CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Master 11515 Tape 1 and Tape 2 CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT - Documentary on the history of Presidental Campaingns and the part that the media plays in American politics. Panel discussion of the impact of the media and Television on the political process and political discourse with Bill Moyers.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Host Bill Moyers introduces a panel discussion of the documentary. His commentary, contrary to the tone of the documentary, runs along the line that TV makes Americans more "aware" of political processes. He indroduces the panel.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Advertising analyst Barbara Lippert [Adweek] says that political ads try to sell, but that the REAGAN era obscured the distinction between the AD and the product; Political ads only really work if they are NEGATIVE [i.e. BUSH'S shameful, racist-pandering WILLIE HORTON ads]. She thinks people are beginning to understand that they are being manipulated.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Kathleen Jamieson, media scholar, says that Ads are forcing politicians to tailor all speeches to fit the soundbite structure of ads, it is inviting to fraud, deception, and falsehood, cites REAGAN'S use of images to create a false pitch that his policies have been good for groups like blacks and the poor. It's a tactic that is hard to refute or challenge with verbal commentary. Media Scholar Kathleen Jamieson says that through the Reagan Era, TV has eroded the national ability to hold complex, informed, reasoned discussion of politics. Voters' identities seem to be growing more rooted in manipulated images and myths in the media than in their thoughts about their own needs and beliefs.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Journalist Mark Hertsgaard says that journalism should fight the "tyranny of the visual", TV needs to be more critical in accepting images that are set up by the candidates or officials. Discusses how BUSH used the TV networks to attack DUKAKIS with images of polluted Boston Harbor, but the networks didn't also show images of ravaged forests and other pollution that occurred under Reagan. Says that the broadcast media need to overcome the pressures of advertisers and the mistaken notion that adversarial or critical coverage of a candidate is not "objective" [because simply spewing out the images provided by staged media events isn't "objective" either.] Journalist Mark Hertsgaard discusses the show-business aspect of TV, in which advertising and business pressures make information and critical analysis subservient to "pleasing the audience" with fuzzy human-interest pieces and entertaining images. The constraint of broadcast time is also a factor.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
British Journalist Harold Evans says it's remarkable how the TV networks simply accept images provided by parties or candidates and rebroadcast them - essentially doing the candidate's work of putting images high in drama but low in political substance out on the air. Discussion of the impact of TV and media on simplifying and lowering political thought and consciousness to the lowest common denominator. British Journalist Harold Evans says that the print media should highlight the shortcomings of the broadcast media. Generally, says the broadcast media just want to put on a show and regurgitate the engineered images that the candidates and the political parties give to them without offering any critical insight.