Pasco Hernando Community College Alienated American Voter Discussion Hi, this assignment is similar to the one you did for me before! To complete the assi

Pasco Hernando Community College Alienated American Voter Discussion Hi, this assignment is similar to the one you did for me before!

To complete the assignment, do the following:

Read the 1996 article “The Alienated American Voter: Are the News Media to Blame? (Links to an external site.)” by Richard Harwood
Write a 2 page (roughly 620 words) essay addressing these questions: (include word count at end of paper)
According to Harwood, why does the American voter feel alienated?
How is this alienation measured? What are the symptoms?
What is to blame?
Do you think things have changed since 1996? Why?

Remember your essay will be graded using the rubric below.

Rubric

Written Assignment Rubric (1)

Written Assignment Rubric (1)

Criteria Ratings Pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeAccuracy

10.0 pts

Above Standards: All supportive facts and statistics are reported accurately.

8.0 pts

Meets Standards: Almost all supportive facts and statistics are reported accurately.

6.0 pts

Approaching Standards: Most supportive facts are reported accurately.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: Most supportive facts and statistics were inaccurately reported. Alternatively, supportive facts and statistics were not reported and/or not reported accurately.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeSentence Structure

10.0 pts

Above Standards: All sentences were well-constructed and varied structure.

8.0 pts

Meets Standards: Almost all sentences were well-constructed and varied structure.

6.0 pts

Approaching Standards: Most sentences were well-constructed, but there is no variation in structure.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: Sentences were not well-structured and had no variation.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeGrammar & Spelling

10.0 pts

Above Standards: There are no errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content.

8.0 pts

Meets Standards: There are very few (1-2) errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content.

6.0 pts

Approaching Standards: There are a few (3-4) errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: There are a significant number of errors (4 or more) in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeCapitalization & Punctuation

10.0 pts

Above Standards: There are no errors in capitalization or punctuation so the essay is exceptionally easy to read.

8.0 pts

Meets Standards: There are very few (1-2) errors in capitalization or punctuation, but the essay is still easy to read.

6.0 pts

Approaching Standards: There are a few (3-4) errors in capitalization and/or punctuation that catch the reader’s attention and interrupt the flow.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: There are several errors (4 or more) in capitalization and/or punctuation that catch the reader’s attention and interrupt the flow.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeTwo Pages

10.0 pts

Meets Standards: Essay is required two pages.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: Essay is less than two pages long or is considerably more than two pages.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeCompletion

10.0 pts

Meets Standards: The essay is complete and answers all of the questions presented for the assignment.

6.0 pts

Approaching Standards: The essay is not complete. Some of the answers to the questions presented for the assignment are incomplete or missing.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: The essay is not complete. The submitted essay does not answer any of the questions presented for the assignment.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeCitations

10.0 pts

Meets Standards: All direct quotes and paraphrases have been properly and consistently cited

5.0 pts

Approaching Standards: Some direct quotes AND / OR paraphrases are not properly or consistently cited.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: Direct quotes AND / OR paraphrases have not been cited at all.

10.0 pts

This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeDirect Quote Usage

10.0 pts

Meets Standards: Direct quote usage is appropriate; direct quotes are not too long; direct quotes are not standing alone as their own sentences.

0.0 pts

Below Standards: Far too many direct quotes utilized; direct quotes are too long; direct quotes cannot stand alone as their own sentences

