A Vote for C-Span

A "brutish, slow-witted beast", is how comedian Jon Stewart describes the 24 hour cable news networks. And after attempting to watch coverage of the Democratic National Convention on all of them, I have to agree. This is nothing new. A very savvy media executive I know—my friend and former boss, Neil Derrough--observed back in the mid 1990s that “feeding the beast” of the 24 hour cable networks, will bring down the quality of journalism, across the board.

The broadcast network news operations have suffered, too. The loss of Tim Russert, Peter Jennings, and even Dan Rather (still alive but not on CBS this week), have diminished the strength of coverage substantially and noticeably. But, in all fairness, I may not be an honest judge of the coverage because, after the first night, I switched to C-Span. For a hard core political junkie, it’s the best option out there for watching the conventions. You get to see what’s going on without the editorial decisions of network—cable and broadcast—producers deciding what is important and what is not.

In many ways, local news is the better choice if you’re interested in “coverage”. At least you get a sense of what it means to the people from your state or city who are at the conventions. How the national campaigns relate to your own world is a reason to watch, listen, or read, local news coverage.

As the DNC reaches its high point tonight, and the RNC gets ready to start, I’ll continue to check in on the networks. I’ll try PBS, too, which I have not watched so far this week. But in the end, I have the feeling I will keep coming back to C-Span.

Midnight Ramblings from EWR to SAN

Trying to understand your own life requires the ability to clearly analyze the information that explains who you are. The reasons you might subject yourself to such an analysis can range from trying to find a new job to choosing a life partner. The point is not to over think every decision. But leading an examined life, as Socrates tells us, is a fundamental piece of living itself. And as we grow older, the ability to see in new ways grows, or at least our perspective becomes wider and deeper.

Struggles can make us stronger or wound us. Even wounds can heal and become sources of strength. How we respond to life’s triumphs and obstacles can define us in profound and powerful ways. It’s taken me 57 years to really understand one of my favorite Dylan lines, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”.

Sitting on an airplane, heading home after a week away, feels like a beginning. Physical motion fascinates. How we move, get from place to place, encompasses breathtaking technological triumph; but mostly, we take it for granted. Our world is a study in contrast. Like anything else in life, we can use technology for good or bad.

As we’ve been discussing in previous blogs, the current moment is a fertile time for creativity. In part, we’re driven by the inability of our longtime employers, television stations and networks, to find ways to use the new story telling tools for positive—and profitable—purpose. We intend to embrace those possibilities.

John and Barack's Great Adventure: Class or More of The Same

A young man I know, wise beyond his years, asked me for help with a political opinion piece, back in the dark days of January. This recent Harvard grad, now enrolled in medical school at Columbia, wanted to publish an essay about his picks for the Republican and Democratic primaries. He identified the two candidates he thought would best serve the country by running a different kind of campaign, based on issues leading to a meaningful election.

His observations and insight into why the two he had in mind would run a clean campaign were refreshing. Imagine real issues being discussed, he argued, and the personal attacks of the last two plus decades being replaced by reasoned discourse and Lincoln-Douglas style debates.

Although he submitted the piece to several newspapers and online sites for publication nobody picked it up. It turns out that he was more prescient than the professional political pundits who make their livings writing about presidential elections—at least as far as predicting the nominees. He got it right. The voters chose John McCain and Barack Obama, two men most likely to be headed for the high road, our young friend believed.

Now it seems, the candidates’ handlers are at it again, most notably McCain’s campaign boss, Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. The sad spectacle of personal attacks will only succeed if we—the voters—let it succeed. As our young observer sensed, before any votes were cast, the public wants a different type of campaign, this time. In last week’s Newsweek (click here for the column), Jonathan Alter offers some insight into candidate McCain’s discomfort with the negative attack strategy, Schmidt is promoting. Obama has also been lured into negativity but not with such clumsy and uncomfortable effect.

We have a chance for something different. Don’t let the Karl Roves of the world rule the day. Demand that the candidates, who were chosen by us—the voters—resist the advice and conventional wisdom that says negative attacks will get them elected, but in reality will damage their own legacies and our futures. And if you’re one of our friends in the media, don’t be complicit. Demand real dialogue that will help us decide who best can lead.

Media Literate News Producers

The melding of marketing with newscasts is nothing new. As producers face shrinking budgets and limited resources, promoting commercial interests as legitimately newsworthy becomes increasingly common. The use of video news releases (VNR) and content provided by companies, and other third parties, grows. Often, producers include commercial content innocently, though they are typically naïve or negligent. Product placement has even made its way onto news sets, recently and probably not so innocently. As with most ethical issues in journalism, those who see the problem as black and white really miss the many shades of gray that are the present reality.

There’s a new television news operation in San Diego that started up one week ago. Evident to any critical viewer is the reliance on content provided by third parties. They’ve done stories on Smart Cars, various movies, and the 40^th anniversary of McDonalds, complete with stacks of Big Macs and a live shot with Ronald McDonald. My purpose is not to single out this news department but to illustrate the pressures producers face. More importantly, we need to understand what is happening and level with viewers about how these stories wind up on the news, in other words--full disclosure; we should encourage media literacy in our audience and be media literate producers ourselves.

In the interest of my own full disclosure, I spent five years developing and helping manage a video news service for The Cleveland Clinic (CC). CC is among the finest academic medical centers in the world. In addition to patient care, education is integral to CC’s mission. The produced stories and video elements that CC provided to stations could be used in a number of different ways, from turnkey turnaround of tracked packages to pulling elements for inclusion in what the station was putting together itself. As a longtime advocate for ethical journalism, my position was clear. Identify what we send; then make certain that final editorial control is with the journalists, not CC. And encourage stations that use our material to localize by talking to doctors, researchers, and clinicians, independent of CC. Within The Clinic, our unit was clearly separated from marketing; the physician CEO, who was there when we started, made it clear that our role was more in line with education than advertising or promotion.

The problem with what’s happening now is that the commercial marketing content that winds up in newscasts is often neither identified nor acknowledged as such. My wife observed that there is a generation of media consumers who don’t clearly distinguish between marketing content and news. In essence, she was saying that segments of today’s audience are media illiterate. But the problem goes deeper. Many producers are not media literate, at least not in any sophisticated fashion. Ultimately, this is a leadership issue. The imperative to set standards and explain expectations falls on newsroom managers and on the culture of the organization. In the expanding world of online journalism the need for media literate writers, producers, and editors is especially critical. The amount of content available, through aggregations sites such as thenewsmarket.com, and content delivered directly to stations by third parties, can serve as valuable resources for news organizations. The challenge is to use it responsibly, critically, and level with viewers, users, and readers, about its source and even the purpose of the provider.

Journalists who figure this out, and add this level of media literate context, will actually be doing consumers a service. The option of not using such content at all is certainly laudable, but becoming less, and less, realistic. Provide honest context and full disclosure, understand the motives of content providers, and level with viewers about how something finds its way into a newscast or web story, and be critical if appropriate. That’s a brand of news that serves the public and will keep them coming back for more.

(Final full disclosure. I consulted with thenewsmarket.com, briefly, more than two years ago.)