Public argument, civil society and what talk radio teaches about rhetoric.

• Author: Kane, Thomas

In an earlier part of this century, G.K. Chesterton wrote of the irony he found regarding the invention of radio: "How strange it is that mankind should have invented a machine for speaking to the whole world at precisely the moment when no man has anything to say."

By contrast, talk radio entered the mass media arena at a time when people had plenty to say. As Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein recently wrote, "Bound by neither the standards of factual accuracy nor objectivity to which the mainstream press aspired (even if it didn't always reach), talk radio exploded into the political world like a cluster bomb" (165). By 1995, over a thousand radio stations were broadcasting some form of talk as their main program format (Laufer x). Among the seventy-five top markets in the country, news/talk radio ranks second only to Adult Contemporary music as the most popular radio format (Hoyt 46).

In 1993, The Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press conducted a comprehensive survey on the vocal minority in American politics, and found that almost one half of Americans listen to talk radio on a relatively frequent basis, with one in six listening regularly (1). Eleven percent have attempted to call into a radio program and six percent report that they have gotten on the air to make their views known (2). Thus, it is difficult to disagree with Peter Laufer "that talk radio has developed into [a] cultural force of consequence in America"(9).

In attempting to identify the economic and sociopolitical reasons for the emergence of talk radio, Mike Hoyt, associate editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, identifies technology and economics as important factors. With the emergence of FM radio and its superior sound quality, AM radio needed a reason to exist. Talk radio provided the reason. Technological achievements such as car phones and satellite networks contributed to the growth. In defining sociopolitical reasons, Hoyt notes that "in a world where front-porch, front-stoop conversation is disappearing, people yearn to connect. For another, of course, two-way talk radio is a great vent for political frustration, of which there is no shortage. It fits the mad-as-hell-not-going-to-take-it-anymore national mood" (46).

In explaining the reasons for the Republican party's victory in the 1994 House of Representatives and Senate elections, Balz and Brownstein assess a prominent role for talk radio: "Republicans benefited from a enormous surge of conservative votes, urged on by the angry diatribes of talk radio hosts and mobilized by the likes of the Christian Coalition, which distributed thirty-three million voter guides, and the National Rifle Association, which poured $3.4 million into targeted campaigns" (56).

President Bill Clinton, the target of many conservative talk show hosts since his 1992 election, called KMOX in Saint Louis June 24, 1994 while-flying over the State of Missouri aboard Air Force One. "Much of talk radio is just a constant, unremitting, drumbeat of negativism and cynicism," he told the two hosts (Laufer 120). Yet, scarcely a year earlier, Clinton had invited more than 200 talk show hosts from around the country to a briefing on his health care proposals along with an opportunity to broadcast their programs from the White House lawn (20). He understands the importance of talk radio in the formation of public opinion.

The political scientist and philosopher James S. Fishkin, relying on the works of Plutarch, describes how members of the Council in ancient Sparta were elected by a method called the Shout: "The order in which candidates to the Council were considered was determined by lot. This order was not known to the impartial evaluators who were seated in another room with writing tablets. The evaluators' job was simply to assess the loudness of the cheering each candidate received when he walked in front of the assembled throng. The candidate receiving the loudest shouts and applause was deemed the winner" (23).

Noting the lack of careful debate and deliberative argument he thought was fostered in the Athenian institutions as well as Aristotle's disdain for the Spartan applaudometer, Fishkin draws a link between the past and the present: "The ire of talk-show democracy has given us a mass electronic version of the Shout" (25).

I want to argue in this essay that there is much in the emergence and popularity of talk radio that should inform students of public argument about current rhetorical practices. I do so, initially, by considering two somewhat interrelated themes with their own subsets of problems and arguments: the lack of a viable civil society with structures and practices capable of serving as a mediating force between the excesses of the market and the distance of government; and the limitations of traditional rhetorical settings and spaces capable .of enhancing the sorts of practices necessary for the making of citizens capable of enhancing the democratic project.

I begin by noting both the complexities and ambiguities surrounding the use of the term civil society. As Adam B. Seligman notes, the term has "three somewhat overlapping but nevertheless distinct uses" first, "as a slogan of different movements and parties," secondly, "as an analytic concept, that is, a quasi-scientific term to describe (or even perhaps explain) certain forms of social phenomena," and thirdly, "as a philosophically normative concept . . . as an ethical ideal, a vision of the social order that is not only descriptive, but prescriptive, providing us with a vision of the good life" (201). It is this third use of the term civil society that contains opportunities for nourishing democratic possibilities, and the one that I want to explore through this essay.

The often dramatic events in Eastern and Central Europe in 1989, as well as the internal happenings in the Soviet Union resulting in its eventual rupture, made for an intellectual revival of interest in civil society in all of its various historical and philosophical forms.

Based on these recent experiences, some factors seem necessary in order to provide the concept with practical meaning and thus potential use for charting social movements and rhetorical campaigns.

For civil society to function as a mediating force, some minimal requisites are necessary. As Marcia Weigle and Jim Butterfield noted about the experiences in the former Communist states, "the topic of civil society emerged in connection with Communist regimes only with the appearance of social activity...