AP Looks at the Power of the 'Pundit Police'

Taking Issue With Campaign Coverage
Taking Issue With Campaign Coverage
By Deborah Howell, Ombudsman
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Washington Post Page B06

Readers are super-sensitive to any perceived slight to their favorite candidate -- from Page 1 display to photos to the details of graphics. And they want guidance from The Post in issues coverage and editorial endorsements before they vote.

Several readers were unhappy that on last Sunday's front page, Sen. Barack Obama's Feb. 9 primary victories were played below a story on the Washington Redskins naming Jim Zorn as head coach. Saadia Mahmud of the District wrote: "I've heard the argument that The Post tries to be a local paper. . . . In this case, local also looks provincial, insular and narrow-minded."

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, assistant managing editor for Sports, is in charge of the Sunday paper. He said, "The stunning nature of the Redskins hire, the fact that it was a complete surprise, to me made it a more compelling story. Plus, we have been leading A1 with politics just about every week, and this was a nice change of pace." Good point, but Obama's multiple wins also could have gotten better display.

Others asked why the lead story Monday emphasized the news that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was changing campaign managers and featured a large, upbeat photo of her campaigning. Obama's victory in the Maine caucuses was relegated to a secondary headline and photo. Ed Thiede, assistant managing editor-news desk, supervises Page 1 design. "Replacing a campaign manager at this stage in the race is bigger news, to me, than winning one caucus. The pictures were a simple decision to play Clinton larger on Monday because we played Obama larger on Sunday. We want to be fair to the candidates in our visual choices." Agreed.

Wednesday's front page featured a large picture of Obama above the fold and a much smaller picture of Sen. John McCain below the fold. Three journalists, not from The Post, wrote: "What were editors thinking about last night when it came to photo choices?" They thought that the "huge, flattering photo of Obama" over "a tiny picture of McCain" gave "conservatives yet more ammo to accuse journalists in general of having a clear liberal/Dem bias."

Thiede said, "The closeness of the Democratic race makes that the newsier of the pieces. Also, it was a very strong photo -- a candidate out in public interacting with residents in our city on Election Day. That alone was a different image than most of these contests have given us -- a candidate on stage surrounded by supporters declaring victory. The McCain photo came in very late, on deadline. It, too, was a good image and there was debate about playing it larger on the page. We decided the Obama photo was better. We hurried to get McCain in, and we were comfortable that we were giving it decent play."

McCain's photo was so small that it conveyed the notion that his victory was not as important as Obama's. It wouldn't have been easy, but the Obama photo could have been cropped or downsized and both of them put above the fold.

One day's photo choice does not mean much, but so many readers mentioned Page 1 photos that my assistant Jean Hwang and I looked at two months' worth of images. Between Dec. 16 and Friday, Obama was on the front page 16 times; Clinton, 13; McCain, 12; Mitt Romney, 7; Rudolph Giuliani, 4; and Mike Huckabee, 2. John Edwards and Fred Thompson appeared on the front page only when they pulled out of the race. Democrats were on the front page 29 times, including two photos of Bill Clinton, and Republicans, 25 times. The difference is small but noticeable. We will continue to monitor it.

Joyce Rains of Bethesda and other readers wanted editorial endorsements of presidential candidates in the local primaries. Rains wrote: "I think this is a terrible omission. Is The Post afraid to take a stand?" Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor, said: "We have not endorsed in past presidential primaries and felt there was not a compelling reason -- such as one Democratic candidate we overwhelmingly preferred -- to do so on this occasion. We did publish a long editorial three Sundays ago outlining the pluses and minuses of the Democratic candidates and making clear that on the Republican side, we believed McCain was superior to the rest."

Reader Tammy Kimes of Laurel complained that there had been almost no coverage of the underlying issues before the local primaries. "I am frustrated with the news coverage. We are having our primary in a week, and all the news coverage is about who is winning what. It just seems totally focused on election strategies and very little about what each candidate stands for."

The coverage of Super Tuesday and the Potomac Primary was a model of good planning, reporting and design. But issues coverage has been slighted since the campaign started. Almost the only issues coverage before the local primaries was on voting day. Too little and too late, especially for those Democrats struggling to decide between Obama and Clinton.

