[music]

Alex Jones: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. The republican convention starts tomorrow in San Diego, and we're apparently in for something new and different, a smooth script and slick productions right down to the viewer-friendly issue segments are only some of the things the Republicans have in store. On cable, we'll even see delegates acting as reporters covering their own convention. What's happening, and where are the media in all of this? Have conventions become television infomercials, void of political importance and unworthy of substantial coverage? In this hour of On the Media, we're talking about convention coverage, San Diego style. That's right after this news, so stay tuned.

[music]

Alex Jones: This is On the Media, and I'm Alex Jones. About 150 years ago, this country started having political conventions as a kind of reform. Up till then, presidential candidates were picked by a few party bosses in Congress, and holding a convention was an exercise in democracy. These days, conventions may be a lot of things, but one thing they are not is democratic, at least in the uproarious, unpredictable, sometimes fascinating, sometimes boring way they used to be. Press pundits are saying that the Republican convention starting tomorrow will be a four-day infomercial created for television, and there's been a lot of hand-wringing about that.

Although both Democratic and Republican conventions have been infomercials of sorts for years, this year the Republicans have just been more baldly honest about what they are going to do. This may sound like the kind of convention that is a nonevent for the media. No real news, no real suspense, but what is suspenseful is how the media is going to cope with this absolutely in-your-face effort by the Republicans to control the convention coverage. Will it work? Will the media, after denouncing the Republicans, react with innovative coverage or perhaps react with a kind of counter coverage, even spike coverage as a demonstration of independence?

What exactly is the obligation of the media in covering a convention like this? Where do the issues come into all this back and forth over the manipulation of the convention coverage? This will be the first convention with a major Internet dimension. How will that affect news coverage? Here to talk about all this are some interesting people. Merrill Brown, managing editor of MSNBC. That's Microsoft NBC, the hybrid news organization that marries television and the Internet. Merrill joins us from Redmond, Washington, which is Microsoft's headquarters town.

Deborah Potter is a faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a former political correspondent for CBS and CNN. She joins us from San Diego, of course. Tony Perry, San Diego bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. Welcome to you all.

Tony Perry: Welcome.

Alex Jones: Tony Perry, what is this plan that the Republican Party has to manage the news coverage of this convention to control the way it goes out?

Tony Perry: Well, Paul Manafort, the lobbyist who is Bob Dole's campaign convention coordinator, says that this will be what he refers to as political television, and he refers to the convention as a message delivery system. They want their message out and they want us to carry it and they want us to write about it. This is, as you pointed out in the intro, this is just the furthest evolution of a process that's been going on for several convention cycles, tailoring these conventions to the needs and the whims and the quirks of television. It seems to me that we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that this was going to happen.

The buzz among the press is that the only reason for a convention when it's preordained, who's going to win is to see if they get a bounce in the polls afterwards. Well, the Republicans have heard that message, and they're going to tailor this thing to get as much of a bounce in the polls as they can.

Alex Jones: First of all, are you at all surprised that they have been as flatly honest about what they're going to do and how they're going to do this? Because he has been quoted in great detail about precisely what they're intending to do and precisely how they expect it to work.

Tony Perry: I was very pleased, actually, to see Manafort first in The Boston Globe, I think, broke that story, and then in a roundtable discussion with reporters that I saw on C-SPAN. Be very honest about what he's doing and very chipper about it, and just tell you I'm going to razzle dazzle you and hope you carry [laughs] my message as unfiltered as I can get it to your viewers and your readers, and your parishioners. I rather like that. I much prefer a man who tells me straight to my eye that he's going to manipulate me, and then it's a shame on me if it happens.

Alex Jones: That's what the next question is. Deborah Potter, what are you hearing out there from your journalistic colleagues? Are they taking this as a flung gauntlet, or are they kind of dispirited by it?

Deborah Potter: No, I don't think anyone's dispirited, Alex. The truth is that this isn't a surprise to anyone. As Tony said, we've been heading in this direction for some time. What's interesting is not only how much the Republicans have tried to develop a message and develop a television program essentially for the three hours of conventions each night, but that they're not just relying on the networks to get that message out. They're actually creating their own television coverage. They're going to have a program carried on cable on The Family Channel with their own delegates playing floor reporter. I'm not a reporter, but I play one on TV. Plus they'll have a morning recap show on the USA Network.

