Media Matters: Why Not Give Us Context (Attendance)

Politics is all theater. Aristotle could have told me that had I not been ignorant about his writings in high school, when I had the good fortune (I thought back then) of interviewing Ronald Reagan, who was running for president.

Seeing him, and seeing how few folks attended his talk at the local Hilton in Reagan neotribal territory in California, showed me how bankrupt the mainstream media is. Forget left/right or liberal/conservative; just give us the numbers (and I don’t mean the poll numbers).

No one mentioned how few people there were, let alone the purple hue of his Grecian Formula hair, making Reagan look like a long-lost former governor.

It’s not for nothing that all politicians complain (i.e. whine) about the established media’s unfairness to her or him — and the airing of the GOP debates, with the public whining of these politicians, hit a chord with the public.

This is where social media comes in. If the media won’t tell us how many people attend the candidates’ pep rallies, will it be on the Twitter feed? (Though who has time to collate all this data, not 538.) I’m tired of not understanding the context (people per candidate) and then hearing the “surprise” at the results of the primary.

The media needs to finance itself, but at our representational democratic expense? Why were the airways constructed as public then? Just give us the specs, please. The non-poll numbers — tell us how many people are in the theater or attended the Cruz show (not just the Trump circus).

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By Ruth O'Brien|2018-07-03T14:04:32+00:00February 18th, 2016|2016 Primaries, Beyond Polling|Comments Off

About the Author: Ruth O'Brien

Professor Ruth O’Brien, who earned her Ph.D. in political science at UCLA, joined the Graduate Center’s doctoral faculty in 1997 and, in 2004, founded the “Writing Politics” specialization in political science. She also serves as an adjunct affiliated scholar with the Center for American Progress. In her research and books, she focuses on American politics, law, political theory without national borders, globalism, and American/global dichotomy. She edits the award-winning “Public Square” series for Princeton University Press, showcasing public intellectuals such as Jill Lepore, Jeff Madrick, Anne Norton, Martha Nussbaum, and Joan Scott. O’Brien is also launching “Heretical Thought,” an Oxford University Press political-theory series that is global in outlook. Her latest book, Out of Many One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition (2013), with a foreword by journalist Thomas Byrnes Edsall, distinguished professor at Columbia’s School of Journalism, was honored with a 2013 “Author Meets Critic” American Political Science Association convention session. She also wrote Bodies in Revolt: Gender, Disability, and a Workplace Ethic of Care (2005), Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (2001), which received an honorable mention from Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry (“Meyers Center”), and Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of the New Deal Labor Policy, 1886–1935 (1998). “Writing Politics” emanated from two books she contributed to and edited: Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination (2008) and Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act (2004), which earned another honorable mention from the Meyers Center. O’Brien’s controversial blog led Rush Limbaugh to dub her a “professorette.”