I was listening to NPR this morning, and to my chagrin, the topic was Sarah Palin. What a suprise, right? Specifically, the show was discussing the Republican assessment of the mainstream media this election, and how, unified, it has assumed an elitist attitude toward the VP running mate of Senator McCain.
Elite has become a vicious insult in politics. I am confused, however, as to why exactly Republicans believe the media to be elite and why elitism is such a grievous crime. Merriam Webster defines elite as "the socially superior part of society" or "a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence." The first definition doesn't seem to apply. The second may be more accurate.
The positions of the media do wield more influence than, say, that of an average citizen. But the media by nature are better educated than the average citizen on what is reported because the media do the research in order to report.
So maybe all media are elite. But if so, they always have been, and always will be. And I suggest that elite in this circumstance isn't an insult at all. Republicans are just mad because the media are doing their jobs - and uncovering unfavorable facts about their new poster child.
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I think the basic issue here is that the media was originally established in the U.S. to serve the people. If, as we discussed in lecture, the people feel as though the media has taken on the attitude that it is above them, then it makes it hard for people to gain the democratic benefits (such as a fair education on both candidates) that the media is supposed to offer. Instead, the people feel as though the media is lecturing down on them rather than raising their level of awareness on current issues.
Let's face it, unless you've worked in a beat for awhile and developed an intimate working knowledge of that beat, there are people out there who know more than you on any given subject. Just because the media researches topics does not make their members experts. You can research a Teamsters Union and write four articles on them, but a 20 plus year member of that organization probably knows more about it than you do.
What's even more bothersome to me about this isn't that Sarah Palin and the Republican party are complaining about the media, but that we haven't heard such complaints from the Obama campaign. In my opinion the media should be holding both sides accountable, and if only one side is complaining perhaps that's a sign that there's an aspect of our job that isn't being done correctly. As a journalist this makes me cringe to think that we're heading into an election without doing our jobs to inform the public, and as a voter it makes me wonder where the information I can use to cast my vote in an educated manner is hiding.
Like they say, nobody's right if everybody is wrong.
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