(HOST) The mid-term elections are less than six weeks away. For commentator and veteran ABC News foreign and diplomatic correspondent Barrie Dunsmore, the fear-mongering, distortions and outright lies he hears daily during this campaign are particularly troubling.
(DUNSMORE) A young friend and I were recently lamenting the state of politics in America today. He asked me how this compared to past history and to what I had lived through and reported in my own lifetime.
Let’s face it. There has been much maliciousness in American political history.
Abraham Lincoln’s political opponents called him "despot," "liar," "monster," "thief," "fiend," "swindler" and "butcher" – and that was in the North.
In the 1930’s the anti-Semitic, radio rabble rouser Father Charles Coughlin regularly accused Franklin Roosevelt of being beholden to an international Jewish conspiracy.
In the late forties and early fifties Harry Truman and members of his cabinet were smeared as "communists" by Senator Joseph McCarthy, as were countless innocent Americans during one of the lowest points for civil liberties in American history.
But if ever a decade would stoke anxieties, stir passions and shake the American people’s faith in their institutions, it was the 1960’s.
With the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear Armageddon. And before the decade ended three of the country’s most prominent political leaders – John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King – would be assassinated. Opposition to the Vietnam War set off violent protests on the campuses of nearly every university. This anti-war violence reached a climax during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and ironically led to the election of Richard Nixon, who kept the war going for seven more years.
The country was also in the throes of four on-going, interlocking revolutions over race, feminism, sexual freedom and an array of new technologies symbolized by the landing on the moon.
But for all the stresses inflicted upon the American people by the events of the Sixties, American democracy did survive, and in some respects was even strengthened. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 65 actually restored important aspects of American democracy by removing part of the stain of two centuries of slavery.
Countless books and PhD theses have been written about the Sixties, so what and I am about to say now may seem like a gross over simplification. Nevertheless, I believe one of the most crucial differences between then and now is the role of the mainstream news media. Throughout the chaos of the Sixties, the major newspapers, magazines and three television networks rejected extremes, supported moderation and thus had their period of greatest influence. In holding to centrist policies they contributed significantly to the peace and stability of the country because they were trusted by most Americans.
Today, with the advent of the Internet, and 24/7 cable news, where the most outrageous voices get all the attention and opinion easily trumps facts, Americans would seem to trust no one except those who share their prejudices.
I know that we can’t turn back the clock, but unless we can somehow restore facts and truth as integral parts of the political dialogue, I fear it will continue to be ever-more partisan and toxic.
(TAG) You can find more commentaries by Barrie Dunsmore at VPR-dot-net.