Once again, FDU’s Politics on the PublicMind series succeeded in bringing the students, staff, and community members’ attention to a controversial subject. The discussion took place on Friday, Oct. 24 and was lead by WNYC Radio’s Bob Hennelly and PolitickerNJ.com’s Debbie Borrie-Holtz.
Hennelly, an award-winning investigative journalist, has been featured on top television news programs such as “60 Minutes” and in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Miami Herald. As a political consultant and analyst, Hennelly has followed the development of the present presidential campaign as affected by the media.
Borrie-Holtz, a regular blogger on PolitickerNJ.com, is considered a top Internet media critic. She has worked closely with the chief of staff, the senate majority leader, and has been an assistant to the secretary of state. Borrie-Holtz is now a professor of public policy at Rutgers.
According to the discussion, the modern media forces politicians to cut back on commenting about foreign situations and most media networks refrain from showing any coverage concerning foreign controversies. Hennelly said that the media has been allowed to run rampant, unregulated, and now is uninformative and leaves people ignorant. The media has not given the people the sense of global fluency they should have. “The political process is about leadership. Leadership is the ability to suspend one’s personal interest to benefit the masses,” said Hennelly.
Borrie-Holtz made several underlying connections from what Hennelly said to the present media. She said that although the media cannot tell us what to think, it can do a pretty good job of telling us what we need to think about. She said that the news we all receive through newspapers and television is nothing but information from wire services, such as the Associated Press. Overall, Borrie-Holtz’s main point is that the American people have a shrinking attention span for what they see on television, and the media has done a great job of playing into this.
What PublicMind, Hennelly and Borrie-Holtz succeeded in doing through this seminar is exemplifying what the media has done to us as an audience. The media has grasped the ability to show us only what they believe to be news worthy stories, whether they are or not. News has become less about domestic and foreign issues and more about the personal aspects of government officials.
Borrie-Holtz said that because of the public’s short attention span for news, the media has resorted to showing audiences only what it feels the audience needs to see. The media has been completely changed by the modern presidential campaigns, and only time will be able to tell how the media plays out in the present presidential campaign.
MARIA DISPENZIERE
Staff Writer
