 Arthur Solomon |
You don’t have to be an experienced journalist to realize that cable TV breaks few news stories. Cable TV’s formula is follow the leader reporting. The overwhelming majority — I’d say all, but I might have missed one — of its stories containing news on cable TV are follow-ups from print publications. All they do is talk about it in excited voices to make it appear as if it’s new news. That might be acceptable. But what isn’t is that cable TV's reports are based mostly on comments, tweets or press releases from candidate’s PR operations.
The backbone of cable TV political coverage is “he said, she said,” commentary from surrogates of both parties. Any resemblance to those lame interviews and news is less than purely coincidental.
Cable TV equates appearances by campaign managers and surrogates as news reporting. What they really are is biased talking heads advertising.
Listening to those conversations uncovers how limited many reporters are. Untrue statements are accepted as facts — probably because the reporters don’t know the facts — reporters can’t control the surrogates and follow-up questions are few and far between.
Cable TV reporters also act like tape recorders, repeating what the campaigns tell them, as if the campaigns are really going to tell them anything except what they want to make public.
In many ways, cable TV talent reminds me of our business, where attractive people who are facile with words are used as new business presenters without really knowing the background of prospective clients.
The above is bad enough. What really bothers me about cable TV political reporting is that the reporters want both campaigns to bow to their story lines. And that’s not what reporting is. Print publications do investigative reporting to uncover facts. Instead of doing their own investigative journalism, cable TV does what I call the “badgering technique” of journalism. And both Clinton and Trump are their targets. The “badgering technique” isn’t good journalism. It’s the lack of initiative journalism.
Ever since the campaign began, Clinton has been hounded by her email problem. It’s reported on almost every day. Then came the Clinton Foundation coverage. Then her health coverage.
Clinton’s poll numbers fell immediately after her stumbling while getting into her van when she left the September 11 memorial services. Cable TV showed footage of the incident, which was newsworthy. But they stepped over the line by repeating the footage multiple times a day, day after day, even after it was revealed she was dehydrated with pneumonia, playing right into the Trump playbook, which has been attacking Clinton as weak. That’s not bad journalism; it’s deplorable exploitation of an event that might affect an election outcome and shows the shallowness of what passes for cable TV political reporting.
On September 15, when Clinton returned to the campaign trail and made a speech in North Carolina, MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki immediately after the speech explained why she was missing from action the past several days. Fair enough. A few minutes later, however, footage repeated of her stumbling when leaving the 9/11 memorial event and segued into her “deplorable” comments, ignoring what she said during the speech.
During all of cable’s coverage of Clinton supposedly wrong doings and health problems, one aspect was missing: actual facts. It’s as if the cable producers learned from William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer on how to practice Yellow Journalism.
Trump was exempt from cable’s “badgering technique” for many months. but no longer. Almost daily, the echo remarks about the GOP candidate not releasing his tax returns, problems with his so-called university and foundation is constantly repeated. What’s missing is actual reporting. At the very least, cable producers and reporters should read the investigative reporting led by the New York Times and Washington Post. Cable TV seemingly equates attractiveness of its on-camera talent to actual reporting.
Apparently, what cable TV wants is for candidates to bow to cable’s agenda wishes. That’s not journalism. Major print pubs report on what the candidates are doing and if they are not satisfied with candidate’s disclosures reporting teams are assigned to try to uncover additional information. That’s what journalism is. That’s what cable TV political reporting is not.
Cable TV has turned the campaign into a sit-com zeroing in on misstatements by the candidates, leaving the serous reporting to print publications.
Harping on the same subject(s) day after day, program after program without revealing any new information is not true journalism, unless you’re a cable TV political reporter.
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Arthur Solomon, a former journalist and senior vice president/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, is a frequent contributor to public relations and sports business publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at [email protected].
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