St. Louis media has a history of being asleep at the switch as candidates for public office work to communicate their message to the public. It can be argued that their dereliction of duty has had very harmful results.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Jeff Smith was running for Congress in Missouri\u2019s Third Congressional District in a field of over a dozen candidates. His grass-roots campaign made him the primary challenger to State Rep. Russ Carnahan of the Carnahan Dynasty in Missouri. Smith had important information that Carnahan ranked near the bottom of Missouri legislators in showing up for votes in Jefferson City. He made the media aware of this information, but they just sat on it. In an act of frustration, Smith took a different path that involved a minor violation of a Federal Elections Commission Regulation. In a complicated story, he wound up going to federal prison for a year. It likely would have never happened with a responsible press in St. Louis \u2013 a press that never apologized for its oversight.<\/p>\n

Current incumbent in Missouri\u2019s Second District, Ann Wagner, has failed to appear at League of Women Voters forums in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Democrats, Libertarians and Green Party candidates have had lively discussions, but the incumbent would not appear to defend herself. Not a peep from the mainstream media of St. Louis.<\/p>\n

The Post-Dispatch<\/u> has repeatedly deplored the role of big money in politics. But they are collaborators with a system that makes it very difficult for a candidate who does not raise large sums of money to compete on a level playing field. Why? Because, (a) they rarely report anything about candidates who do not raise large sums of money, even if these candidates may have the most viable positions on issues, (b) when they take time to handicap races, it is generally based on money raised rather than anything having to do with issues, and (c) because the MSM does not cover these races, candidates need to raise more money to get their word out. Raising money always means that some voters become more important than others, and that undermines democracy.<\/p>\n

We have some very good Democratic candidates in Missouri\u2019s Second Congressional District. It is up to the mainstream media to let voters know about them, and to do so in a way that minimizes the need of the candidates to engage in more money-grubbing.<\/p>\n

To our media: please don\u2019t just comment the state of our democracy; be a greater part of the solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the St. Louis Metro Chapter of the League of Women Voters once again did its heavy lifting to bring political awareness to the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2953,162,77,119,16,1,573],"tags":[3069,1992,131],"yoast_head":"\n