Propaganda and Television News

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 28, 2000 | by Stephen Goode

Unable to stir controversy among delegates in Philadelphia, the TV news media did all it could to incite discord at the GOP conclave. But their efforts were thwarted at every turn.

Mike Huckabee, the Republican governor of Arkansas, had one of the better quips about the Republican National Convention that made it onto TV. Interviewed by CNN, Huckabee said that this year's assembly of GOP delegates wasn't engaged in "red-meat politics" like many nominating conventions in the past. What it was, said the man from Bill Clinton's home state, was "political vegetarianism"

Huckabee was quick to add that he didn't mind. Indeed, he said he welcomed it, especially if it meant George W. Bush's victory. Huckabee's attitude, however, wasn't shared by the 25 or so most visible TV journalists who dominate TV news and control the spin that the major cable and broadcast channels put on the events at the 37th Republican National Convention.

What they did was bend over backward to ferret out controversy and division among the 4,000 delegates and alternates. When serious controversy failed to materialize, these journalists changed tactics in an all-out effort to paint the convention's loudly touted themes of "compassionate conservatism," unity and inclusiveness (a party for all Americans: minorities, women, everyone) as shabby window dressing designed to fool voters into thinking the Republican Party had changed when, in fact, according to these seers of electronic journalism, it hadn't changed and didn't want to do so.

Not every network covered the entire event. Dowdy but mostly reliable C-SPAN did, boasting its coverage to be "complete, uninterrupted and unedited." CNN did, too, or at least most of it, breaking in the evening (when the convention's major events took place) for the Larry King Show, which evidently only the end of the world could preempt. CNN's boast: "CNN is set to dominate the convention." Really?

PBS covered the three hours each evening that the convention was in session but frequently broke away from convention business for seminar-like gab sessions with pundits such as historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss and Heritage Foundation fellow Kay James.

But after polls earlier this year showed that maybe 13 percent or so of Americans planned to watch most or all of the convention, the broadcast channels opted out of full, live coverage as fast as they could for the first time since they began covering presidential conventions in 1948 and 1952. It was a big step away from the kind of patriotism and good citizenship the TV networks practiced in the past by bringing Americans both conventions which, despite their tameness compared to years past, still are part of the process by which the United States of America selects its chief executive.

Broadcast NBC, for example, gave the convention hardly any notice except for spotty mention on the Nightly News. Cable MSNBC, which isn't so widely viewed, covered it for three hours each evening. CBS parceled out portions of its regular hourlong evening programs such as 48 Hours and 60 Minutes Two to smuggle in bits and pieces of the convention among such regular fare as stories about pharmaceutical scams -- and missing Laura Bush's impressive opening-night speech and coming in late on retired Gen. Colin Powell's speech that followed.

ABC, which bestowed upon the convention a relatively generous one hour of coverage each evening between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., nonetheless egregiously violated its own parsimony by (on the first evening) opening with anchorman Peter Jennings roaming among ABC News reporters to hear from them what was going on when he could have showed viewers what was going on directly. After Jennings was done, ABC joined Laura Bush's speech --nearly 10 minutes after it had begun.

Still, these sins pale in comparison with the eagerness so many TV journalists displayed when it came to uncovering controversy where there simply was none, and their willingness to cast serious doubt on the motives behind the convention and of the goals of the candidate stopped just short of paranoia.

CNN was the worst -- perhaps because it covered so much of the event, more than anyone else save CSPAN. By the convention's second day, the big question CNN was posing for its viewers was, "Is inclusion a delusion?" It was a question to which CNN already had an answer: Yes, inclusion is a delusion. The large Insight team present at these events found that just wasn't so.

And viewers watching the convention on any channel saw numerous black, Hispanic and Asian-American delegates. Minority speakers were featured, particularly on the convention's first day and night. In his recent speech before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, George W. Bush stressed the need for the Republican Party today to extend its mantle to persons of all races, just as Lincoln, the first Republican president, had done.

Nonetheless, ABC News anchorman Jennings opened World News Tonight with a description of the Republican convention as "trying to be all things to all people" -- a phrase usually used in sarcasm. CBS Early Show host Bryant Gumbel offered the snide observation that the convention reminded him of the song Home on the Range. "You know," Gumbel explained, "where seldom is heard a discouraging word." On the convention's second night, Jennings outdid himself by chiding delegates for their "slavish" behavior in choosing the appearance of unity over self-assertion.