Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies

Internet offers chance for real political dialogue

Lawrence Uebel

Television as a political medium is dying and almost dead, assuming it was ever alive in the first place. It's still useful for transmitting simple news, speeches and other public announcements, but as a vehicle for debate it has become almost completely worthless. It favors the charismatic rather than the reasonable (acutely noted by Paul Graham), does a poor job of conveying complexity and is weighed down by too much useless filler.

Jon Stewart emphasized a major problem with television debate when he appeared on CNN's Crossfire. He accused the hosts of "partisan hackery," jokingly asking, "Why do we have to fight?" He spent much of the remainder of the show making jokes, but he had a central theme: forced partisan shouting-matches and "kneejerk reactionary talk" are not debate - they're "theater" - and genuine debate is central to a functioning democracy.

Empty partisanship on networks is a major problem, but the most serious issues with television are its inability to convey complexity well and it's being riddled with irrelevancies. I recently watched the Sept. 21 episode of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. In a one-hour period, O'Reilly interrupted his guests (both ones he agreed with and didn't) 11 times and challenged the Obama administration's decision to boycott the network - between one guest and himself referring to the decision as "petty" and "stupid" and to the administration itself as "cry babies," and accusing them of only trying to "get revenge." He made a point-by-point analysis of President Obama speaking with other interviewers, but his average response lasted only around 40 seconds. He finished the show with segments on celebrities. In a segment called "Pinheads and Patriots," he praised Beyonce for bringing a child with leukemia on stage during concert and labeled Dave Matthews a "pinhead" for agreeing that some criticism of Obama is race-based. He had segment analyzing body language and one in which, responding to Megan Fox disliking her Christian school as a girl, he said, "Whatever. Ms. Fox's new film Jennifer's Body bombed at the box office this weekend," though he did add, "We're sorry."

People - especially students - like to take shots at O'Reilly, and he might not be an entirely fair representation of television debate and opinion programs. His site describes the show as an "interview news show." But on the question of effectiveness, O'Reilly isn't terribly worse than any other station. One can take issue with his demeanor, rudeness or method, but when it comes down to it, the problems with his program - name-calling, shouting matches, celebrity stories, shock value and cursory treatment of complex topics - are shared on every other major network opinion show (with the recently deceased Crossfire as just one example).

Until now, the Internet has been used much like TV with respect to politics - at least popularly. It transmits sound bytes out of context, features attack pieces and allows users to pick their favorite channels (Web sites) while blocking out all of the other noise. It would only take one Web site to overcome this.

Any startup could create a site that would compile as much relevant political data that it could find. The startup would have a difficult time on its own, so it would likely require a Wikipedia-style setup: any user could submit an article or scholarly opinion available online, and submissions could be heavily edited by the startup employees. The articles could be tagged with an author's name as well as its references. It could be searchable primarily by issue, and secondarily by author or speaker. This could be especially useful for public officials. Their voting record could be kept under their name as well and would be readily compared to their written and spoken opinions. Profiles of public figures could also list their former professions or public service experiences, which would be useful to voters. Arranging links by popularity would likely make the most sense. The most useful would head to the top of the list, and the useless would drift downwards.

There are three advantages of the internet in this capacity: first, the site would constantly be building upon old material without losing the old, making it harder for public figures to ignore their old words and allowing newcomers to easily get caught up in few days. Second, it's always available rather than constantly changing, so that a reader can spend as much time on one topic as he or she likes - and there is no time limit as in televised debate, so a public figure could write as much or as little as he or she felt relevant to the topic. Finally, written words cannot (persuasively) shout - just see how ridiculous it looks on http://www.youtube.com - and anything discourteous can be cut out so that only the important elements of discussion remain. (Another possible side effect would be, with any success, local chapters of such a site spawning, creating a forum for local issues.)

Such a site would require founders dedicated to neutrality, but this isn't as big of a hurdle as it appears - a truly useful compilation site would only get traffic if it could be trusted. Much as http://www.consumerreports.com relies on unbiased assessment of products for its success, this site would rely on a neutral compilation of material for its own. With so much partisanship already floating around the Internet, only a truly innovative - which is to say neutral - site would have any chance of widespread success.

Many complain that too few people care about politics, but I don't buy it. Somewhere I once read, "politics is gossip for smart people." Television didn't create this problem, but it exacerbated it. People don't dislike politics. They dislike what it has become. No honest, mature person would deny interest in some aspect of war, the national economy, medical insurance, education or, at the very least, taxes. What most people don't care about is the name-calling and rumor-mongering, and sadly television spends most of its political time on these topics because controversy pays. I agree with Orwell that politics is "a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." But we have the means to start cleaning up the mess, and, in the process, maybe make politics a little more effective and civil.


Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter