BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Election-Year Distractions
Have you noticed where the focus of the traditional media is just nine weeks ahead of the mid-term elections? While there seem to be only two driving concerns in this election – the economic condition of the country and the role of government in fixing it – the media is fixated on noise. Just look at the news that’s been dominating the front pages of the newspapers and the evening news broadcasts.
The focus of attention is on the anniversaries of Social Security, the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech (partly because of the provocation of infotainer Glen Beck’s Restore America rally that same day). There’s also continued coverage of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, gay marriage and the sexuality of former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman; the politics of race, the religious affiliation of President Obama and, of course, the pack-journalism story of the decade, the development of an Islamic cultural center in Manhattan.