 | Essays
on Civic Renewal
National
Commission on Civic Renewal Second Plenary Session, continued
Panel Four: Politics
& Civil Society
Contents
Panel
One: Faith & Character
Panel
Two: Community Service & Community Action
Panel Three: Youth
Panel Four: Politics & Civil Society
Panel
Four: Politics & Civil Society
Witnesses:
Jim Walser
Assistant Managing Editor,
Charlotte Observer
Charles M.
Tampio
Vice President for Programs, The Close Up Foundation
Clare Scheuren
President, Board of Directors, Project Vote Smart
GALSTON:
This is the fourth and final panel of our second plenary session,
and the topic of this panel is politics and civil society. We
have three presenters. . . . Our first witness will be Jim Walser,
who is the assistant managing editor of the Charlotte Observer.
Jim, the floor is yours.
JIM
WALSER:
Thank you. I was asked today to talk about a project that we worked
on over the last couple of years called "Taking Back our Neighborhoods."
I hope you have a copy of this, to at least see what it was we're
talking about here.
In 1994
and 1995 and on into early '96, the Charlotte Observer ran a series
of stories called "Taking Back our Neighborhoods." It was ten
separate pieces, running on a Sunday and a Monday, that examined
some problems that were emerging in the inner-city neighborhoods
of Charlotte. It started after the killings of two young Charlotte
police officers as they chased a drug dealer through a public
housing project in early 1994. It was a crime that outraged the
community and sort of symbolized a lot of things that were emerging
with crime in Charlotte. It also made us at the newspaper reexamine
the way that we covered crime: which we've traditionally done
in a very episodic way, crime to crime, in a way that never, we
didn't feel like, gave us a true picture of what it was like to
live in the neighborhoods that were most affected by drugs, violence,
teenage pregnancy, dropouts, a number of other things. We didn't
get a full picture. So we decided we would take it a very different
way.
Among the
other things that we found out was that Charlotte, which ranked
34th in population and has an image as sort of a beacon of the
New South to some people—a very prosperous, up-and-coming
place—was actually 18th in violent crime: way ahead of where
it should have been, in terms of per capita . .. the way you look
at crime. So we decided to do something about it. Or try to do
something about it, and to examine what role we could play as
a newspaper in what's traditionally been something between a community
and the police.
We started
out by examining crime statistics in a new way; we broke it down
by neighborhood. Everybody in Charlotte lives in neighborhoods;
but traditionally the police had broken down crime into their
own ways, into districts for the police department, which didn't
really bear any relationship to anything else. When you talk about
how to combat crime, people will talk about doing it neighborhood
by neighborhood, but nobody knew how the neighborhoods ranked
in crime. So we looked at it differently: ranked the neighborhoods
in Charlotte, neighborhood by neighborhood, and came up with a
list of the 90 neighborhoods and how they ranked in crime. We
then polled the people in the most violent neighborhoods. We took
the top 10 violent neighborhoods and polled those people on what
they thought the solution should be: what they saw as the problem,
how they perceived it, what their lives were like, and what they
thought should be done about it. So that was different than the
way we would normally cover a crime in our community.
From there,
we also formed a coalition with a TV station and two radio stations,
so that when we came out with our stories on a Sunday in the Sunday
paper, they were in conjunction with a TV show that night and
in conjunction with radio programs all that day on radio. So we
would run a media blitz on a Sunday, where we would have a substantial
piece in the newspaper, there would be a television program that
night asking for volunteers, and in the newspaper and on the TV
show we would ask for people to volunteer to do whatever they
wanted to do—but they could call one phone number. It was
easily accessible. They could call that phone number, and the
United Way would link up people who called in with actions that
they might want to take or things that they volunteered to do.
That's very unusual for a newspaper, which traditionally covers
things and pretty much leaves it laying there and moves on. So
we did this over a year and a half.
This is
a quick summary of the things that I think that we learned. One
of the things is that when you break it down by neighborhood,
people identify more with it. They live in neighborhoods. They
don't live in crime districts, or in districts put up by the police
department, or in zip codes; they live in neighborhoods. It's
very important organizationally, if you're combatting crime, to
be organized by neighborhoods. The other thing is that when we
asked people to show up for town meetings and to be on advisory
panels to help us decide what the story was, they actually participated.
They came out; they came out in hundreds. They packed gymnasiums
and churches throughout Charlotte to come and tell people on these
panels—like the police chief, county commissioners, city
councilmen—what they thought the problems were. These are
people in poor neighborhoods, for the most part, who traditionally
have not had much access to public officials because, quite simply,
they don't vote so they don't get much of an audience.
The other
thing is, when we asked people in the general community to volunteer,
amazingly, they did. People came forward by the hundreds to help
out in these neighborhoods. The way we did it—with the list
in the newspaper, the phone number on the television, the phone
number in the newspaper—gave people access that they didn't
have before.
The final
thing I think we learned, we spent a lot of our time talking and
writing about solutions. We wrote about programs that actually
worked in other places around the country—things like you
heard this morning about the Community Development Corporation.
We went and wrote about that up in Newark and other places where
it was in existence and said, "Why can't we do this in Charlotte?"
We tried to be . . . not only show the picture of what the neighborhood
was like, but also try to draw a picture of what had worked in
other neighborhoods around the country that had faced similar
problems.
So those
are some of the learnings that we had on it. It was a very experimental
project. It involved cooperation with the United Way, which is
very controversial in journalistic circles. The project drew a
lot of criticism from people in the press, a lot of whom people
that I respect and that called it pandering, or that it was somehow
violating the principles of objectivity that people take to rule
journalism. Others said we were participating in the parade; that
newspapers should cover the parade, but not participate in it.
And all of that is true. The only thing I can say is that we saw
a problem and we tried to come up with a way that journalistically
we could remain sound but help the community grasp and grapple
with a problem that had been there for decades, really, been emerging
for decades, and was likely to stay that way.
The problems
. . . a lot of them are still there. Some things were done. We're
continuing to cover the story; we've been doing follow-up stories
this year on how those neighborhoods are faring.
It was very
controversial, but I can say honestly that it was the best thing
I've participated in in my 25 years in journalism, and I've been
at the Observer for 17 years. I helped participate in two Pulitzer
Prize-winning projects, but this felt like the best thing that
we had done. And I'll be glad to answer questions.
