http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/11/five-truths-about-us-political-circus-non-americans-should-question
As an American academic living
in Europe, I am often asked by journalists to offer my opinion about what is
going on with US politics, Trump and the media. A number of issues regularly
crop up during these discussions that suggest a somewhat blinkered media view
of events. Here are five issues that I think are important, and worth
considering in a more critical fashion.
Truth #1: “Trump is
revolutionizing US politics…”
"This is why Bernie
Sanders is far more revolutionary than Trump: a candidate with no personal
wealth, and no Super Political Action Committee (“Super PAC”) money, is
mounting a serious challenge against a candidate (Clinton) who has massive
financial support from US corporations. That’s the story."
A recent
editorial in the Washington Post argued that the success of Donald Trump
and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election cycle is evidence that money, while
clearly important in US politics, is not everything. The editorial was half
right. It is hard to see how a self-funding
billionaire, famous for his role in reality television, is in any way a
poster-child for the decreasing power of money in US politics. A billionaire
buying his way to the Presidency is no less bound to the interests of capital
than a millionaire like Hillary Clinton getting corporations to help her buy
her way to the Presidency. Either way, the
Presidency is for sale. This is why Bernie Sanders is far more
revolutionary than Trump: a candidate with no personal wealth, and no Super
Political Action Committee (“Super PAC”) money, is mounting a serious challenge
against a candidate (Clinton) who has massive financial support from US
corporations. That’s the story.
Truth #2: “Trump is getting
ahead with no advertising…”
Trump is a ratings
goldmine. Trump knows
it. The media
know it. And the figures on the levels
of media coverage given to Trump show it. Yet, when the negative influence
of money on US politics is discussed, the conversation is often limited to
campaign finance, and not to things like media profit margins. Trump’s ability
to forego
expensive advertising might be revolutionary to political pundits, but it’s
entirely rational…if not utterly banal. Trump has leveraged his personal and
cultural capital (wealth, celebrity and outrageousness) into free coverage, and
a
salivating corporate US media have obliged. In this sense, US media act
like the contributors Trump proudly announces that he does not have:
corporations donating valuable resources to his cause in the expectation of
financial reward. This is also where the notion of Sanders and Trump as somehow
linked by their financial “outsider” status falls apart: Sanders still has
traction (and is winning states) despite a media that finds his message of
solidarity and equality unsexy
and unappealing. Trump, on the other hand, is being pumped acres of media
oxygen despite message that is vile, juvenile and offensive…because it gets
eyeballs. Trump may not be buying ads, but he is still getting them.
Truth #3: “Trump is the
creation of right-wing media like Fox News…”
"The fact that Trump’s
blatant racism and Islamophobia is resonating cannot be divorced from decades
of media coverage in which the wholesale slaughter of Muslims in Afghanistan,
Iraq and Yemen as a direct result of US military action (and sanctions) was not
only not investigated, but actively cheer-led by the news media."
With the media over-exposure I
have just mentioned, it is easy to
blame outlets like Fox News as key culprits the rise of Donald Trump. In
fact, for pundits and journalists in the US it’s convenient to do so, as these
outlets deflect attention away from the historical failure
of the US news media to engage in critical analyses of politics, as well as
a willingness on the part of US journalism to push the nationalist/patriotism
card when it suits them to do so. The road Donald Trump now drives upon was
paved many years ago by a US news media that championed shallow horse-race
coverage of elections devoid of substantive analysis of policy. And, the fact that
Trump’s blatant racism and Islamophobia is resonating cannot
be divorced from decades of media coverage in which the wholesale slaughter
of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen as a direct result of US military
action (and sanctions) was not only not investigated, but actively cheer-led by
the news media.
Truth #4: “The Democrats are a
progressive alternative to Republicans…”
The desire on the part of the
international press to understand US politics as “left versus right” leads to a
dangerous misrepresentation of the Democrats. US politics is center-right and
far-right. To take the most obvious argument: if we assume that what you are willing
to do abroad cannot be seen as irrelevant to your political ideology, post-9/11
Democratic politics is anything but progressive. Support for the occupation and
destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the killing of civilians in drone
strikes, rearming Israel as
it killed civilians in Gaza? These are not the hallmarks of leftist
politics. Progressivism is not a zero-sum game where you offset hawkish
militarism abroad with mildly progressive politics at home. Unless, that is,
you believe that human life somehow has less value in Baghdad than it does in
Boston. And, domestically, there is another clear example: it’s hard to see how
a party whose leading candidate does
not support the abolition of the death penalty – considered barbaric in
most developed democracies – can pass itself off as progressive. So, yes, the
Democrats are to the left of Trump…but that’s hardly difficult.
Truth #5: “Trump is about
harnessing citizen anger and disaffection with politics…”
This is likely true…but Trump
is also about harnessing xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism. A good place to
start is to watch Van
Jones tear apart Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord on CNN in what has
become an iconic moment in this election cycle. The interaction came after 6 or
7 hours of coverage by CNN where racism and Islamophobia was not addressed. The
fact that it took an African-American to bring it up at the end of the evening
is an indictment of a mainstream US press that has not addressed Trump’s racism
in a substantive manner.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Christian Christensen,
American in Sweden, is Professor of Journalism at Stockholm University. Follow
him on Twitter: @ChrChristensen
No comments:
Post a Comment