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.