The social construction of television punditry
Virginia Postrel has two good posts up riffing on Fareed Zakaria’s column bemoaning the Crossfiring of American politics. Zakaria’s key point: “Crossfire” is now a metaphor for politics in Washington. There are two teams, each with its own politicians, think tanks, special-interest groups, media outfits and TV personalities. The requirement of this world is that ...
Virginia Postrel has two good posts up riffing on Fareed Zakaria's column bemoaning the Crossfiring of American politics. Zakaria's key point:
Virginia Postrel has two good posts up riffing on Fareed Zakaria’s column bemoaning the Crossfiring of American politics. Zakaria’s key point:
“Crossfire” is now a metaphor for politics in Washington. There are two teams, each with its own politicians, think tanks, special-interest groups, media outfits and TV personalities. The requirement of this world is that you must always be reliably left or right. If you are an analyst “on the right” you must always support what the team does. If President Bush invades Iraq, you support it. If he increases the deficit, you support that. If he opposes stem-cell research, you support that, too. There’s no ideological coherence or consistency to these positions. Republicans are now fervent nation-builders, but only two years ago scornfully opposed the whole concept. You must support your team. If you don’t, it screws up the TV show.
Postrel argues that Zakaria’s thesis stops at the edge of the TV screen:
In reality, Washington’s “right-wing” think tanks offer plenty of intellectual diversity (including a range of intellectual quality and integrity, sometimes within the same organization). You just won’t see that diversity reflected in television bookings. There, as in party politics, the goal is predictability and message discipline. The lack of “honest debate” and “bipartisanship” isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. And it will remain a feature until a political crisis sends one or both parties looking for policy entrepreneurs or until media patrons decide that intellectual exploration and genuine debate are more interesting than talking points. In the meantime, the long-term debate will take place offstage.
However, Zakaria’s hypothesis does seem to hold for television, as this e-mail missive to Postrel points out:
Fareed is right about the media pressure for guests to be partisan team players. I just got canceled out of what would have been one of my highest-prestige TV bookings ever because (they told me) top producers had decided I was not firmly enough committed to either side in the election.
My experience with the TV thing is that bookers tend to go with a two-person or three-person format when discussing anything of substance. In the two-person format, it’s necessary that the commentators take clear positions on clear sides of the partisan fence. In three-person formats, the third person is allowed to be an “expert” or “referee” that’s somehow above the fray. Either way, you’re confined to a stereotype.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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