Media Malpractice
There's More Beef to the Mayor's Race than AllegedTo judge by mainstream media coverage, the mayoral race is a snoozefest of like-minded candidates taking care to avoid provoking controversy or disagreeing with one another. Press reports paint the big three – Richard Fulton, Bill Purcell and Jay West – as decent sorts with government experience and moderate outlooks who worry about crime and neighborhoods and schools and traffic. That’s about as in-depth as it gets.
Skeptical that the karma out there on the stump was really so congenial, I ventured out to Woodbine a couple of weeks ago for a mayoral candidates’ forum on affordable housing to see for myself. On the way over, I caught the mellifluous tones of some Downtown lawyers on Teddy Bart’s radio show harrumphing for the thousandth time about the lack of differences among mayoral candidates. Bart’s daily festival of conventional wisdom pitches Fulton, with cash, name recognition and high-priced consultants, as the one to beat in a race of clones.
But then a remarkable thing happened. I sat through the candidates forum and discovered that there are indeed prominent differences between these guys. Although none was intrepid enough to take on the legacy d’Bredesen, there were conspicuous policy quarrels, and some fairly pointed attacks. In short, there’s some life in this campaign after all.
Almost none of that life emanated from the steel-coiffured personage of Richard Fulton, the former mayor running under the delusion that he’s an incumbent. His rambling remarks boiled down to an assertion that he has "the vision and the energy" to tackle the big issues: education, crime and traffic. What he apparently lacks, though, is the vision and the energy to put forth any significant proposals. On housing – this particular forum’s focal issue – Fulton boasted of his small-time accomplishments as mayor way back when, but had nothing to say about the cause-effect relationship between his administration’s inattention to housing in the 1970s and 1980s and the city’s affordable housing imbroglio in the 1990s.
Next up was Bill Purcell who, unlike Fulton, demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of how housing, education and public safety converge as interdependent public policy concerns. He followed up with a broadside on Fulton’s commitment to the housing issue. Noting MDHA estimates that the shortage of affordable housing units numbers in the tens of thousands – a situation years in the making – Purcell asked about the whereabouts of Fulton’s "vision and energy" back when he served three terms as mayor. He attacked a Fulton proposal to use Metro employee pension fund money to finance new housing as unrealistic and beyond the mayor’s authority. When it comes to solutions, Purcell leans a bit too much on a "bully pulpit" argument (the mayor can get things done, dammit, so elect me and I’ll see that it’s fixed) but seems markedly more knowledgeable than his opponents about how other cities and communities are successfully addressing the issues confronting Nashville.
Jay West was unable to attend the housing forum, and sent an ill-prepared campaign representative to appear on his behalf. West’s surrogate regaled us with penetrating analysis when he observed that the affordable housing issue has two facets: the number of housing units available and the affordability of those units. It veered toward the bizarre when he lauded the Metro Development and Housing Agency as "one of the finest public housing agencies in the nation" and proposed that we focus instead on improving incomes – that way we can build more expensive houses. To his credit, West has floated proposals addressing financing for new housing development and property tax relief for low-income senior citizens. One wonders where West’s interest in these issues was hibernating during his many years on Metro Council.
The Tennessean covered the forum with a minimalist five-paragraph write-up the next day that avoided any mention of basic differences in the candidates’ approaches to housing, and made no reference whatsoever to Purcell’s pointed critique of Fulton. A longer piece a few days later covered more ground and acknowledged some differences of opinion but still largely ignored fundamental questions about Fulton’s past accomplishments. Although I pick on The Tennessean here, we find parallel neglect by the local television news organizations.
Housing is just one issue among many, and admittedly it’s not a flashy subject that captures the electorate’s imagination. It is nonetheless fully representative of how local media are mismanaging their political coverage of the mayor’s race. Having cast the unremarkable Mr. Fulton in the role of front-runner for no apparent reason beyond his expansive coterie of wealthy friends, the press is unwilling to make it a race by airing serious challenges to Fulton’s accomplishments and proposals.
The field of mayoral candidates presents the city’s voters with a splendid opportunity to choose among very different perspectives on the near-term future of Metro government. Making the most of that opportunity requires a competent, vigilant press – something far removed from the pervasive journalistic malpractice that currently passes for local media in this town.
Return to home page.