Better Talking Heads
One of the strangest spectacles in American politics is the press coverage of a major speech or debate. You get a bunch of media personalities who, by definition, follow politics far more closely than the average American speculating about how they think the speech would play with a typical undecided voter. Compounding the irony, there’s often a description of a nominal swing demographic — the white working class, the heartland, whatever — that couldn’t be further from the experience of a wealthy television celebrity. And even crazier, many of these events aren’t actually watched by that many people; their most important consequence is as a driver of media coverage. Thus, undecided voters are affected by the media’s coverage of what they think undecided voters would have thought had they watched the thing. Ryan Avent proposes a better way:
I don’t want to diminish the work of my journalist buddies, many of whom have written some really good, really insightful stuff on the speech. But I think that we’d get much more informative coverage by randomly selecting ten viewers and asking them to write what they thought of it.
This makes a ton of sense. So much actual convention coverage is, by contrast, baffling. CNN appears to have spent vast sums of money flying their “talent” out to Denver, putting them up in hotels, and constructing an entire new set in order to provide a venue for talking heads to “cover” the convention by talking over the speeches. And then next week they’re going to do it all over again! Suppose they’d just sent one reporter, not built a new set, showed more speeches, and let their talking heads discuss the speeches from CNN’s usual studios in DC and Atlanta. They could have saved a ton of money. And would substantially fewer people have watched? MSNBC, too. Why did Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews need to be in Denver? What value did that add?
39 Responses to “Better Talking Heads”
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August 29th, 2008 at 9:46 am
The broadcasters do not want it to seem like “coverage” of some newsworthy activity. They want it to be a show that seems like it comes out of the network.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Because it’s not about value for money. It’s about accommodating the gigantic egos of many television personalities. The DNC and RNC are too “important” for Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews to miss, even if they don’t have anything substantive to say.
Plus, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews want to be there to talk to the much more actually important political leaders, who, you know, hold real sway in the institutions of power.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Yeah, but I think hearing ten random voters give their ignorant opinions would be a lot less entertaining than hearing good-looking, well-spoken and charismatic news anchors and analysts give their ignorant opinions.
Really, who in the world would watch Avent’s hypothetical coverage? The reason that the “Hillary supporters hate Obama” meme got a lot of coverage is that its a much more ENTERTAINING angle than “The details of Obama’s veteran’s benefits plan: Revealed!”
The real solution would be a government mandated warning after each commercial break: “For Entertainment Purposes Only.”
But discussing the media as if they were really trying their best to bring fair, accurate and balanced coverage is insane. They’re covering the news in a way to entertain people, they’re good at it, and whether or not that’s the reason our country is so messed up, its certainly the reason that even a progressive stalwart like Matt will still watch MSNBC despite the fact less-entertaining and more informative alternatives such as C-SPAN, NPR and PBS already freaking exist.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:57 am
This is basically what you get on the call-in shows on C-Span
I think this is why the DNC had the “regular folks” get such a prime spot last night. It was a nice change from the parade of politicians, kinda like it would be nice to hear from regular people instead of talking heads. I watched on PBS, did they show these people on the networks/cable?
August 29th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I watched the speech on C-Span since that seemed like the closest I could get to actually being there. I flipped around a little over the past four days and was surprised that on the “news” channels it looked like the convention consisted of major speeches separated by fifteen or twenty minutes of nothing. In reality, those minutes were filled with speeches from ordinary Americans, from House members, from Generals.
I wish they’d cover the convention more as a sporting event. The viewers don’t need to be told how they feel about the event. Fill the dead time with biography, with statistics, but don’t let the viewers miss a moment of the game.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:01 am
ESPN moves Sportscenter to the site of the Super Bowl for Super Bowl week, and, I believe, to the site of the BCS championship game as well. Surely not moving it would save money, right?
August 29th, 2008 at 10:18 am
It’s branding, as El Cid says — and also self-protection. Why, if people realized how similar the comments of ten random people-on-the-American-street might be to the remarks of ten talking heads… why, they might wonder what made those talking heads so special, so deserving of being on TV.
The difference is, if you picked ten random people on the American street, *none* of them would claim that they deserved to be on TV repeatedly, or claim to speak for the rest of the nation. Not without having people laugh in their face.
Which, in a realistic world, is what *should* happen to David Brooks et al.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I wish they’d cover the convention more as a sporting event. The viewers don’t need to be told how they feel about the event. Fill the dead time with biography, with statistics, but don’t let the viewers miss a moment of the game.
Exactly.
Michael T. Sweeney, I don’t think an alternative like that is actually out there. Journalists could serve a useful role in these things (whether from home or on-site I don’t care): they can give context, background, inside commentary, fact-checking, even some entertainment.
