Tom Ellsworth 

10/14/19

Corruption In Politics

A functioning democracy requires a dependable group of voters and honest officials. America is set for the first part, seeing as usually over half of the population votes for who they want to be president. The second part, however, we have issues with. Since the beginning of electing presidents in our country, people have accused officials of being corrupt. I believe we cannot have a healthy and safe democracy and country without addressing the current problems in our government. In this essay, I will explain some of the issues facing our democracy, the history of corruption and how the government and media are connected.

I find this topic interesting because of my interest in history. I haven’t always been interested in modern politics but a novel I picked out sparked my interest in the topic. I have always been interested in the history of American politics and the topic of this allowed me to see the modern side. What I’ve found is that there are a lot of the same issues in politics. Now it’s just gotten a little worse with the expansion of journalism and the decrease in the trust of the public. The world of corruption has become darker, and I’m hoping we find a solution soon.

The election of 1824 was one of the more well-known instances of corruption in our nation’s history. Four people ran that year: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay. After the polls closed, the clear winner of the election was Jackson, but they couldn’t end it on that. He could not be president because to win you need the majority of the electoral college’s votes. Since no-one had them, the vote went to the house of representatives and Henry Clay was taken out of the running, being last by several votes. The speaker of the house, Clay, was contacted by Adams when he told him he would have him in his cabinet if he got the house to vote for him. In the second vote, John Adams won and Clay was brought up into the cabinet. Because of this shady encounter, the election of 1824 has been named a “Corrupt Bargain.” This event caused turmoil throughout the country, showing what effect corruption has had and can have on us.

William Tweed, a volunteer firefighter in the 1840s was another corrupt man involved in politics. After being a volunteer, he gained a good look in the public eye. In 1852, he was voted into congress and eventually into the executive committee of the democratic party. Following this, he would hold many more positions. He built up a group of followers and sent them around to muster up support for himself and this group was later named the “Tweed Ring.” He would also elect friends and people in the Tweed ring into positions of governor and in one case mayor of New York City. He was also known to steal money from the city by controlling the treasury with the Tweed ring and created fake costs for the city, explained on Brittanica.com: “The Tweed ring then proceeded to milk the city through such devices as faked leases, padded bills, false vouchers, unnecessary repairs, and overpriced goods and services bought from suppliers controlled by the ring.”(Boss Tweed) After years of this, a few news sources finally called him out on his awful practices. In 1873, after The New York Times began exposing him, effectively ending his reign.

 Corruption didn’t end in the 1870s, though. It's probably more alive and well now than before. There is no doubt that the current president has gained a lot of attention in the past few years. In the most recent 2016 presidential election, some investigators from the FBI started the search for links between the president and Russia. Not only were they looking for proof that Trump had been gaining support from fake Russian online accounts, but also for proof of tampering with Clinton’s emails. Those who argue that none of this was ever proven and it was ridiculous to even suggest it, they are ignoring the facts. The truth is, even if Trump was not involved with the support for him and the leaking of Clinton’s emails, it’s a situation he should have stopped. If he were not involved, he would have been public about trying to debunk the problem.

 This brings me to my next point about the news. The current president is heavily involved in the news, negatively and positively, but rarely do you hear just about what he’s doing without any opinions. Recently, it is becoming more and more difficult to find neutral news sources. Now, even some of the largest and most popular sources sway to either a conservative or liberal side. Most of them try to seem like they are neutral but are obviously in favor of one or the other. Most of these sources are not willing to think in any way other than their ideas, which is essentially poisoning those who have not formed opinions of their own. Without a neutral stance on an issue, people pick up ideas they get from these sources and will defend the first opinion they hear.

 In extreme cases, some news sources may even create a fake press release on a candidate they like to give them a better name in the running. This makes it even more difficult for honest runners to win. Another thing that may happen is a story will be written on one side of the event while completely ignoring the other.

 In the book “Politics and Journalism in a Post-Truth World,” the reader obtains viewpoints from multiple authors in this collection of articles. This allows the reader to get a view of all sides of a situation and form their own opinion. The book is a series of 17 articles with topics ranging from the president having too much power to the danger of the 24-hour news cycle. 

To analyze this book, I will split it into its four chapters. The first has 5 articles all about how people no longer trust the media and how this has and will affect our society. This portion has one article called “The Search for the Truth Can Never Stop,” which exposes some of the secrets our government has tried to hide. One of these events is our involvement in Nicaragua in the 1980s. A powerful and deadly group called the Contras were fighting against the state of Nicaragua and were being morally and financially backed by America at the time. At a hearing, it was explained to America that the group they were funding was destroying hospitals, burning schools, assaulting the teachers and nurses and killed thousands. The United States, after hearing this, our representative responded saying that “In war, innocent people always suffer.” This is fully true, but not a position we should have taken, seeing as we were funding the battle. We were in the wrong but blamed it on war. I had never heard of this situation before. Not at home, online, in school, anywhere. This should tell you something. While some may argue that the government has not made an effort to stow away information from the public, not telling people information is almost worse than hiding it. This first chapter of the book explained how people are now either used to this behavior or unwilling to listen to the news anymore.

The second chapter adds politics and journalism together and explains how journalism has slowly been ruining our government. In one article, the author expresses his disbelief in the continuation of a trusting public and clean government considering our current news. It is essentially a criticism of our country’s journalists and how they are too focused on profit instead of news. This article shows the opinion of some people who are unwilling to trust or sometimes even listen to the media. This section highlights the importance of each party to the other, the two parties being media and government. To make money, the news needs failures or successes in politics to report on. Presidential candidates can go to specific news sources that paint them in a good light and further their messages. Without each other, these two groups would struggle. Trump highlights this when he says “I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that's a broken system.” (Schwarz)

The third and fourth are similar, one focusing on corruption and the other on morality and ethics in government. This chapter explores the cycle that can arise between the government and the media. The president can speak out against a news source he does not like and that media fires back. Trump could retaliate, and the news source writes a bad review of his presidency. This section explains how politicians nowadays spend over half their time calling people for money to get reelected. In some cases, they cannot do this in government buildings so they leave their job just to go to another building to get money. On US Term Limits.com, Stacey Selleck writes - “Fundraising is big business in Washington, D.C. So big, in fact, that your newly elected Congressional representative is expected to spend half of his or her working hours dialing for dollars at a secret phone bank near Capitol Hill.” (Selleck) In all, the book highlights a lot of the issues and challenges that we have to face in American politics, including the corruption and bad relationships between government and media I have discussed.

If we don’t fix these problems, they’ll only get worse. The future of our great democracy is fading fast with the recent decline in neutral news sources and an increase in corrupt politicians. The country will no longer know who to trust or feel the need to even vote if they know that corruption will overrule their vote anyway. This is dangerous and unhealthy for a government like ours but is sadly allowed to happen because of our great deal of freedoms. Politicians should not be able to pay whoever they want to clear their name or get a leg up in competition. We, as the people, need to hold them responsible for their actions and let them know we do not approve. If we don’t let them know, it will continue to get worse. The perfect answer to our problems may be out there, and if it is, we need to find it. 

Works Cited

Selleck, Stacey, CONGRESS SPENDS MORE TIME DIALING FOR DOLLARS THAN ON
 LEGISLATIVE WORK, termlimits.com/congress-fundraising-priority/ 

Boss Tweed, britannica.com/biography/Boss-Tweed

(2019) Politics and Journalism in a Post-Truth World, Greenhaven Publishing.