Meet the Press
Fifteen minutes of fame really enlightens
a talking head.
By Alan Schroeder
Under ordinary circumstances, I am not the sort of person who requires
the services of a publicist. Or uses a makeup artist. Or gets driven to
television studios by uniformed chauffeurs.
But late last year, during the weeks surrounding the 2000 presidential
debates, I experienced firsthand the life of a media pundit. The release
of my book Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV neatly coincided
with the Gore-Bush joint appearances, earning me a passport into the land
of the talking heads.
During September and October alone, I did seventy-two newspaper interviews,
twenty-four television programs, thirty radio shows, half a dozen Internet
stories, and one live online chat. I dished up my expertise to everybody
from the national political writer for the New York Times to a North Dakota
radio host who interrupted our interview with an update on hog markets.
The milieu of mass media was hardly unfamiliar territory to me. Before
beginning my academic career, I spent fifteen years as a newspaper reporter
and TV producer. I have taught journalism for the past ten years and given
numerous interviews to the press. Still, nothing in my professional history
prepared me for the intensity of functioning as a sought-after expert.
What did my fifteen minutes of media glory teach me? In a nutshell,
these were the lessons.
Journalists come in every variety.
My dealings with journalists ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.
With some reporters, I felt totally tuned in. Their questions were sophisticated
and thought provoking. In particular, journalists from the nation's elite
daily newspapers tend to be interesting to talk to and challenging in their
line of inquiry.
Other questioners were just plain dumb. A co-host on an early-morning
network television show began his interview by asking, "So what happens
in these debates anyway?" I restrained myself from responding that
it had taken me an entire book to address that matter.
Though most interviewers sought information, some preferred to spout
their own opinions, like the Saint Louis radio host who asked, "Isn't
it a well-known fact that ninety-three percent of journalists are liberals?"
then proceeded to spin a web of conspiracy theories that stupefied me into
silence.
Journalists ask the same questions.
The press is often accused of operating according to a herd instinct,
and my interactions with reporters confirmed this charge.
Almost without fail, two questions would crop up: "What does [fill
in candidate's name] have to do in this next debate?" and "What
are the strengths and weaknesses of [fill in candidate's name]?" The
trick was to come up with varied answers, so that I would not give identical
quotes to, say, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
Even before an interview begins, most reporters have a pretty good idea
what they want from a given source. I soon realized that to shift the emphasis
I would have to do something of a sell job.
For example, one of my crusades as a presidential debate scholar is
to educate the public about how fully candidates control the process. The
pre-debate ground rules secretly negotiated by the Gore and Bush campaigns
held extraordinary significance for the viewing audience, yet most reporters
ignored this subterranean part of the story. Why? Because the information
did not fit within the standard horse-race narrative.
I considered it a small victory when, on the day of the season's last
debate, USA Today ran a piece laying out the preposterous, self-protective
rules the candidates had imposed-an article prompted, I believe, by my
comments. Readers gained valuable information, I got my key points across,
and the writer, by breaking from the conventional story line, found a fresh
angle.
Interviews beget more interviews.
Being a media source means etching yourself into the Rolodexes of reporters
and producers all over the country. The Holy Grail of media punditry is,
of course, the New York Times. Being quoted in the Times confers a legitimacy
that soon brings others calling.
But the Times is hardly the only game in town. With each published mention
in any major newspaper, your name enters a database that in turn draws
more reporters. Once they know where to find you, the phone does not stop
ringing.
Some media are more source-friendly than others.
As an interviewee, you quickly come to appreciate the media's hierarchy,
not only from the standpoint of prestige, but also as a qualitative experience.
For me, the most gratifying medium was radio, especially the long interviews.
On television, the imperative is to speak in pithy sound bites, ideally
under ten seconds in length. With print journalists, you can hear the reporter
struggling to take down your quote accurately, which tends to keep answers
simple and brief.
Radio presents no such constraints. Prior to this experience, I had
dismissed radio as anachronistic; now I respect its ability to stimulate
thoughtful discussion. And, best of all, you don't have to wonder if your
hair looks goofy.
The international press is a distinct animal.
I was fascinated by the questions I got from foreign journalists. A
reporter from Tokyo's oldest newspaper posed an oh-so-polite question about
George W. Bush's intellectual capacity and giggled at my attempts to craft
a neutral answer.
A journalist from the Australian Broadcasting Company introduced our
live trans-Pacific interview by describing the Gore-Bush debates as "four-and-a-
half hours of the most boring television ever broadcast." Try sounding
interesting after a setup like that.
My oddest encounter came in a conversation with an Italian magazine
correspondent following the first debate. Why, he wondered, had the two
candidates worn exactly the same outfit of dark suit, white shirt, and
red power tie?
I offered a theory, something about how risk-averse candidates are in
live debates. From there, I assumed, the interview would move to other
questions. Wrong: For ten minutes, everything he asked had to do with the
candidates' sartorial selections.
Journalists cover debates under odd circumstances.
I watched the second Gore-Bush debate on site at Wake Forest University,
from a large room where hundreds of journalists had congregated to file
their articles electronically. Most were members of the traveling press
corps, in town just long enough to deliver their stories to audiences around
the world before hopping back aboard the campaign planes.
Several hours before the telecast, the ladies and gentlemen of the press
descended like locusts upon the Wake Forest campus. Their arrival brought
to mind a sort of mobile factory, with laborers setting up their own machinery
to manufacture a product in the field.
Row after row of long tables were soon occupied by reporters, who viewed
the debate on TV monitors sprinkled around the room. It dawned on me why
so many journalistic accounts sound alike: Nobody else in America watches
the debates in such a regimented way.
Appearing in the media elicits all kinds of reactions.
Finally, I learned that you never can tell who may be watching or listening.
My media appearances generated a flurry of phone calls, letters, and e-mails
from acquaintances and strangers alike.
I heard from an Alabama legislator seeking advice on debating his opponent
in an upcoming campaign. A woman who saw me on C-SPAN wanted to dispute
my contention that radio audiences did not necessarily prefer Nixon over
Kennedy. Someone who read my interview in the San Francisco Chronicle thought
I should have supported the inclusion of Ralph Nader in the general-election
debates-and called me at home to say so.
The most barbed message came in the form of a voice mail. A man from
Buffalo harshly criticized my use-or rather, misuse-of the English language
during an interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio. Among my
unforgivable infractions: "You said 'same identical'-that's redundant!"
I was too busy being a media pundit to return the gentleman's call.
Alan Schroeder is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism.
His book Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV was published
by Columbia University Press in September 2000.
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