by Kevin Walker
University of California, Berkeley
1992
"It is the function of the news," observes Mark Miller, "just as it is the function of The Dukes of Hazard or The Price is Right or an ad for Pizza Hut, to sell us."1 Critics like Miller say that for this reason, television has undermined our electoral system. A "television journalist," to such critics, is an oxymoron. Those who work in the medium counter that they are merely trying to reflect reality to their audience, except that they are using different tools than print journalists. But this mirror analogy has been undermined by time, commercial, and organizational constraints. In politics, particularly, television has had enormous effects, and politicians have adapted to the medium. One result is that if a candidate uses TV well, he is criticized for being "slick"; if he doesn't, he is labeled "unelectable" or unsuited to modern politics.
But as Todd Gitlin notes:
So the question is, What effect has television had on an already impure American political system? Is "trash TV" or "trash politics" to blame for widespread voter discontent and apathy, vicious campaign tactics, a convoluted primary system, and the general breakdown of electoral accountability? Similar questions have been asked for at least thirty years; but the rules keep chaging along with technology and competition. The current election year provides a fascinating, if confusing, test case for studying televised democracy: It comes in the midst of a deep economic recession, a period of accelerating technological development, and dramatic changes around the globe. A war was reduced to a video game last year; this year, an amateur videotape turned several American cities into war zones. I will examine the current presidential campaign as one local station has covered it so far, with special attention to cultural, technological and organizational constraints, journalistic bias, the use of sources, and the use of language.
KTVU-TV has long had a successful 10 p.m. newscast, and only recently took on competition as two network affiliates joined them. While other local stations have cut costs in recent years, KTVU has added to its news department. "When I arrived some five and a half years ago," says the outspoken general manager, Kevin O'Brien, "I added to the reportorial staff, had a new set built, bought new equipment and spent a lot of money on promotion. Additionally, we've produced 40 specials and documentaries during each of the past three years." A face-lift to the newsroom last year added 60 percent more space, brought in state-of-the-art editing facilities, and cost $2.5 million. "The recession could have put the newsroom expansion on hold," O'Brien says, "but we needed more space. Now we can hold our own with any newsroom in town."3 With half the news budget of its competitors, KTVU produces what many regard as the best newscast in the San Francisco Bay Area. But state-of-the-art facilities alone cannot make for good reporting. There are several constraints on the station's political coverage.
The first is a broad cultural and technological phenomenon which John Leo calls "the Geraldoization of news".4 Increased competition -- not only from other news organizations, but from tabloid and "reality" shows -- has created what Gitlin calls a "highbrow/lowbrow cultural split" which, he says, divides the New York Times from the New York Post, and MacNeil/Lehrer from Geraldo Rivera.5 KTVU would seem to be especially susceptible to "Geraldoization," since as a Fox affiliate, it carries distinctively lowbrow, sensational programming. I would characterize KTVU's news, however, as "highbrow news for a lowbrow audience". It follows Fox programming most nights, and must therefore retain the Fox audience. But "old school" journalists like news director Fred Zehnder retain an air of highbrow "hard news" journalism. Still, competition continually presses KTVU, as with all stations, to move further into the lurid and sensational.
The presidential campaign so far has been undeniably lowbrow, especially regarding the Democratic front-runner, Bill Clinton. He has suffered charges of adultery, dodging the Vietnam draft, smoking marijuana, racism -- the list goes on. It could be argued whether this has been sensationalistic reporting, or whether there are simply a lot of skeletons in the Arkansas governor's closet, or both. But it should be noted that it was a tabloid newspaper -- the Star -- that began the first assault, with charges of an extramarital affair. The story was picked up by the "mainstream" press, and became so widely reported that no news organization could avoid it. This is known as "pack journalism." A tabloid has managed to set the tone of reporting in the campaign. The Washington Post's David Broder reluctantly heralded a "Tabloid Election," calling the Clinton media orgy "the latest, but surely not the last, step in the degradation of democracy by televised image-making, of substituting political thought for the audience catharsis of highly contrived dramas."6 This smacks of print journalism elitism, but my brief experience at KTVU convinces me that the conventions of television make such stories inevitable -- even at a station respected for its more substantive coverage.
