HoodaThunk?

(Ed. note: this post was written over a week ago but never published. I… uh…  OK, I hit the wrong button.)

One of the things I’ve tried to stay active doing is reading books. With all of the work I do online it becomes easy to simply stop reading books and that’s a real shame when someone does that. To that end, I make some real efforts at reading all manner of works – political commentary, history, sci-fi, techno-thriller, and anything else that catches my eye. Unlike the book-reading I did in my youth where I literally lost track of the outside world until the book was finished, I tend to read a few chapters a night and I’ve actually got a few books in progress in different parts of the house.

One of the books I’ve just started is by David Mindich titled, “Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News.” This is of personal interest to me because, like Mindich, I firmly believe that our younger fellow citizens are swiftly becoming less and less capable of making informed decisions as members of our democracy and that doesn’t bode well for us as a nation. They’re less capable not because they’re idiots but because they’re ill-informed. The questions that need answering are 1) why are they “tuned out” and 2) what can we do about it?

I’m not even through the first chapter and already the book is becoming difficult to read. I had a similar situation last year when I was trying to get through a James Carville book. It’s just very hard to keep listening to someone who, through assertion and linguistic choices, tries to build an argument on flawed logic and false information. When I picked this book up at the library, I was actually in the stacks looking for Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” and happened to see Mindich’s book nearby. I had no idea who he was, what his premise was in the book, or any clue as to his background. The very first paragraph of the preface provided a dead giveaway that I was reading a book by a liberal author, likely a Democrat supporter, and a better than 9-in-10 chance of being a current or former journalist. Here’s the ‘graph:

The thesis of this book, that young people have largely abandoned traditional news, was not one that I pursued. Instead, it came to me, like a news flash, as I was teaching a class one afternoon in January 2001. On that day, the first of the semester in Media Law and Ethics, I distributed an informal quiz to test students’ background knowledge of the law. I had reason for optimism. These particular students were among the best and brightest in a top department in a selective college. And it was an excellent time to ask students about politics and the law: The Supreme Court had just halted the 2000 presidential election and the hearings to confirm John Ashcroft as attorney general were well underway.

The beginning of that last line – “The Supreme Court had just halted the 2000 presidential election…” – is inexcusable for an author to write in 2005, the copyright date of this work. The Supreme Court case, Bush v. Gore, halted a recount, not an election, and it was a recount that was being performed under unconstitutional circumstances. What the SCOTUS did was prevent the Supreme Court of Florida from casually setting aside parts of the Florida constitution. It prevented the recounts taking place in different parts of Florida under wildly differing criteria and it prevented ballots in 1 jurisdiction from being held to a different standard than in another.

Note also that he completely ignores the fact that both public and private agencies have gone ahead and completed the recounts exactly as the Gore team wanted done and they still found that Bush won that election. For a book published in 2005, that omission is a pretty clear attempt to obscure the facts.

(Ed.: Fast forward to today)

I’ve completed the book and I can’t say I’m overwhelmed. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’d be interested in finding out if Mindich is putting any more stock into the notion that people are tuning out of the traditional media because they recognize that they’re being manipulated. I note that several of the media outlets are still reporting the MoveOn talking points of Rush Limbaugh’s comments even though the truth that he didn’t say what they’re claiming has been known for days.

In the final analysis of Mindich’s suggestions about what to do, you find that he’s all for government intervention into the political discourse. Media outlets should be forced, he believes, to make whatever change he’s got in mind and – get this – candidates for office should be forced to participate in whatever debates are offered.

You know, the media could end all of this trouble immediately, if they’d choose to do so. Gather all the TV news outlets – broadcast or cable – and form a coalition to present a debate or a small series of them. Every member of said coalition carries the same debate at the same and there’s only going to be 1, 2 or 3 of them. Period. Print and internet media can do the same to present the candidates views in writing. My only wish? That candidates would not have access to the comments of any other candidate before their own comments are published. No one gets to take potshots at something someone else said in their answers. Every candidate addresses the given issue with their own thoughts and ideas rather than play gotcha with some other candidate’s.

Mindich gives some great data in his book and it’s certainly food for thought. But his suggestions leave me cold and, I suspect, they would many others as well. Just my opinion…