GALSTON:
Thanks, Jim. Our second witness is Charles Tampio, who is the
vice president for programs of the Close Up Foundation. And for
those of you who are denizens of Washington in general and Capitol
Hill in particular, and you've seen these armies of well-scrubbed
and well-dressed young people in and around the Capitol, the odds
are it's the Close Up Foundation. Chuck, the floor is yours.
CHARLES
TAMPIO:
Thank you. With all respect to Mr. Bennett, we want to make sure
that those buses continue to visit Washington as full as possible.
I once asked a friend of mine who's a Baptist minister what was
the principle behind his sermons, and he said that the mind cannot
absorb more than the seat can endure. And I would like to commend
the Commission on its work and for your patience for sitting through
this long day.
Tomorrow
we celebrate—celebrate is probably the wrong word—but
we mark the second anniversary of the closing of Pennsylvania
Avenue, which ended a tradition of nearly 200 years. And it robbed
America of an important symbol, which is that the American president
lived on a street with a number on the house, like most Americans.
On that day, President Clinton addressed a small group of educators
that were at the White House (I think you were there, Mr. Galston,
at the Communitarian meeting). And he lamented the closing of
Pennsylvania Avenue, and said that while Americans have always
enjoyed poking fun at bureaucrats and at public officials, the
demonization of the bureaucracy had gotten out of hand, and that
we have lost the idea of public service or government service
as worthy or admirable. That's one fact I'd like to put on the
table.
The second
one is that one of the tragic things about contemporary American
education is how we have made the pageant of democracy so deadly
dull. This is the boredom that you were speaking about, Mr. Bennett.
The Gallop Poll, in its annual surveys of education, continues
to report, as it has every year in which it was taken, that the
social studies are the least favorite courses of American secondary
school children. The way that we have taught American government,
I think, in our schools—which, basically, is how a bill becomes
a law—has successfully put American youngsters to sleep for
most of this century.
At Close
Up, we take a very different approach. We try to empower young
people by not talking about the processes of government or the
separation of powers, but to talk about how they as citizens can
influence public policy. So we introduce them, certainly, to the
three branches of government, but also all of the other forces
that influence public policy. And our premise is that while many
of us in this room took algebra in high school, few of us are
algebrists—I'm not sure anyone's an algebrist—but we
all are citizens, no matter what we took in school. And we were
citizens when we took these courses. So what we try to teach young
people is what their responsibilities are today, as a citizen
in their school.
The way
we do this is, first of all, we focus on the whole of American
society. We don't focus on any elites—that's one of the things
that makes the Close Up program different from most of the others—so
the youngsters that are involved, they're not constituting an
academic elite, a leadership elite, or an economic elite. We try
to reach all kinds of kids. And our process is experiential. It's
often been noted that you learn more from a week in Paris than
you do from a month in French class. Or you wouldn't approach
the teaching of cooking from a textbook; you teach it from the
kitchen. Similarly, we take youngsters into the arena. Sometimes
we clog it up; but it belongs to them as much as it belongs to
anyone else. And in the process of visiting the Capitol, of going
through the corridors where decisions are made, we demystify the
process for young people, and, I think, help them to understand
that they can be actors in that process.
How do we
know that we're successful, or even if effective in what we do?
There have been a number of doctoral theses on our subject. But
more than that, we've got a lot of very provocative anecdotal
information. Last week, we had the very first meeting of our alumni
group. We have almost a half million alumni at this point; one
of them has just become a United States Senator, and we're very
proud of her. And we also get reports from teachers who come with
these young people from their communities.
What have
we learned that we can share with other groups? Well, first, that
experiential education itself is a valid approach; that it helps
to connect young people to these processes that seem otherwise
abstract to them; that it has an effect in promoting positive
attitudes about government that simply are very hard to achieve
otherwise through the standard curriculum. Second, we believe
in the use of primary sources, whether they be materials or the
actors in government themselves. Third, we believe in inclusivity,
making sure that all kinds of students are involved. And if you
want to insure the inclusion of these groups, then you have to
work at it explicitly, and you have to secure the resources to
make it happen.
Now, with
respect to recommendations that I might put forward, I would like
to say that each of the disciplines in education today has a constituency
whose support for the discipline is often crucial. So mathematics,
for example, has the engineering community that supports that
discipline. Chemistry and physics has the scientific and industrial
community behind it. Even English has authors, publishers, journalists,
who support the discipline. Who, then, is the constituency for
civic education? I believe that it has to be government. And lately,
government has been an increasingly reluctant partner in this
effort, if you witness the cuts in civic education programs and
lack of support for programs like law-related education.
So my recommendations
are these. First, that government needs to recognize its special
role as a supporter of civic education. It can be an important
catalyst for this kind of learning. And in the words of the PBS
slogan, "If it doesn't, who will?" Second, school reform cannot
be allowed to only focus on science and math. The folks in science
and math have their act together; they continue to say that it's
the center of the curriculum. In fact, I think a case can be made
that civic education could be the focal point of school reform.
Employers today, in fact, don't comment (as often as it's been
mentioned in the press) that they're worried about whether their
entry-level employees can calculate. They have calculators for
that. What they complain about is that young workers don't subscribe
to a common goal, they don't know how to work together in groups,
and they don't have the social skills that are required in contemporary
jobs.
Third, I
would like to say that programs that attempt to encourage civic
renewal should be sure to include all sorts of folks. And I've
also mentioned that dealing with elites in civic education is
an oxymoron or contradiction in terms. Fourth, I think we should
teach directly for the outcomes we want to achieve. That is, if
we want to create citizens, we should teach skills that citizens
need. We can't simply teach history and assume that if students
understand a little bit about American history, as a result they
will be better citizens. We have to teach it directly, and not
indirectly.
And finally,
I'd say that we need to focus more on teacher training and teacher
development. We need to treat teachers like professionals, and
we have to find better ways to recognize the contributions that
they make. And at Close Up—and I know a number of people
in this room have spoken at Close Up groups before—you know
that our goal is a very brief presentation to be followed by questions.
So I'll reserve the rest of my comments till then.
GALSTON:
Chuck, thanks so much. Our final witness for this fourth and final
panel of the day is Clare Scheuren, who is the president of the
board of a new but not unnoted organization called Project Vote
Smart. Clare, the floor is yours.
