Recent commentary from National Journal:
Social Studies: Nice Process In Florida -- Too Bad About the Candidates, by Jonathan Rauch (December 13, 2000)
The surprise has been how well most of the actors have behaved, and how many alarms have been false.
Legal Affairs: No Exit -- How the Supreme Court Boxed Gore In, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 13, 2000)
The D.C. Nine have sent a subtle, but fairly unambiguous, signal that Al Gore's hopes are doomed.
Political Pulse: Time Is Running Out for Gore, by William Schneider (December 13, 2000)
While Gore is arguing the facts, Bush is arguing the law. But Bush has the clock on his side.
The Campaign: A Fond Look at the Nagging Riddle of Al Gore, by Carl M. Cannon (December 13, 2000)
The striking thing about Gore is that he has always been such an unnatural politician.
Legal Affairs: Bush vs. Gore -- A First Draft for the Justices to Consider, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 6, 2000)
We're judges, not magicians, and so we are in no position to somehow anoint the legitimate president.
Media: Tidal Wave? Don't Bet on It, by William Powers (December 6, 2000)
Why the hot news of a liberal columnist declaring his independence from Al Gore cooled quickly.
Political Pulse: Why Al's Losing the Spin War, by William Schneider (December 6, 2000)
Many Americans regard the dispute over the presidential vote as a mere political spectacle.
The Campaign: If Gore Loses, He Needs to Be More Than Magnanimous, by Carl M. Cannon (December 6, 2000)
Should he fail, the Vice President needs to work to repair the breach this challenge has caused.
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Media:Beyond Argument
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that "the all-day cable news networks have been wallowing in the Florida recount story," and that they're motivated mainly by ratings. And this was undeniably true.
"The Circus Comes Back to Town," said a headline in The Washington Post, over a story in which Howard Kurtz observed: "In a reprise of the sex vs. perjury impeachment debate, television has provided a round-the-clock platform for the increasingly shrill rhetoric on both sides." And this, too, was undeniably true.
Cable TV shots of the Ryder rental truck carrying the disputed Florida ballots were reminiscent of O.J. Simpson in his Bronco, reported the Associated Press, which quoted O.J. himself on the nostalgia-stirring resemblance. True, all true.
So many true words have been spoken and written lately about TV's newest excesses that one's tempted to think there is no difference between this election story and the media circuses that preceded it. O.J., Jon-Benet, Diana, Clinton-Lewinsky, and now Bush-Gore: all scandalous, all embarrassing, all the same.
None of the above-mentioned news reports took the argument this far. But Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen did, in an interview with Mark Jurkowitz of The Boston Globe. "What is going on now [in the Bush-Gore standoff] is both an instance of 'the argument culture' and the result of 'the argument culture,'" Tannen told Jurkowitz. "We've conflated public affairs and entertainment so that there's no difference between the O.J. thing, the Monica thing, and this election. It's just one more TV extravaganza."
But unlike the other media critiques floating around right now -- and brace yourself, because this is just the beginning of a new orgy of self-regard -- Tannen's is not true at all. The distinction is an important one, and we shouldn't let the professor get away with fogging things up.
Yes, our new around-the-clock television culture seizes on stories that the public decides are unusually interesting, because those stories are the most lucrative. Yes, the resulting coverage is full of argument (such a shameful thing in a democracy, argument). Yes, some people find argument more entertaining than Sex and the City, and public affairs has become, against considerable odds, a mildly profitable form of entertainment. And yes, there is something troubling in this, a way in which television cheapens public affairs, transforming what should be momentous and solemn into what often feels like high-tech prostitution.
But all of this can be true and it still doesn't mean that the electronic media, and cable TV in particular, have covered this story exactly as they've covered those previous stories. And to claim they've done so is not just sloppy thinking and unfair. It also misses a crucially important development, which is that cable TV is getting a lot better at this. What was recently a rather ridiculous and cartoonish corner of the news universe is becoming more serious, careful, and trustworthy about the big stories it covers, and is covering them in a style that's often superior to the traditional network style.
If you watch closely, it's even possible to see evidence that cable is doing a slow role reversal with the nets. Let's face it, broadcast network TV, once the only place to get solid and reliable broadcast coverage of important events, has capitulated almost entirely to entertainment values. When we think of the networks, we no longer think of Walter Cronkite's evening news or even Ted Koppel's Nightline, which is really just a ghost of the network past. We think of ABC's special White House correspondent Leonardo DiCaprio, of NBC's decision that Titanic is more important than a speech by George W. Bush, of CBS' determination that Survivor was not just an entertaining show but a news event worthy of integration into network journalism.
And when we think of cable, what do we think of? News. And news that is getting better all the time.
Remember the last time "the argument culture" had a field day on cable? It was the Clinton-Lewinsky story, and it was full of embarrassing excess. Cable took what was a more-than-legitimate news story and rendered it cartoonish and silly. There were long afternoons and evenings on MSNBC with John Gibson, Keith Olbermann, and their rogues' gallery of revolving idiots, and it was mostly awful stuff.
Gibson and Olbermann are gone from MSNBC, and in their place you have the likes of Brian Williams, Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews, as well as a cast of mostly impressive legal and political experts. And while MSNBC (with which National Journal has a cooperative agreement) is the most improved of the cable channels, the quality of coverage throughout the cable universe has risen significantly on this story, rendering an extremely complicated tale much more understandable. Maybe I'm just another hostage to "entertainment," but I'm not sure I would have been able to follow and understand this whole saga without Florida legal expert John Shubin popping up on Lester Holt's show all day, or without Matthews asking William Bennett to explain why conservatives, those great believers in states' rights, were seeking relief from the Supreme Court.
Professor Tannen, by the way, isn't simply decrying "the argument culture." She has a book by the same name. Next time you hear someone moaning about cable's sellout to entertainment, and what a tragedy it is for the nation, remember that person might be selling something, too. And it might not be worth buying.
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William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.
For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com.
All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
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