Hwang and I have been keeping track since mid-November of Post political stories on a spreadsheet that is available here. The most important findings are that there have been 104 issues stories and 60 stories on voters, compared with 319 "horse race" stories. The figures for issues stories reflect every debate, even if the stories were not that issues-oriented.

Numbers don't tell you everything; horse-race stories can be fascinating and give you a good insight into a candidate's character. But hard-nosed journalistic comparisons of candidates' stands on the issues give readers what they need to know.

Political Pundits, Overpopulating the News Networks
Political Pundits, Overpopulating the News Networks
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; C01

It's a great time for face time if you want to be a pundit on TV.

With the cable news networks ramping up wall-to-wall political coverage, the demand for people to analyze, comment upon and speculate wildly about the presidential race has expanded accordingly. The nation's economy might be coughing and wheezing, but there is no shortage of employment opportunities in Punditland.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann says that when he introduces his network's lineup of analysts and commentators on primary and caucus nights these days, it conjures up the long-winded introductions on an old variety show. "I am reminded of the way 'Hee Haw' opened," Olbermann says. "I am sorely tempted to finish [the list] with 'Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow, Gene Robinson and Pat Buchanan -- Grandpa Jones! . . . Junior Samples! . . . the Hager Twins!' "

Not to mention the rest of MSNBC's prime-time punditocracy -- the Buck Owenses and Minnie Pearls, as it were: Tucker Carlson! Chuck Todd! Howard Fineman! Richard Wolffe!

Why are so many called to opine so often? Primarily because the news networks are covering the campaign so intensely, fueled by higher-than-usual viewership this year.

During the week of Super Tuesday, 75 percent of available airtime on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News was dedicated to dissecting the campaign, according to the Washington-based, nonprofit Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was more than 10 times the amount the cable news networks spent on the next most heavily reported story that week: the tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast (the war in Iraq didn't make the top five).

"We're devoting as much coverage to the primaries as the networks gave to NASA in the 1960s, only we're covering two or three moon shots a week," says Olbermann, who on Super Tuesday co-hosted the coverage with Chris Matthews for eight straight hours.

On other news networks as well, small armies of political pundits are needed to fill the many hours.

CNN assembles so many commentators for its primary-night shows that it arrays its talking heads in panels of four abreast, as if echoing the setup on "Family Feud." On Super Tuesday, the network's pundits and analysts included a bank of B's -- Bennett (Bill), Begala (Paul), Bernstein (Carl), Brazile (Donna) and Borger (Gloria). They were in addition to David Gergen, Amy Holmes, Roland Martin, Jeffrey Toobin and Jamal Simmons.

The fight for the mike became so intense that at one point Bennett cracked that he had been reduced to CNN's "second string" of pundits.

"My feeling is the more the merrier," says CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, who is often required to play hot-air-traffic controller to the many voices. "When you're on the air as long as we are, you want a nice diversity and range of opinions -- liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans."

Not to be outmanned, Fox News's "A" team includes a sort of reconstituted "McLaughlin Group" (Eleanor Clift, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, Michael Barone, Dick Morris), as well as other familiar veterans (William Kristol, Juan Williams) and a former politician (Newt Gingrich). Fox's newest campaign commentator is Karl Rove, President Bush's former political mastermind.

And those are just the prime-time regulars. All three cable networks have small, standing armies of political journalists, think-tank wonks, ex-pols and vaguely affiliated political figures (typically described on the air as Democratic or Republican "strategists") to provide commentary and predictions at other hours of the day.

Still more demand for punditry comes from the weekend public-affairs programs on the broadcast networks; from public television and radio programs; and from foreign broadcasters, which have shown strong interest in this campaign.

These days, pundits-in-waiting such as Peter Mirijanian don't have to wait long for their phones to ring. Mirijanian, a Democrat who runs his own public relations firm in Washington, estimates that he has been on TV hundreds of times over the past seven years, usually to offer comments about companies or celebrities embroiled in a crisis. Mirijanian says he now gets "two to three" calls a week from TV networks that want him to talk about the presidential race.

Pundits are in such demand that they have to be ready to suit up at any hour. Rachel Sklar, a writer for the Huffington Post Web site, recently detailed her expanding portfolio of TV-commentary assignments on her Facebook page: "Rachel is on CTV in Canada in about 5 mins (at about 9:40 pm)," she wrote. "And on CNN at 2 am, yo. And MSNBC from 3-5 a.m. Super Wednesday slumber party!"

