If you tune in to MSNBC today, you might see a black-and-white ticker occasionally pop up in the corner of your screen, counting down to tonight’s primetime PRESIDENTIAL NEWS CONFERENCE. (Get excited, America: it’s now only seven hours, eleven minutes, and thirty-seven seconds away!)
The Obama administration has continued the practice of holding live, televised conferences: Robert Gibbs meets the press most weekday afternoons, and tonight’s affair (now only seven hours, ten minutes, and forty-two seconds away!) will mark Obama’s second primetime presser.
It’s a given that these conferences are, at their core, political theater, as much about spectacle as the exchange of information and perspectives. But: what value, if any—political or cultural—do they have? Would citizens be better served if they weren’t televised? And given their current, live-TV format…how might press conferences be improved?
On the contrary, it is necessary for the administration to go in front of the American people in as many public venues as possible. The clownish White House Press Corps can't be trusted to do any real reporting, so busy are they following Politico's agenda like stooges. Their obsession with trivia and fluff has reached intolerable levels and they are pretty much as worthless as actual reporters as the clownish Cramer and Santelli. In fact, Tapper and King and Ed Henry are the political equivalent of Cramer and Santelli.
Jay Rosen has been writing about this Ideology of Fluff, you can catch up here:
http://friendfeed.com/e/d4b1284f-f4f0-7d62-cc2e-f03dbf5e7239/In-the-ideology-of-fluff-outrageous-irony-plays-a/
#1 Posted by Tom, CJR on Tue 24 Mar 2009 at 08:06 PM
(After the presser.) My goodness! Can Ed Henry's seething dislike of Obama be more obvious? And what is WITH the demographics of the TV guys? All 35-45-year old white men with a very obviously inflated view of themselves, all with the same hairdo. The print people asked pretty good questions, as did the foreign press - on Israel, the lady from Univision (missed her name) on immigration, Stars & Stripes about the military and vet affairs. Even Mike Allen, the king of Washington political gossip, did better than the silly "sacrifice" question by Chuck Todd and Chip Reid, who hand-carried a list of Republican complaints to read about the deficit 8 years from now. Eyeroll. Chip Reid, after this disastrous performance and his handwringing, petulant defense of Dick Cheney last week, can clearly be regarded from here on out as the resident Republican mouthpiece, from John Boehner's pen to Chip Reid's mouth.
The TV guys are clearly outclassed by professor Obama, who gives them detailed substantive answers that are too difficult for these blow-dried prima donnas. No wonder they dislike him. Bush and Perino spoonfed them easy talking points while stroking their massively inflated but tenderly fragile egos. How did television journalism fail so spectacularly?
#2 Posted by Tom, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 05:28 AM
I suppose I should have expected the economy to be subject number one, though many of the questions were plain silly or "gotcha" questions. I am appalled that no one raised the issue of "state secrets", using the immkigration laws to bar foreign scholars from entering the country, over-classification of govt. docs, etc. No one in the press seems to care about any of these civil liberties issues.
#3 Posted by Bill Fisher, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 10:04 AM
Too often these press conferences seem like a game of bait the president. Ask questions, sure, but don't try so obviously for brownie points. I noticed clatter already about Obama's use of a teleprompter (a great idea considering how complex his job is), how he was lecturing us not inspiring us (these are serious times, aren't they?). Too much emphasis on how he "performed" and not on what he said. What bugs me the most was how shrub got off so easy and no one wanted to point out how stupid he was and is....
#4 Posted by Louise Bruderle, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 10:38 AM
Haven't listened to a president in well over 8 years, but still need the balm of hearing intelligence speaking intelligently -- and even thinking about concerns! Surprise myself by not having missed an Obama press conference yet. Wish the questions would be harder -- what about war crimes of previous admin?