KTVU producer Elvin Sledge explicitly differentiates "TV stories" from "newspaper stories": each contains subject matter that suits it to its medium. But big stories -- such as the infidelity accusations against Clinton -- transcend a single medium. When the Clinton infidelity story became so widespread that it was unavoidable, news organizations began to pursue others, for fear of being "scooped" by a tabloid again. It is the old conundrum of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," and it is full of irony. While decrying such lowbrow coverage, highbrow news organizations continued to indulge in it, for, to be scooped by a competitor is one thing, but to be scooped by a tabloid is unthinkable. Broder says that TV journalism serves to "convert the inner workings of government into minidramas of 30 minutes or less," and laments that newspapers have followed suit. The premium, he says, is on personality. And he makes another important point: Clinton's alleged affair got him ten free minutes of air time on 60 Minutes, while the other candidates were, in effect, penalized for having "proper" marriages.7
KTVU picked up the infidelity charge, as well as most of the subsequent ones against Clinton. After so many accusations, the anchors and reporters began to report them with a resigned tone of voice, a tone easily detectable by viewers. This is the highbrow response to lowbrow pack journalism; the fact that KTVU seemed to be using it against itself might have seemed strange to viewers, since the very fact of reporting the information would seem to justify it to the journalists. But in fact, KTVU has done little of its own political reporting up to this point. It has relied mainly on feeds and pre-produced "packages" from CNN and Fox network news. Viewers might never know this, however, since KTVU lays its own logo over these stories to make them look like KTVU's own. Even when the station has sent its own reporters on political stories, though, little more substance has resulted, as we will see.
The tabloid style of journalism which has ruled the campaign illustrates what Shanto Iyengar calls the "priming effect," by which television news sets the criteria for how viewers judge a candidate. This is a manifestation of "accesibility bias" -- the tendency by people, in this case journalists, to seek the most accessible information to use on a particular issue. Herbert Simon calls this "satisficing," a way people economize their thought by choosing simple, "accessible" information.8 But if "satisficing" means prying deep into candidates' personal lives, who, in the future, will submit themselves to such a "high-tech lynching," to use Justice Clarence Thomas' term?
Another manifestation of accesibility bias is agenda-setting. Iyengar says that television determines the theme and the issues that become voters' priorities.9 Even if TV doesn't tell people what to think, as the Economist observes, "it tells them what to think about".10 Do the people at KTVU feel it is their job to set the political agenda, and the terms for debate? News director Zehnder sums up the general consensus when he says, "That's really not our job. All we can do is select what information we think people should see, and try to make it interesting. We work with what we get, from CNN, from Fox, from our reporters, what we see on the wires, from the papers. We have to select those stories that are best suited to the medium, but also some that, perhaps, aren't. For those, you just have to make them as interesting as possible. I try to balance the need-to-know with stuff that has high 'interest value'." "Interest value" is a key word in the vocabulary of TV news: it is what makes "TV stories," as producer Elvin Sledge calls them.
CNN makes national political coverage easy for an independent station like KTVU, and generally, using CNN benefits evening news viewers who are not able to watch CNN all day; it also gives viewers without cable TV limited access to it. In this sense, the journalists are monitoring CNN for viewers and selecting a few stories from it. But because KTVU relies on national organs like CNN for political news, its news agenda regarding politics is essentially set by a relatively small group of journalists working in Washington and New York. (Although CNN's headquarters is in Atlanta, its coverage is top-heavy with official sources and an "inside-the-Beltway" mentality.) Hence there is virtually no coverage of third parties, for example, unless a rich, high-profile figure like Ross Perot should join one or form one. The TV press, including KTVU, eagerly accepted Perot as a legitimate candidate.
But who really sets the political agenda? Where does the political information on the news come from? Marxist theorists such as Herbert Marcuse argue that a relatively small group of political "elites" control the dissemination of information, forcing a "dominant ideology" on the "masses".11 In this model, KTVU might be viewed as one of what Louis Althusser calls "Ideological State Apparatuses," institutions which are for the most part autonomous, yet linked to others through "an unspoken web of ideological interconnections".12 Such theories rightly recognize the political and economic bases of media content, but tend to assume that audiences passively absorb the "dominant ideology". Our concern here, though, is with the other side of the process -- the shaping of the ideological content of news. In the jargon of the critical theorists, we are concerned more with the "formation of discourse" than the "reading of texts" done by audiences.
According to James Boylan, "Information, the raw material of news, usually turns out to be the peculiar property of those in power and their attendant experts and publicists".13 And, Gitlin adds, "As long as the agenda is set by the White House, or the campaign, the watchdog is defanged".14 The present campaign, though, seems less manipulated than in 1988; there have few stories comparable to the visits to flag factories in '88, for example. Still, virtually all of the coverage of candidates, except debates, is orchestrated by the candidates' staffs. KTVU's Zehnder admits that staged events "have no significance, but you have to put them on. There's no way to divorce yourself from it." If he were to protest this system by boycotting a staged "pseudo-event," he would risk being scooped by his competitors, and, ironically, probably charged with not performing his "public service" function. So he covers the photo ops and staged events. "I could be a great P.R. guy," he says, because he knows what kind of footage assignment editors go for.
Accordingly, much of KTVU's campaign coverage has centered around staged events. On February 12, for instance, the Noon News carried President Bush's announcement of his candidacy, but failed to pick up on the story of Clinton's draft-dodging letter, which appeared that morning on the Associated Press wire. Another staged story which the station carried, on February 14, had a more local angle: it was on the formation of a "draft Cuomo" commitee in Sacramento.
