The same broadcast networks that eagerly devote endless prime-time
hours to vacuous sitcoms and unreal "reality shows" couldn't spare a total
of more than a few hours last week for live coverage of the Democratic
National Convention.
It's true that complaining about scant news coverage from NBC, ABC and
CBS is a bit like griping about small portions of meals from restaurants
that serve lousy food. But still: the conventions are worth watching, if
only to keep up with the rhetorical needles that party strategists are
trying to thread these days.
Gathering for the convention in Boston, several network anchors
participated in a high-profile panel at Harvard University. One of the more
interesting moments came when the panelists responded to a question about
the scant amount of air time the commercial broadcast networks were
devoting to the convention.
In rapid succession, the trio of anchors from those networks (Tom
Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather) squeezed themselves into verbal
contortions as they tried to avoid blaming the cutbacks of air time on the
managements of the media companies that provide their hefty paychecks. To
hear them tell it, the blame could be affixed many places -- but General
Electric, Disney and Viacom didn't merit a mention.
In response, Jim Lehrer of PBS and Judy Woodruff of CNN challenged the
rationales for reducing coverage. Lehrer pointed out that the public's
interest in this election is extraordinarily high. And Woodruff debunked
the claim that the convention didn't deserve much coverage because it was
"scripted." Many presidential events like the State of the Union address
are also scripted, she said -- and the networks don't claim that those
events are unworthy of media attention because they're orchestrated by the
White House.
It was unusual to see Lehrer or Woodruff become so vehement about
anything. Not coincidentally, both of them work for employers offering
products that compete with the broadcast networks. The PBS "NewsHour"
prides itself on long-form coverage without commercial interruptions. And
CNN, while highly commercialized, still devotes dozens of prime hours to
covering each major-party convention. On the subject of air time for
convention coverage, each of the five anchors put out a perspective that
suited their management.
The discussion offered a rare look at Brokaw, Jennings, Rather, Lehrer
and Woodruff all lined up in a row. Perhaps it would have been more prudent
for one of those network superstar anchors to stay away from the panel as a
precautionary measure. After all, the president, vice president and Cabinet
members are never all in the same place at the same time -- lest a
catastrophic event potentially decapitate the entire government leadership.
Fortunately, there was no missile strike or other disaster when those
superstar network anchors shared the stage at the Harvard forum, and the
country's media governance remains intact.
So, there will be no disruption of presidential campaign coverage,
with the major TV networks mostly providing glib punditry while "horse
racing" the latest strategic outlooks for the candidates. On the network
evening news programs, the situation has hardly improved since 2000,
when -- according to Meredith McGehee, director of the Alliance for Better
Campaigns -- 71 percent of the election coverage "dealt with the horse race
aspects of the campaign, rather than substance."
Meanwhile, local TV stations around the country have been content to
join with the networks to rake in big fees for campaign commercials while
doing an atrocious job of providing news coverage. "More than half of all
top-rated local news broadcasts that aired in the seven weeks leading up to
Election Day in 2002 contained no campaign coverage at all," the Alliance
for Better Campaigns reports.
The networks do devote some air time to the presidential race. But
viewers are apt to get most of their "information" about the contest from
the onslaught of paid campaign commercials. And the news reporting is
usually so mired in the muck of cliches and corporatized assumptions that
the spin often renders the coverage worthless or worse.
Several months ago, during the most intense period of the Democratic
presidential primaries, the quantity of reporting -- on ABC, CBS, NBC and
Fox -- was so limited that the Alliance found the networks "devoted just 8
percent of their news hole to election coverage in the two weeks leading up
to the Super Tuesday primaries."
As superficial and rhetorical as the convention speeches tend to be,
at least they allow the public to hear directly from national candidates
and their advocates in more than mere snippets. Right now, much of what
passes for televised discourse about the Kerry-Bush race doesn't go deeper
than bumper-sticker phrases.
The top news shows are a big part of the problem, as the Alliance for
Better Campaigns points out: "The average length of a soundbite by a
presidential candidate on the network evening news went from 43 seconds in
1968 to less than eight seconds in 2000."
With three months to go till Election Day, the limitations of media
coverage are painfully apparent. From now until the final frenzied days of
coast-to-coast campaigning, Americans will be getting their most vivid
impressions of the presidential race via commercial TV networks that
operate to maximize profits for investors -- and minimize public-interest
broadcasting in the process.
___________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at
www.normansolomon.com.
