Op Ed: Prelims Over, Battle Begins OnOregon`s Funding Future

(SALEM) - Oregon`s `direct primary", once proud-and-respected, again barely parted the surface on solid realities of radical change demanded NOW for this once-leading State. Our `two-party-only primary" drew less than fundamental democratic majority for essential decision on definitive State leadership -- surely a horrifying situation demanding rapid attention to the process involved.

Change must come if Oregon is to regain national leadership -- or avoid falling `flat on face", once again. It starts now with the Governorship main-round on the way; long before `you-know-who" returns to their Salem arena; most probably to build, once again, the revolting political-cult confrontations suffered for decades.

Far too many well-funded lobbyists will then still lavish fat `compaign contributions" -- either gracefully conferred, or even, sometimes, angrily withheld.

Oregon led in education, once. Now the State faces suit by parent-school board action on Constitutional deprivation in its educational system, due for Friday action in court to set dates.

Oregon led in `direct primary" impact, briefly -- providing possibilities now lost under piles of pelf spent for `attack ads"; some so strong that endorsers write about `holding our noses" as the campaign developed.

What does that do to confidence voters once reposed in this community`s print-side daily newspaper?

Today new technologies make inevitable rapid access for many, many seeking truthful `opinion" from many more widespread new channels, surely now contributing to democratic understandings.

Oregon led in rapid development of new technologies changing our world as we live it. This State early on became known as `the place to come" for now-famed communications technology leaders-and-developers.

Oregon also led in many complex areas of university/college scholarship, graduate-level diversities and developments; and, with international notice, in now-essential community college innovation and student involvement.

For many migrating to our State --including leaders bringing with them community-minded corporation strengths and workable jobs for many thousands-- it was the Oregon community climate, way of life, and wide array of opportunities that `paid the piper" for all costs connected closely with the travail of transfer from another place.

What has changed? Why has it changed? When did it start? Who has allowed this to happen to all of us here; while stultifying the shining situations which brought many of us in the first place; and now ending that search for a new home by other thousands, still seeking and clearly hoping to find, again, what we did when we came.

For me, what has happened represents a scarifying change and ongoing trend in what our Oregon media make possible: The true picture of this State -- of its people, its politics, its culture, its communities --and our joint future.

Citizens make choices for democratic issues on what they come to know about their governance system. They learn, inevitably, from what the media makes it possible for them to know-and-thus understand. Other channels today assist, but `in the media" is still the main channel for cooperative decision after openly democratic discussion.

If democracy here is now failing --all the symptoms for distortian, decline, denigration are seen and can be evaluated-- then our vaunted `free press" is falling far short of its historic, ordained and demanded responsibilities in our democracy.

You cannot make readers-read, or news-viewers think, but you can surely supply the essential information skillfully presented to produce democratic decision if put to work. That`s the professional media responsibility, built around and over the First Amendment, made first and foremost by our own Founding Fathers, but only after furious and firmly contended full discussion, 200 years ago.

What the public has been told --and taught too !-- about our State governance system, including the much-derided Legislature, is largely unfair and poorly warranted. The media, too, have been misled and manipulated, by those forces at work in other areas of our lives, if not by the same specific manipulators and means.

Money always counts, wherever, whenever applied. Few are those contending advertising, in varied and malign forms, does not play a manipulative role in our society.

`Attack ads" cost millions, absorbing energies better devoted to democratic discussion by other means, in other channels.

What few yet comprehend, and others deny vociferously due to close connection with media-process, is the money-measure impacts surely shaping both the news and the know-how to create it.

There cometh now, once again, as always with media-work, still another shot and another story: The Legislature returns after we elect the new Governor !!