How Does Television Negatively Affect Political Campaigning?

Television is often viewed as a gateway of entertainment, as well as information, commonly found in the form of news. In fact, the average American watches 4 hours of television each day. Being aware of the fact that Americans are tuned in each day, many politicians and political parties use this medium to promote their causes. An important question to ask is "How does television negatively affect political campaigning and political views in general?"
Television can dull the senses; sitting, watching, and being told without any questioning is not a good way of finding answers. A citizen's approach to formulating their opinion about political issues should be conducted with a serious effort to learn and understand. Too often it seems that many people might be force fed information about political candidates running in the upcoming election. People are often told why they should "go green", or support the republicans, or support any number of other political parties or candidates, by way of commercials on TV. By watching a candidate tell you in thirty seconds why you should vote for him, when often times the commercial has nothing to do with actual policies or views of this person, is ridiculous. Vote for so and so, because he has a family in his commercial, or because he waves an American flag at the end and tells us how important it is to support our troops. Often times these types of advertisements attack another candidate's position using carefully worded statistics to make the opponent seem inconsistent or not qualified. Between January 1, 1999 and August 30, 2000, $342 million were spent on political ads, while sixty one percent of these ads were attack ads ("Facts and Figures").

There often times is not much merit to such political advertisements, but this approach, designed to influence the average person, is a common and effective way of accumulating previously uncertain votes. It shows the laziness and overall uncaring attitude of many American citizens who should put a much greater amount of effort into running their democratic society. The question arises at this point as to whether it is the citizens' faults for allowing this to go on by not putting enough effort into their political decisions, or is it the politicians' faults for trying to sell themselves like a bottle of coke to anyone who will listen.

Along with the problem of political advertisements shown on TV not telling viewers much about the actual issues, the use of these ads is a blatant example of indirectly buying voters. The party or candidate who has the most funds makes the most appealing ads, buys the greatest amount of advertising space, and has a completely unfair advantage over an opposing candidate who might be a much better option, but simply someone who has less personal fortune or campaign contributions. Is it a coincidence that so many politicians are wealthy upper-class citizens as opposed to middle class people? It is said that anyone can become president, but unless you are wealthy, male, white, and in good graces with one of two political parties, the chances of this happening based on history is slim. What makes matters worse, and possibly acts as the catalyst to the surreal amount of spending that politicians endure, is the fact that television stations often times gouge their advertisement prices during the most important political election periods (Taylor). There are laws on the books to stop this from happening, but these laws currently have too many loopholes to be effective (Taylor). It is estimated that over one billion dollars worth of advertising money was spent on political campaigns in 2000 (Taylor). While some candidates abuse the fact that they can buy more ad time because they have a larger budget, those with less campaign money struggle to pay the demanded fees to get an ad on TV. This should not be the case. The United States is one of the only countries in the world to not mandate that television stations give free airtime to political candidates during the height of important elections (Taylor). If this free time were given, it would be very beneficial in the fact that it would provide a much more even playing field as the less wealthy and possibly less well known candidates could advertise just as much as the richer, more well known ones. It would also enable the use of vast amounts of money for other causes rather than to increase the profit of television stations. The use of television as a giant marketing platform by politicians is not the only negative effect of television on political campaigning and politics in general.

Along with the negative affects of televised political advertisements, the news programming shown on TV also creates problems for potential voters or for anyone interested in politics. Everyone in the media has an opinion, and therefore everyone technically could have a bias. Some stations, however, seem to be more highly encouraged than others to slant the station bias in a certain direction. It is commonly thought of as true, for example, that Fox News favors conservative ideas, while CNN promotes the liberal side of things (Kaplan). One could argue that as long as different organizations are slanting information both ways, everything should be ok, but this is not logical. The principle of having a slogan of "Fair and Balanced", like Fox does, yet continually demonstrating in statistics that it slants to the right on a majority of issues is a problem. One study goes so far as to say that based on the observed data, Fox influenced three to eight percent of its viewers to vote Republican in the 2000 presidential election (Kaplan). A 2004 study found that 59% of Americans believe the news to be biased, which was 14% higher than the views of the prior year (Hart). It can be seen as a good sign that more people seem to be becoming aware of the constant bias in the mainstream news, and hopefully this knowledge will eventually lead to change. The fact that each news channel has its own nifty saying to emphasize the truth and objectivity of their station compared to the others shows that a problem exists. It is a similar issue to that of saying "honestly" before saying something important or drastic. Were you lying when you said everything else? If not, and if your listener was believing you, then what was the necessary point of saying "honestly" at all. It implies everything else was not honest. Why do media outlets feel the need to constantly tell the viewer how fair and truthful their station is all the time? People watch news with the assumption that it is true, accurate and bias free. But constantly stating so before every commercial break actually implies that it might not be, and they are fully aware of the fact that they are not free of bias nor independent on most issues. I don't think it is a negative effect to have one group of people come out and say, "We cater to the far left, with conspiracy theories and underground reports," or for any media group to do something similar, but for every mainstream media station to claim to report bias free, completely unaltered, 100% truthful news while clearly not doing so can be a negative effect of television on politics. People are constantly being persuaded by one side of the political spectrum or another, through biased news channels, and advertisements. These persuasions are an attempt to get a viewer's support without actually explaining the ideology or specific goals of a particular party or candidate.