There's the question, of course, of how much wisdom and foresight the pundits truly provide. Many pundits wrote off John McCain's candidacy early on; they suggested Hillary Clinton was doomed after losing in Iowa; and they counted Mike Huckabee out on Super Tuesday, among other miscues.

Commentators have also been called out by media watchdogs for sometimes intemperate commentary. Matthews last month apologized for saying on MSNBC "the reason Hillary Clinton may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." MSNBC guest-host David Shuster earlier this month apologized and was suspended for saying the Clinton campaign was "pimping out" the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea. And Time magazine's Mark Halperin apologized last week for using a crude word to describe John Edwards's assessment of Barack Obama's readiness to be president.

Olbermann sees strengths and weaknesses in having so many voices on a news set. On one hand, he says, having lots of people doling out short bits of commentary can feed "the Short Attention Span Theater that American politics has become." Conversely, "the advantage is, if you rotate all these people, you actually give them significant amounts of time off to think about what's happening. Or call people. Or talk amongst themselves."

It may also be helping the ratings. From late December to mid-February, CNN, Fox and MSNBC collectively recorded a 62 percent increase in their prime-time audience, compared with the same period in the last campaign in 2003-04, according to Nielsen data. During all hours of the day, the increase for the three networks was 73 percent.

So how do the networks go about drafting their pundit teams? Credentials matter. Experience working in or covering a campaign counts, producers say. It also helps if you can expound clearly, crisply and provocatively (which might explain why the cable networks like such talk-radio hosts as Maddow, Martin, Dennis Prager and Ed Schultz, among others).

Mirijanian has worked in two presidential campaigns, but his status as a go-to pundit might be a result of his experience -- as a TV pundit. "Let's face it: The bookers have to fill slots all day," he says. "They're asking themselves, 'Who do I know who can go on, who's reliable, and will do a good job?' "

When assembling a group of pundits, the goal is to create "chemistry" among them, says Bill Wolff, MSNBC's vice president of prime-time programming. "You want folks who like and respect each other, who listen to what the other guy says and then respond in an interesting, fair and compelling way," he says. "You want [viewers] to say, 'They're great together.' There's some degree of luck involved, but as they say, luck is the residue of design."

The networks also strive for balance: "Ideally, you want diversity of experience, diversity of [political views] and a group of people who look completely different from each other," says veteran news producer Tammy Haddad, who consults for the National Journal and Newsweek (owned by The Washington Post Co.). "We're seeing a much broader and deeper rotation of voices in this election, I think. In the old days, it was the same four guys."

For the cable networks, the benefit of punditry is that this type of talk is literally cheap. Most experts invited to comment on TV receive no compensation for their opinion slinging, according to news producers. For a select few, however, the rewards of the job can be good, and sometimes great. Several news organizations have agreements with the networks to use the organization's journalists on the air (under a deal with MSNBC, Post reporters receive $100 for daytime appearances and $300 for prime-time segments).

The next step up is a retainer deal, which binds a pundit to a particular network for regular or semi-regular "hits," as segment interviews are known.

An elite cadre at the top of the pundit pyramid -- Mike Barnicle and Newsweek's Fineman on MSNBC; Williams and Kristol on Fox News; Borger and Toobin on CNN -- have annual contracts that tie them to a network on a half- or full-time basis. Such deals can pay as much as $200,000 annually, producers say.

Punditry could be a growth market for some time to come. Assessing his stable of regular analysts, Sam Feist, CNN's political director, says: "I think we've found the right number for our recent election nights."

So CNN now has all the talking heads it needs?

Not necessarily.

"We're always tweaking our team of political contributors," he says. "I won't say we won't add more" as the campaign continues.

Why Are So Many Bigshot Political Reporters Apologizing Now?
Why Are So Many Bigshot Political Reporters Apologizing Now?
by Eric Deggans
February 14, 2008

Time magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin joined a small, yet growing club this week, when he issued an apology for saying former Presidential candidate John Edwards considered Barack Obama "kind of a pussy" on a satellite radio talk show.

Halperin's words: "In a live radio interview this week, I used a word I shouldn't have. The fact that I was conveying other people's words is no excuse for my lapse in judgment."

