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Journalism of Courage
The Superbowl is never too far from the politics of the world’s only superpower. Hugging babies on the campaign trail, posing for photographs with war veterans and chatting up suburban care-givers are all part of life for presidential aspirant. Ultimately, though, it is TV that holds the key to the Oval Office. As Richard Nixon would have told you if he had been around, it was his refusal to get himself made up for his televised debate with John F. Kennedy that led to his defeat in 1960 — the first US presidential candidate ever to be defeated by a 5 o’clock shadow!
Sounds a tad frivolous? Does the man who gets to decide whether or not the world is to go up in a mushroom cloud need to know how to look right and speak right on TV? The answer is yes. The media is both the public sphere and the creator of the public sphere. It plays the mediating role between the subject and the viewers who, in this case, happen to be the voters. American democracy has been faulted for being too media-driven and superficial. But it can be argued that this intense media gaze has brought transparency into the process by taking the debates of the day into people’s drawing rooms.
Take Thursday night’s face-off between President Bush and Senator Kerry — the first of the three televised debates that are now institutionalised as a part of the US presidential elections. Not only did it underline the central theme of the Iraq war in the November elections, it brought home to every viewer the unambiguous position of both men on the issue. Bush’s position that the “world is safer without Saddam Hussein” was pitted graphically against Kerry’s argument that “Iraq was not even close to the centre of the war on terror”. The soundbites were then analysed by the best political minds of the day. The voter thus gets an informed ringside view of the thinking of each candidate and would be, to that extent, better equipped to judge which one of them should get his/her vote. And there’s the entertainment value in all this too: it’s a bit of Survivor, with a couple of WWF tackles thrown in.
