At KSG, Experts Consider Media’s Role in Elections

The Kennedy School of Government wrapped up a conference on the 2004 presidential race with a panel Saturday discussing the media’s role in shaping public opinion on the eve of an election.

The panel entitled, “The Media: Entertainment and Politics” was held under a tent in JFK park and featured NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, Chairman and CEO of Phoenix Pictures Mike Medavoy and David E. Sanger ’82, White House correspondent for the New York Times.

Marvin Kalb, lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School, moderated the discussion.

The panel was part of a larger conference of over 100 academics, journalists, and policymakers entitled “Decision 2004: What is at stake at home and abroad?”

To begin, Medavoy, the Hollywood insider, described a blurring of the line between news and entertainment.

“Everything has become show business,” he said. “You wonder whether we’re all kind of asleep at the switch or whether we’re all getting infected by it.”

Sanger, who is also a Crimson editor, said that the New York Times aims to ensure that people were not getting all their news from popular late-night entertainment programs like those hosted by Jon Stewart, David Letterman and Jay Leno.

“You can’t have a world in which young people are getting all their news from Jon Stewart and the old people are getting it from whatever newspaper they choose to read,” he said.

Sanger, though, said he still thinks that some people do not consider entertainment programming a reliable news source.

“Many Americans can still very well separate the news from the entertainment in their own minds,” Sanger said, adding that this observation might just be a characteristic of the self-selected group he talks to.

Brokaw said he believes that news and entertainment have always been intermingled. The difference now, he said, is that the big three television networks have recently been joined by hundreds of other news sources. This competition, along with new technology, has increased the pressure to disseminate information quickly, even though that information may not be credible.

“The thing that concerns me most is this rush to get things on,” Brokaw said.

Saturday’s discussion also turned to the upcoming presidential election.

Brokaw said so far people seem to be taking their time in digesting new developments that may affect the election, although he suggested that some issues may soon come to a head.

“We’re a long way from the finish line here,” Brokaw said. “The landscape is relatively calm, but there’s this molten mass underneath the surface.”

Sanger said that, assuming the course of the economy was predictable, the “two major unpredictables” that may decide the election are the state of the war in Iraq and whether another major terrorist attack occurs.

“With a country this divided, I don’t think you could ever bank a victory,” Sanger said.

Brokaw also described the nation’s deepening partisanship and said he hoped Americans could soon find a common ground.

“Both these parties right now with their ruthless efficiency are making this one country, two nations,” Brokaw said.

Medavoy said he finds the political split troublesome as well.

“If you cling to your ideologies so firmly, you trivialize history. And if you trivialize history you destroy education,” he said.

Brokaw arrived 15 minutes after the discussion began due to the cancellation of his flight out of New York. Upon his arrival at Logan Airport, he was given a state police escort to expedite his arrival.

“I do not expect to be reading about [the police escort] on Page Six—that’s my only request,” Brokaw said, alluding to the popular gossip section in the New York Post.

Brokaw, towards the end of the panel’s discussion, said that he did not have any political ambitions despite his impending Dec. 1 retirement from his job as the anchor of NBC Nightly News.

“I’m running for cover, not for office,” he said.