CLARE
SCHEUREN:
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. I have the great treat, I
would say, of having the opportunity to listen to everyone else
speak today. This is a topic that we were discussing earlier—whether
that was good or not. I think it's good; I think it's wonderful.
I live in the Southwest—I live in Tucson, Arizona—and
here in the East Coast, when spring is coming, you push the snow
away and you see the crocuses coming up. And when you're a little
kid you get all excited that something wonderful is happening
that you didn't expect to be happening. In Tucson, Arizona, there's
a cactus called an ocotillo—perhaps many of you have seen
an ocotillo—and an ocotillo is a plant about 15 feet high
that looks like a bunch of sticks in the winter. And in the spring,
the ocotillo has little teeny leaves, and just there's one and
two; and then pretty soon, these dead sticks are covered with
leaves and red flowers at the top. And listening to all the folks
in this series of conversations today, I felt like I was in a
place where spring was happening.
I'm here
today representing Project Vote Smart. And I'd like to tell you
about Project Vote Smart and tell you precisely what it does.
I'd also like to suggest that there are a number of indicators
that we should be looking at—that we shouldn't be looking
at the same old indicators of civic dysfunction and civic breakdown.
And I think that's evident from the conversation that we've had
here today.
Let me start
by telling you about Project Vote Smart. It is a national organization
that was founded in the late '80s. It was started by a number
of mostly retired political leaders: Senator Proxmire, Senator
Goldwater, Senator McGovern, Congressman Leach, and others. There
are about 35 people on our board now, and Senator Bradley and
Senator Hatfield just joined our board just very recently. The
organization was founded to address one cause of civic breakdown
as it was identified by the board—one cause that contributes
to lack of voter participation, lack of confidence in government,
lack of trust in government—and that problem was the present
campaign system, which has really, really turned people off. And
it has some kind of egregious facts that go along with that—many
of which you're probably familiar with, but I have a few that
I brought along here.
First of
all, there are a lot of studies that indicate that this is a problem
for the general citizenry, because they believe that government
is run for the benefit of special interests. And the campaign
system has undermined public confidence and increased cynicism
about government. One of the factors beyond the marketing of campaigns
and what people perceive as kind of a corrupt and corrupting system
that even corrupts the candidates themselves because they have
to spend so much time raising money: The cost of running an average
winning Senate campaign jumped from $609,000 in 1976 to $3.6 million
in 1996; a House campaign, from $87,000 to more than $661,000.
Most of that money is used for television ads, sort of marketing
of all kinds. And the old style of political campaigns—although
it is hard, in a congressional district with about 600,000 people,
to chat with everyone—has gone by the wayside. And a lot
of people are very discouraged.
One of the
reasons why this is, we argue, a bad situation, is that people
have found it increasingly difficult to get information. And one
of the reasons that was cited by a spring of 1996 poll—a
study, actually, by the League of Women Voters—was that a
lot of people don't vote because they don't feel like they know
enough. Curtis Gans argues that non-voting is a rational response
to what's going on in the political system—that you just
see this kind of poisonous river, and you don't want to jump into
it. You want to get away from it.
Project
Vote Smart is a way to get around the problems with the present
campaign system which frequently make it hard for people to see
the factual basis on which they would like to make their decisions.
And Project Vote Smart is one thing and one thing only: it is
factual information based on public record; it is for the public,
to be accessed free via a telephone call or through the World
Wide Web. We have essentially developed a system of voter information.
But not just voter information. And I don't know how to get to
that point without going off-track a little bit from what Project
Vote Smart does. But voting is really, of course, just one political
act—and perhaps it's not as significant as many of the things
we've talked about here today. Hopefully, we can maybe get to
that a little bit more in questions. But Project Vote Smart essentially
compiles information and makes it available to the public.
When we
did our first national test in 1992, we had 209,000 phone calls.
The World Wide Web didn't happen then—I guess it was sort
of in the works in some ways, but we didn't know about it then.
We had 209,000 phone calls. But after the election, a number of
political scientists who work with our organization did a study
to see how many people knew about Project Vote Smart. One percent
of the American public had ever heard of us—for obvious reasons.
We don't advertise; we just rely on the Charlotte Observer and
other newspapers to tell the world about us. But only 1 percent
knew about us, yet we received that many phone calls.
Just this
last year, in the 1996 election—we now have, of course, our
hotline, which is staffed by volunteers from universities in Boston;
it's based at Northeastern University and at Corvallis, Oregon,
at Oregon State University —we had 4 million requests for
information. People going crazy right around the time of the election—within
a week of the election we had the majority of our contacts, our
calls, and our requests on the Web. And this is, hopefully, another
little crocus in the snow (or leaf on the ocotillo, or whatever)
that people are really interested.
Now, whether
they vote, whether they don't vote, we don't know. We've done
some studies. Now we know that 6 percent of the American public
knows who we are. Maybe they're not quite sure what we do, but
they know our name or sort of have a vague notion of what we do.
But these people are using our service to become connected to
public decision-making, to understanding what is going on in public
life: what the laws are, what the candidates say, what the performance
ratings are, what performance ratings even are—so there's
a civic education component, too. We would argue that our program
is essential to a self-governing society.
We only
take money from individuals and from foundations; we take no corporate
money or any money that could be connected with any kind of special
interest. So our organization has, as I say, basic factual information
for people who care about what's going on and don't have a habit
yet, necessarily, of inquiring and involving themselves in public
life.
So I'm very,
very glad to be here; and I have a few other notions about things
that we should be considering. But Project Vote Smart is all about
this sort of informational component. The things that Mr. Tampio
is talking about are perhaps much more essential in my mind—and
that is, giving people a reason to care. So hopefully that's something
that come out of this program.
GALSTON:
Thank you very much, Clare. We're now open for questions, beginning
with the co-chairs. Senator Nunn.
NUNN:
Clare, thank you, and Jim and Charles, all of you, for your testimony,
and also your patience as the last panel of the day. We thank
you very much.
Particularly
with Jim here, I'd like to hear both of you, Clare first and then
Jim. Clare, would you state your opinion of why your organization
is necessary? With all the television, with all the radio, with
all the news media out there supposedly covering campaigns in
exhaustive fashion, and yet people still feel like they don't
have the basic information. I mean, I agree with you—they
don't, they feel like they don't. But is something wrong with
our news media, in the way they're covering campaigns, that require
this kind of organization? Or is it people don't believe they're
getting objective information?
