The Beast Needs Feeding

Why the heck do we have political debates going on in June of a non-election year? Why did we have them in May? Is there some special election, some Constitutional amendment being considered, some issue that just can’t wait? Nope. It’s just another manifestation of the American Electoral Process, Sponsored By CNN.

A caveat. I am not a person who likes bashing the media. (Fox News doesn’t count. They barely count as propaganda pushers.) Usually, if you’re bashing the media, you’re upset about an uncomfortable (inconvenient?) truth that they’re covering. And while they demonstrate an astronomical degree of apathy when it comes to the nuances of homeland security, journalists, especially print media, tend to get it right sooner or later. It’s like driving a delivery truck through a tunnel with the headlights out. Might get a little banged up on the way, but the product will get there.

(Also, I am dating a journalist and any perceived media-bashing could have monstrously unintended consequence for yours truly.)

So with that said, we are having presidential debates a full 17 months before the general election (and seven months before the first primaries) because CNN needs to make money. As does MSNBC, and Fox News. Turning the vast field of primary candidates into a lengthy horse race (slash marathon) represents an endless treasure trove of stories to fill up airtime on the 24-hour news networks.

The news channels have both the ability, and the solemn mandate, to manufacture stories. They don’t have the luxury afforded print media, to spend hours, perhaps entire days, looking for stories that might actually be worth covering. No, the flickering blue light of television is always on, and can never be silent, and so if there are no major stories to cover, they have to create them.

Referring to 24-hour news networks (and the media in general) as “the Beast,” an instructor for a Public Information Officer class once told me, “The Beast is always hungry, and the Beast requires constant feeding.” The thing about the Beast is that it’s the only animal that has the ability to make its own meals. It’s just a question of with what ingredients it chooses to prepare them.

Take Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room.” The name is expertly borrowed from a room in the White House where the President and his senior staff go to manage national emergencies. It just oozes urgency. And so, instinctively, you assume that whatever is going on “in the Situation Room” must be emergent and of the highest importance. But the Situation Room is a regularly scheduled show that airs five days a week. They have to fill up that airtime with exciting, breaking-news “situations,” even when that day’s news might actually be pretty lame.

The obvious answer would be for them to drop the insistence on constantly covering “breaking news” and to actually go into a little more detail. Breaking news, by its nature, is sketchy and unreliable, but it’s also the biggest selling point. It’s exciting, and going into the history, background, and complexities of a news story simply doesn’t hold the average television viewer’s attention. The whole goal is to hold their attention through the commercials, and if you bore them beforehand, the game’s over. So you have to fill up 24 hours worth of news stories, but they have to be entertaining news stories. Nothing too boring or intellectual, or they’re going to switch to Oprah.

It sounds like I’m harshing on television itself, and I’m not. I think television is a great medium for hour-long chunks of news, like the old nightly news broadcasts or 60 Minutes or the like. But the more airtime you have to fill up with engaging, exciting, and most of all entertaining news stories, the lower your standards are going to be.

So what do you do, short of bringing zoo animals and Carrot Top into the Situation Room? (Which would be AWESOME.) You try to spin up controversy, you goad newsworthy persons into saying controversial things, or you just invent your own stories. Which is exactly how the presidential race kicked off so early, and which is why we’re having debates in May and June when it’s not even an election year. The news outlets grant their most precious incentive- airtime and coverage- to potential candidates, and hang off every word from ones who have already declared.

And believe it or not, the Iraq war has actually created something of a backlash against “bad news.” Five years ago, a car bombing that killed 20 people in the Middle East would have been major, major news. 17 U.S. servicemen murdered by Islamic terrorists (anyone remember the U.S.S. Cole?) isn’t a national tragedy anymore, it’s a rough week in Iraq and gets maybe a 30-second sound bite. “If it bleeds, it leads” and “There’s no news like bad news” are losing just a little bit of their luster, because people want to hear about something- anything- other than the war.

Astutely tapping into this desire for change, and using it to address the bottom line of their business, cable news networks can just talk about What’s Next. And the only venue in which you can run news stories about stuff that hasn’t happened yet, is the political venue. No race is bigger than the presidential race, and no candidates are more interesting than presidential candidates. The answer is to start hyping the race now, stir up controversy, stir up stories, and most of all, stir up ratings.

Hillary Clinton didn’t want to declare her presidential run until much later. Commendably, she wanted to focus on her duties as a United States Senator. She figured that public interest and private money could wait while she built up a little more authority on legislative issues. Nope. This had about as much chance as Barack Obama’s promise to stay out of the race until his first Senate term was up. Nobody wanted a Hillary Vs. Everyone Else story. There had to be a somewhat-equal competitor, a Happy Gilmore to her Shooter McGavin. And the pressure- through media coverage of rumors and innuendoes- landed on Obama.

So here we are. Nothing meaningful has happened in the primary races, even though the inordinate coverage devoted to fundraising results would have you think otherwise. And with nothing meaningful having happened, we have to endure debates to create something meaningful. But without any real developments, the size of those debates is limited only by the size of the damn stage. So we have to listen to goofballs like Mikes Gravel and Huckabee or Dennis “The Lost Keebler Elf” Kucinich as the camera grants them fictional equality with Clinton, Giuliani, Obama, and anyone else who actually has a chance next November.

On November 8th, 2006, a CNN correspondent said, “This is Day 1 of the 2008 Presidential campaign.” I thought it was an exaggeration. It wasn’t. So my complaints about why we’re having political debates in June of 2007 aren’t really killing the messenger. Well, not killing the messenger because of his message. More like killing the messenger because he’s showing up so damn early.

(Am I going to watch the Republican debate tonight anyway? With my journalist girlfriend? Bet your ass.)