I Must Be Crazy
Those of you that are familiar with my rants know that the answer is affirmative.
The 2014 mid-term elections are over. The Talking Heads chewed over the results with predictably erroneous conclusions about why this and not that. They are now breaking out the tea leaves to predict who will win the 2016 general election, erroneously of course. No one will look back on their 2015 prognostications in 2016, so they will still be considered experts after the 2016 elections.
A tremendous hubbub surrounds the amount of money spent on election campaigns. Since the Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court, big money campaign donors seem to have propagated geometrically. OpenSecrets.org estimates that over $554 million was spent by the Democrats and Republicans together during the 2014 mid-term election cycle. Various sources report that the Koch brothers are prepared to spend $1 billion to procure the outcome of the 2016 elections.
Where does all of that money go?
Don’t laugh. I’ll bet you were going to say “advertising, stupid.”
If I accept your premise that the majority of that money was spent on advertising, then I must foolishly ask if that means the money was spent on television, radio, and newspaper ads.
I’ll wager the answer is “of course.”
If that is true, then over $554 million dollars was given to news media companies that are supposed to be unbiased in their reporting. It would seem to me that because every major media outlet is owned by a corporation, owning a media company is better than being an arms dealer. It’s a win – win situation.
First of all, the media company pays corporate tax rates.
Next, the media company’s only allegiance is to the corporate bottom line.
After that, all interested parties have to advertise through at least one media company, and usually several different media companies.
And finally, after the election is over and the smoke has cleared, the media companies’ collective corporate bottom line is increased by $554 million dollars no matter who wins.
In addition, whoever wins the election has to be careful not to piss your media company off.
It seems to me that money can be made by a media company in a hotly contested election. I believe it was Sun Tzu who said “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” In the case of an election, opportunity exists for the media company. It is in its financial interest to fan the flames of the election process.
Media companies feel free to promote candidates like “Makers and Takers” Ryan, “Tea Party” Bachmann, “Shutdown” Cruz, and “Death Panels” Palin. In my opinion the election of these people is the direct consequence of the undeserved exposure media companies give them. They would have been considered a part of the lunatic fringe just a few years ago. Instead, they get free advertising through the “news” department of the media companies.
No one challenges media companies about softball questions to favored candidates, false equivalencies in support of positions, permitting Congressional representatives to deny science by the “I’m not a scientist” dodge, permitting a candidates’ outright lies to go unchallenged by reporters, and reporters repeating those same lies as he-said she-said “reporting”. This conduct is disgraceful.
I still can’t get over why the president needs to have his words parsed and re-cast immediately after he speaks. There must be a reason for this practice.
The conversation surrounding taking big money donations out of politics is usually focused on the donors, and the influence they are obviously trying to buy from the candidates, if the candidate should happen to win. Why are the big donations necessary?
Air time is expensive. Is air time is more expensive during certain times of certain years? If advertising is more expensive during election cycles, then who is really holding democracy hostage?