SCHEUREN:
Well, I think it's both. I think it's both. The television media,
as you know, is where most people get their news, unfortunately.
But as I understand it, only 2 1/2 minutes a week are devoted
to political news coverage on the average television station.
So obviously that's not very much attention. And you know very
well, from watching the news, what kind of information that is.
It's not substantive; it's not detailed; it's not necessarily
objective—it's just some momentary little snapshot. It's
not really enough. The newspapers—unfortunately, again—are
not read by everyone. And that's for a lot of reasons, and it's
not a happy scenario; but in any case, that's the situation. So,
unfortunately, in that kind of a political climate and this kind
of a political culture, it is necessary to have a ready source.
And of course, just about everybody has a phone, and a lot of
people have computers or they have access to them. And so it makes
it easy to get the information when you want it—not when
a campaign is going on and someone is kind of telling you you
want it, but when you really want it.
NUNN:
Okay, thank you. Jim, would you want to comment on that?
WALSER:
I agree with a lot of what Clare said. It depends on where you
are. If you're in Washington, Los Angeles, or New York, you're
getting lots of information about the campaign, lots of information
about issues, lots of information about other things, from very
big newspapers. If you're in most of the rest of the country,
you can struggle to find out what a candidate thinks about a specific
issue on a specific day.
We tried
a project in 1992, in conjunction with the Poynter Institute,
where we tried to focus on election issues as opposed to horse
race polls, other election kind of stories, and tried to focus
more, both in '92 and '96, on substance, what I would call, as
opposed to flash and that kind of stuff. We got a lot of good
response in '92, not as much good response in '96. I think there
was just generally, obviously, a lot more interest in the '92
election. But over and above that, the problem is, in newspapers,
that sort of conflict between how much people are interested,
how much are you going to give them, and, if they're not voting,
how much do you really want to give them. And then, on the other
hand, what's your role as a newspaper—is it to provide the
information, or is it to sell newspapers? And if they're not voting,
then that would seem to indicate a lack of interest in it; so
some newspapers abandon some of their coverage, I think, from
previous decades or whatever. It's less important.
NUNN:
Let me just throw one thing out here. And it may not have any
meaning . . . but you get mentioned as a presidential candidate
in this town by one of the great mentioners, whoever they are—and
Bill Bennett's been in that situation more recently than I have,
but I was in it in a big way in 1988—I'd not decided to run
but obviously I was thinking about it, and all of a sudden —
BENNETT:
I mention your name every chance I get.
NUNN:
You must do it so often it's no longer newsworthy. Ration it out
a little. But, nevertheless, as soon as my name got mentioned
and I was thinking about it, all of a sudden—it happened
almost overnight, just like that—the reporters covering me
shifted. Totally different group of reporters. Before, it had
been foreign policy, defense people—people that, whether
I was involved in the budget or whatever, they were people who
really were following substance. All of a sudden, bang, I'm hit
with a group of reporters that could care less about anything
substantive I said. I could not say anything that would make news
on the substance any more. It was all about personality, horse
race, posturing. I mean, they'd write a whole paragraph on why
I said something without ever saying what I said. I was never
so relieved in my life to declare I wasn't going to be a presidential
candidate. And then, just like a light switch, a different group
of reporters—not nearly as much reporting, but thank goodness,
it was substantive. I mean, somehow or another, the news media,
it seems to me, has an obligation to cover the substance of a
campaign. And if they don't have a group of people that are capable
of following the substance, maybe they ought to get a different
group of reporters out there, or train those reporters.
I'm not
saying that the political reporters aren't skillful. They are.
But they are not giving people substance. And they certainly make
it difficult, almost impossible, for a candidate to talk about
substance. So that the whole incentive system is to figure out
some way to say three or four sentences that mean absolutely nothing,
that gets you on the news, and sort of convey your personality
or your charisma, or lack thereof.
I also got
a letter, Bill, about then. Some fellow said, "Senator Nunn, please
run for president. My family and I will vote for you, we'll support
you," it said. "We're desperate," he said. "This country has had
all the charisma it can stand." That helped make up my mind. So
maybe Jim would like to comment on that.
WALSER:
I would just say, I think people . . . what you describe is interesting.
I know there is a movement in the country, sort of organized around
the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, which is trying to . . .
facilitate, I guess, for lack of a better word, to get better
coverage in newspapers, to have newspapers focus more on issues.
As TV moves more and more to fast-moving, it takes away daily
news kind of coverage imperatives from newspapers. What newspapers
should be left with is the opportunity to go more for substance.
Now, whether anybody wants to read that is where the tension is,
and whether or not newspapers can continue to be viable financial
institutions or financial —
NUNN:
But you found people reading what you were writing in terms, when
you shifted the way you were reporting on —
WALSER:
We did in '92. '96, we haven't done as much polling back on it.
But I think, in general, in '92 we found very high readership.
On this series . . . there were surveys done after this series
ran, which focused very much, I think, on substance, and found
that 84 percent of the people in our market knew what this series
was about. Which is pretty incredible. It's like a national advertising
campaign; it's almost like McDonald's ads or Nike ads or something,
when you can get 84 percent of the people to understand what a
newspaper series was about. So I think substance can . . . if
presented correctly and if it's good enough, I think it can be
effective and sell.
BENNETT:
Question for each of you. Mr. Walser, I can testify—I visit
Charlotte from time to time—there was a lot of local interest
in that. I think you did the right thing. You talked about criticism
from some of the other media. But did anybody imitate you? Did
anybody do the same thing? Have you had any imitators?
WALSER:
I don't know. There's been a lot more of what is called public
or civic journalism being done in the last couple of years. I
don't know anybody who's done a crime series quite like this.
Again, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism is pushing that whole
concept, and people are starting to buy into it. The question
becomes, Can you maintain your traditional objectivity and your
role as an auditor of the community while you're also seeming
to participate in what could be a solution? Chuck and I were talking
about that at lunch, and he was saying he wasn't sure how he comes
down on this. And I'm not, either. But what we know is that people
are tuning out. Even though Charlotte is a growing area, and in
a lot of other growing areas, the newspaper is not growing as
fast as the area is. And that bothers us, because we need people
to buy the newspaper and read the newspaper. So we're trying to
figure out ways to get them involved in reading about civic affairs,
because that's what newspapers traditionally have been set up
to do best. And if we can't do that, then that's trouble for us.
