DON’T LET THE MEDIA CONTROL YOUR EXPERIENCE OF ELECTION 2016

By: American Decency Staff

If you’re already feeling woozy from the roller coaster ride of Election 2016, you’re not alone. This ride has featured early twists and turns, highs and lows, and yet – as the Carpenters once sang – “we’ve only just begun.”

I have friends who get worked up about politics. They are constantly checking on their favorite candidates, sneaking peeks at the latest polls, and promoting their candidates’ interviews with cable news hosts.

I have other friends who don’t want to talk about the election season until a couple months beforehand. They get worked up too, but in a different way — all this political stuff makes them anxious. They wish they could live in a cave until it’s time to enter the voting booth.

Election season can be difficult for both kinds of people. Those who have already settled on a candidate worry where the election roller coaster ride is taking them. They have a pit in their stomach every time there’s a big drop, or when they see another campaign riding high. Those who are weary of the politicking wish they weren’t on the ride at all. Doesn’t it seem like this ride gets longer every 4 years? they ask.

Journalists Want Your Eyeballs

For both sets of friends – those who love the thrill of political wrangling and those who hate to pay attention, allow me to pass on a word of wisdom I received from my father a few years ago: Don’t let the media control your experience of an election season.

Four years ago, when the Republican party’s nomination process seemed like a game of Whack-a-mole, with a new front-runner rising up every month only then to be squashed, I remember Dad saying: Trevin, it’s in the media’s best interest for there to be many candidates, and for those candidates to surge and then fall. When they build up a candidate, there’s a story about the rise. When they tear down a candidate, there’s a story about the fall. Why settle for one interesting story when you can have two?

That conversation has stayed with me. It reminds me that one of the biggest forces in an election year isn’t the candidates themselves but the journalists who want to win your eyeballs — on print pieces, online articles, television talk shows, or viral videos. There are more stories available to journalists when there are multiple candidates grappling for power and prestige.

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