(C) Fairness & Accuracy in Media This story was originally published by Fairness & Accuracy in Media and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Study Confirms Our Wealth-Controlled Politics [1] ['Steve Rendall'] Date: 2014-07-01 16:16:07+00:00 American democracy may be in worse shape than you think, according to a new university study (Perspectives on Politics, Fall/14). Released in April by Princeton’s Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin I. Page, the study looked at more than 1,700 policies over 20 years to find out how public opinion translated into policy. The political scientists concluded that where economic elite views diverged from those of the public, the public had “zero estimated impact upon policy change, while economic elites are still estimated to have a very large, positive, independent impact.” In other words, the researchers could find no sign that the public’s views had any impact at all on public policy—while the influence of the wealthy was plainly evident. This is what is known as oligarchy: rule by the rich. Bracing news? The study went viral in social media, but has hardly shown up in the US corporate press. In the month after its release there were no network news mentions, nor did it appear in the most influential newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times. (The New York Times—4/21/14—and Washington Post—4/8/14—published blog posts on the study.) The Baltimore Sun (5/12/14) was a rare exception, with an op-ed by Kate Planco Waybright and Jennifer Bevan-Dangel calling for public financing of campaigns to counter the influence of wealth: Rather than curl up in a fetal position and cede the fate of our democracy to those with the fattest bank accounts, our organizations are taking action. We believe public financing of elections has enormous potential to transform our democracy and to help ordinary Americans regain our voices in the political sphere. With 24 hours at their disposal, cable news offered just one story: On MSNBC‘s All In With Chris Hayes (4/16/14), the host illustrated study’s claims by citing gun legislation requiring a background check before one could purchase a firearm—an idea backed by as much as 90 percent of the public—that was voted down in a Congress swimming in gun lobby money. There are likely several reasons why corporate media have ignored the study, chief among them that its findings hit too close to home: The same well-heeled elites and their representatives who dominate US politics are also the owners of US corporate media, and dominate the debate those media provide. In one study after another, FAIR has shown how corporate media discount popular views and the opinions of the less powerful in favor of elite viewpoints. Pro-business think tanks are favored over those viewed as less business-friendly (Extra!, 7/13); corporate sources in news stories are far more numerous than their counterweights—representatives of labor unions, consumer and environmental groups (Extra!, 1/89, 5/02). Coverage of poverty is nearly nonexistent, and America’s 482 billionaires receive many times as much coverage as its 50 million poor (Extra!, 6/14). In that context, it’s far from shocking that evidence that the overweening influence of the wealthy is derailing the democratic experiment is not engaged seriously. On the contrary, media give the impression that poor people do have political power. References to the “poor lobby” or “welfare industry” suggest that low-income people have vocal advocates in D.C., The Nation‘s George Zornick told CounterSpin (11/8/13). But things like last year’s punitive cuts to food stamp benefits should hammer home the truth that “poor people have virtually no pull.” Popularly portrayed as a Democrat vs. Republican battle, the cuts were “much more a result of a political process where money talks.” But in corporate media, it can be seriously contended that it is CEOs who need more voice. Former CNBC host Maria Baritiromo launched a new Fox News show on the premise that “We never hear business people as part of the conversation on a Sunday” (MediaBistro, 3/18/14), while NBC‘s David Gregory (Meet the Press, 11/11/12) faulted Barack Obama for not broadcasting visible fealty to corporate interests—he should have staged a “moment in the Rose Garden where he was flanked by the biggest business leaders in America.” That Obama had in fact hosted precisely such a “moment” days after his inauguration (CNN Money, 1/28/09) is less the point than that his administration has made corporate priorities their own (Common Dreams, 7/24/11). In Bartiromo and Gregory’s imaginary world, in which CEOs are marginalized from debate and suffering from lack of political support, the Gilens/Page study must sound like a missive from Mars. [END] --- [1] Url: https://fair.org/extra/study-confirms-our-wealth-controlled-politics/ Published and (C) by Fairness & Accuracy in Media Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/fair/