They're going to make a major effort to use satellite interviews with local anchors on television, recognizing that fully 60% of the American people won't see anything from San Diego in any fashion. They just won't tune in, so this is the way they'll learn about it from these interviews on local television and on radio talk shows. The Republicans have been very open about what they're doing. They're producing a program that they would like to see carried. They recognize the reality that the networks have scaled back their coverage dramatically, and they're finding other ways to get their message out as, "unfiltered as possible."

I think the dilemma for the media is to figure out what there is to report out here that hasn't already been sliced and diced in a million ways.

Alex Jones: That brings us to you, Merrill Brown. You're going to be trying to do something nobody's done before, and that's cover this convention with an important Internet dimension to it. How do you see this affecting the way you'll be doing your job?

Merrill Brown: In many ways, this kind of event is tailor-made for the Internet because of the breadth of what we can do and the fact of how much control we have of what goes out on our system. We're not dependent on live pictures. We don't have to deal with the convention stage all the time, but what we can do is actually capitalize on the fact that the bottom line is there's a lot of interesting people and a lot of interesting viewpoints and a lot of a slice of American Republican Party politics that's in that room.

If we can capture the flavor of that by having conversation, by having delegates talk to, in effect, people at home on the Internet, if we can capture the interesting slices of life that are a political convention at the Internet, we'll have succeeded and taken advantage of this unique American forum.

Alex Jones: We're going to get to more about the Internet's coverage in its own genre, but you all are teamed with NBC as well. Have you gotten much of a sense of how NBC intends to deal with this very carefully scripted prime-time program that the Republicans are going to prevent? Are they essentially going to just put it on the air the way the Republicans have expected them to?

Merrill Brown: NBC is blessed by the fact that they have, as of now, thanks to MSNBC, multiple forum to cover the convention. They have NBC to give perspective and to really deal with the big stories in what hopefully be an analytical way, but they also have MSNBC, the cable network, to deal with long-form programming as they see fit. That's the mix of three services, Internet, cable, and broadcast, that make the NBC opportunity so interesting.

Alex Jones: Tony Perry, if you would, give us a little bit more detail about what the Republicans have, how they've analyzed the way television covers conventions, and how they are now going to adapt their convention to suit that convention if you will, the convention of the way the TV coverage is covered.

Tony Perry: To begin with, what they're going to have is short and snappy speeches. None of these 30 minutes stem winders. Everybody remembers Governor Clinton's 30-minute speech some conventions ago. You are not going to see that. The keynote here is going to be five minutes. They know that in the age of the remote control, that the American viewer has a pretty short attention span. Even that 40% who does watch some of the conventions is going to be short. There's going to be real people segments. It's going to be done. If you ever watch television commercials where there are, what, seven images per second, they flick by that fast. It can be quite that fast.

Our central nervous system isn't quite up to that for a couple of hours, but that's how quick it's going to be. A speech, an interview outside, a video, a real person talking about some social problem and how the Republicans are going to help him, it's going to be quick, short, punchy. There's been a lot of griping by the networks about how small this convention center is, and it's less than half the size of the Houston Astrodome from '92. One advantage here is what you won't have, you won't have that classic network shot of acres and acres of empty seats because come the important stuff the last couple of days, there aren't going to be empty seats because there are so few seats compared to previous conventions.

This whole convention is geared towards television, and who can blame them? Who can blame them? What they're doing here is pushing to the sticking point, both for television and for print. The question why do we do this?

Alex Jones: I think that is the real issue. Deborah Potter, is this news?

Deborah Potter: I think that it's something that we could not, not cover. I can't imagine they're having a convention and no reporters coming. The truth is that this is the time when these parties get a chance to tell the country what it is they stand for. Now, the political reporters who think they've been doing that since the beginning of the year, following candidates on the trail, it may not be news. It may be as boring as it gets. We know all of this about these candidates and what they stand for, but the American public hasn't been paying attention, and now is the time when people who really want to know what's going on get a chance to tune in and find out.

