Media Curmudgeon

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January 06, 2008

Politics As Sports

Television news is covering the presidential primaries like they were sporting events, and the coverage is not nearly as good as ESPN’s – the sets, graphics, and visuals aren’t as good, the reporters aren’t as good, and the analysts aren’t as good. It’s a sad comment on the current state of the media that sports gets much more intelligent coverage than politics does and that politics is covered as though it were a game.

The nadir of coverage was CNN’s the night of the Iowa caucuses. CNN seems to believe that if it repeats a lie often enough, viewers will believe it – the same belief that Fox News has. The CNN lie Wolf Blitzer kept repeating was that CNN had television’s best team of analysts and reporters. At least Fox News’ lies, “we report, you decide” or “fair and balanced,” are clever marketing slogans that not only attempt to position Fox News, but also to position the competition. CNN’s bogus claim was like the chest-thumping bragging of an insecure child trying to boost its confidence.

CNN’s clumsy, unattractive, malfunctioning graphics were supposed to wow viewers, but instead they were laughably amateurish, and the analysts were merely regurgitating results or spouting obvious platitudes – the only CNN analyst who provided any insight was, to my surprise, the conservative William Bennett, who graciously said he was proud of Iowa and the country for honoring diversity and giving Obama the win.

The best analysts I watched were Mark Shields and David Brooks on “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer,” who, unlike most other analysts, had a few intelligent, insightful things to say. However, even Shields and Brooks couldn’t stay away from the politics-as-sports model. I would love to hear some analysts talk or write about interpreting the language of the campaigns — what the words used by the candidates, pundits, and public really mean.

For example, what does “experience” mean, how should we ordinary citizens translate the word? When Hillary Clinton, Bill Richard, or people 60 or older (both Hillary and Bill are 60) use the word “experience,” what do they mean? If you substitute the word “seniority” for “experience,” you’ll understand. The two candidates have a union, time-in-grade mentality, like most older people do. They are saying, “I put in my time, so now it’s my turn; I deserve it because of the seniority system. Those are the rules – I’m entitled.” And they act petulant if they think the seniority system isn’t going to pay off for them.

“Change” is another word that the pundits should translate, but don’t. “Change,” when Obama says it, means to do something differently, to go another, a new direction. When Hillary Clinton uses the word “change,” it means to do something the way her husband did it in the 1990s. When she says, “I’m for change,” it means “I’m for doing it the way we did in the 1994” or merely “I’m for doing something. – anything that will get your vote – and I’ll change it if you don’t like it.”

The best explanation for why television analysts/pundits keep their jobs is also because of seniority, certainly not because of a free-market merit system. And like the older candidates, the analysts/pundits believe that change means covering elections like they were covered in the 1990s—like ESPN would cover sports—only not a tenth as well.

Posted by Charles Warner at January 6, 2008 05:26 PM

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digibandit at January 6, 2008 11:20 PM writes:

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