By David Gordon, associate editor
Race and a presidential primary season with few precedents were featured topics Wednesday night at a lively panel discussion that started by focusing on how news media have covered the candidates’ views on minority groups but ranged into many related areas.
Panelists were Steven Majstorovic, a UW-Eau Claire political science professor; Joseph Radske, a veteran television newsman and regional director for the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ); and Dan Schillinger, news director at WQOW-TV (Channel 18) in Eau Claire.
The program, on the UW-Eau Claire campus, attracted a mostly student audience of some 25 people. It was organized and sponsored by the UW-EC SPJ chapter.
“This primary season has exposed the lack of diversity in the media,” Radske said. “The candidates, when they started, were more diverse than the media were.”
Schillinger said that the campaign so far is “unprecedented.” He compared a likely Donald Trump nomination to 1964 when the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater despite warnings – which proved to be accurate – that he would be swamped in the November election.
Schillinger lamented the fact that many people who use Facebook and Twitter “are only clicking on views they already agree with.” Trump supporters, he said, often “never hear any other views.”
He said that although there is an army of journalists trying to tell people what’s going on, “the frustration we feel is that people aren’t listening.” We are doomed to repeat past mistakes “if the people who consume journalism consume only what they already believe,” he added.
The discussion also dealt with what Schillinger called “pent-up anger” that has been building up, but which he wasn’t aware of until the campaign got underway. The panelists agreed that some – perhaps a lot – of anger stemmed from President Obama’s occupancy of the White House.
“A lot of people were unhappy (to have a black man as president) and didn’t know how to express it,” Radske said.
Majstorovic said “the reason they don’t like him is because he’s black, and nobody wants to talk about it” except perhaps indirectly, in “code language.”
Schillinger agreed, and said “the question is where do we go from here? We’ve been through eight years of our first minority president (and) what have we learned from it?”
In regard to angry voters more generally, Majstorovic said that people are often driven more by things that enrage them than by things that are positive. He noted that a substantial number of Republican voters feel betrayed by their party.
Peter Hart-Brinson, a UW-EC assistant professor of sociology and communication, moderated the 75-minute discussion and audience questions. He commented that both Trump and Bernie Sanders “are self-professed outsiders.”
Trump and Sanders
Majstorovic said that “Trump actually has more policy flexibility about things” than does Sanders, who has set views and seems more petulant than flexible. He noted that Sanders – officially an Independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats – “has no constituency in Congress” and would have difficulty as president getting any of his programs through the House and Senate.
Schillinger said the same thing could happen in a Trump presidency. He added that, before taking office, President Obama “didn’t have the experience to know how to negotiate deals on Capitol Hill.” Referring to the current presidential field, he said Hillary Clinton does have that kind of experience.
“I don’t think it makes any difference if Trump is president (but) has no constituency,” he said, and “the same thing is true with Hillary” if the Republicans retain control of Congress.
Predictions. Voting and More
Majstorovic, however, predicted that the Democrats will recapture the Senate in November. He also predicted that Trump will be far better versed on issues by the time the fall campaign begins, even though he has been “going for the gut” up to now.
Radske asked the students in the audience whether they were at all engaged by the campaigning, and several responded that they were not impressed by any of the candidates. Radske said he was somewhat puzzled that Clinton was not getting more support from women and young voters, with much of that “going to a 72-year-old white man from Vermont.”
Implicitly urging the students to vote, Majstorovic said that “sometimes, it’s a question of who you dislike less.” He added that citizenship carries with it not only rights, but responsibilities, such as voting.
In response to a question, Schillinger said the government should not follow Australia’s lead and require people to vote. “That’s not what America is about,” he said, “but I sure wish more people” would cast ballots.
Radske said many young reporters, like many people in the general population – don’t understand how or why things happen as they do. If journalists don’t understand a topic before they report it, they will simply select the loudest voices on that subject, he said.
Majstorovic said that new technologies have given us much more information than in the past, but not additional knowledge, which he defined as “informed understanding.”
When the issue of health care coverage and costs was raised from the audience, Majstorovic said he believed strongly that the costs of goods and services, in general, should be determined by the market rather than by the government. But, he asked, “is health care like refrigerators?”
And, in response to a student comment, he noted animatedly that one role of the government, as stated in the preamble to the U.S. constitution, is to “promote the general welfare.”