CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” aired at 7pm each night, has lately added a short segment called “Campaign Playbook.” Cramming as many lame football metaphors as possible into the allotted time, the spot takes a quick look at each candidate’s day, then tells viewers which one had the “Play of the Day.”
Yesterday, reporter John Mercurio showed sound bites of President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi speaking in the Rose Garden, then presented a clip of a new ad from Kerry, and explained that the candidate himself was “benched” for much of the day with a cold. The verdict:
“The play of the day goes to Bush. He had the top draft pick, the Rose Garden photo-op, and a clean bill of health.”
Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that trivializing the campaign — not to mention the carnage in Iraq — by treating it as if it’s a football game is beyond borderline offensive.
But there’s another reason to be repelled by the latest CNN stunt. The “Play of the Day” award seems to go to the best PR gimmick dreamed up by either campaign (note that “Rose Garden photo-op”, on a day of unrelentingly grim news from Iraq) rather than the candidate whose argument is deemed stronger.
This gets things exactly backwards. The media’s job is to sort through the elaborate wall of PR stunts that the campaigns throw up, not to reward stagecraft by basing coverage around an assessment of its effectiveness, thus giving campaigns a further incentive to offer style over substance.
This phenomenon applies more generally to the news media’s coverage of the campaign. Time and again, reporters give positive coverage to the campaign that appears more effective at staging events or at handling the press. A candidate whose campaign doesn’t create attractive photo-ops is judged ineffective.
There’s an element of self-interest involved. The media, particularly TV news, depends on well-staged photo-ops and sound bites. Without them, their product is less compelling. If Campaign A does a better job than Campaign B of giving the media what it wants, it makes sense to reward Campaign A by declaring it the “winner.”
Never mind asking questions that might actually relate to what the next four years might be like under each administration…or trying to assess whether their ideas make sense…or what do experts believe to be the possible effects of their proposals?
That would involve real reporting, not to mention making substantive judgments, instead of relying on cheap stunts like declaring who had the better PR day.
–Zachary Roth
Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.