When Bill Clinton was announcing his candidacy last week, CNN televised a portion of it live. But just as Clinton was about to specify what he would do as president, the camera cut away to commentators David Broder and William Schneider. As they talked, a small inset of Clinton appeared on the screen without sound–a perfect example of how the candidates are often drowned out by all the punditry.
The average length of a TV sound bite declined from 42.3 seconds in 1968 to 9.8 seconds in 1988, according to a Harvard study. With all the fuss about that, the bites will likely get bigger this year. (CBS News, for instance, is experimenting with two-to three-minute speech excerpts.) Even so, the media filter between the candidates and the public remains too thick. While the candidates can be faulted for giving the same spiel over and over, they have no incentive to change if the press won’t cover the fresh speeches they do make.
Harness the horse race: Pointless polling and hackneyed handicapping are part of the coverage voters want, but they were totally out of control in 1988. As much as three quarters of all network TV stories last time could be characterized as horse-race coverage. In his influential book “Why Americans Hate Polities,” E. J. Dionne Jr. writes that “we have tended to focus too narrowly on the political process and not enough on the content of polities.”
More content doesn’t mean a slew of dutiful, boring stories on the minor differences between the candidates’ positions on health-insurance premium deductibility (although a few such pieces would help). And it doesn’t mean dwelling on the often phony “issues” (like the Pledge of Allegiance) that handlers cook up to bash opponents. Instead, real content consists of covering what NBC’s politics chief William Wheatley calls the “leadership” beat–the challenges facing the country and the ability of the candidates to meet them. That entails coverage that doesn’t necessarily rely on a news angle. Thoughtful stories are a lot harder than riposte reporting. But they’re also a lot more relevant.
TV producers are rightly determined to avoid being manipulated into covering staged events that contain no news. Refusing to cover “photo ops” will sometimes free them to do creative stories. But it might also give them an excuse to skip politics that day altogether, essentially blacking out the candidates. The best way to get unscripted moments is to cover debates, ask offbeat questions and not worry that the pictures aren’t flashy.
Because of all of the sleazy negative ads in 1988, many publications developed effective “ad reviews” to investigate and dissect the conflicting charges. The networks are following suit with “truth squads.” This is a highly important development that has already done much to deter the candidates from playing fast and loose. But some candidates are more inaccurate than others. So the truth squads shouldn’t, in the name of “balance,” strain to find fault with ads that are essentially accurate. And airing negative ads as news with the rationale that they have become “controversial” is just an invitation to be manipulated by campaigns seeking free exposure.
Letterman made a joke last week about Bob Kerrey and Debra Winger, and the audience didn’t get it. They don’t know who Kerrey is, and they don’t care. Next year, they may care. But by then editors and producers will probably be saying, “Hey, we already ran our Kerrey profile last October-it’s old news.” What’s old to reporters is new to many voters, which means that some elemental facts about the candidates should be repeated throughout the season. In other words, the press must occasionally bore itself in order to inform the public.
All of the deep budget cuts at news organizations will lessen some of the ludicrous media overkill; surely no one will miss the dozens of satellite trucks in Des Moines. The potential danger this year lies at the other extreme. With political coverage viewed as an often unaffordable extravagance, wide leads in the polls can form the basis of an excuse for not really covering campaigns. The problem with such logic is that American political campaigns are not just about electing people. They are also the only time we have to explore the condition and future of the country. If that’s not the real aim of journalism, what is?
