As America prepares to watch the first of the presidential debates, the media has spent most of the last three days discussing strategies and how the expectations for each candidate will affect public perception of who wins and loses.  Not that anyone should be surprised by this.  But it does suggest the media has learned absolutely nothing in the past two weeks.  Just 10 days ago, all three cable networks were lamenting how the Trump campaign had played them with his 30 minute infomercial about the new Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. Trump had promised a major announcement about his five year campaign to discredit President Obama’s status as a United States citizen.

On the September 18 edition of CNN’s Reliable Sources, a panel of media “experts” including Carl Bernstein complained Trump officials had advertised the event as a “press conference.”  Instead, after Trump’s 37 second terse and inaccurate assessment of his role in the birther conspiracy, he left the stage without any opportunity for attending reporters to question him.  As part of the discussion, the show’s host Brian Stelter had the following exchange with CNN political reporter Jeremy Diamond.

STELTER: So, do you find yourself, I’m going to put on the spot here — do you find yourself struggling to figure out how to cover this kind of campaign, but not a normal campaign, a campaign where there are more misstatements than usual, where it feels like we’re being played sometimes by Trump?

DIAMOND: Well, I’ve been doing so for 15 months. So, at this point, I think I’ve gotten used to it to a certain extent.

STELTER: OK.

In other words, what Diamond admitted was Trump was controlling the narrative and there is not much the media can about it.

Are you kidding me?  Who owns the microphones?  Who owns the cameras?  Who decides what goes over the airwaves and what doesn’t?  In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the late Stephen Covey divides situations into two circles:  concern and influence.  The circle of concern includes those elements over which you have no control and one should not waste energy trying to change them.  Focus should be on elements within the circle of influence where the individual or organization can control the situation.  Candidate’s access to free air time is absolutely within the networks’ circle of influence.

Later in the conversation, Stelter and Diamond continue:

STELTER: Jeremy, talking about control briefly, what could be done differently? Give us an idea what have could be done differently.

DIAMOND: I mean, it’s hard to say, you know, at this point. I think that reporters are trying as hard as they can to continue to ask tough questions, to continue to press Donald Trump, to continue to force this campaign to really do more press availabilities, you know?

After 15 months of being jerked around, you have no ideas?  Then I have a couple.  First, fire Diamond and his colleagues and hire reporters and executives at CNN who do have ideas about how to stop being played by candidates and their surrogates.

Second, CNN and the other networks could say to both candidates they will NO LONGER show campaign events live.  If the candidates give reporters an opportunity to question them about the content of their speech, they will then show both the event and the follow-up Q and A.  If candidates want time to voice unchallenged statements, they should have to pay for it.

The next time you hear someone in the media complain about their ability to cover political candidates, just remember, they have no one to blame but themselves.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

I am trying to figure out the moment in time news programs became game shows.  I’m not sure exactly when this transformation took place.  Maybe it was May 11, 2001.  That was the date of Lynn Russell’s last broadcast as the anchor of CNN Headline News.  Russell’s program consisted of a recap of current events which was updated every fifteen minutes, reminiscent of the CBS nightly news before it became a half-hour newscast on September 2, 1963.

You might think the expansion of broadcast nightly news to 30 minutes and the addition of three 24/7 cable news networks would make it easier to “get the news.”  Unfortunately, you would be wrong.  This was never more evident than September 4, 2016.  An AP wire story reported a 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Oklahoma.  Interested in learning more, I turned on cable news. On CNN, instead of news, I encountered six talking heads discussing the impact on the presidential election of the latest “sound bite du jour.”  In another era, the image would have been mistaken for an episode of Gene Rayburn hosting The Match Game.  MSNBC was no better.  It may be the “place for politics” but it is no longer “a place for news.”

The Sunday morning network talk shows further represent the decline of broadcast journalism.  Oh, for the days of Lawrence Spivak, the original host of Meet the Press.  When watching archived videos such as the one pictured here with then Senator John F. Kennedy, you immediately notice three things.  First, the panel is made up of credentialed correspondents from the major news services such as the Associated Press and United Press International. Second, only the principals (candidates, public officials or world leaders) are invited to appear.  No surrogates allowed. Finally, the panel members never express their own opinion.  They ask questions and trust the viewers to evaluate the guest’s response.  If they thought the guest was avoiding the question or if the answer was suspect, they would challenge the interviewee with follow-up inquiries.  Today, Meet the Pundits would be a more apt title for what is passed off as current affairs programming.

What have we sacrificed in return for the endless babble of opinion?  In a word, journalism. And there is a simple test to prove it.  Name one occasion on which a panel discussion resulted in a “breakthrough” moment in American history or politics.  Imagine it is April 13, 1954.  Instead of Edward R. Morrow hosting the CBS news program See It Now,  you have four pundits analyzing the McCarthy hearings. Committee legal counsel Roy Cohn defends Senator Joseph McCarthy’s crusade against communists in the government. One of the anti-McCarthy pundits might echo Morrow’s now famous accusation. “The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one.  The junior senator from Wisconsin has crossed that line.”   The host concludes, “There you have it.  Both sides of the issue.”  I think it is a safe bet the program would not have won a Peabody Award nor would organizations like the Ratio Television Digital News Association or NRP name awards for outstanding journalism for the show’s host, as they have for Morrow.

Or imagine it is February 27, 1968.  Walter Cronkite’s broadcast Report from Vietnam changed Americans’ perception of the conflict.  He ended the program with the following.

We’ve been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. For it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Now imagine our coverage of the Vietnam war had been relegated to Hard Ball, The Situation Room or Fox and Friends. Instead of an eyewitness account, we would have been inundated with accusations likely based on false or exaggerated numbers.  Remember, support for the war turned in part when Cronkite reported that the official “kill numbers” released by General Westmoreland’s office included livestock.

There was one additional element at play as Cronkite’s broadcast approached.  He had to convince CBS News president Richard Salant to air the report.  Journalism is not just about investigating or writing a story.  The truly great reporters also have the courage to confront their bosses, urging them to take risks they otherwise would prefer to avoid.

When the history of broadcast journalism in the early 21st Century is chronicled, there will be many questions and hopefully some second guessing.  However, there is one thing of which I am sure.  Next to the word journalist, you are just as likely to find Gene Rayburn’s picture as you are to find Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer and Sean Hannity.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP