By Danny Schechter
Here we are in the 21st century, and the U.S. media has gone back to the 18th to help us puzzle over what those founding fathers had in mind when they concocted a system to save democracy from the voters. The mysteries of this byzantine Electoral College may well determine, cliché of clichés, "the next leader of the free world." But whoever ends up winning — Al or Dubya — we Americans have already lost.
Consider: Thanks in part to uncompelling media coverage, half of the eligible voters went to sleep, not to the polls. Millions of others — mostly the poor and minorities — were legally disenfranchised because of their entanglements in the criminal justice system, including, according to a Human Rights Watch report, The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws, fully 31 percent of African-American men living in Florida has lost the right to vote. (What a coincidence!) This disclosure is just one of a number of election-related contradictions that were not reported before the election or raised by reporters with the candidates, at least not that I saw.
But who could have "projected," to use that hip news word, that the whole election would come down to the complaints of a handful of elderly people living in one of the richest counties in America, in a state governed by George W. Bush's brother Jeb. Post-election revelations that voting irregularities are very common and that the courts are reluctant to "interfere" (i.e., insure that all is kosher) leads to eyebrows raised to new heights. How curious to learn from Florida's former Election Director David E. Cardwell that there "is no such thing as a perfect election." How un-perfect they are is now anyone's guess. Writing in The New York Times Nov. 12, the always polished Francis X. Clines asserts, "Politicians know that gross [emphasis mine] ballot anomalies inevitably occur in American elections."
Leave it to the Times! First Clines tells us the problem is gross (i.e. serious), then he minimizes its seriousness by speaking of mere "anomalies." Like what? That bizarre punch-hole "butterfly ballot" in Florida with its inscrutable "chads"? The holes punched in the ballots, thousands of votes discarded, voters blocked at some voting places? Then he characterizes these gross violations of electoral law as "inevitable" and hence a problem nothing can be done about. Oh, how naïve are we not-in-the-know folks. Earlier in his "Week in Review" analysis, Clines speaks of "flummoxed TV anchors, their omniscience burnt out before our eyes."
Little is ever said by our media wise men or well-paid punditocracy about the relationship between a media that is asleep at the switch and the deeply flawed electoral system whose reliability is just assumed — until so-called "anomalies" become too public to be ignored.
Needless to say, this comic drama, and our media's role in it, has become a subject for international ridicule, as I discovered when I queried colleagues around the world. In the spirit of that phrase in the U.S. Declaration of Independence pledging "decent respect for the opinions of mankind," let's play global hopscotch:
FINLAND
TV journalist Anna Kaca reports on a conversation overheard in the halls at her station: "American domestic and foreign politics are too important to the world to be left to the Americans."
ENGLAND
Writes Gregory Palast of the Observer: "This is a wonderfully smug, self-congratulatory moment for England, which loves to think of America as Britain's big, dumb cousin. 'This is no way to run a democracy' is a media favorite ... from a people with an un-elected House of Lords ruled by genetic fossils. Andrew Marr, BBC-TV's political correspondent, earned hoots and howls for saying the disaster confirmed the strength of U.S. democracy because there was no coup d'état, as would happen in Bolivia in like circumstance. The bigger fear in Europe is the specter of a befuddled Bush with his golf club on The Button." Adds Mark Lynas of One World: "I haven't looked in great detail at the U.K. media, and since most of it is right wing there is a natural bias in favor of Bush, but it seems to me that there is a clear sense that all the irregularities in the Florida vote can't simply be brushed under the carpet."
Paola di Maio, an Italian journalist living in Britain, adds a conspiratorial note: "It is obvious that IBM and the FBI have taken over the system. Last year IBM invited me to discuss with them their new 'electronic democracy' technology in Greenock, Scotland. I expressed great interest and enthusiasm in the technology, but with one reservation: You can change the result of an entire election by hitting one button or by changing one digit in the code. They replied that top executives don't know much about coding. The little nerd sitting in the corner of the room manipulating the slides had a sinister look. But I am paranoid by nature."
And, notes London-based MediaChannel news editor Bruce Whitehead: "Personally, I think it shakes U.S. authority; Uncle Sam tells everyone how great democracy is, but it turns out the popular vote can't be trusted, and hey, they use the electoral colleges to overrule if they think the public gets it wrong ... Milosevic must be loving every moment."
GERMANY
Markus Rettich, director of political studies for Media Tenor writes: "So-called Americanization of the electoral process was a big question in the German election of 1998. Editorials warned election campaigns could be personality-based rather than issue-based, and they blamed the current chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, and his team for this development. Analyzing the campaign coverage of the leading German television newscasts and newspaper media, we found that journalists themselves 'Americanized' their reporting by not covering the issues the politicians were talking about, and boosted Schroeder's chances of winning the election by making positive predictions about his chances of victory up to the day of election. In 2000, we are analyzing U.S. presidential campaign coverage to study a 'real' Americanized campaign, so that we may look into our own political future. German television journalists regard the American newscasts as a model for their own work. If we really have seen our future, we have cause for concern. American TV journalists turned election coverage into sports reporting — poor sports reporting at that! To carry the analogy further, it's like announcing goals before they are scored, just to be first. TV journalists are now talking about democracy without considering what their own work means for the American democracy."