BENNETT:
I wanted to ask Chuck, if I could . . . let me respond just briefly.
You know, I wasn't kidding about the buses. I mean, I think it's
fine if buses to come to Washington. But I really think they ought
to go out there, too. Because again—I'm making this point
because I think it's relevant to our deliberations—if we
want to talk about civil society in America and who shapes civil
society . . . In my view, people in Washington shape some policy
and they give out some money, but they do not shape minds and
hearts in the way people who make television shows do, in the
way people who make movies do. It is power. I believe these guys
have the power the church had in the 13th century. And if you
don't believe me, talk to 15-year-olds.
Here is
my question, Chuck. You and I have been at this before; you know
my bias toward the book. What is the indirect teaching of history?
What's the direct teaching of history, and what's the indirect?
You mentioned teaching history directly rather than indirectly.
TAMPIO:
Well, I was talking about teaching civics directly rather than
teaching history.
BENNETT:
All right, because you said history.
TAMPIO:
Excuse me for that. I was saying that if you want civic outcomes,
you have to teach civics directly—not teach American history.
With respect to TV and movies, I would say this. First of all,
I agree with you that those images are very, very powerful, and
they're hard for us in education to contradict. But those folks
don't have any trouble getting their message out. You know, Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone get their message out in
very powerful ways to young people about their view of society.
I do think, though, that you do need to make special effort for
young people to see those things that are a little less visible
and less obvious.
And the
other thing I would say is that, with respect to schooling and
teachers . . . as I mentioned before, I think we need to help
teachers, give the teachers tools to teach critical viewing of
television. When I was in school, we learned grammar and rhetoric
as a way of understanding language so that we wouldn't be manipulated
by it. Similarly, I think we'd better start teaching rhetoric
of symbols and images in schools, to help kids develop the tools
to analyze or view critically those images and not be manipulated
by it.
BENNETT:
It's just . . . the caution, to me, is, when I toured American
schools, I did not see such a great bias in terms of what we call
book learning in favor of so-called real-world experience. I saw
the other day: never have American students taken more trips to
Paris than they are now, and our knowledge of geography is at
an all-time low. Especially if you're watching the movies all
the way and the whole thing. (I'm playing the part here.) Anyway,
I think we don't have to choose. I think we can both read the
Federalist Papers and talk to local officials and government officials.
But the
point about power I just want to make again, and then I want to
ask Clare my question. Take the "Ellen" episode. I'm not going
to get into whether you were for it or not, or on her side or
whatever. The only point I would make is, how much went into putting
that show in front of the American public. I mean, my gosh . .
. I mean, that is an extraordinary exercise of power, it seems
to me. And some interesting crossover questions: Was this news?
Did that deserve to be on ABC News, on Prime-Time Live? It's all
part of one company. Again, it's the Madisonian point: When you
get that much power—and I will argue that was enormous power,
because no one could avoid that . . . and it is, after all, a
television show (with all due respect to Ellen and Dan Quayle,
it is only a television show)—did it really deserve that
much?
That's not
really the point. The point I'm making is—Boy, they decided
to put this thing in front of our faces, and they got it there,
minute after minute after minute. That's power, and it's worth
exploring.
And it's
a related question, Clare, to you. Sam talked about the media
pursuing him. And it's funny—I don't know what this effect
is—but the more journalists you get, in some ways, it strikes
me, the less independence there is. I went to this White House
correspondents' dinner this year, one event I go to in the spring.
And I walked in and there was a breathless reporter from ET, Entertainment
Tonight, saying, "Are you Mr. Bennett?" and I said, "Yes." He
said, "Are you thrilled to be here with all these journalists?"
I said, "Thrilled. Thrilled. Nothing better." Right, Sam? They
talk to each other. They now interview each other. And if you
put on the radio and TV, they are now interviewing each other.
This is like the mirror talking to the mirror talking to the mirror;
this is some joke from Kierkegaard or something. Is anybody out
there actually doing anything, or are we all watching it? What
do you think?
But the
effect of this is to make . . . and you can just try it. If you
have any access to the media in this town, all you do is, you
just try an experiment. Just drop one little leak, one little
incorrect rumor with enough personality in it into the mix, and
watch it go around. And it'll catch on fire. That's why I think
it's absolutely critical what you're doing. More is not any protection.
NUNN:
I was wondering where all that was coming from.
BENNETT:
Empower America, 1-800-332- . . . And we're in your book, and
I thank you as one of the sources. But it seems to me there is
a kind of —what was Harold Rosenberg's phrase?—a herd
of independent minds, which is what we've got in this town. And
it is crucial to get those other perspectives and points of view,
because you get . . . What is the effect?—there's some smart
social scientists here who could tell me what this is—that
the more you get, the more uniform it gets. The more homogenous
the news is, the "samer" it is. I get five papers now in the morning—USA
Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Washington Times,
the Washington Post. And with the exception of the Washington
Times, the other four are (not in terms of spin, but in terms
of what's reported—out of a great variety of events going
on in the world) very much the same. I think that's to you, Clare.
I guess it's to everybody, to the three of you.
SCHEUREN:
I can speak to that briefly. First of all, a really wonderful
but depressing book was published last year by Tom Patterson,
who's a political science professor at Syracuse University—perhaps
you're familiar with it—called Out of Order, in which he
studied media coverage since 1988 of political campaigns. And
he has charts and graphs about this issue that you're talking
about, where the reporters interview each other. And it's kind
of hilarious when you read it, because it's so crazy. And the
numbers of minutes that are spent—and I'm sorry to say I
don't have that off the top of my head, because it's really amazing.
And we know this from watching all those shows that are on the
news—so-called public affairs shows—where, of course,
people talk to each other. The citizens out there in the real
world are concerned, and not necessarily even consciously concerned,
about this political culture that contributes to what Senator
Nunn is talking about—where all of a sudden, it's a marketing
issue. You know, first it was sort of an interesting thing, and
now, all of a sudden, it's a personality and a marketing thing.
So we've got to change the face of things and get the right people
in to take care of this new development.
