[First published in AM New York.]
NIXON vs. KENNEDY was the first television election. Now Bush vs. Kerry has become the first Internet election.
In the slipstream created by Howard Dean‘s innovative campaign manager Joe Trippi and by his webmistress, Zephyr Teachout (could you invent a better name for a cyber-messenger?) who revolutionized grassroots politics and took their primaries battle online, the Kerry-Edwards campaign has adopted many of their techniques. More than just the party base has been energized by weblogs, social networking sites like MeetUp.com, and discussion sessions via Yahoo Groups and the like. And of course the Bush-Cheney machine, too, has emulated Dean’s internet initiative.
So a torrent of fresh public participation has been unleashed in our national politics, from the new kind of cash donations – small, often tiny, but from myriad individual sources – through to interactive policy exchanges between voters and candidates.
And the effect on the press and broadcasting is very evident. Can we now even imagine a Web-less campaign? Would the CBS News tale of George W Bush‘s National Guard days have unraveled so dramatically without keen-eyed bloggers to spot signs of a forger at work? Would the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” have gotten any traction for their effort to impugn John Kerry‘s battlefield heroism in the face of testimony from Kerry’s actual Swift Boat companions?
The impact has been a mixed blessing. The mainstream media (if we shouid still use that phrase) bear a big responsibility here. A provocative, even totally groundless story circulating on the web can gain disproportionate currency, and even credibility, once “Big Media” feels it has to take it up. All too often it’s been passed on to mass audiences without any real assessment or even basic journalistic review.
In the haste of the 24-hour news-cycle, newspaper or TV journalists who fear a rival “putting it out there” first can too easily repeat a website’s dubious assertion, and just add to it a denial from the accused party, as if that was all the work that was needed.
My news editors always told me: “If you’re not sure it stands up, don’t publish it.” But in these hysterical times, an oddity like “Hey – the President’s wearing a wire,” plus maybe a spokesman’s response of “That’s ridiculous”, will swallow up time and column-inches on a King Kong scaie. Not much harm is done there perhaps. But why should an unfortunate 24-year-old woman have to live with the lasting fall-out of some unsupportable “Affair With Intern” gossip that originated on the Web?
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Last time I checked, newspapers and network newsrooms had calendars. Fixed-date stories were noted ahead of time and worked on. Readers and viewers can be forgiven for having no clue that the Welfare Reform Act signed by Bill Clinton finally expired during this campaign – on September 30th, to be precise.
Have you noticed any media outlets holding the candidates’ feet to fire about it? I haven’t.
Some related promises are on record to analyse. Bush has said “We want 70% of the people on welfare working by the next five years.” Kerry has said “I will raise minimum wage to $7 an hour and 9.2 million women trying to raise families will earn another $3,800 a year.”
As Fox News would say: You decide.
