CNN Bemoans Voter Apathy... and Covers a Presidential Kiss

Chicken and egg - does the media provide shallow coverage because people don't care about more important issues, or do people not care about more important issues because the media's coverage is so shallow?

I don't think you can blame voter apathy on soft news. For as long as there has been a press, much of it has been sensationalistic and superficial because people have always been drawn to gossip and titillation more readily than deep and introspective political analysis.

Yay Voter Apathy! People ignoring politics have more time to become more engaged in their own communities, getting involved in things that can actually improve the quality of life for themselves and those around them.

I made a shockingly accurate prediction in 2008, and I'll make it again. It's a 100% lock to be accurate once again, and probably forever.

Don said:

No matter who gets elected, in four years, FedGov will be bigger, you'll have less freedom and pay more taxes, and we'll still be building an American Empire in over 150 other countries.

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Go out in the community, meet people who are dealing with your community's problems and opportunities, and engage. That's how you make a difference, not by pulling a lever every so often.

CNN spent fourteen straight hours covering the transfer of one of the Ebola patients from one hospital to another.

They've been mailing it in for years, for the most part.

Sure, there's always been sensationalistic and superficial news. But there hasn't always been 24-hour news. Nor has there always been an internet. Nor has there always been search engines like we have now on the internet. So I don't think the chicken/egg thing is necessarily accurate. There's room here for more analysis/discussion/research. Imo.

Don said:

Yay Voter Apathy! People ignoring politics have more time to become more engaged in their own communities, getting involved in things that can actually improve the quality of life for themselves and those around them.

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You have no reason to believe that's what they're doing with their time.

If the argument is that CNN sucks, I won't disagree.

If the argument is that people are apathetic and uninformed because CNN sucks, I am not convinced. It's not like those who care can't find actual news.

Well, people are growing up with very different understandings of what news is and how to get it, as compared to the not-all-that-distant past.

You know, newspapers and the evening news followed pretty standard formats for a long time. I used to read the paper simply because it was what I thought I was supposed to do as a young adult (as a teenager, really). And in so doing, I couldn't help but read about less-than-thrilling stuff simply because it was in the paper. And some of that stuff was significant/actually important.

Now? People follow links. They read what they think interests them only, more often than not. And the 24-hour news cycle is so ratings-driven, it's ridiculously repetitive. Can't take the chance that anyone is missing "the Big Story" and changing channels.

Celia Cyanide said:

You have no reason to believe that's what they're doing with their time.

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Even watching the Kardashians is probably a better use of their time.

Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change. (Courtesy of that fringe news site, the Boston Globe.)

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

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Glennon is Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon. He's not some conspiracy theorist, either.

Glennon’s critique sounds like an outsider’s take, even a radical one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.

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Don said:

Even watching the Kardashians is probably a better use of their time.

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Give me a break. Voting takes a day, usually not more than a few hours, every couple of years.

I know you don't believe voting changes anything, but the idea that the amount of time people people spend voting is preventing them from doing anything is pretty ridiculous. As is the idea that not voting is going to give them all this time to do really important stuff.

I thought the President being razzed by some guy not to hit on his girlfriend was a nice little departure from Ebola, ISIS, and the usual political grind. How in the hell does a innocuous little trifle like that get conflated into a screed about the failings of democracy and the news media?

Some of y'all need to lighten up, not tighten up.

I wonder where CNN is getting their news. The increases over 2010 in registrations and early voting numbers don't bear out their conclusions.

From the Washington Post:

The higher-than-expected turnout, long before Election Day, suggests early predictions of dismally low turnout might be too pessimistic.

“There’s going to be high turnout, both in the early vote and on Election Day combined,” McDonald said.

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MSNBC (here and here) is reporting a voter registration spike in Texas's five largest counties, with an increase of 373,000 registered voters in those counties. Early voting began this week with steep increases over 2010 numbers.

The turnout numbers were striking. In Tarrant County, which contains Davis’s home base of Fort Worth, 29,391 people voted Monday, nearly three times the comparable number for 2010. Heavily Hispanic El Paso County also saw a nearly threefold increase.

