THE PRESENTATION of the movement in everyday life does not, at first, appear to be a major problem. When an individual activist canvasses up and down a street, standing in doorways, sitting in living rooms, talking, he is more or less in control of the image he presents. The central committee that directs the canvassing or organizes a demonstration is more or less in control of the immediate impact of those activities. But as soon as a journalist or a cameraman appears on the scene, all such control is lost.
What the media do with the movement is so erratic that it is very difficult to detect a pattern or work out a strategy. Sometimes they pick up a campaign that is struggling along with no great success in sight and publicize it to the nation, vastly increasing its size and scope. Here is the dream of many little bands of activists: suddenly to be made important. More often, the media only glance at citizen politics and reflect the judgment of the professionals as to its significance. Then activists think they find a “consistent ideological bias” in newspaper and television coverage, and they attribute to this bias the fact that they are being ignored. I suspect they are wrong (though not always). The consistent bias of the news media is toward novelty and excitement, not toward right, left, or center. Of course, what is new today depends on what was news yesterday. So if one campaign is extensively covered, the next may not be covered at all; and after a period of neglect, an activity fitfully sustained for some time will abruptly be discovered. One does not choose; one is chosen.
Given the essentially arbitrary quality of media coverage, there is still some room for maneuver. Local newspapers are especially open: activists able to grind out copy can get almost as much coverage as they want. And it does matter, though it is hard to say how much, that press releases be well written, news conferences properly staged, celebrities and Great Men intelligently exploited. Political action has or can have a dramatic quality which activists should not deny or repress. Nor is it shameful to seek out professional help with such things, so long as the professionals are told that they must take the movement as it is, not try to make it more presentable. (Perhaps the movement should be made more presentable, but that is a political decision and must be made by the participants themselves.)
There are, however, two dangers to the movement in the media’s bias toward novelty and excitement. The first is the danger of rhetorical and tactical escalation in search of publicity. If this activity doesn’t attract enough attention, then perhaps this one will, or this one. . . . The inevitable progress is from orderly demonstrations and more or less rational speeches to window-breaking, obscenity, and melodramatic calls for revolution. Steadily over time, the ante is raised, wilder things are said, greater risks accepted. Citizens come to act with one eye on what they are doing, the other fixed on its reflection in the media. They must continually astonish others in order to see themselves.
Amateur activism sometimes is astonishing, and it is always useful for a citizen to make his break with the routines of political life as dramatically as he can. But good politics most often consists in doing the same thing over and over again. Like many other worthwhile human activities, it requires a considerable capacity for boredom. This the media do not encourage, and so their influence must be opposed. The best means of opposition is the development of the movement’s internal audience. Hence the need for newsletters, pamphlets, films, aimed at the membership itself and setting standards of political relevance and utility different from those established outside.
The second danger is the overexposure of movement leaders and spokesmen. One of the ways the media produce excitement is by focusing on personality. If no leader has clearly emerged, or if leadership is shared within the movement, the most colorful figure will be sought out and designated Prince. He will be filmed and interviewed endlessly, his opinions asked on a dozen different subjects, each of his performances edited so as to single out his most extravagant words and gestures, his most “interesting” self. It may be that he doesn’t have opinions on a dozen different subjects, that his extravagant words represent no one else’s views: it doesn’t matter. Nor will he find it easy to resist the temptations of sudden fame. The movement, after all, needs publicity; if he can be its agent, has he any right to refuse the opportunity?
There are three victims here: the media audience which is entertained but not informed; the movement membership which is misrepresented; and the media Prince himself, who is all too quickly used up. He may be an exciting man, but if he keeps talking he won’t be exciting for long: soon enough, someone else will be discovered. And meanwhile, other activists who trusted him as one of themselves suddenly see him in a new light: Who is he to speak so loudly? The instability of leadership among citizen activists is at least partly explicable in these terms. A man hardly has time to build a firm political base before he receives national publicity and is ruthlessly exposed to the (suspicious) eyes of his associates and followers. What can he do? Above all, he must refuse to join in the games to which he is incessantly invited, the game of épater le bourgeois, the game of maximal leader, the game of instant opinion. He must reflect views widely held, even if he states them in his own fashion and with his own emphasis; he must drag other people into the limelight with him; he must master the techniques of evasion and refusal.
It makes little sense, however, to refuse absolutely to face a camera or talk to a journalist. This is sometimes seen as the path of integrity. We will keep control of our own faces, activists say, and present only our unmediated selves to the world. The political purposes of the movement make that an impossible decision. One can’t refuse to be described, discussed, reported. The activist has chosen to seek public effects, to influence other people, to change (some part of) their lives. He not only needs publicity; they deserve that his actions be publicized. So he has a public face, willy-nilly, and that inevitably means a face he can’t entirely control. As a result, of course, he is not entirely responsible for his appearance. But he must take responsibility and do the best he can.