I, too, am fascinated by just how scripted this convention is, not just in terms of the pacing, but in terms of the themes. Haley Barbour, the chairman of the party, said yesterday that no one was told here you get a few minutes to talk about whatever you want to. Every speech that will be made at this convention has been carefully vetted. Every speaker was asked to talk about a specific subject. They've got this not only planned in terms of the pacing but in terms of the theme and the message. It is incredibly well put together if it holds as a plan.

If people do get a chance to tune into some of this one way or another on cable or on public television, they'll get a chance to see some of this without any kind of interruption. They'll get a sense of what this party stands for, and that's a good thing, I think.

Alex Jones: I think--

Tony Perry: Alex, I think what the Republicans have realized, and I'm sure the Democrats have, too, is that the media is addicted to conventions. We love them. We send more people-

Alex Jones: 15,000 [crosstalk].

Tony Perry: -that you can ever imagine, and we're going to come and we're going to report on what they have, even if there isn't any hard breaking news out of it. They've got in us a fairly captive audience if you will. They know that. For all the grousing that we give, we're going to be there. Max Frankel had a piece in today's New York Times in which he talked about the press being hooked in a nostalgia for conventions, and he called conventions the least important part of the political season, and who am I to disagree with him? I think there's something to that. All the convention promises will be forgotten probably by the middle of next week.

It's a wonderful spectacle while it happens, but we're hooked on it. I've talked to reporters from across the country, from medium and small papers, and they'll tell you that their editors are sending a dozen reporters to this, more reporters than they have covering the issues that are of real importance to their readers back home. We just love these conventions.

Alex Jones: I saw in the Washington Post last week that the ratio of reporters to delegates is going to be 15 to 1. Astonishing. We've got a lot more to talk about. We want to know what you think. How do you think the media should cover the Republican convention? What would you like to see and read? What are your ideas? Our number is 1-800-343-3342. That's 1-800-343-3342. This is On the Media from National Public Radio.

I'm Alex Jones. We're back with On the Media talking about how the media are going to cover this made-for-TV convention that's about to come up or start tomorrow in San Diego. I can't believe that the one that the Democrats are going to hold a little bit later is going to be much different. We're talking with Merrill Brown, managing editor of MSNBC, Deborah Potter, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and Tony Perry, San Diego bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. We want to hear what you think. How should the media be covering this convention and the democratic convention as well? Our number is 1-800-343-3342.

Deborah Potter, one of the things that really fascinated me about the articles that have appeared this past week about this sort of Republican plan is how sophisticated and subtle they were about analyzing the way the television networks covered conventions. Ordinarily, with anchors at the beginning of the hour, anchors at the end of the hour, 15 minutes away for commercial breaks, and then short segments in between in which information would be passed on to people, and they have adopted that standardized form which they found apparently all of the networks were using. Is that going to change, you think, because of this effort to manipulate it?

Deborah Potter: I don't think so. My sense is that the Republicans did a very smart thing. They watched some television, they looked at what had been done in the past, and they said, "Gee, there's a pattern here." They tend to give this much time to the anchors, as you say, at the top of the hour. Then they'll come to the floor a little bit, then they'll go to a reporter a little bit. The Republican said, "Well, we're going to try to adapt this template ourselves and make our own program fit that." It's pretty smart thinking, I think. What you have to recognize, Alex, is that the networks are not covering this gavel-to-gavel as they used to. They didn't four years ago.

I think secretly a lot of people at the networks had hoped that the Democrats would take the lead, being the party in power, and cut back to maybe three or even two days' worth of convention. It didn't happen, and so now here we all are once again with a four-day convention and nothing going on. I think what the Republicans probably fear the most is the natural tendency of the media to look for conflict. Tony says we're addicted to conventions. We're also addicted to this need to have some kind of conflict. When you have a very, very scripted convention, they tried it in '92, and there was still some conflict.

We had floor speeches, as everyone remembers, by Pat Buchanan, among others, whose remarks had not been carefully vetted in advance, and that gave everybody a story. This time, I think you're going to find reporters looking around for stories that will make it seem as though there's something exciting happening here. That, I suspect, is the real concern among Republicans. We're already seeing it today, the differences between Kemp and Dole.

Alex Jones: One of the things that really suggests, I mean, lends itself to this response that, Deborah, that you're talking about is, for instance, the fact that both the governor of California, Wilson, and Governor Weld of Massachusetts, are not going to be participating in this scripted event because they had things they wanted to say that they were not going to be allowed to say. There's nothing, it seems to me, to prevent them from saying that outside the convention. You know, context. Is that something that's apt to happen, or do you think no one's going to break ranks?

Deborah Potter: Oh, I think we're already seeing it. I've seen interviews already with both of those gentlemen talking about what they would have said. I think that they are Republicans and this is the Republican week to shine and no one wants to directly reign on the parade. I do think that Haley Barbour is correct that what all these people have in common is that they would like to win the election this fall. I do think you're going to see a little bit of care being taken by those people who were excluded, not to be ugly about it, but that doesn't prevent the journalists from rushing to them looking for a little bit of excitement.

Alex Jones: I want to get our listeners in on this conversation. Vince in Boston, you're on the air.

Vince: Hi.

Alex Jones: Hi, Vince.

Vince: My thought was that the Republicans, by being very open and candid about what they're doing, have almost erected or suggested that there's a principle that they're entitled to four nights of airtime to get their message out in an unfiltered, unchallenged way. That in some sense, if the media try to pierce that veil or penetrate that veneer in any way, that really the Republicans have set the media up for the criticism that the media won't allow them-

Alex Jones: That's interesting.

Vince: -to get their message out.

Alex Jones: Merrill Brown, how would you react to that?

Merrill Brown: I think the message is being quite carefully crafted, even down to watching this morning limiting reporter access to newsmakers behind discrete security walls. I'm not in San Diego yet. I won't be there until tomorrow morning, but if things are going to that extreme, there's obviously the risk of some sort of just outright rebellion from the media. If things are this tightly crafted, I'm not quite sure what the story--

Alex Jones: The thing is, have the Republicans somehow seize the high ground by being so open about it, in effect saying, "Of course, we're doing this. This is the right thing to do. Why shouldn't we do this? This is our message. We want you to carry it. That's your job." Is that the media's job at a convention?

Merrill Brown: It is certainly not the media's job either to be at the convention or to carry the message. The media's job is to hunt for news and to capture the truth as best we can. If there are no fresh truths or no fresh message coming out of this, and it's a mimicking of what we've been hearing for many months, and let's not forget, it's been clear who the coronated nominee is going to be, I don't think there's any obligation here whatsoever. As I said, I think the story is all these interesting people under one roof, and can we capture some sense of where Republican Party politics are today because of that opportunity?

Alex Jones: Now, has the Republican Party been solicitous of MSNBC, for instance, this Internet effort that you're mounting, have they been tried to coordinate with you about who you would get and how you would use them, that kind of thing?

Merrill Brown: Much to my surprise, but I guess, upon reflection, not so surprising is the fact that they have gone out of their way over leaps and bounds to seem Internet friendly because they think the Internet is yet another way to avoid the screen of big media. They have given us an extraordinary position on the floor of the convention, almost as good as a large broadcast network to grab delegates and, in effect, talk to them on the Internet and interview them on the Internet.

They are trying very hard to be hip. After all, what is hipper than the Internet right now? It's been very interesting to be involved in these conversations with them and to realize how extraordinarily accessible they want to appear to the Internet community.

Alex Jones: Tony Perry, has the Republican Party somehow seized a moral high ground, and where does that leave newspapers in this situation?

Tony Perry: Newspapers are scrambling to create a niche for themselves in [chuckles] increasingly broadcast and Internet world, but I think we're going to do fine because we have strengths that that broadcast doesn't have. We have space. We have time to put things together. We're not wed to things that are happening now that'll be uninteresting 30 minutes from now. I think Merrill has hit on it. The standing order is not go cover the convention, but the standing order is go look for news at the convention. That's pretty standard stuff.

Any young reporter who's ever gone to a school board meeting and come back and told the city editor, "Here's what happened at the meeting," and had the city editor growl, "Yes, but where's the news?" The same is true. The little school board or this great big national convention. Where is the news? Where is the beef?