Zehnder sent reporter/commentator Bob MacKenzie to cover the New Hampshire primary. His decision to send a reporter, instead of relying on CNN or Fox, was a competitive one, he says: the other local stations had sent their own people too. He specifically chose MacKenzie because "people identify with him; he's recognizable." Indeed, MacKenzie's regular feature stories contain a certain charm and down-home feeling -- he makes viewers feel like neighbors, like he's telling them some inside gossip over the backyard fence. This makes him one of the station's most popular figures. MacKenzie's report from New Hampshire, however, was mundane, not different from a CNN report might have been. (MacKenzie did, however, find a free day to do a light feature from Boston during the trip.) After he returned, I asked MacKenzie how he went about getting the story in New Hampshire. He said he went only to the photo ops staged by the candidates, knowing full well that he was being used. "It's a big put-on," he said, "a scam". But the candidates had complete control over their coverage: they wouldn't sit for any additional interviews, much less from a reporter from California, a state whose primary was still months away. So MacKenzie merely wrapped a "stand-up" around the stock campaign shots he had gotten.
The president controls his media portrayal more than any other candidate, simply by virtue of his office. KTVU, for example, showed President Bush throwing out a first pitch at a baseball game on all its newscasts. Most other stations also picked it up. There was talk, one day in the newsroom, of trying to get Bush the candidate as a guest on Mornings on 2, which is a mixture of news, light features and interviews, along the lines of Good Morning America. Naturally, it was said, KTVU would bring the cameras to him, wherever he was. An exclusive interview with the president is a plum for a local station, and Bush knows how to exploit this, as Reagan did before him. During the campaign, Bush has given interviews to stations in states he has campaigned in, always controlled by his handlers, not the station. Thus far, KTVU has not received such an interview, but as I write, the California primary approaches, and the stations ratings are high, making it a key target.
One way to fight pseudo-events is to shift them from the center of the story. KTVU Reporter Rob Roth did a good job of this when covering Bush's visit to San Francisco on February 25. He pulled a few bites from what had become a stock speech, but then he focused on the many protests outside of the hotel where Bush was speaking. A vast array of protest groups had filled Union Square to feed off of Bush's inevitable media attention, and Roth was willing to indulge them. He gave an impression of the wide variety of different people that had gathered, although first showing, of course, the most telegenic people -- those who had gotten violent and were arrested. He included several interviews in his piece, including one of an Arkansas couple who couldn't understand the protests. There was more coverage of the demonstrations than of Bush's speech. I asked Zehnder about this angle, and he replied, "That was the story. If it was Omaha, we would probably have just shown Bush's speech, but it was San Francisco, and the protests were the story". This is another way of saying that there were better pictures to be had outside of the hotel, and this is analagous to the networks' coverage of the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco, when colorful-looking and -acting people outside Moscone Center turned the story into a picture of the city as a kind of circus. In Roth's story, such coverage was peripheral, but was still a story. To not cover such protests would verge on propaganda; people must be shown dissent when it emerges.
But a voiciferous minority can sometimes steal the show, unjustly. Roth found this out a few days later when he covered a meeting of state Republicans in Burlingame. Both the meeting and Roth's story were monopolized, visually and orally, by supporters of Pat Buchanan. They dominated Roth's February 29 report when they managed to nullify an endorsement of Bush and force a straw vote. But the next day, the straw vote showed that there were actually very few Buchanan supporters. They just knew how to get the cameras' attention with their chants and signs.
David Broder cites another way to counter the candidate-controlled coverage. He says news organizations should go directly to the audience, to find out what their concerns and perceptions are.15 KTVU has done this too, conducting a lot of what are called "vox pop" interviews. For instance, in March, MacKenzie took an informal poll, in San Francisco, of people's preferences for president. He reported, "What really surprised us was the impact of Jerry Brown.... When he left office [as governor], he couldn't win an office in Yreka or Barstow". He qualified his findings, however, by saying how small his sample was. Faith Fancher has done similar reports for the station.
This method, in a way, belittles the opinions of "regular people", by selecting from those caught on tape, and lumping them together. These are often contrasted with the opinions of "experts", which are far more prevalent on the news. MacKenzie, for instance, interviewed former Republican congressman Pete McCloskey one evening. McCloskey touted Pat Buchanan. I asked MacKenzie what the criteria are for choosing experts. He said that current office-holders or candidates are not allowed; other journalists are not chosen, because "we've got enough of 'em"; and he doesn't like college professors because "they tend to drone on... they're unsuited to the medium". Yet a few weeks later, on "Super Tuesday," MacKenzie had a U.C. Berkeley political science professor, Raymond Wolfinger, as a guest. MacKenzie later defended this choice, saying, "Well, he's good. He knew when to shut up." Janet Steele has observed how broadcast journalists misuse experts in two ways: "They seek out specialists who will reinforce their own understanding of a story, and they use academic authority to create the illusion of objective reporting". She says that TV reporters tend to view professors as impartial, when often they are not.16 This seems to hold true at KTVU. But the regular experts that appear seem, rather, to actively cultivate an aura of impartiality. The news director will often call them up when reporters haven't yet decided what angle to pursue on a story. This is preferable, however, to creating a false dichotomy of "this-side-says, the-other-side-replies". So it might be said that the use of experts results in more substance than comes from reporting the staged photo ops of candidates. In this sense, it is ironic that Mornings on 2 yields more substantive campaign coverage than an evening newscast.
Politicians have learned to avoid journalist-mediated coverage altogether by airing commercials that get their message directly to viewers. A campaign consultant says, "The press just isn't that important to political campaigns anymore.... Television stations devote very little time to political news." One candidate learned this when a well-promoted press conference was attended by only two reporters -- one from a trade publication and one from a newsletter for political insiders. No TV or radio reporters showed up.17 This might seem like a pleasant alternative -- reporters refusing to attend staged events. But campaign ads that skirt journalistic mediation are more insidious, as was very much evident in 1988. The press has retaliated by reporting on, and deconstructing, campaign ads. But as CBS' Leslie Stahl found out, the bitterest spoken critique can be completely immunized by placing it against staged pictures. Viewers may come away remembering the pictures and forgetting the words.18 Sometimes, too, campaign ads are merely reported on, not critiqued. This only doubles the ad's effectiveness. On February 25, KTVU ran several seconds of a Bush ad that bashed contender Pat Buchanan for his stance on the Gulf War. The ad was not countered, and Bush's own contradictions on the war were not even mentioned. Zehnder has written a memo to the news staff saying that all such ads should be set inside a graphic of a TV set and labelled with a "Campaign '92" overlay. This is in order to differentiate the ad from other ones that run during the newscast, (the "real ads"). But it does little to counter the power of such ads.
Another way candidates can, presumably, skirt journalistic mediation is in debates. But in this time of frenzied competition for viewers, TV stations have deemed televised debates as "death," Sledge's term for non-TV stories. So during this campaign, there have been a few televised debates, but each only ran on one network. KTVU has not shown any debates at all, not even the one that ran on CNN. What instead shows up is "debate bites" -- snippets of the most dramatic exchanges from a debate. With the emphasis on drama, such bites seldom contain substantive discussion, and are often rather firmly situated in the tabloid mode. Thus, probably the best-remembered bite has been the finger-pointing session between Jerry Brown and Clinton over the power of Clinton's wife in his campain and during his governorship. This was billed on KTVU as "the hottest confrontation yet" in the campaign. The un-moderated debate on Donahue, ironically, was regarded as the most substantive by many print journalists. Yet on KTVU it was belittled when anchor Dennis Richmond said, "Instead of a battle, it was more of a lovefest."
A less direct means of influence that politicians have is trying to "help" with a station's coverage. On March 30, KTVU received a letter on the stationary of Ron Brown, the Democratic party chairman. It contained some "talking points" (read: party propaganda) on Bush. There were comments telling how Bush has failed in some way on most every issue, and suggestions for coverage.
The biggest factors affecting political coverage, from the points of view of both politicians and journalists, are the technological constraints of the medium. References to "screen persona" and and "telegenic ability" are rampant in print stories about candidates. They are usually related to "electability" -- that mysterious quality that has been so prominent in this campaign. Paul Tsongas has been the unfortunate victim of this aspect of coverage. He was so un-telegenic that at one point, it was thought that disgruntled voters would shun handlers and manipulators and go for him. One Democratic strategist mused, "Who knows? Maybe the charisma of no charisma will work Maybe this is the year of the un-candidate".19 Alas, a few weeks later, Tsongas withdrew due to lack of support. He was often compared to Elmer Fudd, or Bob Newhart).
From the tele-journalist's view, Tsongas' withdrawal was not surprising. Zehnder, with years of experience in TV, knows full well the potentialities and limitations of his medium. In selecting stories, he has feet in both the "old school" of journalism, and the audience-driven, competitive side on television. He doesn't look at demographics, saying that he simply strives for the widest possible audience. Therefore, he selects stories that are believed to attract a broad viewership; those that might appeal only to a small segment are disregarded. As regards the campaign, this means that coverage of issues get little coverage. "If I had all 'need-to-know' stories, I would probably lose my job," he says. He cites KQED's failed Newsroom: "You basically had a bunch of newspaper reporters come in and talk, sometimes for eight to ten minutes each." This is "death," as KQED found out. Successful news shows, Zehnder says, don't try to emulate print journalism. "People must have other sources than TV," he says.
