- The politicians are corrupt. Bureaucrats
are incompetent. Sheriffs are dimwits. Mail carriers are boobs. School
principals are mean. Judges are dishonest. And the government is hiding
evil forces.
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- This is America - on television.
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- How government and public servants are
portrayed on network entertainment shows came under scrutiny Tuesday in
a study funded by the Ford Foundation and the Council for Excellence in
Government.
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- It is not a pretty sight.
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- "In the world of 1990s prime-time
television, the mayor is clueless or corrupt, the postal carrier is storing
your mail in a locker, and a secret government agency is plotting to kill
off citizens with biological weapons," says Patricia McGinnis, president
of the council.
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- She warned, "The viewing public
is buying into these negative stereotypes."
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- A Yankelovich poll made public along
with the study finds that more than half of television audiences - and
two-thirds of those between 18 and 34 - believe government and its workers
are accurately portrayed on TV sitcoms and dramas.
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- The study, conducted by the Center for
Media and Public Affairs, analyzed 1,234 episodes of network programs over
the past 44 years that portrayed 2,664 characters as public sector employees.
Among the conclusions:
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- * Public officials committed crimes
more than twice as often as characters in other occupations.
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- * Seventy percent of shows dealing with
government services showed them performing poorly.
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- * Not a single episode made the point
that public officials serve the public interest.
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- * Public officials replaced businessmen
as television's least likable.
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- The study determined that before 1975
three out of every four episodes reaffirmed the integrity of the legal
or political system. Since then, three out of five episodes have portrayed
the system as corrupt.
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- Before the 1990s, law enforcers were
portrayed negatively in only one out of five shows. Now they're in negative
roles half the time. And so are teachers.
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- Today, when government institutions are
shown on TV as serving the public, it is usually because mavericks or whistleblowers
fight the system to make it work.
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- "Prime-time entertainment today
gives public service little notice and less respect," said Robert
Lichter, president of the center that conducted the study. "The core
institutions of government - the political system and those who work within
it - are treated badly."
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- As an example, the study cites an episode
last year of "The X-Files," in which FBI agent Fox Mulder discovers
a secret government conspiracy to implant a deadly bio-toxin in order
to test its effects on the general populace.
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- When a shadowy higher-up tells him, "Our
government is not in the business of killing innocent civilians,"
Mulder replies hotly, "The (heck) they aren't."
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- Elected officials had the worst image
of any characters on television during the entire time period studied
with 51 percent portrayed as bad guys. That was the only group in which
a majority were shown negatively.
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- "By the 1980s, the good-guy politician
had virtually disappeared from the screen," the report says.
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- It notes that two of the most negative
portrayals of politicians came from executive producer Linda Bloodworth
Thomason, a prominent friend of President Clinton.
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- In "Hearts Afire," Sen. Strobe
Smithers was "a doddering and possible senile conservative Southern
senator" who was having an affair with his secretary. In "Women
of the House," Suzanne Sugarbaker was a former beauty queen who took
over the House seat of her fifth husband and was portrayed as "a
shallow, stupid, vain and materialistic bimbo."
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- The ABC sitcom "Spin City"
was cited for showing the fictional mayor of New York City as a "scatterbrained
bungler" who practices silly facial expressions in a mirror prior
to a TV interview.
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- The study says television sometimes presents
holding office as a punishment in itself. It notes that in one episode
of "Picket Fences" a robber was sentenced to take the job of
mayor as a form of community service to atone for crimes. No respectable
citizen wanted the job.
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- "Civil servants were frequently
portrayed as robotic paper shufflers or abrasive malcontents who were
too lazy, apathetic or self-absorbed to serve the public. The Postal Service
has fared especially badly," says the study. Two examples: the blowhard
Cliff on "Cheers" and the unsavory Newman of "Seinfeld."
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- Yet there is one occupation that television
shows consistently have admired, more than doctors, teachers, lawyers,
judges, federal agents or local police. Topping the good guy list with
a 63 percent positive rating - private eyes.
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- John Lang is a reporter for Scripps Howard
News Service.
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