Alex Jones: For instance, you're a San Diego guy, your governor is a San Diego guy, and yet he is not going to be there to even welcome the Republicans to his town because he would not go by the script. Isn't that news?

Tony Perry: That is news and covered in some detail. We've been very close and analytical of his role in the abortion fight, his role in the compromise language. Don't forget that the world does not end outside that convention center. Pat Buchanan, for example, is going to go to a suburban area, and he's hired himself a hall, and I'll bet you that's the hottest ticket in town, journalistically, to go there.

Alex Jones: I would say so.

Tony Perry: My hunch is there's going to be a lot of coverage tomorrow, Pat Buchanan's speech up in Escondido, 30 miles from San Diego, and it'll probably get as much, if not more coverage than the great Houston culture war speech. Pete Wilson has gotten his message out. He'll get it out other ways, too. The fact that you don't get to mount the podium, those cameras do swing around, and there are the mini cams outside the hall.

Alex Jones: Indeed, Vince, thank you for your call. Interesting point. We've got a number of more callers. We're going to get as many of you on the air as we can. Our number, 1-800-343-3342. This is On the Media from National Public Radio.

I'm Alex Jones. We're back with On the Media talking about how the media should be covering the upcoming Republican and later Democratic conventions with Merrill Brown, managing editor of MSNBC, Deborah Potter of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and Tony Perry, San Diego bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. We've got a lot of callers. I want to get some of them in on the conversation. David in Cambridge, Massachusetts, you're on the air.

David 1: Thank you.

Alex Jones: Sure thing.

David 1: I'm curious about your comment that the Republicans seem to have staked out the moral high ground on this.

Alex Jones: No, I think they've tried to. They've tried to because they have declared this is their right.

David: Well, it seems to be the moral high ground here might be for them to pay for the advertising time. I'm not sure why the media is-- Why cover it? That's the story.

Alex Jones: I think that's a very legitimate question. Deborah Potter, we're back. Why cover it? Is this something that in and of itself is a legitimate thing to cover? I don't mean the people around it or the temperature of the Republican Party, I mean the convention message that the Republican Party is trying to put out.

Deborah Potter: I do think we cover these things because they're a ritual for us. We've already discussed how much the media love to come to events like this. It is the grand old party in other ways, too. I can tell you that the local paper had a party for the press last night, and while I didn't make it, I noticed this morning that a lot of folks apparently did.

Alex Jones: A little bleary-eyed, I think.

Deborah Potter: [laughs] I know you're shocked by this, but it's a ritual that we would be at this event. On the other hand, it may seem trite, but it really is a great national civics lesson. It's something that we do in this country. It's part of our tradition. Again, I make the point that this is a time whether what's happening on the floor is exciting or not, whether it's news or not, this is a time for Americans to look at these two parties over the next three weeks and really get an idea, a sense of how they differ, what it is that they stand for, how they are different, something that political reporters know terribly well but that many people in this country haven't yet focused on.

I grant you that we know these two candidates, that there's nothing terribly new that could be said about either of them and yet it's a chance for us to really focus down on where they differ on issues. I find that sort of thing useful to voters who ultimately have to make a choice in November.

Alex Jones: David, thank you very much for your call. Tony, what are the resources, really, that the LA Times is going to be devoting to this?

Tony Perry: We'll have 75 people here, led by our national political editor, David Lauter, and our national editor, Mike Miller. The editor, Shelby Coffey, is down here. We've got all the major editors. We've got 27 reporters. We've got 10 photographers. We've got copy editors. We've got graphics people. We've got pollsters. We've got researchers. We are going to cover this thing as we do traditionally from top to bottom, analytically putting it in the context of what has come before, what's going to come after. We try to stay away from some of the ephemeral things, the protests on the outside.

We think we've matured beyond covering every person with a picket sign. We try to get away from covering people who would have said the same thing if we called them last week and would say the same thing if we called them next week. We're looking for something as new and something that's significant. I think if there's one focus to the coverage, it is, is this working? Are they going to be able to launch from here? Recent history has shown us that if you don't get a bounce, if you don't get an increase in your standings after one of these conventions, you're in bad shape. You can still get an increase and have it chipped away. We know this, but we only have to look at Mondale.

