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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
Polemical Hacks, Bastardized Gonzo,
and the Death Of Democracy - Page 10
By Eric Kaufmann
Commentary
Ryan Gogol
It can certainly be argued that American democracy is faltering in some very important respects. Simply consider any one of the following issues: low voter turnout, growing disinterest in politics among youth, biased reporting and misleading information, a growing distrust of the national government. According to Eric Kaufmann, all of these problems point to a severe absence of informed political discourse among the public, and it is the media "above all" that ought to be blamed. Likewise, he concludes in his essay that only "a strong commitment to institutional reforms within press rooms and journalism programs can provide the forum for the informed civic discourse" that democracy needs.
However, I would highly caution that while the media reforms Kaufmann proposes might indeed be a step in the right direction, they are anything but a panacea. In order to rectify the anomie of American democracy, these would have to be aided by other important, and perhaps more basic, developments. These include louder calls for changes in government and corporate accountability, and also more frequent public use of more decentralized news sources, namely, the Internet.
In the first place, it is not entirely clear that the media have, for example, been the main culprits behind youth "cynicism of [and growing detachment from] democratic and legislative processes." A lot of the data cited for this claim involves voter statistics, especially among young adults. Here, Kaufmann is right to acknowledge that voting is not the only meaningful form of political participation, nor is it perceived by many people to be the most effective, as there are a host of other ways to get involved. But Kaufmann poses the question, if voting is such a simple process, why, then, does the number of young voters continue to dwindle? I would agree with him in maintaining that many voters, young adults especially, need to be better educated on the issues and government policies on which they are voting when they choose a candidate. But I do not see why these statistics show the refrain from voting to be the effect of certain media practices having turned young voters off from politics. Kauffman goes on to suggest that the rise of the so-called "New Pamphleteers" has rendered young people vulnerable to a "poorly manufactured web of pseudo-facts and pop-polisci." No one will deny that universities and colleges nationwide, including Rutgers, have their fair share of sandbox liberals - idealistic students swayed by such a desire for change that they are more prone to ideological doctrine than to thinking for themselves and doing their own research. Again, it is not clear that this is just a media problem, or that the new pamphleteers should even qualify as real news - it may be unfair to lump them under the broad category of "media outlets." Lastly, I find it rather interesting that Kaufmann also cites "anomic democracy" as both a political and sociological phenomenon prevalent among young adults today. The associated feelings of purposelessness and isolation have far less to do with the media per se, and a lot more to do with a marked decline in the presence of community and shared sense of ethics in American life.
Kaufmann also fails to mention the significant ways in which the media do promote informed political discourse - the kind of discourse we need to revamp our ailing democracy. Despite the lack of objectivity or integrity that we find in Gonzo journalism, the new pamphleteers or broadcast media, there are still evidently high standards in journalism. All one has to do is open up an issue of such reputed magazines as The Economist or Newsweek for quality information on a host of political and economic issues. All publications have their biases, but the point is that there is a litany of scholarly publications and journals circulated in America that provide accurate and detailed information on current national and world issues.