 Arthur Solomon |
In November, I wrote a column on this website highly critical of cable TV’s coverage of the 2016 election, which was essentially a string of commercials interrupted by egocentric, mostly wrong, self-assured, so-called political experts who provided malpractice-like analysis.
I stated that I was done writing about the lessons learned from this event. What I didn’t say was that I would stop writing about cable TV’s failure to uncover news instead of just talking in generalities and freeloading on coverage from print publications for substantive discussions.
It’s now been five months, and nothing’s changed. The same crew of reporters who were unable to ask specific questions and counter what Trump’s surrogates said during interviews — because they didn’t know the facts — and the same “expert” analysts who assured America of a Hillary Clinton victory are still at it.
The shortcomings about political matters by cable beat reporters are obvious. Spokespersons for Trump and the Democratic opponents still go largely unchallenged.
TV pundits still confidentially offer their opinions as if they know what they’re talking about, even though a good case can be made that they’re responsible for Clinton’s defeat by lulling her voters to remain at home because of their non-stop, “it’s in the bag” for Hillary comments.
The most thoughtful of all the pundits, as he has been for years, is David Gergen of CNN. Of the cable TV political shows, “AM Joy” on MSNBC is the most continually hard hitting. Joy-Ann Reid’s former colleague, Tamron Hall, was also a tough interviewer, as is occasionally Jake Tapper of CNN. But for the most part, what is served up by cable political programs is soft-questioning pap.
There are a few reasons why tough questioning occurs so infrequently. Unlike print political reporters — who are immersed in the nitty-gritty of legislation and have specific beats requiring them to be knowledgeable and write stories laden with facts — the TV cable reporters are mostly generalists. Traveling with a candidate and repeating what a candidate says, without educating themselves about the details of legislation being discussed so an intelligent perspective can be provided for viewers, doesn’t make the reporter an expert. A parrot can do that.
Perhaps another reason is that many cable reporters — especially hosts of the daily and Sunday programs — are comrades in arms with their guests. They go to the same insider parties, socialize with each other, and their kids go to the same schools. It’s difficult to look a guest on a program in the eye and say, “You’re not telling the truth,” when you’re all part of the same social set.
Most importantly, political guests are the backbone of cable TV programming. Put them on the spot, and they’ll refuse to participate in the cable TV game.
Cable TV pundits have no shame. The same so-called experts — the pundits whose predictions and analysis have been wrong so often in the past and in the recent presidential election — are telling us what will happen during the Trump administration and will also opine what the Democrats must do to become relevant in 2018 and 2020.
Instead of repeating what political operatives tell them and pretending it’s “breaking news,” cable reporters should do some enterprise reporting. Years ago, major print publications did away with the one-source story. TV should do the same. What’s needed is more hard news political reporting, like major print pubs do.
In an effort to make viewers think they’re hearing inside news, an oft-used phrase of cable reporters is, “our sources tell us,” without investigating the veracity of what those sources disclose. Do they think their “sources” are going to tell them anything that they don’t want the reporter to use? As someone who’s worked on local, state and national political campaigns, including the presidential level, I know the only information “sources” reveal are what they want the reporters to use. Like we do in our business.
Shortly after the election, the hot media topic was “fake news” and how to control it. My suggestion: A good place to begin is by eliminating reports by cable news field reporters based on sources from the campaign they’re covering
Extremely disturbing is Fox’s “Media Buzz”, a program that’s supposed to critique press coverage but has permitted obvious misstatements by guests to go unchallenged. It’s bad enough that host Howard Kurtz often acts as a PR person for other shows on the network.
During a discussion on his February 26 program, about Trump’s attacks on the “opposition media” and “fake news” and the exclusion of the New York Times, CNN, Politico and other news organizations from a press briefing, Kurtz let an obvious falsehood by Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, go uncorrected.
Lewandowski said the Times and WSJ get stories wrong and then bury the corrections on “page A 97.” Considering the context of the topic, this was much more than an exaggeration. Kurtz and Lewandowski certainly had to know that both publications for years prominently printed corrections on page two until March, when the Times changed its format and began printing a notification on page two directing readers to the corrections. But Kurtz let Lewandowski’s fake news comment stand.
The bottom line is that cable TV hardly ever breaks any news. On the extremely rare occasion that a cable political reporter might truly break a story, there’s cynicism about the “exclusive” claim, because of cable’s untruthful “breaking news” utterances that occur several times an hour.
Print publications detail mistakes they make in news stories with corrections. Cable TV reporters and pundits should do the same. (But don’t hold your breath waiting for them to do so.)
There is one facet of the 2016 election coverage that I’ll miss, and it’s definitely not listening to the same pundits continue to confidently think they really know what’s happening. I’ll miss the free concerts featuring Beyonce, Bruce, Katy and others. They were definitely more entertaining than the cable TV news performers, without providing reporting and erroneous analysis that might have determined the outcome of the election.
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Arthur Solomon was a senior VP at Burson-Marsteller. He now is a contributor to public relations and sports business publications, consults on PR projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at [email protected].
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