And the
reason that this is happening, I would easily argue—and this
gets back to this whole lack of connection and lack of civic sense
and lack of commitment to the ideals of democracy and lack of
understanding of it—is that the political culture itself
is a flat line. It doesn't have a dimension to it. We see this
disjuncture between how many kids are in soccer and how few people
vote. What is that? It's a real problem.
ELAINE
CHAO:
Thank you very much for this Reporters' Sourcebook. I understand
that you also produce the Voter's Self-Defense Manual.
SCHEUREN:
Right. And we also have several other publications, including
a guide to the World Wide Web.
CHAO:
I see that in the back. I was kind of curious. You mentioned your
funding. You mentioned that you are funded . . . 40 percent of
your funding comes from foundations, and 60 percent comes from
37,000 individuals.
SCHEUREN:
Right. Well, actually we have 55,000 now.
CHAO:
Who are the foundations that are supporting this, and what is
your overall budget?
SCHEUREN:
One and a half million dollars during non-election years. Two
million during election years.
CHAO:
How many copies of this do you produce?
SCHEUREN:
Twenty thousand. And we give it to political reporters. But we
do produce millions of those Voter Self-defense Manuals. The foundation
that supports us the most is Carnegie.
CHAO:
Do people just call up the 1-800 number and ask for these?
SCHEUREN:
Well, those are available to political reporters. Usually, the
general public doesn't particularly know about them, although
they're welcome to get them if they call. This book, the Yellow
Pages, and then the Voter Self-defense Manual, we send them to
anyone who calls and asks for them. We also receive grants for
special projects in areas where there are large numbers of people
who traditionally haven't voted—low-income, minority, and
youth voters. So then we publish that book, the Voter Self-defense
Manual, in Spanish and in Chinese and in Vietnamese and a number
of . . . I'm trying to think, there are about five languages that
we publish it in. So we've had a lot of opportunities to give
that book out. And of course, we do it through civic organizations
like the League of Women Voters, so there's some kind of connection
there, where there's some people registering people to vote or
answering questions, and some list forums they can go to, and
that kind of thing. So it's not just sending this information
out without any local connection.
CHAO:
No, I wasn't making any such judgment. I was just curious how
you distribute the publications. Thank you.
PETER
GOLDMARK:
My question is for Jim Walser. I've got to disclose a couple of
affiliations to do this. I am on the advisory committee of the
Pew Center for Civic Journalism; I am also on the board of the
company that owns the Charlotte Observer. I think this civic journalism
movement is the most important and most powerful current of renewal
in the American media, as the discussion here today and elsewhere
around the country reveals. What the media is doing and how it's
doing it is right at the root, right at the intersection, of a
lot of things we're wrestling with. There is, however, Jim (and
I thought you were a little mild on this) a very serious and blistering
counterattack on civic journalism from the people I call the cardinals
of the curia—most of whom are editors of the five newspapers
you get every morning, Bill, or at least of three or four of them.
And I think it would be useful, Jim, if you just take a second
and list the major . . . incidentally, there has been a major
blistering attach on the Charlotte Observer itself for its role
in civic journalism. I think it would be useful to hear, in your
own words, the major charges leveled against civic journalism
and how Walser responds to them?
WALSER:
Well, I don't think we have enough time to get to all of them.
But Max Frankel wrote a column in the New York Times Magazine,
basically alleging that it was pandering and that it was an extension
of the Fund, the Clean Air Fund, or things that the Times does
on that end. Didn't look at it journalistically. I know he wrote
this column . . . the fact-checker called me to see if the names
were spelled correctly, and I said, "Well, has he actually seen
any of the public journalism that we've done?" And she said, "Of
course not" —I mean, she said, "No," and I said, "Of course
not. Well, let me send you some," and by that time the column
was already down the pike.
Len Downie
at the Post has been very critical. Again, the whole idea of being
in the parade as opposed to being . . . we should cover the parade,
not be in the parade—which is really ludicrous in view of
what Mr. Bennett was saying, where you have so much of the media
interviewing the media. So I mean, the parade, to some extent,
has become the media. So you are in the parade—there's no
question about that. And our conclusion, after being in the neighborhoods
thing—where we were asking people to call the United Way
and saying "Connect up with somebody over here to do something
good in the community"—was, "Okay, we're not doing it. We're
sending it to the United Way; we're just being more active and
proactive in terms of how we get people to where they can feel
like they're participating and doing some good."
Let's see,
what other criticism. Michael Kelly in the New Yorker ripped us
apart on the "Your Voice, Your Vote" project that we did in '96,
which was a consortium of 16 media outlets in North Carolina which
was designed to get more at issues and away from the kind of personality
journalism that Senator Nunn was talking about. His central charge,
I guess, was that we had not taken on the real issues, which he
defined as race. And he quoted Harvey Gantt's campaign manager
as saying, "We tried to talk about race, and the Charlotte Observer
wouldn't listen to us." Which was so ludicrous, because, number
1, if you're a black candidate in North Carolina, the last thing
you want to be talking about is race, and number 2, if they wanted
to talk about race, we would have been more than glad to cover
it. But of course, they didn't. They were saying that by having
a media conglomerate there, sort of writing about the same issues—even
though they might be the right issues—we were, in effect,
not allowing Gantt to get his message out. And of course, the
other candidate in that was Senator Helms, who's always critical
of the media. So we were right in the middle of both camps on
that one.
It's been
pretty intense. I agree with you; I think it's the cardinals.
It's basically people who are in situations where they're in the
middle of it. They don't see the need when you're out in places
like Charlotte or in Kansas or in California or Arizona, where
you don't get page after page of political coverage every day
in your newspaper. You get very, very little political coverage,
and a lot of that is from AP or is very watered-down coverage—not
very personable, not very accessible, not very meaningful, for
the most part. And that's a lot of what constitutes political
coverage out there across the land. And of course, the personality
stuff is what dominates in New York, Washington, Boston.
So, yeah,
we got criticized quite a bit, and we wrote a lot of letters.
We got quite a bit of criticism for taking money from the Pew
Foundation to do polling and to pay a community coordinator in
the newsroom. The Wall Street Journal wrote a front-page story
about that, and subsequently, as you know, Knight-Ridder has decided
not to take any money from outside sources. None of that money
was ever used in the newsroom per se, but—
GOLDMARK:
One last question. One of the charges of the cardinals of the
curia is that one of the most important functions of the press
in the American system is to bring bad news when that must be
brought, and that the kind of process that your story involved,
and some of the other things the Observer has done and in other
papers around the country, may weaken and compromise your ability
to bring bad news to us when you alone can bring it to us. The
Charlotte Observer has been in this for four or five years. Have
you seen any compromise of this, the willingness to do the tough
job?
