The News Business and the Punch and Judy Primaries: Who Dreamed This Up?

Measuring people39s reactions to what they see and hear of course is fundamental to the media39s business Ratings mean rankings which mean advertising rates which mean dollars It39s the Willie Sutton rule counting claps eyeballs and clicks is all about the money But choosing presidential candidates based on whether they deliver laughs like Mel Brooks best Bill Maher in opponentskewering satire or outshout everyone else on stage makes as much sense as voting based on their hat size Unfortunately it39s what the 2020 primaries are about to doTake Senator Bernie Sanders his current frontrunner status and his quotmomentumquot ascribed by the commentariat toward victory as the Democratic presidential nominee Reinforced by Sanders39 quotwinquot in the latest debate those judgments reflect his primary performances in Iowa New Hampshire and Nevada Among the total population of the three states 75 million there are 48 million registered voters Some 156000 of them voted for Sanders in the three primaries That39s 2 percent of the total who could vote As for the United States registered voters in the three states represent 25 percent of all Americans who are registered to voteIn a country where presidential campaigning now begins with Inauguration Day and runs for the next four years to be shocked that a multibilliondollar political industry would spawn a perpetual showtime to entertain the crowd would be naamp239ve Donald Trump delivering a stump speech this week in a cricket stadium north of Mumbai India packed with 100000 cheering if bewildered Indians is the obvious reductio ad absurdum If political silliness such as Trump39s election rally in India were the only effect of the perpetual campaign it would be bad enough But it39s also done something worseLike the Silicon Valley giants that have fostered legions of symbiotic software makers whose businesses depend on serving the needs of big tech the financial tsunami that fuels the 247365 campaign has made the Fourth Estate amp8212 the news amp8212 the political industry39s handmaiden Think of the remora fish that swim tucked under sharks to gobble up tidbits when they chomp their prey broadcast cable and web news outlets cling day and night to the political drama like a remora fish no matter its nonsensical content The consequences are washing any trace of serious politics right down the drainConsider the reporting on the Democratic Party39s primaries where the candidates have been hustling from VFW dining halls in Dubuque to fat cat French wine and brie fundraisers in Beverly Hills for months on end Some might point to the backtothefuture features of their 21st Century campaigns living room gatherings pressing the flesh enthusing about healthcare promises or the environment before small and bigtime donors and talking with the local papers39 reporters to bring their message downhome It39s retail politics at the grassroots as it always has been they would argueFair enough But how much of the candidates39 reception on the ground amp8212 such as their nittygritty talk with voters much less the substance of what they say in such oldfashioned settings amp8212 actually makes the news The answer Save for the major national newspapers that periodically write longform stories almost none Instead the socalled analysis consensus judgments and commentary that fill broadcast cable and online news are virtually all defined by the campaign39s spectacle not substance The primary debates are the case in point as is their influence in skewing what matters about the candidates and their campaignsA look at their impact on the news media39s conventional wisdom is instructive Nate Silver39s FiveThirtyEight a publication that has claimed a national niche for statistical legerdemain offered a snapshot after the January debate Among its data points who spoke most mentioned Trump most often and dwelled most heavily on various issues such as healthcare or foreign affairs Vox did a more conventional analysis of the Las Vegas debate this month proclaiming quotwinners and losersquot opining on the racial and ethnic visuals of the allwhite candidate lineup and dissecting their apologies spitting and hissing over salient moments for the contenders and presumably the countryTo be sure in their postgame analysis Silver39s website and Vox are not alone in focusing on irrelevant minutia And for some amp8212 say high school debate coaches or maybe SamoanAmericans pining for one of their own on stage amp8212 their finegrained assessments of the debaters39 visuals shticks and rhetoric may have had some valueBut for anyone considering what39s important in choosing a president amp8212 for instance their knowledge record experience proposals and how they defend them amp8212 the glitzy gameshow sets reality TV repartee and oneliners were useless Or worseFor the majority of Americans who get their news from broadcast and cable media the commentary and coverage of the nine Democratic debates since June have created an Alice in Wonderland narrative The primaries obviously are about culling the field and Super Tuesday when 16 states vote on March 3 will do so big time But even here debate performances have loomed disproportionately large in the media39s depiction of the candidates39 prospects as have the overanalyzed results in unrepresentative geographies such as Iowa and New Hampshire each over 90 percent white that simply don39t reflect the country39s makeup todayThe facts about Sanders39 mojo with a far more diverse electorate will sort themselves out next week when states comprising 40 percent of the US population hold their primaries Nonetheless the media39s depiction of the campaign including the lack of substantive coverage and its analytically dubious anointments of winners and losers will have had its effects on all the contenders The foolishness and faux narrative created around the primary debates similarly will have played their partIn The Boys on the Bus the superb story of the press and its coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign that pitted Richard Nixon against Senator George McGovern Timothy Crouse put it this way quotThe reporters attached to George McGovern had a very limited usefulness as political observers by and large for what they knew best was not the American electorate but the tiny community of the press plane a totally abnormal world that combined the incestuousness of a New England hamlet with the giddiness of a midocean gala and the physical rigors of the Long MarchquotThe NixonMcGovern campaign predated cable news and the web a far cry from today39s informationsaturated world As they say that39s progress Or is it amp8212 given that the political industry and its media helpmates just might have put us back on that bus once againFor further analysis of the media39s 2020 election coverage read Jack Myers39 take in quot When Politics Media and Vaudeville Intersect Amusing Ourselves to DeathquotDon39t stop now Stay in the know with more from Kent Harrington taking a critical look into the world of media politics and political journalismClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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The News Business and the Punch and Judy Primaries: Who Dreamed This Up?

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Kent M. Harrington

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