When it comes to picture-driven, staged photo ops, on the other hand, Zehnder says that such stories have "high interest value". He compares them to newspapers using color and light features on their front pages. What he overlooks, however, is that newspapers began the trend in response to TV. USA Today is explicitly modeled on TV, right down to its TV-shaped vending machines. Journalists automatically promote the medium in which they work, using its technology to the fullest for competitive reasons. And both TV news departments and political candidates share a longing for great pictures. It is easy for pictures to become an end in themselves, though. Too often, also, they are thrown together in a jumble of disconnected images.
This is related to the phenomenon of the shrinking "sound bite". Daniel Hallin has found that the average bite has gone from 43.1 seconds in 1968, to between 6.5 and 8.9 seconds this year, (a conservative estimate).20 This seems to hold true for CNN, KTVU's main source of campaign coverage. When KTVU's own reporters cover a poltical speech, they naturally make their own small bites, aided by their state-of-the-art editing technology. The practice has led candidates to begin speaking in bite-sized pieces. There were a few seconds of Bush's most dramatic words to a grocers' convention on February 3; a few snippets from his announcement of candidacy on February 12; and there have been endless small bites from all the other candidates. As a convention, the most dramatic words -- not necessarily the most important -- are chosen. Thus, for example, some Bob Kerrey and Buchanan supporters made the news when they "exchanged words" on February 15, while neither candidate was even shown. Some demonstrators protesting Buchanan's anti-Semitism made the news simply by being noisy; the story wasn't Buchanan's anti-Semitism, but the protesters, who came across as deviant. This concurs with the doctrine of "moderatism", one of Herbert Gans' "enduring values" in the news.21
Research by Ronald Lembo suggests that younger viewers are not only conditioned to seeing bites, but they enhance the effect by continually switching channels and watching more than one program at once, in a simulation of MTV. Asks Gitlin, "Does a fascination with speed, quick cuts, ten-second bites, one-second 'scenes', and out-of-context images suggest less tolerance for the rigors of serious argument and the tedium of political life?" Declining newspaper readerhship, he says, seems to confirm this.22
CBS's Leslie Stahl says that television must be "the whole newspaper," not just the headlines or the front page.23 But this view is quickly becoming dated. Zehnder has already divorced his newscasts from any connection with newspapers, saying that people should supplement their viewing with reading. Noon News producer Sledge, too, talks of "TV stories" that are nothing like newspaper ones. General manager O'Brien echoes this, saying, "The average consumer is interested in news only if it is packaged in a certain way."24 This shows a view of the news audience as passive "consumers" who want "packaged" goods. The Frankfurt School theories begin to have some credence here.
But what is a "well-packaged" story? According to Mackie Morris, a consultant who advises KTVU, a good TV story should be "about people", naturally. Video technology, he says, is "a new form of storytelling," though he doesn't allude to the truthfulness of the stories told. The reporter should have "storyteller identity", and construct his or her story with a clear beginning, middle and end, he says. Conflict and suspense are good, as are the elements of surprise and emotion. "Symmetrical construction techniques" should give balance to a story, he says; this is a new catch-phrase for "objectivity".
How might this relate to campaign coverage? The most obvious manifestation is the fascination with polls, and "who's ahead", as we will see. The need for drama was underscored on the day after "Super Tuesday," when, after everything went as expected, there was little exciting news to report. Sledge -- who admits being captivated by A Current Affair -- wished he had more than a meager CNN package showing the results and the requisite bites. By contrast, the high-pitched argument between Brown and Clinton was excitedly billed as "the hottest confrontation yet". This shows how the candidates have adapted to the need for drama. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson says, "You basically give the candidates this little box and say if you want to get coverage, you better fit through this hole. So the candidates just take that attack and slam it through that hole and boy, they get on the evening news." Another professor adds, "It's kind of a train wreck fascination. [It] raises the emotional intensity. And that's what reporters and everybody else likes".25
Another piece of advice Mackie Morris gives tele-journalists is, "steal, steal, steal!" He tells reporters, "If you see something you like, some technique or a different way of doing something, steal it!" But how far should a TV reporter take this advice? What about stealing from, say, commercials? This process might be automatic, anyway. "Like the commercials that pay for it," Mark Miller says, "TV's political coverage relies on two crude rhetorical strategies to keep the viewer tuned in -- titillation and flattery".26 Like it or not, TV news and advertising continue to move closer to each other, in what the Washington Post's Lloyd Grove calls "perpetual fusion".27 Then there are the news reports about campaign commercials; and commercials about commercials; and reports on commercials about commercials; and on and on. Each step is further removed from reality, a reality which was heavily constructed in the first place. The political ad, the news, and the ads that support it become indistinguishable, creating what Jean Baudrillard calls a "hyperreality" in which subjects are decentered and the real and the unreal become one.28
Iyengar adds that the "episodic" nature of TV news undermines electoral accountability by causing individuals to assign responsibility for political issues to indivudals, instead of to institutions or the whole of society. By contrast, C-SPAN, for example, is entirely "thematic," focusing on long-term trends and broader societal issues.29 It can immediately be seen that "episodic" requires good pictures; "thematic" means talking heads. And the objectivity convention dictates only episodic stories; thematic ones are left to C-SPAN and PBS documentaries. Besides, Sledge argues, people like episodic. To him, "thematic" is a synonym for "death," which means migrating viewers, and, hence, lower ratings. The nation's economy is "death". Iran-contra was "death". Few stories are exclusively thematic or episodic, but the way a story is framed makes all the difference, according to Iyengar.