#5 Posted by Eileen O'Sullivan, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 10:41 AM
Television "journalism" is a minute-by-minute search for sound bytes and "gotcha" moments. The egos of those promulgating this trash are superceded only by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street. It would be too much like work to ask them to actually do deep political reporting or bring to light real issues that they must do legwork for. One day the big story is the president's laugh during an interview on the economy, the next day the story is how caustic he was in answering Ed Henry's ill-informed question. Chuck Todd, Chip Reid, Dana Bash, Ed Henry, Jake Tapper, Savannah Guthrie, Susanne Malveaux, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Bret Baier, Major Garrett, ad nauseum - they all rely on the most ideological, superficial sources and talking points to feed their daily reports. It's entertainment. It's not news. And it's CERTAINLY not informed reporting. And all of this is a terrific waste when we have a deeply intellectual president who has real vision and enormous capabilities, a cabinet with more talent and know-how than any we've seen lately, and our country is in the throes of existential problems. We have never needed good journalism more than we do today, and our country is being failed by an incapable, peurile Fourth Estate. I think President Obama gets it. If he doesn't get out there and tell it like it is, no one else will.
#6 Posted by Diane Wanek, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 10:58 AM
Two fundamental limitations diminish the value of presidential pressers. The first is the administration's ability to structure the proceeding to accommodate the message. The second is journalistic compliance and timidity. That being said, the presser remains the only venue that encourages presidential accountability in full view of the voting public. As such the presser, however diminished, continues to provide a valuable public service.
#7 Posted by David Blythe, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 12:07 PM
Sure, televised press conferences are political pageantry masquerading as Something More; sure, they're about performance--and, really, brand solidification, on both sides--as much as they're about the candid exchange of information. The points made above are well taken.
But. Pageantry and performance aren't always a bad thing (cf Campaign 2008, Campaign 1960, Campaign 1789, etc.); and press conferences--political theater in the guise of, you know, A Face-off between the President and Intrepid Denizens of the Fourth Estate--are, to my mind, valuable. Not just because of the (limited) intellectual exchange they involve--even when no news is broken, the way the White House chooses to frame its answers alone is telling and, occasionally, news in its own right--but also because of their entertainment value itself.
No, seriously. Televised, spectacular-in-the-lowest-sense press conferences--particularly when they take place in primetime, and even more particularly when they're Twittered and live-blogged and, generally, made spectacles of--aren't just political exercises; they're cultural touchstones. They have more in common, in that sense, with the Super Bowl or the Oscars--or, indeed, with presidential nominating conventions--than they do with the often dull and dreary behind-the-scenes research/discussion/investigation that generally defines the real work of White House correspondency. Even at their least informative and most performative, press conferences, like other TV shows, offer a communal experience.
That experience, sure, might be a vague celebration of democracy's workings--rather than, you know, an exposition of those workings themselves--but, still, if nothing else, it connects people to the democratic process. Nearly fifty million viewers don't lie.
And that, all things considered, is a good thing. We're in a moment, after all, in which the demands of democracy--that citizens be not only informed about politics, but engaged in them--find themselves, even more than they have in the past, in competition against a culture whose members often lack the time or the inclination (or both) to be, in the classic sense, good citizens. A moment in which our political structures all too often find themselves thwarted by our social ones. If a televised press conference exposes people to politics--or, even better, gets people excited about our political system, in the way that All the President's Men got people excited about journalism--then that's to the good. There's nothing wrong with a little mythology. As long as we recognize, when it comes to press conferences, that the scene playing out before us is as much about fiction as it is about fact.
#8 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 01:29 PM
@Tom: As I said, the points you made above are well taken. Quick follow-up to one thing, though (since follow-ups were a theme last night): I'm wondering, what about his questioning suggested Ed Henry's "seething dislike of Obama"?
#9 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 01:40 PM
@Megan: I agree with the idea that the produced spectacle of the Obama press conferences has the utility of sustaining citizen involvement, etc. And to that end, I suggest that we have some more daring cutaways and dramatic camera pans during these things.
@Louise: I think you make a good point about how the focus is on how Obama performed, rather than on what he said. It cleaves with the quasi-consensus this morning that the presser had no news value, that it was just another opportunity for Obama to lay out his points. But because of that mentality--that this is, functionally speaking, really more Obama-meets-the-people than Obama-meets-the-press--I think there's a sensibility among much of the press that the most important takeaway is... how Obama performed. Take out the news quotient and you have to replace it with something that changed or morphed or developed -- and that's where words like tone/attitude and adjectives like "professorial" seem to start taking precedence.
But again, I don't necessarily think this arrangement is a bad thing, if you consider the upsides. Prime time press conferences (should we just go ahead and call them spectacles?) show how the administration thinks (in terms of reporters called, follow-ups allowed), and it affords an opportunity for its 50 million viewers to (learn to) deconstruct spin, pinpoint evasions, etc. And I think that's a good opportunity.
#10 Posted by Jane Kim, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 02:31 PM
The so-called questions from journalists seem to live in the realm of the old question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" As an old journalist I feel embarassed by some of the lengthy, multi-faceted questions, which seem in my mind to be personal puff pieces rather than timely questions. But Obama did well in answering them, even if there is no answer to the question.
#11 Posted by Gerald Burke, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 02:53 PM
One thing I'd add to Jane's cutaway/pans suggestion: I'd love it if we could get past the whole list-of-pre-selected-reporters approach and make the questioning process truly random. (Wonder why Obama called on Univision's Lourdes Meluza last night, mere hours after his Homeland Security chief outlined a new Mexican border patrol initiative? Hint: it wasn't to talk about Afghanistan.) Press conferences seem like they're scripted for the simple reason that, to an extent, they are: you can predict (or, at least: prepare) fairly easily what kinds of questions, say, a reporter from Stars & Stripes--or National Catholic Reporter, or Cat Fancy, or what have you--will ask. If Obama can choose which reporters get a question, he can choose, essentially, which topics he addresses. And which he avoids.
But wouldn't things be so much more suspenseful--which is to say, so much more entertaining--if he couldn't? Wouldn't it, more to the point, add to the information-gathering capabilities of press conferences if neither we nor the president knew in advance which reporters would be asking questions?
And--in a truly, truly ideal world--wouldn't press conferences be infinitely more fun to watch if they involved a dapperly-clad Rahm Emmanuel picking numbered ping-pong balls from one of those Lotto-on-TV-like air machines?
Yes. Yes. And: yes.
#12 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 03:45 PM
@Megan: That's a good point, and I do think the Lourdes Meluza example is the most telling on that front from last night -- I was watching the live feed on the NYT web site last night, and the NYT news headline announcing the administration's new steps on Mexico dovetailed nicely/predictably with Obama calling on Univision.
And another point along the same lines. Questions from the foreign/niche press tend to be considered freebies for the president (though Howard Kurtz liked last night's), but that has more to do with the streamlined question-choosing method that Megan mentions than the subject matter of the questions themselves. If the president didn't know who was asking questions, foreign/niche press questions wouldn't be as easily shunted into the let-him-catch-his-breath category, and in my opinion, would go a long way towards leveling the question-asking playing field.
#13 Posted by Jane Kim, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 04:11 PM
@Jane: Good point. Along those lines: it was rather shocking, I thought (as did many others) how absent Iraq, Afghanistan, and foreign-affairs-in-general were from last night's conference. (Especially considering how many questions focused, in a verging-on-redundant way, on the economy.) Having a random selection of questioners would at least discourage, if not full-on prevent, another such topic-myopic event.
#14 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 04:30 PM
@Megan,
Please realize that the general public, myself included, does not view these press conferences as political theater. The press may think so, but that's an indication of their jaded, cynical outlook (or affectation, I can't tell). We citizens are desperate for real information about issues that are profoundly affecting our lives. Your colleagues are a maddening, destructive interference with that. Please understand that. When your colleagues behave as though it is all about them and what they think and whether they are bored, it discredits your entire profession, because these idiots are your most public face. To write this kind of stuff up as meaningless political theater is not at all helpful to the audience. (Though, I grant that the general public isn't your audience on this blog. That you skip over the meat and report on the fluff is still maddening, though.
As for Ed Henry, he makes no effort to hide his contempt of Obama and Gibbs, and I think that was obvious last night in his demeanor and his contemptuous question. His TV reporting is done with a sneering, contemptuous attitude. Look at his behavior again. Maybe you know him personally and so give him a pass, but he isn't hiding it, that's for sure.
#15 Posted by Tom, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 04:52 PM
@Tom: Thanks for the reply. To be clear, I have no doubt whatsoever about citizens' desperation for information; as a citizen myself, I share it. It's just that, as far as I'm concerned, press conferences simply aren't the best conduits for that information. Their (relative) brevity inspires (relatively) short answers; their live-TV-ness encourages guardedness in answers (so as to avoid the politician's worst nightmare: Making a Gaffe); their planned-out-in-advance nature, as I mentioned above, tends to inhibit the kind of frank, content-rich exchanges that constitute the Platonic-ideal version of the presidential press conference.
And then there's the TV Factor--the tendency of a television camera to convert anything and anyone before it into a celebrity and, in some sense, a commodity. It's because of the camera, I think, that last night's event--and every other conference I can think of--was as much about performing as informing.
To my mind, the TV Factor is the key culprit in televised press conferences' informational deficiency. How can we expect reporters to get, and politicians to give, the kind of necessary, urgent, relevant information that the public needs and deserves using a platform that inherently discourages such an exchange? We can't, really, I'd say; hence--yes--political theater.
So this citizen would rather get her information about the White House and its doings the old-fashioned way: in text, and in full sentences, rather than sound bites.
As for Ed Henry and his colleagues...we could debate ad nauseam about whether DC reporters seem self-aggrandizing and limelight-loving because they are that way or because the current White House Press Corps system makes them seem that way. Just as we could debate ad nauseam whether Henry was being "tough" last night or "sneering," and whether, in that, he was being a good reporter or a "contemptuous" one. I don't think either question is resolvable (the first because, as far as I'm concerned, it's a chicken/egg thing; the second, because the only one who can answer to Ed Henry's emotions is Ed Henry).
I appreciate where you're coming from, though, Tom, and I wonder: do you think there's any way to remedy the basic model for televised press conferences in a way that would make them valuable to you, the citizen? Or are they--and the press corps--beyond repair?
#16 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 06:20 PM
@ Megan,
Thanks for asking. I'd like to address a couple of your points and let me apologize for the lengthy response. I'm a harsh media critic, but a whole lot of citizens out here in the real world are desperate for your profession to save yourselves. I'm somewhat more optimistic about print journalists. but yes, I think that television "journalism" is beyond repair.
First, you say "...as far as I'm concerned, press conferences simply aren't the best conduits for that information. " and then "So this citizen would rather get her information about the White House and its doings the old-fashioned way: in text, and in full sentences, rather than sound bites" Well, that's fine. Where do we get that? I happen to think that there was a lot of information that came out of the presser, which I watched on CSPAN, information that was valuable to me. You may have already known everything there was to know about the administrations policies and plans, and thus the presser was irrelevant to you, but I don't, and it was valuable to me. You see?
So you tell me where we get this information. Please, tell me who is going to write that information that we both want and need. Have you seen the coverage today? Let me ask you to read this fine piece of journalism by Stevan Collinson, who got the last question and who works for a French wire service. (It's in English.) Compare his piece to, say, Peter Baker's snippy little atrocity, absolutely, utterly without substance or information. Baker's coverage isn't unique, I saw not a single American media outlet convey a shred of information about the substance of the presser. Compare with this:
Obama touts economic progress at press grilling
So while Baker and Nagourney were fuming about not getting a question, and everyone else in Washington was chasing Drudge links with their "boring" "teleprompter" and other fluff, Collinson was writing this for HIS reading audience. See the difference.?
You say "How can we expect reporters to get, and politicians to give, the kind of necessary, urgent, relevant information that the public needs and deserves using a platform that inherently discourages such an exchange?" Well, you can see Collinson's piece, which gave necessary, urgent, and relevant information that I need and deserve. What I'm saying is, there's nothing wrong with press conferences, it is the journalists who are at fault here. White House journalists have no standards, no real accountability, and have, I think, forgotten how to do reporting at all. They think it's all about them. Well, I don't care at all what they thought about the president's demeanor, or the setting, or whether he "seemed" wary, or "seemed" tired, or whether he read or didn't read from a teleprompter. It's irrelevant. I want to know what he said.
About Ed Henry, you are right, he may just have a repellent, obnoxious personality and a knack for asking irrelevant, idiotic questions, but I've been watching him work for awhile and his personality flaws weren't so apparent during the past administration. Indeed, he was very polite and deferential. He didn't have much substance even back then, however. I'd hardly call his "question" a "tough question." It was a confrontation, a gotcha, and any answer given wouldn't have done a thing to advance anyone's knowledge or understanding. That makes him a waste of space and good oxygen.
Is the press corps beyond repair? You tell me.
Again, I apologize for the length.
#17 Posted by Tom, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 07:58 PM
Oh, one more thing, Meghan, about how it is the journalist's fault if they don't "get any news." Steven Collinson, who got the last question on Israel and whose piece I linked above, also wrote this piece about the answer he got to his question:
Mideast peace not getting easier: Obama
Another piece of good, solid journalism. Takes Obama's answer and synthesizes it with with the bigger picture, and brings in some analysis about how it might be received.
Point being, the game that the White House press plays is childishly conspiring how to "knock the President off his game." Well, shouldn't it actually be to get information? I mean, who are they supposed to be doing this for, their own self-serving insider gossip, or to get information for their audience? I think the answer is obvious.
#18 Posted by Tom, CJR on Wed 25 Mar 2009 at 11:04 PM
@Tom: Thanks (again) for the thoughtful reply. My colleague Katia made, in one of our news meetings the other day, what I think is a key point to our current conversation: that the vast, vast majority of White House news is broken not before the cameras, but behind the scenes, via one-on-one interactions between members of the press and members of the administration (usually lower-level members who are experts in whatever topic the reporter is reporting on). I, for one, am much more interested in the news resulting from those interactions--information from people "in the trenches" of the White House, as it were (rather than from spokespeople like Gibbs)--than I am in the quick-take, camera-ready, soundbite-happy "news" that tends to come out of press conferences themselves.
Now, it's true, as you note, that some news--or, at least, some useful information--can come out of the White House pressers. The Collinson pieces you point to are good examples of that. But Collinson could have produced those same pieces--arguably, even better, richer pieces--if he'd conducted his exchange with Obama behind-the-scenes, rather than live, in front of 40 million people. If the measure of a presidential press conference's value is the quality of the answers the president gives to the questions he's asked--and, indeed, what other metric is there?--then the public would have been equally well served--and possibly better served--had Collinson been able to bypass the press conference, had he been able to ask his question (and, more to the point, had Obama been able to answer it) in a more intimate environment.
Except, again, asking the question behind-the-scenes would mean that we, the public, would miss out on the communal-event aspect of the press conference. And on a smidge--though just a smidge--of transparency.
But that's what I meant about the TV cameras: they change the dynamic, in the way that having even one girl in a roomful of guys can, ever so slightly, change the dynamic. Televised press conferences serve spectacle and, broadly, the civic psyche; they don't (very well) serve information.
Which is not to say, by the way, that I think the current system for political reporting--behind-the-scenes conversations between the press corps and those in power leading to discrete reports--works terribly well in terms of "serving information." I don't. I'm excited about the possibilities represented by pro-am journalism and the like when it comes to Washington and political reporting; I think and I hope that the next couple of years will bring some much-need innovation (read: change) to political-reporting-as-usual.
In the meantime, though, I largely agree with you, Tom, about the current state of affairs: the reportorial gotcha-ism you mention is rampant, and by no means limited to television journalism. And many of yesterday's assessments of the press conference were, indeed, disappointing and baffling and, in some cases, infuriating. (See my colleague Liz's roundup of those assessments on Campaign Desk.) The pronouncements of reporters' boredom, etc. at the conference skewed superficial and snarky and completely point-missing; in that, they reinforced the negative stereotypes of the White House press corps--and, in some sense, of the press corps more generally--as entitled and pompous and glib. It's incredibly frustrating, all around. Not to mention self-defeating.
My guess, though, Tom, is that what these stories were trying to do, at least, was the same thing I'm trying to do when I write about the theatrical character of press conferences: call a spade a spade, and recognize that those conferences are, to a large degree, political spectacle more than anything else--for all the reasons I mentioned above. That doesn't excuse yesterday's arrogant assessments, by any means; but, wh
#19 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Thu 26 Mar 2009 at 09:21 AM
Megan, I truly appreciate this thoughtful exchange. I of course, didn't mean to imply that I thought that a presidential press conference was the be-all and end-all of news reporting. Certainly the major thrust of news is gathered at the lower levels. There is, however, a great deal to be gained for us outsiders to see and hear an exchange of views with intelligent question-askers, what the president says, how he answers/doesn't answer. That isn't trivial information, because most citizens aren't that interested in the weeds of policy, you see. That demands, however, that the questions be intelligent and designed to elicit information, which the White House press fails to do, in their trivial, self-aggrandizing pursuit of the Gotcha! You know, Gotchas! are not useful for the viewing audience. And, I'm certainly not trying to make the case that a press conference should end the gathering of information.
One thing I think that Washington forgets is that most citizens are not constantly tuned in to political news. So you probably knew all about his positions and policies, but of course us citizens have other things to do: jobs, children, families, recreation. Just because Washington knows this stuff, it needs to be repeated and presented to people in forums and times where the information is accessible to them.
A nighttime press conference is ideal: speeches are fine, but the questions should help flesh out the context and details. Leno is good, but it wasn't that policy-focused. Town Halls are good, but reach a limited audience. The internet is good, for those who are motivated to use it. ALL venues can be useful and informative.
And, if I may be so bold, who are YOU to decide whether that "political spectacle" is useful for ME, informs MY views. I submit that you and your colleagues don't have that right. No longer will you act as MY gatekeeper to the information I want and need. I make that determination, you see. The imperious dismissal of the usefulness of this venue smacks of desperation to retain that gatekeeper role. (No offense to you, I am speaking generally.)
And I must say, Meghan, that your colleagues haven't done a very good job reporting on those "one-on-one interactions between members of the press and members of the administration" either. What am I to make of all this granting of anonymity for the purpose of personal attack? What am I to make of all this assertion-reported-as-fact and reporter's opinion-stated-as-fact? The wholesale stenography of press releases? The ignoring and outright covering-up of important stories? on and on. I'd gladly give up press conferences for a renaissance of real journalism. Fair trade, when it happens.
#20 Posted by Tom, CJR on Thu 26 Mar 2009 at 09:58 AM
White House pressers are important, no, crucial to the public to hear the President directly, see him work with media folks, and see media folks in action too: 1) Let's us get behind the scenes and make our own assessment of how each is doing his job and 2) let's us hear the the questions and answers straight from the horses' mouth. No middleman/woman.
#21 Posted by Sally Ballin, CJR on Thu 26 Mar 2009 at 03:42 PM
I don't have time to follow what the President and Congress are doing. It is great to have an articulate person on TV who tells me what is going on. What better person than the President.
Stop with the phony outrage.
#22 Posted by Mayme, NY, CJR on Sun 29 Mar 2009 at 06:30 AM
I certainly agree with the critics of the TV guys and their "gotcha" questions. It's almost as if they're bending over backwards not to seem "soft" on the President. I also agree with the poster who referred to the "Politico" -style coverage. Is this the best we can do in this perilous hour?
Obama excels in the role of Teacher-in-Chief, and I don't think we can overestimate the vital importance this function can play in a democracy -- no thanks to the Jake Tappers of the world.
Maybe we should rethink the spectacle and just have the President sit down with David Brooks for an hour a week.
#23 Posted by Elizabeth, Chicago, CJR on Mon 30 Mar 2009 at 12:09 PM