Elections, personality politics and the mass media

N.B. – I attended the launch of our book Oligarchic Politics: Elections and the Party-List System in the Philippines last May 8 (Tuesday) where the authors were asked to present the highlights of the chapter or chapters they wrote. Here’s mine.

Oligarchic Politics cover

I promise that mine will be the shortest presentation today. Journalists, after all, like it short and sweet. (And I’d like to think that while I may not be short, at least I’m sweet!)

The chapter I wrote is titled “Elections, Personality Politics and the Mass Media.” I will not bore you with empirical and anecdotal data that you may all be familiar with already. Allow me to just present some of my major arguments.

During elections, candidates normally engage in politicking instead of politicizing. The former is characterized by, among others, muckraking and one-liners to questions that demand honest answers, while the latter seeks to enlighten the electorate on the burning issues of the day.

Mass media are often blamed for perpetuating the kind of elections and campaigns that go with them. Journalists, however, are wont to say that they only report what happens, and that what is needed is political maturity on the part of both the electorate and the candidates so that political campaigns can be taken to a higher level of discussion of issues.

The candidates and their handlers can conveniently argue that they are merely giving in to the demands of the electorate to make the campaigns as light (read: entertaining) as possible. However, the candidates cannot deny their responsibility in failing to take the campaigns to a higher level of discussion of issues. In fact, the fundamental definition of issues becomes problematic as they become fixated on answering and hurdling character attacks like citizenship and disqualification cases and consequently consider them as important issues.

While it is the journalists’ duty to report what happens on the road and they could be constrained by the refusal of candidates to comprehensively discuss burning issues of the day, they should expose such candidates who fail to articulate their stand on issues. Something can be done by the mass media organizations to ensure a comprehensive discussion of issues concerning politics, economics and culture and consequently transcend personality politics that characterizes campaigns during elections. Journalists should therefore keep in mind their primary duty of providing information that people need (not what they want) as they go about covering the 2007 national and local elections.

Marami pong salamat at isang mapagpalayang araw sa inyong lahat.

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