Deserves a ANOTHER LOOK.......Marty Kaplan...Internet Push and Money in Politics!

[KoKo]

http://billmoyers.com/segment/marty-kaplan-on-big-moneys-effect-on-big-media/

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Marty Kaplan on Big Money’s Effect on Big Media
April 27, 2012

Big money and big media have coupled to create a ‘Disney World’ of democracy in which TV shows, televised debates, even news coverage is being dumbed down, just as the volume is being turned up. The result is a public certainly more entertained, but less informed and personally involved than they should be, says Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center and an entertainment industry veteran. Bill Moyers talks with Kaplan about how taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system.

“It’s all about combat. If every political issue is [represented by] combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other,” Kaplan tells Moyers. “And you have an audience that hasn’t a clue at the end of the story, which is why you’ll hear, ‘Well, we’ll have to leave it there.’”

“The problem is that there’s not that much information out there if you’re an ordinary citizen. You can ferret it out, but it ought not be like that in a democracy,” Kaplan says. “Education and journalism were supposed to, according to our founders, inform our public and make democracy work.”


More about Marty Kaplan
Marty Kaplan
Media Scholar

Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. He is the founding director of the School’s Norman Lear Center, a nonpartisan research and public policy center that “studies the social, political, economic and cultural impact of entertainment on the world.”

aplan’s expertise draws on his broad career in government and the entertainment industry. He was chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter F. Mondale and served as deputy campaign manager of Mondale’s 1984 presidential race, where he was responsible for policy, speechwriting, and research. He was an executive assistant to the U.S. Commissioner of Education Ernest L. Boyer, and his work in education policy continued through his roles as a program officer at the Aspen Institute, guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, and senior adviser at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Kaplan’s work in entertainment includes his 12 years with Walt Disney Studios, where Kaplan was vice president of production for live-action feature films and a writer-producer under exclusive contract. He wrote and executive produced the political comedy The Distinguished Gentleman, starring Eddie Murphy, adapted Michael Frayn’s play into the film Noises Off by Peter Bogdanovich, and was a writer on the action-adventure Max Q, produced for television by Jerry Bruckheimer.

His frequent appearances in the press include So What Else Is News?, the nationally-syndicated program about media, politics, and pop culture, that he created and hosted on Air America Radio. He has also been a featured commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and Marketplace. His writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, where he has been a blogger since the website’s inception, and Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, where he is a columnist. He was deputy op-ed editor and columnist for the Washington Star and a commentator on the CBS Morning News.

Kaplan graduated from Harvard with a degree in molecular biology. While at Harvard he was president of The Harvard Lampoon and the Signet Society and on the editorial boards of The Harvard Crimson and The Harvard Advocate. He received his Master’s degree in English at Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar and received a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University as a Danforth Foundation Fellow.

http://billmoyers.com/guest/marty-kaplan/