While live tweeting the democratic debate on October 13th, Donald Trumps

most discussed tweet was his blunt declaration, Sorry, there is no STAR on
the stage tonight!. I was expecting the media to vilify Trump for regarding
potential national leaders as one would American Idol contestants, but many
publications and citizens seemed to echo his sentiment. The American
people seem ironically resistant to substantive political discourse in the
broadcast debates, favoring the buffoonery of the GOPs personalities over
identifying what issues need to be tackled. Admittedly, Ive enjoyed watching
the chaos of the Republican debates, or reading about the cartoonish drivel
that some candidates have been spewing, but Im also concerned the
medias representation of the presidential race reads more like a tabloid than
a legitimate news outlet. As The Washington Post points out: For better or
worse, Republicans have engaged a massive swath of the country with their
first two debates, which were watched by 25 million and 23 million people,
respectively. (By comparison, the highest-rated Democratic presidential debate in 2008, when Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were locked
in a battle royal, drew 10.7 million viewers.) Even if some voters tuned in just
to witness the spectacle that is Trumps front-running candidacy, they now
are familiar with many of the other GOP candidates. (Rucker, 2015).
Its undeniable that the state of politics continues to align more closely with
the Neil Postmans dystopian vision of entertainment dominating pressing
discourse. One could assume he would regard the digital age as he did
television, about which he wrote, the problem is not that television presents
us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented
as entertaining (Postman, 87). Indeed, the current race is defined by the
need to entertain; for example, the two presidential frontrunners were
special guests on Saturday Night Live as part of a press circuit, and more
people are familiar with the outrageous behavior of Ben Carson and Mike
Huckabee than the actual policies of viable candidates. The state of affairs
has me considering a few things; for one, is the danger in this political
grandstanding the fact that some of these individuals actually stand a
chance to be our president, or that it distracts us from focusing on the issues
that we face as a nation? Furthermore, exactly who is behind the content of
the current political media; would it be the spin doctors of political
communications firms, or predominantly distributors seeking higher
advertiser dollars?
Croteau and Hoynes provide arguments that the current issues with political
representation in the media are a relatively moot point. They present the
Minimal Effects Model, which suggests that media messages more often
reinforce beliefs rather than change them. They compound the theory by
presented Doris Grabers study on media, in which she concluded while
people used media information to make sense of public issues, what they
knew about these issues was not limited to the information the media
supplied. (Croteau/Hoynes, 239). Thus, the average politically active citizen

is not relying on TV, Buzzfeed, The New York Post, etc. to become informed
about issues they care about.
But then the informed citizen is likely pursuing information from sources that
share their bias, as opposed to sources that are supposed to strive for
objectivity. While many are unlikely to be swayed by what they see on
television or read in the newspaper, they still should be presented with
different perspectives to be a fully informed participatory citizen. As Eli
Parisner said in The Filter Bubble, To be the author of your life, you have to
be aware of a diverse array of options and lifestyles (11). Mainstream media
should strive to be an outlet that is both accessible and serious in its political
coverage, and not cave to the consumers inclination to be entertained
before informed.
Works Cited
Cox, John Woodrow. "Democrats See a More Substantive, If Sleepy, Debate
than Rowdy GOP Show." Washington Post. The Washington Post, n.d.
Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. Media Society: Industries, Images, and
Audiences. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2003. Print.
Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York:
Penguin, 2011. Print.