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