The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Media blamed for cynicism of voters about politicians

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 02, 2006
ePaper

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Media blamed for cynicism of voters about politicians

Staff Reporter

This attitude is demoralising for elected representatives: U.S. expert

BANGALORE: More than 50 per cent of Americans in the 18 to 21 age group don't trust politicians because "they are dishonest."If this recent survey report reads so much like an Indian urban story, blame the lack of trust in an institution called "Representative Democracy."

Big interests

Nine out of 10 Americans in that age group believe a few big interests run the Government.

Terming this a "very, very cynical attitude" was Karl K. Kurtz, director of National Conference of State Legislature (NCSL)'s Trust for Representative Democracy, a public outreach and education programme, who is on a visit to the city-based Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media (IIJNM).

Mr. Kurtz said it was demoralising to the elected officials, hindered recruitment of candidates and made building consensus that much more difficult.

Yet, the IIJNM students did not bat an eyelid when asked to justify that cynicism.

Divide

The Indian-American divide seemed to merge as they reeled out the reasons: "Corruption, false promises, laidback attitude of politicians, lack of transparency and judicial failure."

Mr. Kurtz's challenge, back in the U.S., was to challenge that cynicism and put the trust back in the political process.

Towards that end, NCSL was busy taking American legislators back to school.

Idea

The idea was to explain to students how they worked in areas related to conflict, negotiations and compromised.

Breaking barriers was the big objective. Project Citizen was another key role, a middle school civic education programme.

Mr. Kurtz represented NCSL that networked the 50 American States in matters of legislature, governance and everything that negated the need to "re-invent the wheel" as he put it.

Questions

But for the Indian students, he represented the American Government and that was valid enough to shoot some foreign policy questions.

Obvious choice

Iraq was the most obvious choice.

The response from Mr. Kurtz was telling.

"Elections in the United States are not won on international or foreign policy issues, but on local ones."

And that explained why the American public opinion differed so widely with the worldview on the U.S. administration's role in Iraq and West Asia.

Acknowledgement

The acknowledgement came from Mr. Kurtz himself. "Americans are insular," he said.

The media was to blame for the cynicism of the public, as it often portrayed politicians in a negative light.

Observation

This observation by a student drew Mr. Kurtz's attention to the American media, which he was convinced, sent reporters with inadequate knowledge of the process of governance to cover politics.

For tomorrow's journalists, getting fine-tuned at IIJNM, he had a word of advice: "Reporters should be sceptical, they ought to ask tough questions. But let that be in a context of overall trust of the system."

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka