Biden's debate "performance" and our media [View all]

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Over the years since the Kennedy-Nixon televised debate, the main stream media have changed their focus when reporting political news. Soon after that first example of two candidates standing in front of a TV camera and debating issues, it came to the attention of pundits and journalists that some (or all) candidates were hiring PR specialists to advise them on how to seem more … whatever they wanted to seem to the voting public. More handsome, more decisive, more informed, more assertive, more electable! This struck the pundits as being unfair, because the public could be hoodwinked (gaslighted, in today’s terminology) into believing something that wasn’t true. So the Media started advising the public on the tricky wiles that PR specialists could work on the audience’s perception. An older generation of commentators would start a column with a fact, and from that, by marshaling other facts, conclude that the Russians were expanding their nuclear and conventional arsenals, and that America had better watch out. It was all very innocent. By degrees over the years, both columnists and straight reporters of political news have morphed from reporting hard news, like “this is what the candidate said,” to reporting on the political significance of whatever some poor candidate said in the political context of his candidacy, his party’s standing with various demographics, and the possible effect statement might have on the balance of power between the two parties. (There are only two, never more than two, because that’s an easier horse race for voters to follow.). What matters to the punditry is not anything politicians might say, but how it will play in the giant drama the media are actually following. When NPR and the NYT, and Bill Clinton (who lets the pundits do the “rating”), and most other media talk of President Joseph R. Biden’s “performance”, that’s exactly what they mean. He’s being judged on the dramatic value of his appearance in the debate.

So, in post-debate reporting, we have instant judgments on Mr. Biden’s verbal stumbles, and pretty much nothing else. Nothing like: did both candidates answer the questions put to them, or did one of them veer off instantly into ad hominem attacks? If only one answered the questions, did he respond with coherent facts, proposals, and policies? Did the other participant, ttc (the trump creature), indulge in ever-wilder fantasies of what a President did do, can do, and is certainly responsible for doing to the country? If ttc painted a lurid picture of Biden’s evil powers, did that matter at all in the face of Biden’s stumble(s)? Clearly, it did not. The media are not evaluating the debate as a debate, but as a scene in the endless political drama they are reporting on.

This theory explains the media’s judgement on the dramatic value of the recent debate. Personally I didn’t listen to the debate, for two reasons, the most compelling one being that I’m so sick of political reporters explaining politics to me that I could scream.