Alex Jones: Is this going to be about the politics of the convention or the process of the convention more, or the process of how the Republican Party is trying to, I mean--

Tony Perry: It's going to be about all of those things and much more. Unless this goes well, I don't think Dole has much chance. We're looking at another Mondale who was behind when he was nominated in San Francisco in '84, and he was still behind by about the same margin when he was elected. I think that's why the Republicans know this. They know that the media is looking for failure here and is looking for it's not working, and so that's why they've gone to these extraordinary lengths to manage.

Alex Jones: They've also going to guarantee that it's going to be talked about. The idea of whether it's working or not and what they're trying to do versus what actually the media is doing is going to be a very important centerpiece story for the whole convention [unintelligible 00:28:24].

Tony Perry: You mentioned in the intro that the talk show folks, there's going to be talk show alley. I think you had it four years ago in Houston. It's even bigger now. 55 talk show hosts around the country are going to be lined up on what is Harbor Drive in front of the convention center, so the GOP luminaries, Susan Molinari, presumably Kemp, others can go down the road, stopping at one, then the other, then the other, then the other, talking to these generally conservative talk show hosts and getting the message out to the faithful very quickly and over the heads of the networks, and over the heads of the big newspapers.

Alex Jones: David in Roslyn, Long Island, you're on the air.

David 2: Yes. Good afternoon.

Alex Jones: Good afternoon.

David 2: A fascinating discussion. I don't know that there's a great deal that the networks are going to be able to do to overcome this. One of the things, and I think Deborah Potter mentioned, a lot of this is based on tradition and maybe nostalgia and so forth is to actually make this story a major story in and of itself. In other words, bring on some experts who've been to conventions for 15, 20, 25, 30 years. The Brinkleys, the Cronkites, the Wickers. Show some of the great archival film footage of when conventions really meant something.

Explain as simply and carefully as you can exactly what the Republicans are trying to do here in terms of the media coverage. It might not work, but at least it's some attempt to try to stop this in-your-face kind of thing.

Alex Jones: Merrill Brown, do you think that that's going to be, in part, what your outfit's going to be doing?

Merrill Brown: We're going to try. We have a writer completely dedicated to covering the story of is the message getting through the media and to the public. He's going to be covering the delivery and it's successful nature or not successful of the message. I'm sure we're not alone in that fact, but I mean, others are going to cover just that fact as well. Hopefully, that's one way to cover the news without being totally, if you will, sucked in by the message.

Alex Jones: The thing is, if you are the Republican Party and if you make that a centerpiece issue, doesn't that also accomplish your purpose, which is to get the message out? If you're going to be discussing whether the message is getting out, then the message is going to be getting out, and shouldn't it get out. We're talking about a presidential race, and isn't the Republican message in and of itself a legitimate thing to be out there, to be considered at a Republican convention?

Merrill Brown: There are multiple messages, Alex. There's the Weld/Wilson message. There's the Buchanan message. There's the Ralph Reed/Pat Robertson message. There's the Dole/Kemp message. There's the Kemp message that existed before 72 hours ago when he became the nominee. I hope its our job, I know its our job to sort through all that and see who really represents the broadest spectrum of Republican thinking out there.

I think more, and there are messages that aren't Republican, too. It's humbling, really to see the number of groups that have come to San Diego all across the spectrum, left to right, to get their message to us, to the media. We have what is referred to as the protest zone right across from the convention center, 65 groups have signed up for 50 minutes slots to stand on a platform with a public address system and talk to the world about their social and political concerns in hopes that we, the media, will listen and give voice to their concerns.

For all of our cynicism and all of our tendency to go to the big party like I went to last night, there is something that brings us back to first purposes. When you see all of these people seeking, redress of grievances from left wing to right wing, all of them are asking us, the media, to get their message out. That, I don't know.

Alex Jones: Good point.

Tony Perry: Paul Manafort aside, all those folks in the street, left-wing, right-wing, asking us to explain their concerns to the American people, that's a good thing, and that's sort of a burden on us.

