Letter to Bob Kerr, Providence Journal Columnist

Tom Sgouros

14 September 2000

Dear Bob:

While I usually enjoy your columns about city life, I think your writing about RI politics deserves some comment.

In this election year, the people running for office, for the US Senate and for Congress are serious people running for a serious position, but by treating them like children in your column you invite your readers to tune the whole contest out. Congress and the Senate are considering important issues that will have a profound effect on our lives. Can't we figure out a way to make sure that our representatives are the best we have to send?

You may -- and probably will -- object that the negative tone of the campaigns is what turns people off, but I'd like to conduct a thought experiment with you. What if a campaign sent a press release to your august journal entitled "Jones Announces Stance on US Housing Policy"? Would it be printed? I think you know the answer, and I think you can imagine as well as I the newsroom sniggers it would produce (at least it would if it stayed out of the circular file long enough). If a candidate hammers on an issue for long enough, and airs ads about them, eventually the ProJo will do an "analysis" piece, as Scott MacKay did about choice a couple of weeks back. But it seems to take a few rounds of slugging before attention is paid.

The problem of how to get one's message out -- and how to get people to pay attention to it -- is an old one. Years ago, the Providence Journal occasionally used to print verbatim accounts of speeches given. That appears to be a practice of bygone days not appropriate to the market demands for news in the 21st Century.

When nobody pays attention, and the press won't help (much), it is small wonder that candidates turn to television. At least there they are guaranteed their efforts will be noticed. Negative advertising is a lamentable, but entirely predictable, response to the pressures. (I do fault the press for not consistently distinguishing between negative ads that simply call names -- "special-interest hypocrite", or "Shame on you" being two recent examples -- and those that confine themselves to statements of fact, such as past votes or publicly stated opinions. But that is another argument for another day.)

Only an idiot would blame the whole affair on the press, and I do not. There is no doubt in my mind that the whole process is a circular one, with the negative advertising reinforcing the apathy, which reinforces the pressures to create negative ads. However, when you write a column that invites readers to tune out the whole thing -- to ignore the candidates, and spend no time trying to make sense of their messages -- you voluntarily insert yourself into this tragic spiral. No one forces you to write columns like the one in Wednesday's paper. You have a choice in the matter: you can choose to be part of the spiral making things worse, or not. I think you probably remember how Eldridge Cleaver put it in the '60's: "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." You can't be an uninvolved onlooker, especially not if you're writing for the newspaper.

One way the Journal could help is by providing a forum for discussions between candidates. The internet provides a model: the moderated listserv. This is a place where people can post questions and have them answered. A moderator sets rules and enforces them, to maintain a certain level of civility and accuracy. Sometimes the moderator will comment on a posting, letting the readers know why he or she let it go through, but flagging inconsistencies or misstatements. What about a page a couple of days a week where candidates could post statements of their opinions, and people or reporters (sorry, I meant "including" reporters) could post questions? It would sure allow a hell of a lot more depth than the 40-second responses the TV debates provide. A page of newsprint a couple of days a week wouldn't be so hard to give up.

I guess what I'm saying is that if people at the most widely read news outlet in the state want to see more substance in the political discussions that take place, they have the power to do something more about it than simply whine. The ProJo doesn't have the power to fix what is wrong with American democracy, and to cure voter apathy in one swell foop, but as I said before, you guys can resist the spiral down, or participate in it. It's your choice.

Yours,

Tom Sgouros

Full disclosure: I was heavily involved in Kate Coyne-McCoy's campaign.


Bob Kerr's Reply

tom: my apologies for the slow response. i can't agree with much of what you wrote. part of my job is to comment on things that are affecting people's lives and the campaign is certainly one of them. and this campaign was so insulting in its childish tit for tat that i couldn't ignore it. to suggest that such a horror show should be overlooked or soft-pedalled in the hope that fewer people will be turned off by the process is, for one thing, affording my column far more influence than it has. and it is also shortchanging the ability of voters to take in the things that are written and spoken and make good choices. to suggest that pointing out that something is rotten is somehow contributing to the rottenness is a clever ploy, but i just can't buy into it. i don't think i've become part of the spiral. i've just pointed out that it's downward instead of upward. bob kerr

M.Charles Bakst also replied, because I sent it to him, too.

Coverage of campaigns in the news media leaves something to be desired. In fact, the way television handles it is a disgrace. But the fundamental way candidates communicate is through paid ads. It is their choice how they decide to fill that time that they pay for. mcb