In this discussion I call upon two movies as examples and evidence to examine the role of
mass media in politics. The two movies I will use for this basis are The Candidate and
All the Presidents Men.
Today, the art of governing a society seems to be much dictated or prescribed by what the
assemblage of the citizens of the United States say or express to the mass media.
Thus, the government and politicians listening to and acting upon our very wishes and
desires. Or looking at this in another point of view; The mass media relays to us as
citizens the news or information about the administration as conveyed or set forth by the
administration as the "truth". I believe that the majority of the populace would tend
to agree more with this second point of view. The government or politicians of this
great country try to appear to have the semblance of truth or honesty in all of it's
endeavors.
And sometimes it does. However, on occasion within its own discretion, the media
investigates and tries to inform us by the televised news, major newspapers and (large)
radio personalities of cover-ups, conspiracies and or wrong doings by our so-called
leaders. Are we always told the truth by the mass media? By the government? By the
media speaking for or as directed by the government? Or has the line between truth and
lies been so badly blurred in politics that we will never know what truly goes on in our
political system?
The two movies examined, both play in some way on the function of the mass media in
American politics. We can see how much and how heavily we rely on our televisions, radio
shows, newspapers and now the Internet to communicate to us the latest breaking news,
political campaigns, slandering, commercials for politicians running for office, debates,
presidential addresses, cover-ups, conspiracies and information that can take down an
entire administration. This shows that in all the different aspects of politics that the
media plays a very wide, varied and important role in letting us know what is going on.
The Candidate tries to unveil how a political campaign for office is run. It tells the
story of how an upstart uses the media and available resources in its televised form to
try and convey his message and his beliefs to the mass public on whom he will rely upon
to vote and hopefully elect him into office. As we see though, the people or elite's who
run the campaign, take what the candidate says and dilute it, dissect it, take it out of
context and rearrange his words into what they think the public wants to hear. We see
how elitist decisions are made as to what we get to see, hear and digest on our own. How
do they know what we want to hear? (Maybe they would if they would go door to door and
take a legitimate poll on the issues and concerns that are the most important to us
today.) What we do get to see in this example though, is a behind the scenes look at the
candidate and how he differs from his real self personae when not in the public eye and
how he is skeptical at a lot of the ways a political campaign is run.
All the President's Men shares the same theme and ideas as The Candidate in that the main
link between the people and the politicians/administration is the media. This story is
based upon how the undying determination of a team of two reporters for a major
newspaper, The Washington Post go at all costs to get the truth out in their
investigation and uncovering of a major conspiracy in the administration. The reporters
fact finding was hindered quite a few times along the way to discover and disclose the
truth to the public, but their willingness and determination to do so brought out the
facts and allegations that crippled the White House. This example shows how the media
does play a crucial role in bringing out the truths and realities of what really goes on
behind the closed doors of the politicians who run our country.
There are some things that separate these two movies in regard to the role of the media
in politics. They differ in the angles at which they approach their respective story.
For instance in The Candidate, television is the main means of communication to the
public for the fresh upstart and the incumbent running for the office of senator.
Television can give almost exactly what the two candidates want. Short spots in which
they convey their beliefs, ideas and towards the end, slander for one another.
Television provides to us up to the minute, flashy, visual, auditory messages and it has
proven to be a good way in which to get a certain point across in a specified amount of
time, for a price. The political role of the media has expanded immensely by means of
the television set, in what media theorist Marshal Mcluhan called our planet "the global
village."1
In All the President's Men the role that media plays takes a different note to reflect
the hard hitting sword in the form of the printed word of newspapers. Newspapers are
very powerful in the sense that they are print, and most people still believe that what
they read is true, instead of taking everything at face value, gathering together several
other sources of information and then making the decision to agree or disagree. So with
substantial evidence, newspapers can print stories and or allegations that bring about
many stirring revelations, as many citizens get their daily dose of news by reading the
lowdown that is delivered to them right at their front door every morning. This points
out that newspapers are still very much a major player in American and political
culture.
Looking further into these films we can see that they make some assumptions about us as
the mass public. The films themselves assume, the characters of the candidates running
for office assume, the higher ups assume and the media also makes these predictions of
what the public wants to be exposed to. In a general sense a couple of these at first
glance would appear to be that we as a public do not care about some things. As in All
the Presidents Men, when the two reporters first started learning of some of the wrong
things that were going on in Watergate and they wanted to report on it, their superiors
at the newspaper argued that it wasn't news, "nobody wants to read about that shit". Why
do they predict these things, and what do they base their decisions on? Well, I believe
that at first they just want to make sure they get the facts straight before diving in
and printing some potentially damaging evidence, or one could also argue that they do not
want to be the ones to diffuse the truth. In The Candidate at the first banquet the new
upstart attends, while giving a speech we can hear the reporter telling the cameraman,
"OK, shut it off, we got enough". The candidate had not even spoken two or three
complete sentences before being cut off. Maybe a lot of people wanted to hear what he
had to say, maybe not. But the media made a curt decision right there on the spot to cut
short what they would show in their respective newscast. This clearly shows that maybe
they are not playing favorites for the incumbent, who got just about any bit of airtime
he wanted, but that the media sticks by what they know or believe. Always just a little
hesitant to jump right in with something fresh, until the freshness turns into something
tried and true.
I offer some more assumptions or predictions that the media tends to appear to have about
the citizens who soak up what they give to us every day; First they seem to be under the
impression that we (the public) do not care. In general I would assume that they might
think that the majority of the populace are dimwitted and muddleheaded about the politics
that rule this nation. That we are curious and want to know, but we take almost all
things conveyed through the media as fact and reality, so they can spread just about
whatever they would like as the truth.
A good counterpoint to this though is that in this day and age, it is getting more and
more impossible to hide or conceal what is the truth as we are becoming ever more
connected in terms of the Internet. Someone can publish a document in Yugoslavia about
anything and seconds later make it available to anyone with access to a computer and the
Internet. Then it could be relayed to the media as a great top news headline, but the
media as always will have that final decision.
These assumptions that the media makes in such an ever so lightly way are very much
consistent with what we know. These movies were filmed twenty years ago, and yet we can
still see that they shed some light on the media in a way that we can compare them with
the media as of today. Everyone is always looking for the latest news, newspapers and TV
newscasts are clearly biased in the news that they report, and still, we do not always
get told the truth.
In closing, I offer the thought that the media should not be so critical in what it
reports to the population in the world of politics. If we are to continue to have the
greatest country on the planet, we need to be informed of all the facts that are readily
available about our State Representatives, Senators and Presidents, so that we may make
our own intelligent decisions on who to vote for in our elections when putting these
people into office. It would be a shame to have to impeach or require a politician or
administration to step down from their position due to some news about wrong doings by
them after they have been elected to office, especially if the information was available
but never reported before the election took place. This country was built on honesty and
integrity and hopefully it will continue to prosper with these values, but as in the past
deterioration is sometimes inevitable in the big money world of American political
system.
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