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This interview with Denis Campbell appeared on The David Pakman Show on January 9, 2012.
David Pakman: Denis Campbell’s Editor in Chief of “UK Progressive” Magazine, and he’s here to talk to us about a recent article he wrote, “The ESPN-isation of the United States Election”, which is really a good way to put what we see kind of in mainstream corporate media coverage of politics, and particularly the debates have been a good indicator of this. Tell us, Denis, what is… what do you mean by the “ESPN-isation”?
Denis Campbell: Well, what I’ve been seeing in most of the election coverage is this inability to really have a discussion of any substance. If it can’t fit into a 20-second package with all of the highlights such as ESPN would do as part of their “SportsCenter” program, it’s not worth discussing. And it seems to be, on the part of at least the mainstream American media, highly insulting.
One of the things I enjoy about doing programs here for BBC, ITV, and others is that you actually are given a significant amount of time, a segment in which you can actually discuss an issue and fully vet it, understand the issue, the questioners are usually fairly well-informed on what’s going on. And I don’t see any of that, particularly with the news actresses on Fox and some of the others where it just seems if I can make a breathless point and say something over and over again, no matter whether it’s true or false, it becomes true.
And I really think if we could get to a point in the discussion and the debates going forward where we’re actually talking issues of substance, it’s going to be much better for everybody making an informed decision. In fact, the polls are showing the electorate doesn’t want this sound-bite stark attack, they really want the politicians to stop attacking each other and start discussing the really serious issues that face us all.
David: Yeah, well, it’s interesting, because not all of the GOP candidates would even really be capable of in-depth discussion, and they’re kind of being given a pass because they never really have to do that.
But I have a couple of different thoughts on what you’re saying. I mean, in principle, I agree, I agree with what you’re saying, and my initial thought is well, let’s look at it piece by piece. Is this a result of what people are asking for? And you’re saying no, people actually want more in-depth discussion from candidates.
And if not, is there really blame? In other words, would we… Fox News, which has the highest… even though their ratings dropped in 2011, they still command the most news market cable share, they produce this type of kind of sound-bite news where it’s infotainment, a lot of stuff on the screen, but people do watch it. So in other words, if that wasn’t going to work for them, if it wasn’t going to be profitable, they wouldn’t do it. They didn’t necessarily push it on people, did they?
Campbell: No, I mean, there’s always been the saying in the news biz that if it bleeds, it leads. So if there is something that is salacious or titillating or filled with violent content that you can actually say as an anchor, you know, you may want to take the young ones out of the room, this content may not be appropriate for all viewers, that’s a surefire guarantee that everybody’s just going to pull right up to the television set and see whatever it is.
I call that sort of car crash theatre, you know, they tend to, in an automobile accident, to put the vehicle strategically so no one can see in, but yet traffic stops on both sides of the dual carriageway to look in and see, you know, what exactly, oh, let’s see the bodies, let’s see the wreck. It’s a macabre human fascination with things that are going wrong.
And if you look at all of the lead news stories of the last two weeks, they’ve all been focused on everything that each candidate is doing wrong. Today we’re savaging Romney over Bain, we’ve savaged Gingrich, we’ve savaged Santorum, etc., over past positions that they’ve taken, because that seems to be the way in which you get press, in which you get focus.
David: I also want to separate, though, the issue of length that a topic is discussed with kind of the superficiality of it, because I mean, a perfect example would be our show, right? I mean, we do two one-hour shows a week, plus our bonus content, because that’s kind of what our resources currently allow. If you take away the kind of commercial space, we do about a 50-minute show, so our interviews end up being somewhere between seven and 11 minutes.
Now, I would like to do longer interviews, and it would be great to do a half-hour interview with someone, but however, then we only talk to one person, we don’t get to a lot of other topics that, you know, bring more audience in, which we need, right? We’re trying to self-sustain and grow the show.
