Ex-Clinton aide blasts media

With the ever-increasing volume of data due to the spread of information technology, the media is failing in its role as a constructive force in American political life, according to former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

McCurry, Bill Clinton's press secretary from 1995 to 1998, and current chairman and CEO of Grassroots Enterprise -- a software and services company -- addressed more than 40 people yesterday at the Fels Center of Government.

His topic was "The Quality of our Political Information System" -- how information is produced and diffused -- and its effect on Washington politics. McCurry analyzed the dysfunctionality of America's media, politics and civic life.

Recalling how as a Princeton undergraduate in the 1970s "we had a thing called a typewriter," he argued that modern technology has led to "data overload." This overload, he said, overwhelmed the media's ability to filter and present information to the public and warped political discourse.

"There is a body of information that is simply factual that has to be in the possession of the citizenry," he said. Yet, the media, overwhelmed by information and pressured by falling profits, tends to "manipulate and massage the truth," playing up and encouraging the spectacle of polarizing debate rather than consensus.

Clinton "created that center of the political spectrum that we know can hold and govern," McCurry said. But the "problem is it's just as boring as hell to be a moderate," McCurry said.

McCurry claims politicians are coached to attack rather than to listen: "There is a pervasive evil in our system called media training," he said.

McCurry advocated the "revamping of how we value the public's right to know [to] take those things that truly are important and make them interesting to people."

A fan of the popular NBC drama The West Wing, McCurry argued that the show has done a better job than the news media of raising American's civic awareness.

Reflecting on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, he noted how "the tonal quality of politics can change when faced with some urgency in the system," offering leaders the opportunity to "convert popularity into real momentum for moving things forward."

McCurry argued for the reassertion by politicians, the media and the public of "eternal values that are associated with faith and spirituality" as a means to create informed civic discourse and political consensus, and he spoke of the role of information technology and young Americans in this process.

"I think he laid out and analyzed the issues well," College and Wharton senior David Burd said. "But I'm concerned about the practicality -- what can we do substantively as citizens."

Burd, who is writing a paper on youth involvement in the political process, continued: "I think he began to broach those issues. We have to continue that discussion."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.