Harris County, which contains Houston, saw 61,735 voters Monday — an increase of more than 11,000 compared to the number who voted on the first day in 2010. Bexar County, containing San Antonio, saw an increase of nearly 7,000 voters. In Dallas and Travis (Austin) counties, the increases were respectively nearly 3,000 and nearly 1,000.

More than one-third of Texans live in those six counties.

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And it's not just in the largest counties. Increases are posted for the Rio Grande Valley and Southeast Texas.

Voter registration numbers mean little unless those voters actually get out and vote, but if early voting numbers are anything to go by it's going to be interesting.

I've become more apathetic lately (I still plan to vote, though), but that's less because of media coverage (which sucks royally, I will admit. I won't even watch TV news anymore because it's so infuriating) than because of the current political environment. Nothing gets done. The people I've voted for who said they'd try to improve things have either not followed through or been unable to. It feels like it doesn't matter who is elected right now because it's just going to be more bullshit. When something does get passed, it seems to be more in line with what the big corporations or organizations want than what people want. Look at the 90% of people in favor of background checks for gun purchases, but that law can't get passed because the damned NRA is preventing it. That's bullshit.

The very few politicians I've seen that I've been really impressed with have no chance of being actually elected (Huntsman, for instance). I feel like the rest are engaged in a game of manipulation to convince voters to vote for them. It's all about psychological ploys and not at all about actual, meaningful conversation about issues.

It's really, really hard to stay engaged in something when you feel like nothing you do matters. I can't compete with big corporations. Politicians are often lying asshats telling people what they want to hear, so there is no real way of knowing what a person is actually going to do once they're in office. Personally, I think it's all a farce, and unless something drastically changes, that's going to continue. Sadly, I have no idea what I can do to drastically change things. I don't think being informed and voting is actually enough to get it done.

kaitie said:

The very few politicians I've seen that I've been really impressed with have no chance of being actually elected (Huntsman, for instance). I feel like the rest are engaged in a game of manipulation to convince voters to vote for them. It's all about psychological ploys and not at all about actual, meaningful conversation about issues.

It's really, really hard to stay engaged in something when you feel like nothing you do matters. I can't compete with big corporations. Politicians are often lying asshats telling people what they want to hear, so there is no real way of knowing what a person is actually going to do once they're in office. Personally, I think it's all a farce, and unless something drastically changes, that's going to continue. Sadly, I have no idea what I can do to drastically change things. I don't think being informed and voting is actually enough to get it done.

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Bolded part, on an individual level, it's not. Now, if you could get the country as a whole to start doing more personal research on the politicians involved and the issues, then it might change. Especially if you can get people to vote for candidates outside of the simple two part system.

But yeah, that's not going to happen anytime soon. US democracy, in its current state, is kinda broken. It's become purely a popularity contest. Granted, democracy has always been that to a degree, but with the sensationalist news efforts to push it even farther in that direction, it's gotten worse.

kaitie said:

The very few politicians I've seen that I've been really impressed with have no chance of being actually elected (Huntsman, for instance). I feel like the rest are engaged in a game of manipulation to convince voters to vote for them. It's all about psychological ploys and not at all about actual, meaningful conversation about issues.

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For a democracy to work, you must have a nation of intelligent and informed voters.

In countries where a large percentage of the population is illiterate, and has little or no knowledge of anything outside their small frame of reference, democracy has always been problematical.

In our supposedly educated society, mass media and the tools of manipulation have become sophisticated far beyond anything the founders could have been envisioned. If psychological methods (and immense amounts of money to implement them) are determinative in who gets elected, how does democracy remain a viable form of government?

Here's an interesting little logic disconnect from two Washington state initiatives:

Initiative 594 would require all firearm sales, including those at gun shows and conducted online, to be predicated on a background check of the buyer. Initiative 591, however, would disallow background checks for gun purchases unless explicitly required by the federal government.

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http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA3F1XL20140416?irpc=932

So we have two ballot measures here – one mandates background checks, the other bans background checks. Both measures are leading in the polls. WTF?

Most people in this country take it as an article of faith that democracy is the best system of government available. The argument goes that even though it's demonstrably full of flaws, it's the least bad of all systems people have devised so far.

But maybe it isn't. Maybe there's a better way to run a government – although even suggesting such a thing opens one to charges of elitism, classism, racism, and what have you.

rugcat said:

But maybe it isn't. Maybe there's a better way to run a government – although even suggesting such a thing opens one to charges of elitism, classism, racism, and what have you.

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More like, we all probably have an idea of how the system could be improved by limiting decisions only to a select group, but we'd never agree on who that select group should be.

What exactly is voter apathy, anyway?

Is it being too arsed to be bothered to vote on election day?

Is it being too lazy to be bothered to learn the histories of their candidates, their voting record and just voting for whatever letter [(R) or (D)] you've always voted?

Or is it doing all the research, knowing exactly who the players are... and voting your conscience despite knowing that nothing's really going to change and that you might as well have just written in "Homer Simpson" for all it's going to matter.

I would say that if #1 is all you're worried about, voter turnout has been on a decades long rise. (Example for Presidential Elections: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Voter_turnout.png).

It's #2 and #3 that, I think, that is true voter apathy and something that's becoming an issue. I doubt my vote matters, but I'll always drag my ass to town hall and cast a vote with as much information as I can... just on the off-chance it does.

rugcat said:

Most people in this country take it as an article of faith that democracy is the best system of government available. The argument goes that even though it's demonstrably full of flaws, it's the least bad of all systems people have devised so far.

But maybe it isn't. Maybe there's a better way to run a government – although even suggesting such a thing opens one to charges of elitism, classism, racism, and what have you.

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Amadan said:

More like, we all probably have an idea of how the system could be improved by limiting decisions only to a select group, but we'd never agree on who that select group should be.

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I wonder why there isn't a political label for those of us who believe different kinds of governments work better for different kinds of societies and cultures.

I guess I'm just radical enough that the idea that any single form of governance is best for everyone is laugh-out-loud ridiculous to me.

rugcat said:

Most people in this country take it as an article of faith that democracy is the best system of government available. The argument goes that even though it's demonstrably full of flaws, it's the least bad of all systems people have devised so far.

But maybe it isn't. Maybe there's a better way to run a government – although even suggesting such a thing opens one to charges of elitism, classism, racism, and what have you.

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The US has what can be best described as a Cult of Democracy. Like 99% of the time, people in the US will always agree that a non-democratic society will be improved by becoming more democratic, regardless of that country is currently going through or how their society is currently set up.

I agree with Kuwi, that different societies need different governments and it isn't a one size fits all type of deal. And at this point, I'm not sure if democracy works well for the US at the federal level. At least, not the type we currently have going on.

I'm sensing a lot of voter apathy this election. Moreso than usual. Two of my pals (one a disgruntled republican and one a disheartened democrat) essentially wrote, "Just threw my vote away on an independent candidate. Huzzah, America."

People are ready to move past a 2-party government. (Yes, I know some independents and members of other parties have had wins, but not nearly enough.) It's about strategy. My democratic pals will do anything to keep a republican out of office because of mass disrespect for human rights. My conservative pals seem so blinded by their hatred of Obama that they will do anything to keep a democrat out of office.

It's a polarized political world.

Celia Cyanide said:

Give me a break. Voting takes a day, usually not more than a few hours, every couple of years.

I know you don't believe voting changes anything, but the idea that the amount of time people people spend voting is preventing them from doing anything is pretty ridiculous. As is the idea that not voting is going to give them all this time to do really important stuff.

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Hours?

Damn, I don't miss living in the city. I'm in and out in 20 tops.

The advent of "happy news", which started back in the 1970s, has got us where we are today in the arena of TV "journalism". The 24-hour cable news cycle only accentuated that. Now we have celeb-news anchors and hosts, like Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, whose only discernible talents are affability and good dentistry. CNN has the gall to bemoan voter apathy? Really? That's like Charles Manson bemoaning serial murder.

caw