It’s fitting that media reform would be a campaign issue for presidential candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. Don’t know who they are? Well, that starts to get toward my point. Kucinich and Gravel – both still trying to hold their own in the race for the White House – are prime examples of the chronic lack of coverage that less well-funded candidates receive. These “back of the pack” runners are given their few moments to speak at the debates and press conferences, and then quietly ushered aside to make room for the glitz and glam of media hogs like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Obama has the mighty Oprah Winfrey vouching for him on daytime television, while Hillary is sitting pretty on her war chest of corporate campaign contributions. What does Mike Gravel offer? Well… only boring things like the replacement of income taxes with progressive consumption taxes; an end to the war; universal, single-payer health care; and a revolutionary idea for direct-democracy called the National Initiative (which would allow citizens to bypass Congress and directly pass their own legislation). As a senator for Alaska in the ‘70s, he lead the way to force the Defense Department to release the Pentagon Papers to Congress.
I suppose these things might be more exciting if Gravel had more than a few thousand dollars in his campaign fund, but for now, CNN has better things to do with their time… like entertaining the American public.
The BBC, in an article entitled “I’m voting for… what’s-his-name,” concludes that some candidates, like Gravel and Kucinich, are merely “message candidates”; in fact only running for the sake of bringing certain issues to the limelight. How sad; we designate those with the most qualified, well-articulated ideas to act as puppet candidates in our fake democracy, and push the corporate money grabbers to American Idol status.
What the mainstream media is in fact doing is neglecting its role as information mediums in the American democratic process. Fundraising ability has become directly correlated with media coverage, in effect leaving those of us who are looking so desperately to use our vote on a serious candidate, drowned out by mass media cacophony.
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