One convention of KTVU and other stations that can multiply the effect of episodic coverage is to show certain episodes over and over again. It is common at KTVU to "pull file tape" from the past for a given story, in order to give background or just to have pictures to put words to. The Los Angeles riots have already become such a "package"; the same pictures are called up repeatedly for follow-up stories. Of course, such archive footage can be used to create thematic stories, and this is sometimes done, with great effect. But far more often, it is simply an automatic process in the construction of other episodic stories.
By far, the most common manifestation of the constraints of TV technology on politics is the over-reliance on polls. By focusing on the audience, they are assumed to balance the flood of political information that comes from those in the "power structure". But as another form of accesibility bias, this "horserace" angle can create what is known as the "bandwagon effect": it can make polls into self-fulfilling prophesies, in effect, telling voters whom to vote for. Because there is currently so much emphasis on "electability," polls tell who is and who is not electable. Why waste your vote on a candidate who is doomed to come in last place?
KTVU's campaign coverage has consisted of poll and primary results more than anything else. For instance, there was a February 4 AP poll showing Bush's economic plan failing with voters; the rise and fall of Paul Tsongas was duly noted in Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe polls; on February 14, a report of poll results made up the entire campaign coverage for the evening news. This is even more common on the shorter Noon News.
Zehnder says the horserace aspect is important: polls, he says, are often "all you've got." As for the bandwagon effect, he concedes, "You've got to have it that way." He compares the phenomenon to a murder trial [or, perhaps, a police brutality trial?]: once a suspect is shown on TV, the public instantly convicts him in their minds. It is inevitable, he says. "All we can do is put it on as clearly as we can, and hope the viewers can discern for themselves."
Gitlin cites broader societal factors in the ubiquity of polls. "This is a success culture bedazzled by sports statistics and empty of criteria other than numbers to answer the question, 'How am I doing?'"30 This is linked to the competitive nature of commercial news organizations. Miller adds that polls create "an overall conception of events simple enough to take in with one quick mental glance."31 What is especially dangerous is when polls set the tone for other coverage. A CNN Headline News package run by KTVU on February 12 was a typical story telling what the Democrats did that day, containing no polls. But a careful viewer could see that the candidates were shown according to their position in the polls.
Polls are also one more way of preserving "objectivity," of balancing the more journalist-mediated political stories. Perhaps KTVU's heavy reliance on polls is due to the fact that the journalist-mediated pieces can be so opinionated. MacKenzie is notorious for this. In one "perpective" piece, he managed to demolish Jerry Brown, and also belittle President Bush, (perhaps for "fairness"). The piece seemed simply to feed voter apathy, overall: he compared politics to baseball, and, not surprisingly, deemed baseball more worthy of our attention. MacKenzie admitted to me that he probably was contributing to voter discontent, but when he constructed the story, he said, he was drawing from that very discontent. He hoped viewers would clearly see that he was being humorous. (The piece was appropriately timed, since the next day, New York primary results were delayed by a baseball game.) MacKenzie had a chance to interview Brown on March 17, via satellite. Brown quickly turned it into a campaign speech, tailored specifically to Oakland. MacKenzie, however, had the last word, denouncing Brown as just another "professional politician". This just amplified the message that "the system is corrupt". Another commentator, Enid Gallagher, sent the same message when she declared in a commentary, "31 flavors and they all seem to taste the same."
In Brown's case, it may be that he challenges the very value structure MacKenzie and other journalists work under: he begs for thematic coverage, and questions the "enduring values" described by Gans, (including ethnocentrism, since Brown studied Buddhism). In Marxist terms, it might be said that he challenges the "dominant ideology," perhaps because he has viewed it from the outside.
David Riesman's "inside dopester" has become cynical and allergic to politics. He now practices, as Gitlin says, "knowing indifference." "Speaking up is less important -- and certainly less fun -- than sizing up.... One is already participating, in effect, by watching."32 This seems to describe MacKenzie to a tee, and the perspective piece described above serves as evidence.
