The Sam & Cokie Dog & Pony Show

Broadcast early on Sunday mornings or at other odd times during the week, a handful of "serious" news shows frame political debate on non-cable television. While these shows may bore most people who can't tolerate more than five minutes of self-righteous, quarreling pundits, the Sunday morning news shows try so hard to be entertaining that you almost forget who their target audience is: investors, businessmen, CEOs, and people particularly concerned with national politics.

In theory, because of the narrow target audience and the reduced pressure to sell advertising during these time slots, these shows should be able to rise above the typical disaster, crime, and trivial entertainment fare routinely shown on the 11 o'clock news. One would expect more serious issues to be covered, or for a few serious issues to be dealt with in more depth. Even if the target audience is conservative, wealthy, and privileged, they still need access to information to make investment and business decisions. But the news shows routinely fail them. While these shows may feature long interviews with politicians, economists, scientists, journalists, and other "leaders," the topics they choose often exceed the evening news in terms of the fluff factor. Because the producers of these shows don't have to worry about ratings and have a guaranteed audience, there seems to be a deeper problem here--perhaps some sort of fundamental flaw in the news culture, in which national reporters and pundits cannot prioritize what news is important, or are too complacent (or too lazy) to find even a few interesting facts to give. Some recent examples:

The June 7th "This Week with Sam & Cokie" on ABC (at 11:00 a.m.) focused on nothing but the Monica Lewinsky affair, Ken Starr, and semen-stained dresses for the entire hour. (Some folks might be entertained by semen-stained clothing, but with Sam Donaldson reporting? I'll pass, thank you.) This was by no means a slow news week. For its specialized target audience, this was a bad choice of stories to run. Many important events were occurring nationally and internationally that were of interest to the investor class: Indonesia was changing governments, India and Pakistan had tested nuclear bombs, Congress was considering a spate of stupid bills like the flag-burning amendment, etc.

Sam & Cokie features the following interviewers: Cokie Roberts as the moderate, George Will as the conservative, and Sam Donaldson as the "liberal." William Kristol and George Stephanopoulos usually participate in a Right-Left roundtable discussion at the end. During some weeks, the show exhibits a little more focus, and the June 14th show reduced the Lewinsky affair to one-third of the programming time, thereby freeing up a few minutes for discussing China and the Tobacco bill.

The other two network shows are equally bad. Sometimes they include some relevant subject matter, but the range of their discourse is limited and they tend to devote as much time to pop culture scandals (OJ Simpson, for example) as Entertainment Tonight does. A topic such as "rude airline passengers" may merit discussion by someone at some time, but as part of a major network news show? Subjects of real concern to everyday people aren't even on the map.

Slightly better shows are isolated to the graveyard shift. "Meet the Press" on NBC often has a wide variety of subjects (although the choice of commentators remains fairly reactionary). For example, they devoted only five minutes to the Lewinsky scandal on the June 14th broadcast and ran interviews with people ranging from Charlton Heston of the NRA to Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council. On "Face the Nation," however, the Lewinsky scandal consumed 20 of 23 minutes of total air time.

PBS tries to give us a step up. Despite its reactionary host, William F. Buckley, the half-hour "Firing Line" can be counted on to provide actual in-depth coverage of a single political issue without commercial interruption, during which interviewees are allowed long periods of time to at least express complete thoughts.

"The McLaughlin Group" is also free of advertising pressures. On this show, a spectrum of loudmouths ranging from this week's guest "moderate" to Patrick Buchanan on the far right argue and talk over each other, often grabbing for the microphone to be heard--a restrained, upper-crust version of the Jerry Springer Show. The June 14th show devoted two-thirds of its time to a variety of subjects, but dished out the remaining one-third to the Lewinsky affair, treating viewers to erudite pundits pontificating on the artistic merits of each photo in the infamous Monica Lewinsky spread in Vanity Fair Magazine. Other PBS gems include "Wall Street Week" (zzzzzz) and "Washington Week in Review" (yawn).

I say, better switch the channel back to "Frasier" or the baseball game.

MediaWatch is written every two weeks by members of the MediaWatch collective, a local group monitoring Seattle news media. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, July 14 at 6:00 PM, 3rd floor Univ. Baptist Church (4554 12th Ave. NE in Seattle). For info or to get involved, e-mail mediawatch@u.washington.edu or call 632-1656.