WALSER:
Not at the Observer. I do think that possibility could exist.
There have been stories written about places where it was alleged
to have happened. There was a long article in the Columbia Journalism
Review last year that contained some of that. It could happen.
It has not happened at the Observer. We had a story last week
about a major community leader who was involved in some of this
stuff that we did, who had inflated his credentials. And we went
with the story. We got a lot of criticism for that, and it was
a tough story to put in the paper, because the guy had done a
lot of good in the community. But we went with it. During the
middle of this, we ran a story about the United Way and how it
was spending too much money. There were charges it was spending
too much money on administrative costs at a time when we were
sort of doing business with them, I guess. But it could—it
does have that possibility, if it were abused.
RICHARD
LAND:
I'd like to comment and address this question to really all three
of you, if you want to answer it, or serious observations. I have
to go back to what Peter Goldmark said before lunch, about how
what's going on in civic renewal in community organizations, for
instance, has been missed by both major parties, has been missed
by the media, and to a larger degree has been missed by the government.
I think that's indicative of a general problem we have in this
country right now. And that is that I think that our national
institutions are way behind the curve of something extraordinary
that's going on in the United States.
And I think
one of the reasons for lack of participation in the political
process is that more and more Americans sense that the two major
parties are increasingly out of touch with where their country
is, and where they are, and what their concerns are; and that
the two parties really are the Outs and the Ins, not the Republicans
and the Democrats; and that when you elect people to Washington,
they come to Washington and then they get coopted by the chattering
heads, by the chattering classes in Washington, far too often.
And as I go around the country, I hear this complaint. "We elected
this guy, he was a good guy, and we sent him to Washington and
now he talks just like Washington." Which reminds me of, I think
it was Clare Booth Luce's comment about one of the great strengths
of Ronald Reagan, which made him impervious to this in many ways,
was that, from his movie career, he learned very quickly the difference
between critics and box office, and didn't seem really to care
much about what anybody in Washington said about him.
But I think
that—and Bill, this goes back to your comment about the media—I
really think that what you said about the newspapers is even more
true of the five major networks. You talk about a parade? They're
a parade in lockstep. And until that phalanx of the five major
networks is broken, we're going to be playing defense. It seems
to me that the best thing that could happen to this country would
be for a group not controlled by the various elites on the two
major coasts—and by that I mean cultural and social elites
—if they were to be able to purchase one of the five major
networks—and if it's not the Turner network, move it out
of New York and Los Angeles to a place like Atlanta or Chicago
or Dallas—and consciously attempt to get in touch with what's
going on outside of these chattering classes who talk to each
other.
Clare, do
you focus on other than national elections? That's one thing,
I think. Because I think I feel a sense in the country of people
being more interested and more involved at the local and state
level, because they really think now that makes more of a difference—that
they can see what they're doing make a difference. And are there
projects similar to yours, the Close Up project, at the state
level in any state?
SCHEUREN:
The answer is yes. In 1996, we did cover legislative races in
states, and we have a lot of information—especially, of course,
if you called our phone line or our Web site, because we're connected
to the state information systems of the different state legislatures.
But we did collect information, and we do have information, on
13,000 elected officials in the United States right now. And in
the case of the state legislators, a lot of them did not respond
to our questionnaire asking them what their concerns and issues
and emotions were, because they really didn't know quite who we
were and what it was all about. We have this survey called the
National Political Awareness Test. Now, federal candidates . .
. over 80 percent complete it, and in the states we only had 34
percent last year.
But the
answer is yes, we do have local information. And yes, we do have
a lot of information about issues that could be useful in local
conversations and study groups and action/development programs.
TAMPIO:
I first got involved in the Close Up program when I was an official
at the state department of education in Rhode Island, and after
bringing a group of students and teachers to Washington, found
that they were having some difficulty translating the motivation
and excitement that they had, that had been generated here in
Washington, to the local scene. So I helped to organize a program
in Rhode Island, where we brought kids all the way to Providence
from throughout the state. And it was an attempt to duplicate
the Close Up program at the state level. We did that at the municipal
level, and we have about a hundred of these programs that go on
around the United States very successfully. And actually, our
last sermon here in Washington, before we send them home, is that
here you see a lot of the headlines about figures that you know,
and now you've seen them. But in fact, if you want to make a difference
in your life, your daily life in your community, the action is
at the state and municipal level. And we give them some printed
materials that help them do that and assist their teachers back
home.
And with
respect to what you said about television, I just need to make
a plug: that Close Up, in 1979, worked very closely with the folks
on C-Span to create an alternative network, to provide an alternate
source of information from what the commercial media were providing.
ANNA
FAITH JONES:
I just had one other that's somewhat on the same line. Not about
political campaigns, but . . . you said, you know, Jim, that newspapers
feel that their business is to observe and report on the parade,
not be a part of it. My sense of it is, they selectively only
report on the parts of the parade they want to report on. We convened
a group of the media in Boston just to say, "Report on the entire
parade. All you do is hold the mirror up and report the most awful
and controversial things that are going on, again and again. And
then you decry that as being what's happening over the entire
community." And what we were trying to say is, There are a lot
of good things going on. We can tell you the things that we support.
Why don't you ever cover that? "Too hard to get into the community;
we don't know people." You know, if there's something bad that's
going on, you can call a reporter in a minute and he'll be right
there.
But I guess
my question is—and I'm for public journalism; I support that,
I know that's a great leap beyond that—but I would like to
ask, Why not simply report the entire parade? Why is there such
selective coverage? And when there is, as we've heard reported
today, this movement toward people getting engaged and making
good things happen and at every level in their community, why
is there not more reporting of that? Why isn't that considered
a legitimate part of the parade?
WALSER:
I can only speak to the part that I know about. I think that traditionally,
news has been defined as somewhat about stuff going wrong. And
that's the traditional definition of the news; and that people
were doing things right was sort of accepted. Unfortunately, the
media is so dominant now, such a part of our lives, that it's
an unremitting assault of negativism, if you don't watch it.
And as we
hold up . . . We say we like to hold up the mirror to society.
