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STATE OF THE STATE
There isn't much political information
in the Information Age
by Jennifer Davis
You've come a long way, baby," goes one well-known cigarette ad. But the slogan could apply as well to the type of advertising used to sell not a product, but a person: campaign advertising.
In fact, voters have more - and faster - sources of political information than ever before: TV, radio, newspapers, direct mail, the Internet.
This is indeed the Information Age.
Yet even if we look and listen closely, we aren't getting much information, from paid campaign ads or free campaign reporting. True, we may know to the penny the balance in a candidate's campaign kitty, but we are left with little understanding of where those candidates stand on the important issues of the day. We may know which important votes officials missed during their political career, but little about the tough choices they made.
Voters today are swimming in a sea of information that has been spun, slanted and squeezed every which way but up. The campaign commercials that started airing this summer - vivid images meant to prey on voters' fears - will become more pervasive and negative as November 3 nears. One of Republican gubernatorial candidate George Ryan's early ads, for instance, depicts gang members with automatic weapons as the narrator warns, "There's enough dangerous people around. We don't need a governor who lets them have guns."
There are two key reasons for the glut of largely cursory campaign info: The news media isn't doing its job, leaving voters to rely on ads, and the majority of voters could care less. And why should the candidates complain? They're happy the news is focused on who's winning, not why. "I don't think the voter wants to pay attention to [campaign] ads and direct mail, but it's hard to get information otherwise," says Kent Redfield, who teaches political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "The news coverage you see tends to be horse race kind of stuff."
That, or "it's covered like a ping- pong match," says former Statehouse reporter Charlie Wheeler. "Candidate so-and-so says this and candidate so-and-so responds."
Further, Bernard Schoenburg, who has covered politics and campaigns over the past 20 years, admits it's easier to focus on the "horse race" aspects of campaigns. "Getting into the issues is harder. Some [news outlets] are doing it better than others." He includes in that number his own paper, The State Journal-Register of Springfield. "I think we do try to do issue things. But it's a constant struggle to do it right."
In their defense, reporters are forever struggling to, as they say, "feed the beast." A daily newspaper or radio or TV newscast must be filled with something, and there isn't often time for an in-depth analysis of issues. And many candidates, particularly incumbents, would prefer to avoid such scrutiny.
Finally, there is conflicting information about what voters want to know. "TV media consultants and gurus, whose job is to track ratings, point to surveys that show people aren't interested in politics," says Wheeler, who also directs the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "They're more interested in health, personal finance and crime. They say, 'Show the car crashes and sex scandals.' So I think reporters are swimming uphill when they argue for more or better campaign coverage."
Then there are the candidates themselves. "They all have clever media consultants trying to manipulate the news," Wheeler says. "Their paid message they totally manipulate, but they also try and stage news events or set up things they know TV is likely to cover."
Notes the June issue of Campaigns & Elections magazine: "In recent years, political media buying has evolved from a relatively uncomplicated, peripheral part of the campaign process into something of a center-stage science - an adaptation borne out of necessity."
Adds Redfield: "As the more traditional voter cues - political parties, families, community institutions and religion - continue to decline and voters turn more to TV and radio, they'll be exposed to more sophisticated, narrow messages about candidates."
Combined, these influences explain part of the reason why we have gone from the days of the Lincoln-Douglas debates to getting much of our political information from slick, expensive 30-second sound bytes. The other reason,
6 | September 1998 Illinois Issues
oddly, is that we no longer view politics as entertainment.
Indeed, 140 years ago this summer, that is exactly why people flocked from all parts of Illinois and neighboring states to hear U.S. Senate candidates Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln as they stumped the state, engaging in seven now-legendary debates, mostly on the contentious issue of slavery.
Those debates - in Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy and Alton - "attracted tens of thousands of voters to their appearances, and newspaper reprints of their speeches became required reading for hundreds of thousands more," writes Harold Holzer in his 1993 book, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. "Particularly in the small towns that dotted the Illinois prairie, the pulse of politics and the heartbeat of the community throbbed as one; election fever was a year-round malady that infected its eager victims with incurable enthusiasm. Public officials might be revered, voter turnout was nearly unanimous, and politics lured masses of celebrants to barbecues, Fourth of July picnics, fireworks displays and stemwinder speeches that combined the fervor of the revival meeting, the spectacle of theater and the passion of neighborly argument."
In other words, they had nothing better to do.
"The mere idea today," Holzer writes, "of summoning thousands of ordinary citizens to gather together outdoors, unsheltered and, more often than not, unseated, to observe political debates firsthand - much less expecting audiences to listen attentively to hours of speechifying - borders on the fantastic." And the voters of that time didn't even choose the U.S. Senate candidate; the legislature did.
Today, we are much too distracted by life, argues Wheeler, to pay such close attention to political campaigns. Such are the consequences, perhaps, of our fast-paced age.
So how do we get back some of what we've lost?
Wheeler believes that, "first off, we need to convince the gatekeepers that politics are important and, secondly, we have to give reporters time and space to go beyond the obvious. It's the media not just being reactive, but sitting down and thinking and planning rationally."
And there are signs of positive change. Most newspapers now, for instance, analyze TV campaign commercials - pointing out to viewers the inadequacies or inaccuracies. Closer to election time, many publish special sections on the candidates that go into a little more detail about the issues. For our part, Illinois Issues this month took special pains to give each gubernatorial candidate a chance to speak at length on the issues and on how they would govern Illinois.
We obviously cannot return to those yesteryear days, but neither do we have to accept the slick advertising lie that we've come a long way. Because we haven't. Not truly.
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