Do Smaller Candidates Get Short Changed?
It was a bizarre scene: The interviewers were asking serious questions with a slight smirk on their faces, and the audience grinned or even laughed at some of the responses. My German is extremely basic, so I had little grasp of what the candidates were saying, but a German friend watching with me said the candidates were articulating positions pretty far outside of the mainstream.
The German system is different than the American one – there are a wide range of political parties, and 5 percent of the vote gets you a seat at the table. So it is particularly important to hear from a number of candidates. But now that election season is heating up, it's worth asking: Does the American press short-change candidates without the star power or organization to seem like legitimate contenders?
There are two ways of looking at this. The conventional view is that the press need only pay attention to candidates who have a chance at winning. It's already a crowded field, according to this logic, and there's little time to waste on those who don't have a shot. The problem with this argument, according to Dennis Kucinich, who ran for president in 2004 and is running again this year, is that it can lead to journalists guiding the will of the people instead of the other way around.
As Kucinich told "On The Media" host Bob Garfield, "I do believe that, you know, there's a tendency on the part of the media in this country to try to pick whoever's going to be the nominee early on, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy." He added: "…there is such a thing as a gatekeeper theory, and everyone understands that. The Internet's changed a lot of that, but corporate-owned media, in a society where there are fewer and fewer media companies, has an ability to be able to control the debate."
For someone who was never really in the running, Kucinich did get his fair share of attention in 2004. But the issue he raises is worth considering. Reporters do pay at least some attention to candidates across the ideological spectrum, from Kucinich to Sam Brownback. But they also spend a disproportionate amount of time focused on who is ahead in the polls as well as minutiae related to the big-name candidates. That leaves less time for minor candidates to be seen and heard, and it leaves the public with less access to those candidates' ideas.