But what we mostly reflect back is the plane crashes, wars, and
negative things. And people are telling us, by every survey we
do, they say the same thing that you are: "There's good things
going on in the community; why don't you report it?" And what
we were determined to do with "Taking Back the Neighborhoods"
was say, "Yeah, there's some bad stuff there, but there's a lot
of good people in these neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are
not monolithically bad. There's a lot of good people in there,
and we're going to spend the time." It took a lot of time. We
sent five and six reporters into these neighborhoods, and they
stayed, in some cases, for six and seven weeks. For a journalist,
that's an incredible amount of time, unless you're writing a book
or something.
As far as
TV goes: I think the reason that they cover quick and dirty things
is, it's cheap. A lot of local TV stations, in our market at least,
have had tremendous cutbacks in the number of reporters that they
have. A lot of them used to have investigative units; they had
political reporters. A lot of them don't have that any more. They
have three or four name reporters, and they have to cover everything.
And they don't have the time to go out and do exhaustive looks
at things. And our media partner in this, WSOC—which has
the reputation of being sort of "if it bleeds, it leads" kind
of TV station—they came in and did ten very classy documentary-style
efforts on this thing and won a lot of recognition for it. But
whether or not that translates into rating points and money for
the station, I don't know. But I think the media in general, and
certainly newspapers, are definitely looking at redefining how
they view news. And in some cases, it's going to be that something
good is happening someplace. I know it is in our newspaper, anyway.
HENRY
FERNANDEZ:
Project Vote Smart. You're also on-line, you have a Web site,
and . . . how people in the legislature voted on different issues
is on-line. I know also that groups like the Christian Coalition
similarly are on-line and, for issues that they think are important,
can tell their constituencies specifically how people voted, who's
in, who's out, from their perspective. And it seems that this
pretty much . . . if you're an advocacy organization, in the next
year or two, you're going to have to have this to kind of outreach.
I'd be interested: What impact do you feel that that involvement,
the on-line involvement, has had on the work that you're doing?
How would you describe—even anecdotally, if you don't have
any statistical information?
SCHEUREN:
Well, it's had a huge, huge impact, because people could find
us on the Web when they're intentionally looking for us and they
have our address and they want to find us, but also could find
us through other connections. It has increased the number of requests
for service, as I said, into the millions now. And we have a lot
of . . . of course we have our information on-line, but we also
have connections to other sources of political information.
I think the
Internet is . . . I mentioned earlier that there were a lot of
indicators we weren't paying attention to. And it's kind of like
the heart disease problem —you have a blocked artery and
most of the doctors will say, "Forget it, it's not going to .
. ." You either do surgery, or you get around it by getting exercise
and stuff and building up the collateral arteries. And that's
what the Internet is. The blocked artery is all the things, of
course, we've been talking about; and the Internet is another
way to get around that. I think it has extraordinary potential.
And already, just the issues conversations that you see on the
New York Times Web site—which is sort of fairly common—are
fascinating. Because people who ordinarily wouldn't go out and
buy a National Issues Forum book or go to a forum will have a
conversation with someone else in some other part of the world.
And of course, it's a great source of information.
FERNANDEZ:
I know also that, just locally, I'm on the board of a child advocacy
organization, and we do that same kind of voter's guide on-line
for the issues that we think are important with regard to children.
Not making a decision where people should have voted—we do
that through our 501(c)4. But the hits on that are in the tens
of thousands. Tens of thousands of people who had no other way
to get that kind of information get it there. And I know that
groups like the Children's Defense Fund are now doing that same
kind of thing on a national level. So the Charlotte Observer,
are you all on-line?
WALSER:
Yes.
FERNANDEZ:
Because I know that the New York Times now will pump to me the
specific issues that I want and only those stories—not just
from the Times, but from all AP wires and other stories around.
What do you think the impact is, for politics and civil society,
of the Internet, particularly from a newspaper's perspective?
WALSER:
Well, I think obviously, it's unlimited, the potential. I don't
know what specifically. We're using it to put a lot of additional
information that we don't have room to put in the newspaper .
. . we'll put on the on-line. I'm not sure you can get to all
the political stuff that you're talking about—that you can
get from the Times—on our site yet. But I'm sure it will
get to that point.
As far as
where it's headed, I don't know. I'm of two minds about the Internet.
One is, you can go and get anything you want. The other is that
there's so much stuff there that who's going to have the time
to sort through it all? And I think that's the tension you're
getting there. But obviously, people are getting on there, and
they're finding stuff out. And I think that's good news for us.
We will become more of a directory to where you can go get information,
in some cases, than we will be actually providing the information
ourselves. Because there's just so much stuff out there.
GALSTON:
If there are no further questions, let me just step out of my
role as the silent traffic cop for one minute and comment as a
political scientist on what I've heard in this panel. And I want
to point to evidence of the pivotal role that newspapers can play
in two directions that are very, very important to the workings
of this Commission.
Bill Bennett
has talked about power, and television as a holder of power, a
key holder of power, in contemporary society. Well, what we've
heard from Jim Walser is that, at least at the local level, this
power is sometimes more apparent than real. If local television
stations are experiencing cutbacks, then their agenda will be
driven either by the events that are easy to cover or by newspapers
that are helping to set an alternative agenda. And the relationship
between what newspapers do and what television subsequently does
is pretty well established empirically at both the local level
and the national level. So I want to suggest that what the newspaper
sector chooses to do, or to forbear from doing, in the next 10
years is going to be a very, very important driver of what this
incredible power called television ends up doing, particularly
in political and civic and civil matters. So in my judgment, you
are at the epicenter of hope in this entire sector.
The other
thing we know from the political science literature is that there
is a very strong positive relationship between newspaper reading
and political engagement of all sorts, and, regrettably, an equally
strong negative relationship between television watching and political
engagement of all sorts. So the ability of newspapers, in my judgment
as a political scientist, to regain and then to play forcefully
their historic civic role in this country, is going to affect
what a group like this will be studying, and the facts that it
will be able to cite, twenty years from now. And if newspapers
can figure out how to square this circle in the early part of
the 21st century, we'll be going in one direction as a civic society.
And if you don't, I fear that we won't. And on that combination
of hope and apocalypse, I declare the second plenary session of
the Commission adjourned. Thank you very much, one and all.
Back to Panel Three
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