©
Josh Sager – September 2012
In a post-Citizens United political landscape, those
with large amounts of money are able to spend near-unlimited amounts in order
to spread propaganda favorable to their interests. Corporations, unions, and
rich individuals invest in political advertising and attempt to sway the public
into supporting politicians who are friendly to their interests. With the
weakening of campaign finance laws, modern elections have become billion dollar
events and interest groups the new advertising sponsors. As most of the money
in political races is spent in the production and distribution of political
advertising campaigns, this increase in money in politics has led to the public
being bombarded with political propaganda, much of it non-factual, and all of
it focused at shaping public opinion.
Money may not directly buy an election, but it
definitely buys a megaphone which can be used to influence voters—the more
money which can be spent, the larger and louder the megaphone that can be
bought to sway the election. Americans are currently being inundated with
millions of dollars of political advertising and there is rarely any real
fact-checking that would correct any falsehoods propagated by these ads; some
fact checking may occur, but it is almost never propagated with the same
frequency of the lie. By virtue of shear repetition and lack of a loud
debunking voice, political advertising allows those with resources (ex. oil
corporations) to convince wide swathes of the population to vote in a certain
way, regardless of the real effects of such a vote. At this point in American
politics, the megaphones that corporate interest groups are using to spread
their propaganda are the size and power of air-raid sirens—even if the truth
about an issue is spoken, it is drowned out by the much louder lies of those
who wish to buy the election to serve their interests.
In the traditional political model, the media acts
as an information source and a fact-checking organization. By reporting the
facts and debunking lies, the media serves to keep both sides honest and
confined within the facts. Unfortunately, due to both the sheer volume of
political propaganda being thrown at the American public and an unwillingness
by the media to risk being seen as biased if they debunk propaganda, the
traditional media functionality is now failing. The American media has gone
from the objective arbiters of the facts, to the neutral stenographers who
report partisan lies on equal footing with factual arguments.
For the most part, the current mainstream media has
become totally politically neutrality and has neglected much of the
fact-checking that it should be doing. A neutral media, as opposed to the
objective media, reports all sides on an issue equally, regardless of which
side is factually correct. As most Americans lack a personal knowledge of the
issues and rely on the media to tell them the facts, the equal portrayal of
political propaganda and factual arguments often leads Americans to draw the
wrong conclusions. When there are no fact checkers, it is far easier to
construct a set of lies to prop up a false premise than to make a factual
argument; reality has contradictions and exceptions, while an argument
engineered to spread a lie simply forces all facts to conform to the selected
outcome.
We see examples of this toxic “neutrality”
in several recent situations:
• The fictional “death panels” that
plagued the Affordable Care Act passage
• The fight over the validity of global
warming as a phenomenon
• The portrayal of Obama as a socialist
or radical liberal
For
more details on the Neutral/Objective media situation, read
this article.
The combination of a neutral media and a deregulated
campaign finance system has a truly toxic effect on American democracy. The
massive advertising campaigns of special interest groups are flooding the
American public with propaganda and are running virtually unopposed by the
media. In the absence of an objective referee, the loudest (wealthiest)
interest groups will be allowed to shape public opinion in their favor and will
gradually indoctrinate the public to support their interest.
A democracy doesn't work if the people voting have
been indoctrinated to the point where they are incapable of making rational
choices when they step into the ballot box. Because of their exposure to a
flood of misinformation, the low-information voter is increasingly likely to
vote contrary to their interests, not because they don’t want to pursue a
certain policy, but because they have been brainwashed. If we, as a society,
want to retain our democracy and the integrity of our government, we must
prevent private entities—all of which have an agenda, regardless of whether
they are large aggregations of power or simply people with wealth—from being
able to drown out all other voices. How are the poor and middle class expected
to get their voices heard when millions of dollars of advertising is blaring
propaganda across every media medium.
By equalizing the playing field through campaign
finance laws, the strongest of which would be a constitutional amendment, we
may create a system where the discussion is based around who has the best ideas
rather than who shouts the loudest. To protect our democracy, it is imperative
that every American recognize that limitless money in politics is a recipe for
a government that only serves those who can afford a loud voice, and that
campaign finance is an issue beyond partisanship—without sane rules on the
money in our political process, there is no way to have an actual conversation
about the issues.
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