Media, city prepare for convention

By David Drucker

Daily Bruin Contributor

The Democratic Party descends upon Staples Center Aug. 14th to
nominate Vice President Al Gore and his running mate Sen. Joseph
Lieberman, D-Conn., to the 2000 presidential ticket.

The first religious Jew on a national ticket, pundits agree
Lieberman helps Gore distance himself from the Clinton scandals and
attract the moderate majority of voters.

Covering the political hoopla will be 15,000 journalists,
including 4,000 members of the foreign press corps. And if recent
Nielsen television ratings are any indication, the biggest question
the press may have is whether anybody is paying attention.

Despite the fact that ABC, CBS and NBC have dramatically scaled
back coverage of this year’s Democratic and Republican
conventions, political science professor John Zaller said
there’s still value in the media’s coverage.

“The fact that viewership is down doesn’t mean that
the conventions don’t get exposure,” Zaller said.
“Because most people get at least some news, the convention
is still an important means of getting the party’s message
out.”

Host of KCRW’s Which Way L.A. radio show and veteran Los
Angeles television journalist Warren Olney said that coverage was
adjusted because the nature of the conventions has changed.

“On the one hand, there’s less coverage of the
conventions, because frankly, there’s less news,” Olney
said. “When I started covering them in 1960, they functioned
to choose the nominee.”

Voter.com communications director Michael Bustamante said he
doesn’t think interest in the political process has waned at
all, and said people have simply chosen different venues to get
their information.

“Part of the reason voters are turned off to the
conventions is that they are tired of being spoonfed the
information the campaigns want to give them,” he said.
“What they want to do is find out who the candidates are and
what they stand for, and the Internet gives them a chance to do
that.”

Ironically, such convention predictability appears to stem from
both parties’ desire to craft their message for a television
audience; one that first tuned in during the summer of 1948 to
watch President Harry S Truman and New York Gov. Thomas Dewey
accept the Democratic and Republican party nominations.

“Political parties have become increasingly aware that
they are on television, and they’ve tried to craft a
convention program that’s tailored to interest a television
audience,” Zaller said.

Bustamante said that, in effect, these efforts are a waste of
time.

“The convention just does not make for good television,
but it does make for good information,” he said.

For political protesters, the issue isn’t so much how this
information is accessed, but rather its content.

Their concern is not whether the American people are watching
the convention, but what message is filtered out by what the
protesters call the corporate, mainstream media.

While recognized news outlets like CNN and Fox News Channel have
set up shop within the secure confines of Staples Center, the Los
Angeles Independent Media Center has located itself inside
Patriotic Hall.

Located just south of the arena, the IMC shares the building
with the alternative Shadow Convention, and aims to provide news
coverage of issues it considers to be more important.

“I see the IMC as a wonderful way to bring grassroots
people together,” said Radio Collective member Marc Herbst.
“What I’m trying to do is learn who the real voices are
and get those voices out there.”

That aside, Herbst contended that the press contingent on hand
to cover the Democratic National Convention has abandoned their
public trust and participates with powerful politicians to suppress
the issues the majority of Americans are concerned about.

“The mainstream media are part and parcel of the same
sphere and the same group,” he said. “They cooperate
with the politicians to contribute to the stifling of the real
issues that real people are concerned about.”

Olney doesn’t necessarily disagree with this
contention.

“I think there’s some truth to what they’re
saying,” Olney said. “There’s certainly no
conspiracy, but it’s very difficult to determine whose voices
should be heard and whose shouldn’t.”