Losing Faith

Although his focus is on advertisements, Father Jeffery expounds on the points made by Diana C. Mutz and Byron Reeve in the article "The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust," in a video clip appropriatly titled "Civility in Politics."



The bottom line is that negativity in politics is causing people to become more and more disillusioned with and disgusted by politicians, the government and the political process as a whole.

Yet, the two sources mentioned above differ on a key point. Father Jeffery seems to believe that the politicians hold the power to make political discourse more polite and positive, while Mutz and Reeves propose that the media change something about their programs to make the end product display more civil dialogue. On the outset it seems that each position makes sense considering the visual medium they are describing. Father Jeffery is talking about something produced by the candidates and Mutz and Reeves are discussing the nature of programming and formatting. However, I would still like to propose that the later are letting the politicians/those involved in the uncivil debate off the hook too easily.

Take this debate clip. It is not a political debate but I would like to go out on a limb and say that a similar situation has occurred sometime over the course of history with politicians as well.



As you can see, the moderator here is not the one who encouraged the violence for better ratings. Granted he didn't do that much to stop it, but clearly it is the debaters who were responsible for what occurred. They were the ones cursing and being rude and they were ones who turned a roundtable discussion into a violent episode.

I am not denying the fact that the media thrives on this kind of conflict. While this stunt was not planned, I am sure the producers did not complain that it went down either. Television stations particularly love showing controversial video clips. They only show a few minutes of political debates and if there is anything uncivil that was said or done it is safe to assume that is what they will show.

However, they do not make this stuff up. Moderators at debates and political talk show hosts may invite confrontational guests and ask provocative questions, but they are not controlling what their panelists do or say. Politicians are not mannequins. Bill O'Reilly is not jerking his guests' head or making their eyes roll. He is not whispering explicative statements in their ears. Although he is undeniably happy when those on his show act this way, he is not making them do so.

Sure MSM will zero in on the incivility of politicians and overexpose it, but pointing it out is all they are doing. If the politicians do not give them the materials to work with, they will not be able to focus their reports on it. Finding a way "to create political programming that is both interesting and exciting to watch yet not likely to damage public attitudes in a significant way," as Mutz and Reeve propose, is not what we should concentrate on doing. Finding politicians who are exciting to watch without being rude and thus turning off the public from politics is a much harder thing to find, but will end up being a more successful way to discourage outlandish and uncivil programming.