SOUTH AFRICA
Reports Amina Frense of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC): "The headlines in Gauteng province, the area most densely populated with South Africans and with the biggest number of dailies in South Africa, first screamed 'It's Gore!' and then crossed that out and substituted 'It's Bush!' then crossed that out and added, 'Who knows?' One of the many Gauteng inhabitants wrote 'Who Cares?' My [South African Broadcasting Corporation] on-air colleague said we are at least sure of one thing: In America they can't say, 'We are going back to the Bush.' That is going down well as a South Africanism and is a reference to the liberation struggle here." Adds Pallo Jordan, a prominent member of the Parliament: "South African coverage is absolutely derivative! Either from CNN or the BBC, nothing that you have not heard. The U.S. mess was knocked off our front pages by a really heavy story about six white fascist cops training their police dogs by setting them on three African 'illegal immigrants.' Don't know if that story has reached there? [Yes, MediaChannel ran it! — D.S.] I suggest you folks invite the Zimbabwe National Democratic Institute to come and assess whether these elections were free and fair!" (Note: I covered the South African elections, with l9 parties running, in l994. Everyone voted by marking the ballots without shards, machines or any technology. Somehow the ballots were counted.)
OTHER AFRICAN STATES
Agence France Press reported that African nations on Friday suggested sending "observers" to the United States to help overcome presidential poll confusion as the world's press argued over whether it was witnessing electoral chaos or simply democracy in action. Congo's independent La Reference Plus said Thursday that the U.S. vote provided "strong arguments for bad leaders and dictators in Africa ... If this happens in the United States, how do you want everything to be clean and transparent in the poor African continent?"
INDIA
From K. M. Shrivastava, a professor at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi: "Chief Indian Election Commissioner Mr. M. S. Gill has said that the Indian election system is better [than that of the United States], and those reviewing the Indian Constitution should learn a lesson from the [Amerian] muddle. Gill's immediate reaction was that the culprits were mainly big television networks who had jumped the gun in trying to be first with the news. 'I think part of the blame lies with the competitive press of America, with each television channel wanting to be the first to break the news.'"
TV producer Ramesh Sharma adds: "As Tom Stoppard, the British playwright, said, 'It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting ...' Most editorial comments have been quick to compare the electoral system in India — itself a subject of great debate and in need of reforms — with what is clearly a much more flawed system in the United States. What has come under scrutiny is the electoral college system, an archaic machinery that has inherent defects, where the will of the majority can often be ignored. An editorial in the Times of India concludes: 'The country that lectures the world has to hear out the world for a change, whether it is a taxi driver in Nigeria giving a piece of his mind or the Italians calling the superpower a Banana Republic ...' "
INDONESIA
British TV reporter Jake Lynch, in Jakarta on a journalism education program, responded to my query this way: "Indonesians are bemused at the 'U.S. mess,' especially since the candidates seem so alike. Media here fastened on the comments about the Middle East — both promising that America would remain 'Israel's friend' as well as a disinterested mediator — a combination which, viewed from here, seems impossible. More seriously, many of our friends here are committed to the 'reformasi' process in Indonesia, but now disheartened at the emergence of a political discourse in which the dissatisfactions of daily life are increasingly blamed on a Washington-based plot."
CUBA
The Associated Press reported this encounter 90 miles from Florida: Fidel Castro lampooned low voter turnout in the United States by spending the day at the beach. State television Wednesday night showed Castro walking along the shore in his typical olive green uniform and boots and running into an unidentified American tourist. "Like the majority of Americans, you have gone to the beach," Castro said. Later Cuba raised the possibility of sending election observers — a prospect raised by many other editorial writers and personalities, such as Nigeria's Nobel Laureate for literature, Wole Soyinka.
MEXICO
Alberto Giordano of the Narco News Network opines: "Turnabout is fair play, and we love the way this is progressing. The United States government and media have preached for so long to Latin America about 'democracy' that everyone down here is laughing now at them. In Mexico, where the 1988 'fall of the computer system' elected Carlos Salinas by fraud, that earthshaking event was the first fissure in what later brought the Zapatista rebellion and now the fall of the ruling party. I hope the same educational process follows in Gringolandia, where democracy has become an expensive circus and farce. ... There's also confusion in all América (the América with an accent) about how a candidate could win a majority of votes and not win the election. Even the presidential election system of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked."
BACK IN THE USA
A final comment comes from Mike Albert of Z magazine, whose views are close to my own, but no doubt would be branded "foreign" by our media. "For communicating content," media matters. Shutting Nader out of the debates was anti-democratic and locked the door on the visibility he needed to win five percent of the vote [and thus ensure that his Green Party would garner matching funds]. Pathetic media coverage guaranteed low support, low hope and thus, low votes. Any future campaign must more effectively galvanize alternative media and Internet options and must also mount a far more powerful campaign of visible pressure on mainstream media and on the debate authorities. Why not have rallies of 10,000 and 15,000 people outside NBC, or inside NBC, for that matter?" Well, yes, but who would cover them?
Finally, just in case you assumed that this crisis couldn't be commercialized, guess again. At least one movie studio has already rushed a film on the subject into production, as if fiction can trump reality. And then there's this: Orlando.com said it will award a five-day trip for two to Florida to the person who correctly guesses whether Gore or Bush wins the recount. The winner gets air tickets and a visit to Disney World.
Perfect. You can't make this stuff up.
UPDATE
Last week in my column, "Convicted by an Image", I knocked CBS for a highly ideological "48 Hours" interview with Lori Berenson, a political prisoner in Peru. This week, I tip my hat to CBS's "60 Minutes" for a hard-hitting investigation of the causes of some of the violence between Israel and the Palestinians; "Probing Root Causes Of Mideast Violence" The story was the subject of a media alert before it aired because Palestinian groups, see "Palestine Media Watch", feared it would support an attempt by the Israeli Army to explain away the killing of a 12-year-old Palestinian at a border crossing in Gaza. The story, reported by Bob Simon and produced by Michael Gavshon, was instead quite tough (and unusual for beings so) in showing both Israeli and Palestinian criticisms of Israeli Army behavior.
— Danny Schechter is the executive editor of MediaChannel and the author of "News Dissector" (Electronpress.com) and "Falun Gong's Challenge to China" (Akashicbooks.com).
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