I had a bit of a revelation a couple of days ago, about the nature of national television news as it stands today, at least as it concerns political/public policy stories. Lots of you have probably had this revelation already, but, hey, I work in the media, and sometimes can't see the forest for the trees.
I knew President Obama was going to do a grand sweep of the Sunday morning talk shows to push his health care reform plan. I also knew there was no way I'd be able to watch any of those shows; that sort of leisurely Sunday morning television viewing ended for me three children ago. So I figure I'd catch the highlights, so to speak, on one of the network evening news programs. Lots of times, there isn't a lot of big news on Sundays, so rehashes of the morning panel shows are pretty common. And I really wanted to find out what Obama was saying about rescuing health care reform -- what changes he would accept in the bill, what he would consider unacceptable, etc. So at 6:30, my wife and I sat down to watch ABC News.
What we found out about the policy points of the health care legislation as it stood at that moment was exactly, precisely, nothing. Instead, the coverage immediately began with commentary about whether President Obama was overexposing himself by being on so many programs at the same time. Media experts followed political consultants talking about how it was or wasn't a good political move for the White House to be doing this, and how it was impacting the polls, and how the rest of the media was responding to those polls... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Not a word from any doctors, patients, uninsured people, or people dropped by their insurance companies. It was just the horse race, just the politics, with none of the policy.
When they went back to the studio after the video report, there were two people joining the anchor at the desk. Finally, I thought, some policy or medical or insurance experts who can actually bring me up to date on the status and content of the legislation itself, and how the President was presenting it. But I was wrong. It was two more media people -- Matt Taibbi, a very good reporter for Rolling Stone, and a young woman, whose name I don't remember, whose qualification for being there seemed to be that she had a website. We watched as they proceeded to spend two or three more network television minutes debating how the media was responding to the president's appearances and what effect this would have in the polls. It was the media analyzing the media analyzing the polls measuring people's responses to ... the media. I learned nothing about the health care bill.
This is what has come of network news cutbacks on hard news gathering, and the pumping up of the cheaper-to-produce opinion gabfests that now fill the cable news channels, and, increasingly, as I discovered Sunday, the network news programs themselves: namely, lots of talk -- not many facts.
People have long criticized local news, where I've spent my career, for focusing too much on crime and fires and weather, and certainly some of those criticisms are justified. But at least when we tell you about a fire, we're telling you about the fire, not about how the fire is being covered by the media or how it impacts the fire commissioner's approval ratings; it's the news, the facts, the lives it impacts ... and that's pretty much it. After what I saw on ABC Sunday night, I've never been so proud to be in the sector of the media I'm in.
Try this out: whatever national news you watch, whatever programs on whatever cable channel, pledge to only watch the segments that give you the hard facts or discussions about the hard facts (including opinion) concerning any particular story. The minute the focus changes to "Let's see what the media is saying about the media coverage of this topic," turn it off, or change the channel. I think you'll find you have some extra time on your hands. Maybe more time to hang out with your family on Sunday morning.