To Sunday Show Hosts: They aren't going to do what you want

Gotcha Moments and Stories Not Covered

Today’s post is different from my more analytical style. It’s just going to be a long rant about media decision making.

I’ve written before about media coverage during this election cycle. I’m a big believer in Jay Rosen’s “Not the Odds but the Stakes”. Media critics use this as shorthand for “setting aside horserace coverage focusing on which candidates are up by how much in which states through which subgroups according to a new poll”. This theme is regularly echoed by other media figures whom I trust: James Fallows, Margaret Sullivan, Brian Beutler, Dan Froomkin, Eric Wemple, Greg Sargent, and Paul Waldman, just to name a few.

Focusing on the Stakes is important to move voters from being simple spectators of election coverage to investors in the kind of governing we wish to see implemented. This is especially important as it comes to Lower Information Voters.

Not everybody is a political junkie like me or the people in my list above. They may not be paying attention to the election nearly six months away. They may only get their news from Instagram or YouTube or TicToc¹. They may watch network evening news, as the majority of older people do.²

They will, of course, see clips of Trump feting Hannibal Lector or Biden using the wrong name. They will see reports of individuals concerned about prices.³ They will see claims of a border invasion or drastic increases of crime (both of which are inconsistent with the data).

In the midst of this, there is a particular component of media coverage that has become completely worthless: The Sunday Morning Interview Show. I confess that I don’t watch them. I rely on Aaron Rupar, who records the shows and clips the parts for social media that get reported by other outlets.⁴

Going counterclockwise from the upper left, we have Senator J.D. Vance on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, Rep. Elise Stafanik on Fox News Sunday with Martha McSally, Senator Marco Rubio on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, and Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Byron Donalds on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartoromo.

On Face the Nation, Brennan was trying to ask Vance about a quote he’d made in favor of Victor Orban’s conditional public funding of higher education. She tries to point out the authoritarian regime of Hungary but Vance makes some vague comments about indoctrination in public universities (not some, just a blanket statement). He blows by her critique with his favorite claims.

On Fox News Sunday, McSally asks Stefanik about her 2016 claims that a Trump candidacy would not be good for women. Stefanik dismisses the charge because McSally had quoted the New York Times story (about an actual audio recording). Stefanik blames the messenger and deflects the question.

Welker on Meet the Press asks Rubio two key questions, according the clips I saw. The key question was about Trump’s claimed plan to deport 11 million undocumented residents, which Rubio had opposed as a candidate back in 2016. He responded that things are different now and cites an ever-increasing set of estimates of the current total (not supported by the best data). She asks him if he’d support the outcome of the 2024 election and he launches on a “whataboutism” claim of times the Democrats complained about election outcomes (knowing that they didn’t engage in a massive plot to pursue their claims). Rubio has now turned his list into an online commercial.

Luna and Donalds talked to Bartoromo about concerns that President Biden is taking drugs to support public performances like the State of the Union. That’s why they want to get the audio recordings of the Hur transcript. Likely because of the Dominion lawsuit, Bartoromo manages to insert that they aren’t doctors and don’t have any expertise on the topic.

Nobody should be surprised at the vacuous nature of these “interviews”. They seem more like visibility stunts for the interviewees, all of whom imagine themselves to be on Trump’s list for vice presidential pick. As much as the hosts want to get them to address shifts in their positions or weaknesses in their argument, they will not move from their prior talking points.

Tim Russert pioneered this format when he was the MTP host. Nobody has quite done it as well. He would ask about a comment that a president made or an earlier claim of the interviewee and ask them to expand. The focus (as I remember) did not seem to be to catch the interviewee in a flip/flop that would lead to claims of hypocrisy.⁵

In light of Rosen’s “stakes” argument, this is a luxury we cannot afford. We are wasting hours of media time every weekend that could be used to actually help voters better understand what those stakes are.⁶ This doesn’t have to be partisan. It should simply be informative.

Paradoxically, the best version of the kind of “stakes” coverage we need can be found on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. After his opening recap of the news and a little bit of fun with local news reporters, he devotes about twenty minutes of his show to dig into a particular issue of contemporary importance. Just this season, he has dealt with the Supreme Court, hog butchering, airplane safety, state medical boards, student loan debt, food delivery apps, the death penalty, medicaid, UFOs, the opioid crisis, and attacks on public libraries. It’s true that he uses humor and he often curses, but his team covering these important topics puts the rest of broadcast media to shame.

If we really want to focus on the stakes, it’s time for news organizations to ask Oliver how he does this. It’s far more informative than discovering that Marco Rubio is inconsistent or that Donalds and Luna are making up conspiracy theories.

1. This is especially true for millennials and GenZ.

2. We recorded one of those shows for awhile and were struck by the coverage of at least ten stories, with intros and teasers, in 22 minutes of non-commercial time. It’s impossible to get context in this way.

3. Target announced today that they were reducing prices on 5,000 popular items. Makes one wonder how they can afford to do that and why those prices were higher in the first place.

4. I just subscribed to Aaron’s newsletter so that I’m not completely taking advantage of him.

5. Today’s interviewees are without shame so hypocrisy doesn’t seem to phase them.

6. Recent stories around NPR, The Washington Post, and The New York Times make clear that this is not a problem limited to broadcast media.