So I think that we kind of have to separate between the goal… the means to the end being having explosions and bugs on the screen and things of interest, and that there are still legitimate limitations to what can be done within the format, right? Do you differentiate between those two?
Campbell: No, I mean, “UK Progressive” Magazine is known for depth. We don’t get huge numbers of viewers, and quite frankly, at the end of the day, I’m not sure we want huge numbers of viewers that just pop in and pop back out of the website.
What our readers tell us over and over again is that they like the fact that we will take an issue and really go through it. We have a sustainability contributor from there in the States, in New Jersey, by the name of Theodora Filis, who’s developed quite a following because of the depth to which she goes into issues such as fracking, such as GMO foods, etc., and our readers want that.
Today on the call-in show that I did for the BBC, it was scheduled to be a 45-minute appearance and then they were going to go on to another topic, but the producer came in midway through and said hey, Denis, the board is completely lit up, people want to know more about the U.S. election, what’s going on, can you stay? We ended up being an hour and a half to almost an hour 40 minutes of what was a three-hour show on one topic.
I think that the decisions that are taken by you, by your producers, by others, when you have a good guest who’s contributing good content, you then have to take the news director sort of approach in which you say you know what? This is good, let’s keep going with it, because people are being informed.
When Gabby Giffords was shot a year ago, I did what was supposed to be a three-minute stand-up interview for the BBC. We ended up going eight minutes because we were talking about topics that were very emotional and were very, very much in-depth. We ended up touching on the gun control issues, the whole political climate, the way in which Democrats, Republicans, left and right talk to each other. And so if you have good content that is really being well-received, you stay with it.
What I see, though, on the news networks in the States is that it’s a prescribed time limit. If it’s going to be a three-minute, four-minute, five-minute segment, that’s it, we’re going into a hard commercial break, we’re out of here, that’s it. There’s very few people out there, Rachel Maddow does this periodically, that will say can you stick with us after the break? This is going very well, I’d like to discuss this more. And I think that’s what has to happen more for people to really become engaged and interested in this campaign going forward.
David: To go back to the debates, which was kind of where we started, what is going to drive a change in the depth of the debates in the United States? I mean, again, like I said, a lot of the Republicans wouldn’t be able to have a debate of any kind of depth. Hopefully those are going to kind of be gone with the next upcoming primaries. Newt Gingrich has suggested these Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with Barack Obama; it’s unlikely they’ll really come to fruition. I don’t know why, I just feel like in the end, they won’t. Will people drive it, or will candidates drive it, or the media?
Campbell: Well, the interesting thing was if you looked back to the 2008 campaign, it was the first true internet campaign. It was the first true multimedia campaign we’d ever seen for president.
And what was fascinating to most of us that were covering it was that we were able to go online to see detailed position papers, to see actual full-length interviews of campaign stops along the way for both President Obama, Hillary Clinton, as well as John Edwards, who was in the race at this point in time. And you were really able to take a good measure of the candidate and what it was they stood for and where they were likely to go.
The problem with… today is that I don’t see a lot of the basic blocking and tackling being done by the campaign staff. You know, you had that press agent for, what was his name, Cantor, that interrupted a 60-minute interview with basically false facts.
We have a number of press people that are coming up in the ranks now that have grown up in this period which we’re currently in that don’t do the digging, that don’t do the hard work. And you know, to have as your senior press spokesperson somebody who would dare to interrupt the majority leader during the course of an interview is unprecedented as well as just plain stupid.
We have a lot of press people that have forgotten on the staff side that their role is one of staff, yet they still seem to think that they are the straw that stirs the drink and not the candidate, and I think that’s the beginning of the breakdown of the system as well.
David: Fascinating stuff. Denis Campbell, I encourage everyone to check out “UK Progressive” Magazine. Your article is “The ESPN-isation of the US Election”, you are the Editor in Chief. A pleasure to speak with you again.
Campbell: Same here, and happy New Year to you, David.
David: OK, thanks.