But how to reconcile the fatalism and low turnout of voters with the anger so many people show, and the plethora of opinions they have on issues? One answer might be provided by Gans. His values of "moderatism" and "altruistic democracy," which pervade the news, can maintain in voters a view that change must come withing the existing structures. In Daniel Hallin's terms, the argument remains within a "Sphere of Legitimate Controversy" in which conflicts on issues are dictated by intra-governmental conflicts. Only rarely is the "Sphere of Deviance" penetrated, when the very foundations of "responsible capitalism" and "altruistic democracy" are questioned.33 The Los Angeles riots have provided one such rare instance. Except for Brown, the candidates' continual claims to be "outsiders" in no way place them in the "Sphere of Deviance", outside of the "dominant ideology"; they all are making challenges (or pseudo-challenges) within "Legitimate Controversy".
One other way journalists counter the power of politicians and handlers is to "expose" their tactics, in what Gitlin calls "metacoverage". This, he says, is like "handicapping coverage" to go with the horserace. And KTVU has indulged in it as much as any other news organization. Anchor Elaine Corral, introducing MacKenzie's report from New Hampshire, led in by saying, "That is what has come to be known as 'spin control,' and there's a lot of it going around tonight." Dennis Richmond added, "If you believe the candidates rather than the polls, there were more winners than losers in New Hampshire..." Faith Fancher, reporting the South Dakota primary results, also noted how candidates "managed to put a winning spin" on their finishes.
But more than this, whole packages have been done on, well, packaging. For example, Rob Roth, one day, focused on candidates' "charisma," and interviewed a "communications consultant". The consultant gave high marks to Jerry Brown, but said he needed more of Clinton's "wit". George Watson did a piece on "mudslinging," introducing it with the creative line, "Home of the sleaze, land of the negative campaign". In it, he interviewed Gitlin, who, ironically, said that perhaps journalists should pursue accusations of Bush's extramarital affair, while he simultaneously denounced sleazy reporting. But meta-coverage fails to show how corrupt the business of televised politics is, or how it could be changed; it merely shows how inevitable the manipulation is. It demonstrates TV's power by mocking it. It makes viewers feel like "inside dopesters" by showing the process, but serves as more of a promotion for the medium, the handlers, and the journalists who "expose" them.
The most subtle, and perhaps most powerful, shaping of political news by journalists and politicians alike occurs at the level of language. Most discourse is constituted in language, and political language is especially plastic. Mark Poster conceives of "modes of information" which change the configuration or "wrapping" of language. In our current electronic/digital mode, he says, those in government and the media enjoy a "priviledged position," and they use language to protect it. Through the use of code words and "priviledged discourse," media elites maintain the hegemonic ideology. Certainly the audience actively forms subjective meanings, but the nature of the media can delimit the range of possible "readings".34
In television journalism, language is inevitably tied to images. Even if a reporter uses a divergent script and set of pictures, Mackie Morris suggests using a "touch-and-go" technique: touching on the pictures in the script, then going on. The writers at KTVU are not so much writers as narrators. Sledge, for one, tells his writers to write directly to the pictures. This is the kind of technique that won Reagan the hearts of journalists and the votes of voters.
In writing, the ideal of the detatched observer still holds. Fancy terms like "symmetrical construction" have replaced "objectivity" and "fairness" to account for this. Writers write, and anchors deliver, their words "with an air of magisterial entitlement," as Boylan says.35 This is most evident in the use of attributions like, "Impressions are..."; "The perception is..."; and "Political experts say...". I asked Bill Weeks, who frequently writes stories on politics at KTVU, what these mean. He said that they are mostly cumulative, formed from what he reads in the papers and sees on TV and on the wires. Such a method may have led one writer to cause Elaine Corral to refer to Clinton casually as "Slick Willie" one night.
Weeks also tends to use the all-too-automatic cliches that Orwell called "dying metaphors," such as when he said Paul Tsongas might "throw his hat back in" the race. Asked about the phrase, Weeks could not explain what exactly it meant, confirming Orwell's belief that the users of such cliches are often ignorant of their meaning.36 More common, and more easily understood, are military and sports metaphors. One writer described how, in the "brutal New York primaries... a battle-scarred Clinton... ripped through all four states." Brown became, at one point, a "wild card player," an analogy to football, and, before that, to card games. Games of chance, in fact, are a popular analogy, such as the "horserace" or the "presidential pool". One writer used a more original metaphor, describing how Clinton "hit a New York pothole". Orwell would probably respect this. Care must be taken, though, to guard against misinterpretation: because writers write to the pictures, there is incentive to use metaphor and analogy more loosely, instead of using straight descriptions, as in radio. This can have the effect of either misleading viewers who aren't watching the screen, or making them look at it. Most often at KTVU, writers will draw attention to the action on the screen, as in "Democratic front-runner Bill Clinton spoke at this church today...".