10.0 pts

Total Points: 80.0 The Alienated American Voter: Are the News Media to Blame?
Author(s): Richard Harwood
Source: The Brookings Review , Fall, 1996, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall, 1996), pp. 32-35
Published by: Brookings Institution Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/20080685
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Wt)t ^?ltenateb
Are The News Media To Blame?
by Richard Harwood
a private person he does not know for certain what is
going on, or who is doing it, or where he is being car
and academic studies, millions of our people can’t ried. No newspaper reports his environment so that he
name their city council members, their representatives can grasp it; no school has taught him how to imagine
The attention of the American public is not riveted on
government. As we are constantly reminded by polls
in state government, or their representatives in
it; his ideals, often, do not fit with it; listening to
Congress. Ten times more people can identify Judge
speeches, uttering opinions, and voting do not, he
Ito or Judge Wapner of TV’s people’s court than can finds, enable him to govern it. He lives in a world in
identify the Chief Justice of the United States. Half which he cannot see, does not understand, and is un
able to direct.
our people don’t vote in presidential elections. Some
80-90 percent don’t vote in many local elections. The
“In the cold light of experience, he knows that his
Pew Research Center for People and the Press never
sovereignty is a fiction. He reigns in theory, but in fact
lets us forget that people pay little attention to the lat he does not govern. Contemplating himself and his
est happenings in Washington or in Bosnia and China.
actual accomplishments in public affairs, contrasting
Most of us are pretty much oblivious to something the influence he exerts with the influence he is sup
called the “Contract with America” and other hot posed according to democratic theory to exert, he
must say of his sovereignty what Bismarck said of
endearing anecdotes from my days as a political re Napoleon II: ‘At a distance it is something, but close
button issues of the day in Washington. One of the
porter in Kentucky involved a congressional candidate
who was asked to state his position on the Taft-Hartley
Bill. He did not equivocate: “By God, if we owe it we
to, it is nothing at all.'”
It is not, I think, entirely cynical, to conclude that
these sentiments are as relevant now as then. We may
ought to pay it!”
be born equal in the sight of the divinity and we may
possess certain inalienable rights. But equal status in
The Man in the Back Row
the political system and in the economic order is not
Seventy years ago, in “The Phantom Public,” Walter
among them. According to the dictum in Washington,
Lippmann gave us a sketch of the democratic condi your Rolodex defines who you are. I would add that
tion. “The private citizen,” he wrote, “has come to it is not only the names on your Rolodex that count
feel rather like a deaf spectator in the back row, who but the names?especially your own?on the
ought to keep his mind on the mystery off there, but Rolodexes of the people we call. After unanswered
cannot quite manage to stay awake. He knows he is phone calls following his retirement, a journalistic col
league said he had made a discovery: “I’m not a has
somehow affected by what is going on. Rules and reg
ulations continually, taxes annually, and wars occasion been. I’m a never-was.”
In terms of political access, that is the normal
ally remind him that he is being swept along by great
drifts of circumstance.
plight of the average man and woman. They know,
“Yet these public affairs are in no convincing way like Lippmann’s man in the back row, that real polit
his affairs. They are for the most part invisible. They ical power is as unequally distributed as wealth and
are managed, if they are managed at all, in distant cen health in our democracy. The Friends of Bill are not
on the same row with the Friends of Joe Six-Pack.
ters, from behind the scenes by unnamed powers. As
This gets our attention in the press every few years,
Richard Harwood, a writer and editor at the Washington Post
but it is unclear if we in the media bear responsibility
for 22 years before retiring in 1988, is a nationally syndicated for this state of affairs or, if we do, how we can repair
the system.
columnist. This article is adapted from the keynote address given
In any case, the large promises implicit in the idea
at a Brookings Center for Public Policy Education National Issues
Forum on The Media and American Democracy on May 29.
of “one man, one vote” have never been realized
whatever the roles the press has assumed in political
THE BROOKINGS REVIEW
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American Leiter
affairs over the history of our country. In an earlier age learning. We attached many qualifications for voting
when the concepts of self-government and citizen leg- and other participation in public affairs?sex, race, lit?
islators became our foundation stones, it was taken for eracy, age, residency, and property ownership. It was
granted that the tasks of governing should be assigned also taken for granted that newspapers on the whole
to a small element of society?men of property and would be controlled subsidiaries of the political parties.
Once upon a Time,
a Passion for Politics.
Many of the requirements for vot
ing and office holding eventually
were discarded and a commercially
successful press emerged, a press no
and prostitutes, as well as flexible
ica and still is so far as I know.
the country had ever seen, and it
and whiskey flowed all night. Spec
tacular rallies at the precinct club
house featured songs and banners,
The rituals and celebrations of
judges if you wound up in court;
construction contracts and fran politics strengthened and sustained
chises for loyalists and high bidders.
these bonds. Thousands gathered
This was more democracy than for grand feedings where the suds
longer financially dependent on was inspired not only by greed or
