 |
USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
|---|
|
USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
|---|
| Political Conventions As Advertising | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | Newspapers: The Reformation | |
| Previous In Section | « Scan Only The Public Media Section » | Next In Section | |
When It Comes To Democrat Convention Coverage, PBS Shines
Denver — The modern political convention is a four day long infomercial for the sponsoring party. In all the noise and hoopla, important ideas sometimes arise, human frailties surface, policy issues are articulated, and legitimate news happens. Somewhere in the political theater, speech making and hype, both parties speak to their view of what matters most to the American electorate. But for millions of Americans who seek to know something about the people who seek to govern a nation of sovereign citizens, what matters most is difficult to find on network television or the degenerating cable news channels.
In the search to know what matters most, the American electorate must look beyond commercial media if they want to know what’s being said, celebrated, promoted, or condemned by today’s polarized political camps. What matters most to broadcast media is demographics, not information. What cable news viewers have seen of the Democrat convention is endless punditry, polarizing pontification and something close to open warfare between personalities and producers.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale, (D), Minnesota
As has become obvious in recent presidential cycles, the extent of what viewers see, hear and know depends entirely on which broadcast organizations they watch. Those who choose ABC News, CBS News, or NBC News are least likely to know what matters most about the presidential campaigns and the conventions. The problem for the networks begins with a half-hearted commitment to to inform and a wall to wall commitment to profitability. Network coverage of the Democrat convention has been shallow to the point of embarrassment. What little meaningful content that is aired is compressed and filtered through layers of commentary, editorializing, talking television stars and bountiful commercials.
CBS coverage has been technically inferior with sometimes unintelligible audio due to the use of noise canceling microphones that clip and distort. NBC News has appeared confused and disorganized — sometimes unable to switch to remote sources, cameras, audio and correspondents. ABC has been technically sound, but overcome by up front talking heads vying with one another for the scant airtime available.
This year the entertainment-driven network news divisions, cable news networks and public media ( Including C-SPAN ) have very different ideas about how the modern political convention ought best be covered. It’s not political content nor journalistic standards that separate probative and entertainment approaches to this year’s immensely important presidential election coverage. It’s profitability that determines the extent and depth of television coverage. While the for profit media covers only what’s most entertaining, emotional, and promotable, the public media still go after what matters most — the personalities, ideas and policy issues that slip through the infomercial packaging the network news divisions so clearly pursue. Those who watched C-SPAN saw everything unfiltered — as it happened.
MacNeil/Lehrer Journalists Make Probative and Relevant Convention Coverage Look Easy
While the networks and cable news channels make the most noise and garner the most attention, PBS’ MacNeil/Lehrer Productions still covers what matters most. Where substance matters over cosmetics and entertainment, PBS wins the prize for relevant and probative coverage of the Democrats assembled at Denver’s Pepsi Center. After only two nights, the overall superiority of MacNeil/Lehrer’s NewsHour team is obvious by way of breadth, probity and insight. Given the sparse resources at hand and the immensity of people and issues to be covered, PBS’ feat challenges traditional thinking about how and why television ought to cover American politics, candidates and conventions.
What PBS is doing is not new — for there are no secrets to political convention coverage. The PBS formula differs sharply from C-SPAN in the sense that some materials are either truncated or go uncovered so that what’s most important can be aired. Speeches, happenings and conflicts are placed in historical and political context so that viewers can better understand the meaning and implications of what they see and hear.
It’s not exactly Walter Cronkite deftly garnering information from the CBS News correspondents pool. PBS coverage is, in many ways, the equal of the best network convention coverage and, in some ways better, by way of excellent historical foundation and wizened political analysis not found elsewhere.
Former President Jimmy Carter & First Lady Rosalynn
Driven in part by legitimate concerns that the modern political convention is scripted and laden with talking points and self-puffery, the network news operations see limited profitability, and possibly substantial losses in serious coverage. So, token coverage is presented as relevant when in fact such coverage ought to be labeled as inherently deficient in useful information or meaningful relevancy.
After all the hoopla, dramatic utterances, uplifting rhetoric and scripted events come to an end, America’s network news divisions will have missed substantially all of what mattered most at this week’s Democrat National Convention. They’ll miss it again next week when the Republicans gather in Saint Paul. In their stead the news channels will endlessly promote conflict and talking points that obscure and confuse genuine news and information.
Today’s network news broadcasts are in reality entertainment programming. Network news is about star power, demographics, ratings and profitability. Just as viewers have learned to graze 200 channels, the network news divisions graze the news. They choose what’s most scintillating, or interesting or dramatic, encapsulate it, graphically enhance it. On air, a highly paid and familiar personality reads the teleprompter sells each story.
Congratulations to PBS for providing relevant and provative convention coverage.