All they really need to STOP doing is speculating endlessly about “how it’s going to play with the voters”, etc.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:19 am
An interesting post that brings an observation to mind. I watched probably twenty hours of the convention this week — on CSPAN. I have no idea what CNN or MSNBC had to say about any of it; I haven’t had any contact with them this week. I haven’t even thought about it until reading this.
Heh. And then I come here to see some insight on the substance of the convention, and I see… coverage of the coverage.
Interesting. “What value did that add?” indeed.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Why did Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews need to be in Denver? What value did that add?
Well, it’s sort of like an episode of Big Brother. By forcing all these big egos into the same place they exacerbate the tensions and so people watch to see if they actually come to blows.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:33 am
They really should get some of those, then. Chris Matthews looked like he was about to blow for half the coverage. I noticed during the Obama speech that a lot of the news teams had canopies for their anchors. I think some of them had neon. So tacky!
August 29th, 2008 at 10:34 am
You have been in DC how long now Matt? You should realize that one measure of how important a DC player you are is how little of August you have to actually spend in DC when Congress is out. That’s why columnists take vacation then and surrounding their vacation they have the pre-written columns that they can shovel out that have little to do with current events. But during an election that isn’t possible, so the next best thing is to go cover the election during two really big parties!
August 29th, 2008 at 10:37 am
But this way they get to see and be seen, and that’s what’s really important.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Decent point.
I am always amazed that anyone can confidently predict what Obama or any other politician needs to do with any given speech. Their sources are always a vague collection of talking points, conventional wisdom, idle thoughts, polling data, worship to the hypothetical ‘blue collar worker’ god weighted to the extent I am confident the Anchors and Analysts do not know why they are saying what they say. What’s wrong with accurate and precise reporting, not ill-formed mendacity?
August 29th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Apparently PBS is the forgotten network, but I don’t know why. The network shows all the speeches without filter. Jim Lehrer and his associates, Gwen and Judy, stay objective and polite while eliciting excellent commentary from diverse delegates. Mark Shields is thoughtful, and even David Brooks is surprisingly engaging (nothing like columnist David Brooks). A panel of professors adds academic and historic perspective. I suppose you could listen to cable for entertainment or outrage, or the networks for frustration, but if you just want to see the conventions, PBS works.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I second Lenore. PBS! Absolutely. I switched between CNN, MSNBC and PBS for awhile, and then stuck with PBS. They even showed Stevie Wonder — MUCH more entertaining the the talking heads. Their panel of professors were serious and thoughtful and added a lot of historical background. And they’re available in HD!!!
August 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am
A third vote for PBS. I stumbled across their coverage while looking for an HD option and was amazed at what an interesting presentation they provided. The panel of historians was particularly good. I can see how Shields would be tiresome to conservative viewers, but I love the guy.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I’m not so sure about this. The relentless idiocy of what I was hearing from the cable-chatterers drove me to CSPAN’s much better convention coverage last night. Afterwards, I listed to a handful of calls. Some were okay, but many more were cringe-inducing and I finally turned off my TV set when some (I assume White Power) guy from Oregon went off on “Wake Up White People, We Can’t Let a Black Socialist Be President” rant. I couldn’t sleep for a good hour afterwards!
August 29th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
A production note to MSNBC: try not putting your anchor’s desk on the sidewalk next time. Content aside, the background screaming craziness drowning out the anchors’ discussion rendered their coverage unwatchable.
Thank God for CSPAN.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
By setting up at the Denver train station, MSNBC gave Alex Jones and his friends a priceless opportunity to annoy people nationwide by yelling “9-11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB” over a bullhorn for hours on end.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Another vote for PBS.
Not only is the commentary better and more intelligent- witness Ray Suarez’s insightful conversation early in the evening with the two veteran Chicago writers (forget their names) on Obama’s early political career – but I watched the last three hours or so of the convention on PBS and was completely thrilled watching the short speeches by the ‘regular people’ that Joe Biden introduced – including most notably the now immortal Barney Smith. And then later I watched the whole thing rebroadcast on CNN and they had their talking heads talk right over the whole thing like it wasn’t even happening. And later when Obama made his great ‘celebrity’ comeback CNN almost missed it because they were too busy showing how many screens they had up in all the different places.
C-Span, but then PBS. All the other networks are more interested in just showing and marketing themselves. They make it about themselves. Which is why they continue to exist as such devastating punchlines for Comedy Central.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I tried it both ways actually, I watched MSNBC for about five minutes, but as soon as they were talking over speeches, I switched to the MSNBC live stream. No talking heads, no Chris Matthews, no Olbermann/Scarboro petty bickering, just the live video. Which worked perfectly for me, I actually got to see what was going on at the convention for a change. Maybe I’ll try that for the RNC. I’ll also check PBS constantly, because I value Moyers and Leher for the fact that they practice actual journalism.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Can everyone say “Frank Luntz” on the count of three? One, two, three … where the hell is Frank?
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