In her remarks on Discourse and Democracy, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell began by attributing decline in political participation, in part, to a thinning of public discourse - a consequence itself of corporate control over media outlets, the commercialization of news programming and the tendency by both media and political campaigns to engage in and rely on deception and distraction.

Recent moves by Sinclair Broadcasting were offered as examples of the power of the media to control what America sees and when we see it, which she argues is compounded by the power of corporate contributions at large.

Dialogue in the public realm becomes even shallower with the reliance on television, where events in the news are described without context and coverage of political campaigns consists of horserace or sports analogies and ads by candidates themselves.

She quotes Joe Trippi as saying that the best ads [the ones that are most successful in helping a candidate] are the ones that fail the country the most. Campbell elaborates saying, "Political ads [particularly negative political ads] are often successful because they attract news coverage and commentary."

Decrying the contraction of the public realm, she notes the rise of the consumption society with its emphasis on individual life styles and argues that "Democracy must govern capitalism, not the other way around."

George Loper, October 21, 2004

Note: The Third Annual LaBrosse-Levinson Lectures on Religion, Culture and Social Theory are co-sponosred by the Center on Religion and Democracy and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Papers for the event will be published in the Fall 2004 issue of The Hedgehog Review.

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell is Chair and Professor of Communications Studies at the University of Minnesota and is the author of eight books, among them Shadowboxing with Stereotypes: The Press, The Public, and The Candidates' Wives, 1993; The Rhetoric of Mythical America Revisited, 1997; and Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and The Genre of Governance, 1990.