Media Myopia and the Future of Democratic Politics.

As I write this column, the major media are still gripped by a modern political soap opera. Votes from the 2000 U.S. elections have been counted and recounted, litigation has reached the highest court in the country, the stock market bounces nervously, and media pundits speculate on the health of the nation. Yet the Florida recount battle has distracted many citizens from a story with more enduring significance.

The major media "call" of Florida for Al Gore--and then for George W. Bush--on the evening of November 7 exposed a narrow and herdlike media. Its leaders place short-term, bottom-line considerations ahead of larger democratic needs. Consequently, the media today are incapable not only of serious scrutiny of our democratic practices but even of informed coverage of political races. Drawing on identical data and obsessed with the desire to be first, the major media all marched lemminglike off the cliff election eve.

Political reporting increasingly resembles sports coverage. Endless polls tell us who is gaining ground, and issue coverage is confined to discussions of who gains strategic advantage by the way disputes are parried or poses are struck.

If politics is being covered as a horse race, one would expect the media to at least do that job well. But Florida became almost as much of a badge of shame to the media mavens as it was a legal crisis for the Bush and Gore camps. Unable to resist the urge to be first with the call, major media twice gave viewers misleading information. Painful and embarrassed retractions occasioned promises to seek the causes of error and to do better next time. Unfortunately, little of the on-air commentary provided viewers with an adequate sense of the depth of the problem.

All of the major media based their calls on data supplied by the Voter News Service, a consortium established by the networks to conduct exit polling and gather results from sample precincts. Through the 1988 presidential election, however, each of the networks maintained its own polling operation. Under that prior system, it would have been entirely possible for different networks to have made different "calls" on Florida. Or, seeing their rivals making other forecasts, some could have held off.

The VNS was created solely to save costs. Media analysts total the savings at around $10 million per network. For these savings--a tiny fraction of their total budgets--citizens pay a high price. Not only are the number of samples on which predictions are based limited, networks must also work from one uniform set of exit polling data.

Exit polls purport to provide some sense of why elections go as they do. But these polls can shape, as much as reflect, ongoing political debate. Such questions as "Does the economy or the environment matter more to you?" are based on and reinforce the contestable view that these concerns can be neatly separated. (I would argue that here in Maine, jobs that erode the fisheries, forests, and scenic vistas--our "natural capital"--may themselves not be sustainable.) Other questions aimed at finding out when voters make up their minds reinforce the view of politics as an ongoing horse race. If networks conducted individual exit polls, there would be at least the possibility that viewers could be treated to wider sets of data and interpretation of the electorate.

The cliffhanger the networks so poorly covered did offer some benefits though. The United States considers itself a model of democratic practice, but in many respects our nation is hardly voter friendly. The notorious confusing ballots in the Palm Beach area are symptomatic of larger failings. Tax forms are updated and uniform around the country but ballots can come in many shapes and sizes and formats. Elections for different levels of government are also seldom coordinated. The result is that just how and when to vote can be needlessly complicated.

The Florida recount controversy also has exposed other deficiencies in the infrastructure of democracy in the United States. Antiquated voting machines slowed the vote in many localities, and precincts with inadequately trained or insufficient numbers of staff made it hard for many voters to receive help when ballots were confusing.

It is easy to argue that voters have an obligation to study ballots and election schedules. Nonetheless, in a democracy, election policies and procedures should strive to make voting as easy as possible. As Fordham political scientist Thomas DeLuca, author of The Two Faces of Political Apathy, has argued, "The real scandal of American politics is the low voter turnout." DeLuca has proposed that our presidential elections be made national holidays or rescheduled to a "Democracy Weekend" when more citizens could vote without facing conflicts with work.

The importance of scheduling issues became clear in another less publicized election-eve cliffhanger. In Michigan, Democrat Debbie Stabenow defeated incumbent conservative Republican Spencer Abraham. One major factor contributing to Stabenow's win was labor turnout. But labor turnout wasn't merely a function of typical get-out-the-vote campaigns. The United Auto Workers had negotiated election day as a holiday for workers.

What the UAW won for some, public policy should advance for all. With the U.S. electorate working ever longer hours, electoral participation would be facilitated by, at the very least, making election day a national holiday. Unfortunately, we shouldn't hold our collective breath waiting for our major network news organizations to conduct exit polling on the question of expanding voter participation.

John Buell's most recent book, co-authored with Etta Kralovec, is The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning (Beacon Press, 2000). He can be reached at [e-mail].