Article October 6, 1980 Issue

Attention, voters

JUDITH ANN HARDY

• "Victory of the media over machines"—political machines, that is. So one newspaper headline described the upset in which a new candidate defeated her incumbent opponent in an election.

• "... with the new expertise in packaging candidates, we need more than ever to be alert to manipulation and phoniness," concludes author Vance Packard. In his book The People Shapers he devotes a chapter to the subject of the media's methods of engineering voter approval. In the same chapter, media advisor Tony Schwartz is quoted as saying, "The goal of a media advisor is to tie up the voter and deliver him to the candidate." He goes on to admit: "So it is really the voter who is packaged, not the candidate."  The People Shapers (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977), pp. 153, 149;

There is something each of us can do to keep from being "packaged." We can "judge righteous judgment,"  John 7:24; as Jesus instructed. Everyone has this ability; it's innate, God-given. We have only to claim and exercise it.

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