the parties but still capable of par hope of material gain but by the
tisan practices that today would partisan fraternalism and sense of
shock journalistic critics and prac belonging that we now call com
titioners out of their socks. We en munitarianism and by lasting emo
tered a long era in which great
numbers of the unwashed and less
hours of speechmaking, exciting
parades with bands and torchlights,
dances and games of chance. News
tional intensities arising out of papers stoked these fires for a public
shared experiences, most especially in which education, as we define it
privileged not only gained the the Civil War. An obvious legacy today, was a scarce commodity.
franchise but gained office. A pas was the Solid South’s century-long
When the first popular election
sion for politics stirred the masses as commitment to the Democratic for president was held in 1824, the
Tocqueville and other travelers party and Republican voting pat turnout of eligible voters was about
noted. Not everyone was pleased. terns that have endured even 27 percent. By the end of the cen
In Boston, having the Irish in City longer. The poorest county in Ap tury turnouts of 70-80 percent
Hall was comparable to having palachia for a long time was the were common. They then fell off
barbarians in the Temple. Others most Republican county in Amer precipitously.
elsewhere had similar reactions as
rewards for political activism be
came more and more visible and
political participation became more
common. There was job patronage
on a large scale. There were also
turkeys, coal, and bail money from
the precinct captain; immunity
from arrest for barkeeps, gamblers,
Progressive Reform
Most Americans pay very
little attention to the latest
events in Washington, D.C.
Speculation about the fall-off in popular political par
ticipation in this century abounds. One theory assigns
blame to the ever-present reformers who concluded
that too much raw democracy was ruining the coun
try. In response there arose among the middle and up
per classes a strong Progressive movement designed to
destroy the city political machines and the patronage
safeguards against electoral fraud. These proposals co
incided with the rise of social science as a legitimate
field of scholarly endeavor and the rise of credentialism
as a panacea for many ills. Doctors, lawyers, architects,
teachers, and engineers, among others, would hence
forth be credentialed by colleges and universities and
licensed to pursue their professions or vocations. Even
tually, licensing boards were set up for hairdressers, bar
and corrupt practices on which they thrived. The bers, morticians, cabdrivers, the building trades, and so
movement involved such radical proposals as a merit
system for public employment; the use of trained ac
countants and auditors to keep the books in order;
anti-nepotism laws; universal suffrage coupled with
foolproof voter registration systems and various other
on. So why not credentialed public employees?
The thrust of it all was that the nation should have
“clean” government and “clean” elections and should
bring to government businesslike management of its
financial affairs and to government and business alike
FALL 1996
PHOTOGRAPH BY HAROLD FEINSTEN
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was no longer enough. The Progressives and their
muckraking allies had hoped that an “aroused public
opinion would fulfill the promises of democracy,”
clean up the mess, and move society toward a more
Utopian state. Instead, what followed was apathy and
disillusionment. Voter turnout fell 40 percent from
1896 to 1920. Steffens’s marvelous book on the un
derside of politics, The Shame of the Cities, sold only
3,000 copies. Peter Finley Dunne’s character, Mr.
Dooley, asked a salient question: “Is there an institu
tion that isn’t corrupt to its very foundations? Don’t
you believe it.”
The years since the mid-1960s are regarded by
many journalists as the Second Muckraking era. All
institutions have been fair game for investigative re
porting and critical assessment. In part, because of
these efforts, the political process in one sense has
been “purified” as Progressive reforms have been re
alized. The spoils system is by and large a thing of the
past. Barriers to voting have been eliminated. Polit
ical party bosses are extinct, the smoke-filled room an
archaic memory. The party machines that once pro
vided the foot soldiers of politics have been replaced
by a professional class of political consultants who in
“professional” management and skills. Even newspa 1992 were paid $250 million to manage the elections
pers began talking about the need for an educated of congressional candidates. That does not include
the tens of millions of dollars paid consultants that
year for presidential campaign services. They create
the propaganda, raise the money, train and market
as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard the candidates, define issues and election strategies,
Baker, exposed the inner workings of the corrupt po organize rallies, get out the vote, and write the script
litical machines and the corrupt use of economic for party conventions. They perform virtually all the
newsroom labor force and for journalism schools to
provide the training.
A generation of “muckrakers,” led by such figures
power by corporations such as Standard Oil and
American Sugar. Their work inspired newspaper peo
ple all over the country to emulation.
functions once performed by ordinary people who
now sit on the sidelines viewing elections, as Peter
Shapiro has written, either with indifferent detach
The results of the Progressive movement were ment or as “shameful exercises in mudslinging, ob
mixed. Many reforms were achieved with lasting fuscation and demagoguery.” The primary elections
beneficial effects on society?child labor and antitrust
and caucuses that were intended to open up the sys
laws, for example. But they had some unintended tem have been no cure for political alienation and
consequences.