When I first heard about this exchange yesterday, I wondered about the journalism end of it. If Halperin heard Edwards call Obama the p-word, shouldn't he have reported it in Time? If Edwards said the word to him off the record, why did Halperin recount the exchange in public?

And if Edwards didn't use the p-word, why did Halperin tell the story to make it look as if he had -- putting the worst sort of profanity in the mouth of a guy he presumably is still covering?

But it struck me this morning, after reading the apology, that there is more going on here. The rules have changed a bit for political reporters, especially those with high profiles, and some players haven't realized it yet.

Already, MSNBC anchors Chris Matthews and David Shuster have had to apologize publicly for using language that was particularly insulting to women on their shows. Matthews basically said Clinton's career as an elected official came courtesy of sympathy generated by her husband's philandering and Shuster wondered if daughter Chelsea was being "pimped out" by her parents in making calls to celebrities and superdelegates.

In all three instances, you have people making boneheaded statements using inappropriate language. On one level, all these guys seemed to forget that they weren't bellied up to the bar with their fellow reporters after a deadline, but speaking to national audiences on professional broadcasts.

But beyond that, the presence of a black man and woman as important presidential candidates is forcing these guys to rethink how they talk about politics. And some of them are failing miserably.

Another big sign: How most media outlets talk about race. Beyond making predictions and observations about how black and white people are voting, I haven't seen much talk about race -- which is surprising for a contest which could produce America's first black president.

Instead, the media and political insiders seem to be playing a game of hot potato -- each side is waiting for the other to talk about race issues in a way which gives them license to speak, too. The most recent example of this odd dynamic was Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's comments to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's editorial board talking down the possibility of the state's voters supporting Obama.

My pal and PG edit board member Tony Norman quotes Rendell saying: "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," he said bluntly. Our eyes only met briefly, perhaps because the governor wanted to spare the only black guy in the room from feeling self-conscious for backing an obvious loser. "I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann [2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate] been the identical candidate that he was --well-spoken [note: Mr. Rendell did not call the brother "articulate"], charismatic, good-looking -- but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so."

Leave aside that he's comparing the candidacy of a black Republican football star who had never held public office to a sitting Democratic Senator who has already won a number of tough primary battles. Rendell later complained on Matthews' show Hardball that it was the media which was obsessed with race and that nothing he said would have helped Clinton, anyway.

Riiight. So far, Obama has avoided race talk by confounding assumptions. Think he can't get white votes? Then he'll win primaries in Idaho, North Dakota and Connecticut. Think he's not black enough? Then he'll win 80 percent of the black vote in South Carolina (frankly, I think a lot of black people just wanted to see whether he had a serious chance. Once he won Iowa, they were ready to line up).

But I do think that one question I asked in a story last year has barely been addressed: how will black people feel if Obama doesn't champion black issues in ways they expect? And that's partially because the mostly-white press corps covering the campaigns can't figure out how to ask the question without getting criticized.

I took some criticism of my own after writing a blog post about the lack of diversity among those covering the election. Because I cited MSNBC, I heard from folks at NBC News including Keith Olbermann, who felt I was being unfair by not noting all the female and black correspondents and guest pundits they had on air.

Fair enough. But the anchors are the focus of most political coverage, especially on cable TV. They direct the conversation, they highlight subjects or ignore them, they choose the guests and set context and they ultimately serve as the voice of the channel.

On MSNBC, that list of election night anchors includes Olbermann, Matthews, Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Joe Scarborough and Tim Russert. That seems to echo MSNBC's general lineup, in which every show hosted by a name anchor is a white male: Tucker Carlson, Dan Abrams, Matthews, Olbermann and Scarborough.

On CNN, the evening lineup is Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs, Larry King and Anderson Cooper, though NBC expatriot Campbell Brown has an 8 p.m. show coming at some point. On Fox the afternoon and evening anchor crew is Shepard Smith, Neil Cavuto, John Gibson, Brit Hume, Hannity and Colmes and Bill O'Reilly, with Greta Van Susteren adding a little gender diversity at least.

But if we do wind up welcoming a President Obama or Clinton, all these folks will have to learn a new way of talking about a great many things. I'm starting to think that the candidates aren't the only people facing some serious tests this election season.