Although the news channels themselves can be slanted and biased, even worse are video news releases (VNR's). VNR's are often broadcast on news channels or over the internet and are commonly made to appear like they were produced by the news channels themselves, but in fact are usually not. As a VNR is a video of some relevance and possible importance to a news channel, sometimes relating to breaking news stories, often times these brief clips accompany an investigative report on TV. VNR's are can be made by anyone, and often times are used to support a particular opinion or cause. For example, one specific VNR that was aired between 2002 and 2005 shows an Iraqi- American saying "Thank you Bush," and "Thank you USA," implying the fact that he was happy for the war on his nation because he was being granted a better lifestyle opportunity due to the fact that the US armed forces had freed him from Saddam Hussein's regime. This would have been an inspirational piece of film footage had it not been that the federal government actually produced this piece of footage and sent it to many news stations around the country in order to increase the Bush Administration's popularity. To the viewer, this footage would seem to be accurate and independently recorded, like news should be. However, the federal government has made 100's of VNR's that have been shown on the news as if the footage came from an independent news team or the station itself. These government released VNR's come from twenty different federal agencies and all promote a government act in some way. Should this be part of what we as Americans are watching on the news; a government produced video used to promote a specific agenda and shown to the public under the guise of mainstream, accurate, independent media? The obvious answer is no, this is not what anyone should have to confuse with real, independent, news. Many news networks, such as CBS and CNN, attempt to find out who pays for VNR's before they are aired, and will not show any VNR's that promote an obvious agenda, but errors still occur. Many times, the person who decides to air a particular VNR has received it from a reliable source such as AP and does not realize that it is in fact a VNR. Along with the more direct problems of political advertisements and biased news stations, this problem is a more discreet one which needs to be fixed hopefully by more attentive programming in the near future (Pavlik).

Television tends to sensationalize many things, including aspects of politics. On TV, especially in their own political ads, politicians rely a great deal on appearance. Sometimes it has been seen that having a favorable appearance is more important than exactly what a politician is saying. An example of this is the Kennedy/ Nixon debate in which Kennedy, having been used to time on TV, appeared calm, relaxed, and attentive, while Nixon, having little experience on TV, appeared shaken, nervous, and sweaty. The public was quick to notice how horrible Nixon appeared, especially compared to Kennedy. Even though Nixon held his own and some say even won the actual debate, the real winner was Kennedy as he greatly increased his public opinion and decreased Nixon's. Along with the importance of appearance, politicians also put much effort into the structure of an advertisement. No matter what exactly is being said it seems that many advertisements all have the same features and structure: either the president or someone else is giving favorable data about the candidate in a solemn tone, or unfavorable data about the opposing candidate, while people, maybe his family, look happy and smile in the background, or construction workers rebuild a building, or an American flag flies (Slovin). Throughout the entire message a song is playing in the background; something inspirational. The viewer watches all this and is left thinking; wow, I feel like I know that candidate better now. Often times, the message really won't say much at all about the person, except for trivial background details, yet will be enough to make a difference in the mind of the potential voter watching on television.
Television is for politicians and viewers often times a quick, easy way out of the real work that should be done to accurately portray and vote for a candidate. Politicians can put together an effective commercial without saying much of anything, while viewers can be influenced by it without more into the politicians behind it. People watch the news on a variety of media stations, but on virtually each one they are given a take on the news, rather than the complete unbiased facts. Sometimes on these news channels government made video news releases will be played under the guise of real news. Television has made it easy for people to get in touch with politicians, but too often it is with an artificial appearance of these people, and nothing more than that. Politicians running for office enjoy the ability to play their advertisements on TV, but television stations also see it as a way to make money, and often times they require an excessive amount of it. Currently, the political system hinges too much on false appearances, accusations, and who collects the most money. None of these things should have as much affect as they currently do on American voters, but TV helps create a need to play pretend and is used as a means of constant influence. If the people of this country would like to have a more accurate look at politics in general, maybe changing the way television handles politics would be a good first step.