causes of the decline of broadcast political information, none of which are wholly satisfactory as the single primary cause of the decline. Substantial new research must be done in this area by economists, political scientists, and journalists alike to truly get to the bottom of the problem. While the cause may elude us, the current and future effects of a sustained decline stare us all too obviously in the face. Effects The decline of viable political information on broadcast television could have serious negative effects on our democracy. These include an increased dependence on political advertising for voter education and campaigning, creating an undemocratic and expensive campaign system, and increased voter ignorance and cynicism. This drop of "free" coverage has meant for candidates the need to rely on paid news advertising. Thus occurring concurrently with the decline of coverage has been the skyrocketing of campaign advertising. In 1970, political ad sales for all races, federal, state and local, including spending by candidates, parties, and interest groups, adjusted for inflation totaled less than $100 million. In 2000, it is estimated that political ad spending on broadcast television reached almost $1 billion dollars, ten times the 1970 amount (ABC 2002). The 2004 Democratic primaries saw record spending on political advertising, reaching an estimated $90 dollars spent for every resident of the state during the Iowa caucuses (Wisconsin Advertising Project 2004). Despite more stringent restrictions put in place by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, record-breaking territory is already being reached in fundraising by presidential and congressional candidates. That money is promptly used to purchase advertising spots, most candidates' single biggest campaign expense, and ofttimes upwards of 50 percent of their campaign budgets (ABC 2002). This spending results in a tremendous amount of broadcast time devoted to political advertisements. In the 2000 election, some stations aired up to 60 political advertisements a day (ABC 2002). Assuming each spot lasts 30-seconds, this is more than double the average amount of political coverage aired on both local and national news broadcasts during that election (Kaplan and Hale 2001). It seems the job of provid- ing voters with information during elections has shifted from the news organizations to the candidates themselves, a thought which probably provokes fear and concern in most Americans. However, the negative effects of paid political advertising in the realm of creating an informed populace can be overrated, and may not be the effects one would assume. Despite the common belief that campaign advertising is negative, attack-oriented, and insubstantial, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that candidate advertisements were actually negative less often than the news, contained fewer direct attacks, and discussed policy issues more regularly (Jamieson 1996). Even when the ads do get negative, this is not necessarily a bad thing. According to Kenneth Goldstein of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, Negative ads often contain a lot of information that allow voters to make decisions about the candidates. We should not necessarily see them as a harmful part of our electoral system. In fact, voters actually learn more from negative ads than they do from positive ones. Moreover, negative ads can stimulate turnout and that's not a bad thing either (Wisconsin Advertising Project 2002). Where dependence upon political advertising for voter education does have a pernicious influence is in the uneven playing field it creates for candidates, providing an overwhelming advantage for the wealthier and better financed candidate. Since the poorer candidate can no longer rely upon generating free publicity through the broadcast news media, paid advertisement becomes the primary campaign battlefield, one in which the candidate is at a severe disadvantage. This is doubly true in the case of challengers to sitting incumbents, who must counter the incumbent's superior name recognition and ability to generate free publicity solely through raising massive amounts of money to pay for advertising, an area in which the candidate with less money is again at a disadvantage. Incumbents and challengers alike, dependent on money and the ads it buys, must spend even more time courting wealthy supporters-creating the opportunity for corruption, or even worse, creating a public suspicion of widespread government corruption and subservience to special interests. The drop of substantive political information on the news and the disappearance of debate and convention coverage means that, except for in campaign commercials, increasingly the public does not learn about candidates from any first-hand exposure. Instead, their information regarding a candidate has been filtered through newscasters, pundits, and commentators (Jamieson 1996), and increasingly channeled through a strategy or political maneuvering frame, making it difficult for citizens to glean how this all applies to them, why it is important, and what it should mean for their voting decision. Voter ignorance is one area where the effects of television's unfulfillment of its democratic education potential become obvious. Three days before Super Tuesday, March 2, 2004, a survey by the National Annenberg Election Survey 78 |