mistrust. The participation rate in the primaries of
1992 and 1996 was barely 20 percent of the popula
Exit the Voters
tion. The rich vote far more than the poor except in
Cleaning up government and elections greatly dimin
ished the rewards of political activism for those whose
credentials were nonexistent. One had now to pass a
test or have a diploma to get a job; political loyalty
unusual settings such as the District of Columbia,
Are the Media Responsible?
There are two important questions
here. The first is whether apathy
and lack of participation constitute
Do apathy and lack of partic
ipation constitute a problem
a “problem” for American democ
racy. The second is this: if it is a
problem, are the media responsible
in one degree or another?
where Mayor Marion Barry’s vision of govern
ment?jobs for loyalists and the needy?has drawn
enormous support in low-income wards.
for American democracy?
On the first point, some would
argue with Lippmann and others
that nonvoting by uninterested
and uninformed people is not a
problem at all. It was their view
that instead of grading democracy
on the basis of popular participa
tion, we should judge the system
by the well-being of its citizens?wise take part in the political life of
their health, education, safety, the nation.
That is not a popular argument.
housing, and material standards of
living. If those tests are met, this Academicians, politicians, and jour
argument goes, the system works nalists tend to view the indifference
regardless of the numbers who or nonengagement of the elec
participate in elections or other torate as a crisis. They are looking
THE BROOKINGS REVIEW
3 4
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for causes, and one of the suspects I
is the press.
Professor Thomas Leonard, a
If they are a problem, are the
student of the media’s influence on
the Progressive Movement, con
cluded that the work of the muck
rakers was a major factor in the de
cline of political activism in that
era. “It was,” he wrote, “the dis
crediting of some basic assumptions
about how democracy worked that
made muckraking both shocking…
and a message to pull back from
political life.” He based this judg
ment on circumstantial evidence,
not academic science or research
into the psyches of voters by pro
media responsible for them
in one degree or another?
position of relative impotence in
shaping opinion and political be
I and despairing,” causing the viewer
havior.”
to “turn against the social and po
litical institutions involved, or
That theory is now suspect as
evidence accumulates that the me
against himself, [for] feeling unable
to deal with a political system like
dia?television in particular?ex
ert political power. In his doctoral
this.”
More recent studies have
fessional pollsters and psycholo
dissertation in 1972, Robinson
reached similar conclusions: “neg
gists. Those tools weren’t available
then. In fact, the scholar Michael
Robinson tells us that as late as the
concluded that news and public
networks were, in a broad sense,
consistently propagandistic and
sometimes malign. They evoked
ative” news stories and “negative”
political ads create cynicism, drive
people away from political partici
pation, and often confuse them to
such a degree that they refuse to
“which are inordinately sinister
I and government.
1960s “most political scientists
clung to the theory of minimal
consequences . . . which relegates
television and all mass media to a I
affairs programs of the television
images of American politics
Keeping Politics in Perspective
In pondering the implications of all this it is helpful to
maintain a proper perspective. The fact that there are
villains in government and politics and that the press
is often wayward is not proof that political and gov
ernmental institutions are necessarily villainous or that
journalists are always bad actors. That the American
electorate includes many apathetic and politically ig
norant people is not proof that the system is in termi
nal decline. A hundred million people went to the
polls in 1992. The 80-90 million who didn’t vote
might very well have made a rational decision that
vote or even read about politics
I in a large sense, much to answer for. Their own cyn
icism about politics and government has been infec
tious and often destructive. Their failure to put things
in perspective is perhaps their greatest sin. But we have
and will survive all that. As we deplore the state of
democracy it clears the mind to ask: compared with
what and with whom?
We can profitably remember and apply to the
gloomy speculations and fears about the future
Winston Churchill’s great message to his country in
1940. “We are waiting for the long-promised invasion.
So are the fishes.”
they had little stake in the outcome.
A big ad in the Wall Street Journal last spring in
formed readers that “Without legislation correcting
the BIF/SAIF premium disparity, SAID’s deposit
base will almost certainly decline to the point that
SAIF premiums would not cover FICO interest pay
ments, resulting in a FICO default as early as 1997.”
What is the guy in the back row to make of that? It
is well to remember that while politics is central in
the lives of the political class and in the professional
lives of journalists, that is not the case with all of us.
As Austin Ranney wrote some years ago, “The fact
is that for most Americans, politics is still far from be
ing the most interesting and important thing in life.
To them, politics is usually boring, repetitious, and
above all, largely irrelevant to the things that really
matter in their lives, such as making friends, finding
spouses, getting jobs, raising children, and having a
good time.” So on election days, they may simply
prefer to go fishing, secure in the knowledge, as An
nie sings in her showstopper, the sun will come up
tomorrow.
It is certainly true that many imperfections in our
democracy remain despite the best and well-meaning
efforts of reformers. It is also true that the media have,
3 5
FALL 1996
PHOTOGRAPGHS BY HAROLD FEINSTEM
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