I have discussed only one side of the formation of political ideology through the news. For a thoughtful discussion of how audiences interpret the "text" of TV news, I recommend Iyengar's study.37 For a more general discussion of audience interpretation of news, a good source is David Morley.38 The fact that the journalists at KTVU do not think about the audience from day-to-day is telling. Such concerns have, after years of experience, become automatic for Zehnder, and his stable of writers, reporters and producers learn to automatically please him. Similarly, all the news employees have internalized the "enduring values" that Gans describes, and they unknowingly transmit them in their stories. This is not an active process of hegemonic domination by a small group of elites, however. Audience reactions tend to set boundaries, and the whole process of value perpetuation is circular, encompassing the entire, overarching American culture.
The technological demands of the medium shape content more strongly. With the virtual absence of regulations on TV, and TV news in particular, competition will inevitably move toward more emphasis on dramatic images. Zehnder is right: television should not be compared to print, and TV news should not try to emulate print journalism. However, the effects that television continues to have on politics is severe. On one hand, the ubiquity of cameras gives more potential voters a chance, at least, to see and hear candidates. But this becomes a vicious circle, since a candidate in the presence of cameras will tend to alter his words and actions for them. Paul Tsongas stands as testimony to candidates who do not do so. The problems start when voters expect candidates and presidents to live up to their televised speeches and images.
According to the New York Times' Randall Rothenberg, "In a world saturated with manufactured images, efforts to make television a more serious, longer-winded approach to politics... present the classic conundrum about trees, forests, hearing and sound. If television's political coverage was improved but nobody watched, would it make a difference?"39 Ross Perot talks of creating a sort of "tele-democracy" if he is elected. The idea is a good one -- I believe people yearn for more direct access to the president on a regular basis. But it is doubtful such a system would indeed be two-way. Perot also assumes that the media will passively accept his idea; it is likely they would have strong reservations, and any acceptance would undoubtedly include several restrictions and qualifications. As Gitlin concludes, "Television may not have eroded all possibilities for democratic political life, but it has certainly not thrown open the doors to broad-based enlightenment".40
1. Miller, Mark. Boxed In, p.95.
2. Gitlin, Todd. "Blips, Bites & Savvy Talk," p.23. Dissent, Winter 1990, pp.18-26.
3. Quoted in Morch, Al. "Channel 2 exec isn't afraid of the time bandits." San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 2, 1992, p.D-5.
4. Leo, John. "The Geraldoization of News." This World, April 19, 1992, p.2.
5. Gitlin, 1990, p.24.
6. Broder, David S. "Tabloid Election." Washington Post (National Weekly Edition), Feb.2-9, 1992, p.4.
7. Ibid.
8. Iyengar, Shanto. Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues , pp131- 134. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991)
9. Ibid., p.2
10. "The Lesson of Willie Horton." The Economist, Jan. 25, 1992, p.31.
11. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. (London: Abacus, 1972)
12. Althusser, Louis, quoted in Fiske, John. "British Cultural Studies and Television," p.272. Channels of Discourse, pp.254-288. (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 1987)
13. Boylan, James. "Where Have All the People Gone?," p.34. Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1991, pp.33-35.
14. Gitin, 1990, p.22.
15. Quoted in Boylan, 1991, p.35.
16. Steele, Janet. "Sound Bite Seeks Expert." Washington Journalism Review, Sept. 1990, pp.28-29.
17. Sragow, Darry. "Press Coverage is No Longer the Key to Winning a Race," p.1. MediaFile, April/May 1992, pp.1,5.
18. See The Public Mind, Bill Moyers' PBS series; also, Gitlin, 1990, p.20.
19. Quoted by Jon Margolis. "Can Tsongas get elected?" San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 23, 1992, p.A-16.
20. See Tierney, John. "Sound Bites Become Smaller Mouthfuls." New York Times, Jan. 23, 1992, p.1.
21. Gans, Herbert. Deciding What's News. (N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1980)
22. Gitlin, 1990, p.25.
23. From The Public Mind
24. Quoted in Eisenberg, Ira. "From Happy Talk to Trash TV: The Selling of the News," p.68. San Francisco Focus, Oct. 1990, pp.64-69, 100-102.
25. Quoted in Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Candidates Learn that Attacks Attract Attention." New York Times, Feb. 29, 1992, p.9.
26. Miller, p.97.
27. Quoted in Boot, William. "Campaign '88: TV overdoses on the inside dope," p.29. Columbia Journalism Review, Jan./Feb. 1989, pp.23-29.
28. See Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information, p.63. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990)
29. Iyengar, 1991 (op. cit.)
30. Gitlin, 1990, p.18.
31. Miller, p.99.
32. Gitlin, 1990, p.21.
33. Hallin, Daniel. The 'Uncensored War': The Media and Vietnam. (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1986)
34. Poster, 1990. (op. cit.)
35. Boylan, 1991, p.5.
36. Iyengar, 1991 (op. cit.)
38. Morley, David. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. (N.Y.: Routledge, 1988)
39. Rothenberg, Randall. "Politics on TV: Too Fsst, Too Loose?," p.4. New York Times, July 15, 1990, pp.1,4.
40. Gitlin, 1990, p.26. (op. cit.)