The Radical Middle

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Now McCormick and Spino are the driving force behind the upcoming We the People national convention (www.democracycampaign.org) in Springfield, Illinois, which will bring together hundreds of people for a cross-spectrum dialogue about national priorities in late September (see sidebar, p. 84).

Carl Fillichio Seeing Homeland Security from the Citizen's Perspective

The polarization of political debate is largely the media's fault, says Carl Fillichio, vice president for innovation and public engagement at the Council for Excellence in Government (www.excelgov.org). According to a 2003 CEG study, media portrayals of government are not biased to the left or right, but to the negative, since the press thrives on controversy. "Because television, particularly cable, is point-counterpoint, it facilitates screaming," Fillichio says. "It doesn't make good TV if we agree." The study showed that the "news hole" -- the time left in a half-hour broadcast after you subtract the ads -- has shrunk dramatically. In 1981 the average was 22 minutes and 22 seconds; in 2001 it was 18 minutes and 37 seconds. "That puts tremendous pressure on producers to define arguments quickly -- 'the left thinks this and the right thinks that' -- because the nuance of middle ground is too complicated."

A former Labor Department spokesman who helped shut down Kathie Lee Gifford's Asian sweatshops in the mid-'90s, Fillichio put his media savvy to good use in his latest project, a set of 50 recommendations for improving homeland security, compiled through an innovative public dialogue process. CEG staged seven town-hall meetings from Miami to San Diego, inviting thousands of citizens to speak directly with federal, state, and local officials about their ideas for making the country safer. "In St. Louis, we had the Democratic mayor and [Republican] homeland security secretary Tom Ridge on the panel together, not disagreeing with each other, not speechifying, but listening to the citizens of the city." And, Fillichio says, it actually made good television "because real people were involved." Two local stations bumped their daytime soap operas and covered the forum live, gavel to gavel.

Leif Utne is associate editor of Utne.

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