For Honest Government, Turn Off Your TV

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert				September 18, 2000

For Honest Government, Turn Off Your TV
By Gary Ruskin

As the 2000 election campaign heats up, millions are bracing for the
barrage of obnoxious political ads that are starting to fill our homes. 
They are feeling a sense of hopelessness about the political morass and
corruption, and wondering if there is something -- anything -- they can
do to clean it up.

Well, there is.  We don't have to wait for the politicians to take
action.  We can do it tonight, in our own homes.  Without spending a
penny or losing a moment of time. (In fact we'll gain time.) 

It's so simple.  We can just turn off our televisions.  Put them in the
basement or the closet.  Perhaps even throw them out. 

It's do-it-ourselves campaign finance reform.  Here's how it works.

The tube is a prime culprit in the corruption of American politics. The
high cost of the TV ads drives the money orgy that has swallowed
Washington.  "Television advertising is the greatest single force
increasing the price of political campaigns," the Washington Post says. 
Enormous sums are needed to buy TV ads, which can cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars for a national, prime-time 30-second spot.

The money comes mainly from corporations and wealthy special interests,
in exchange for political influence.  Former Democratic fundraiser
Johnny Chung said it best: "[T]he White House is like a subway -- you
have to put in coins to open the gates."

This year's elections will be the most expensive in history.  No matter
who wins, fat cat donors will have more influence than ever, and
ordinary citizens less.  

It looks like Congress won't solve the problem that it itself helped to
create, so it's time to take the matter into our own hands.

It would be so easy.  Turn off the TV.

If a thirty-second spot appears and no one's watching it, then does it
really appear?  If fewer people watch, then TV will lose its influence
in the political arena, and politicians will spend less money on it. 
Who is going to spend a fortune to run TV ads that no one sees?

The campaign money might get spent on other things.  But the other
things don't cost as much.  So campaigns would become less expensive,
and the role of money would become smaller.  This could make a big
difference in the quality of our government.  It could bring other
benefits too.

If we watch less TV, we'll avoid the nasty political ads that have
become the common currency of political campaigns.  People often forget
that the ugliness of politics today is largely a phenomenon of
television.  In person, politicians usually try to be as nice as Mr.
Rogers.  That's why they hire actors to do the dirty work in the ads --
they want to keep their own images clean.  To stop watching would be a
good way to tell politicians that we are fed up with the mudslinging and
character assassination, and the hired media hit-men.  The whole tenor
of the campaign season might improve.

The best part is, there's virtually nothing to lose.  Network television
is nothing to write home about.  Most local news is pathetic and getting
worse.  "If it bleeds, it leads," the saying goes.

The campaign "news" has been squeezed into the same pattern.  In 1968,
the average presidential campaign sound bite on network news was 43
seconds.  In 1996 election, it dropped to 8.2 seconds.  Third graders
communicate in longer segments than that.

Regrettably, it isn't likely to get much better.  Every technology has
predispositions -- "The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan said
-- and the predisposition of television is to dumb down whatever it
touches. The tube must "suppress the content of ideas in order to
accommodate the requirements of visual interest; that is to say, to
accommodate the values of show business," Professor Neil Postman
observes in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

So to smart-up political campaigns, we need to turn off the thing that
is doing the most to dumb them down.  Might as well read a newspaper
instead.

When we disengage from the forces that are wrecking our politics, we
render them impotent.  We can do this ourselves.  By cleaning up our
politics, we'd improve our lives as well.

-30-

<----article ends here---->

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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert 
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
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