Alex Jones: Deborah?

Deborah Potter: Alex, it's Deborah Potter in San Diego. My sense of the question you asked earlier about whether the Republicans have set the media up, I think is a really good point that we ought to at least give some attention to. That is in this regard, I think you're right. If there's any one group that is as little liked as politicians in this country, it is we, in the media, we are not beloved, and there is something of a backlash against the constant yammering and negativism that we have seen in the press in the past.

My sense is if that negative stuff begins to override the message that the Republicans are trying to put out, a message which, by the way, will be available from other places, including C-SPAN and others. There could be a backlash against the press that could only help the Republicans. It's something worth considering.

Alex Jones: Interesting. David, thank you for your call. Timothy in Boston, Massachusetts, you're on the air.

Timothy: Thank you for taking my call. My view is that the conventions are really kindly said to be a docudrama, but really it's a comedy of black humor with songs of wealth and happiness and health. I think perhaps what I would certainly enjoy hearing the media do is what they usually do in a very good way, and that is to have an informative satire where the history and behavior of the participants, the direct participants, and the people behind them clearly stated who did what, when, who their supporters are, where do they get their money from, sort of a reality.

Alex Jones: Let me ask Merrill Brown, is there room for that on the MSNBC coverage, or is that something that the comedy channel will have to do?

Merrill Brown: Oh, no, there's plenty of room for that. We're going to be having fun with political cartoons, with humor. We have a wonderful, or at least a wonderfully humorous, I think, listing and accumulation of Kemp quotes over the years about Bob Dole that we were able to accumulate very quickly over the weekend, and in and of itself is quite funny because they haven't been close political allies. It's quite obvious.

Alex Jones: Interesting. Timothy, thank you very much for your call.

Tony Perry: One issue we've looked at, because it's very important, is who's paying the bills here? This is an extraordinarily expensive convention, even though very little new will be done here. It's very expensive to do just to rubber stamp with what they already have. Some $13 million of corporate money, twice as much as have ever been pumped into one of these conventions is going into this convention. This despite the fact that 20 years ago, post-Watergate, there was legislation that said no corporate money should go into political conventions.

Alex Jones: How does [crosstalk]?

Tony Perry: Did you know that each convention gets $12 million from the federal taxpayers? Well, the loopholes began, and they've gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. First, there was a loophole for local corporations to give a little money because a convention is good for business and that's been expanded and expanded to now all your major corporations, many of them with business pending in Washington, many of them seeking contracts or regulations fork out millions. Name your Fortune 500 company and they're here, and they've given money to run this convention, and they're giving money in Chicago as well. In fact, even more so in Chicago.

That's the kind of thing the press has been at. We've done some good work on that. I've seen ABC has done some good work. Brooks Jackson of CNN has done some awfully good work. That's the kind of story that the press should go after here. Who are these folks? Who's paying for them? What really is happening here? What really is this? What this is is a gathering of the political tribe, and among the political tribe is the money corporations of this country seeking and buying access.

Alex Jones: Huge ones, I know. Helene in the Bronx, you're on the air.

Helene: Hi.

Alex Jones: Hi there. Hello.

Helene: Hi.

Alex Jones: Hi there.

Helene: The republican convention will be so orchestrated and scripted. I would like to see reporters revealing the discrepancies between what is said, between what is said-- I'm getting another call, between what's said by a politician and what his or her life or political record has actually been. In fact, I think you said you were going to try to do that and augmented with cartoons and [crosstalk].

Alex Jones: That's what Merrill Brown was talking about.

Helene: That was wonderful. I'm really happy to hear that.

Alex Jones: Merrill Brown, is that something that requires a huge amount of resources, or is it something now with computers and the kind of, well, with the Internet, for instance, with data banks and computers, you can get access to that kind of stuff very fast?

Merrill Brown: Well, instantaneous research is one of the great tools of the Internet. Hopefully, we'll have some very skilled people at that and we can make quick comparisons. As, for instance, candidate Dole outlines his view about the deficit in welfare reform and contrast that to how his views have, shall we say, evolved over the years, and we can do that effectively and hopefully give people something that matters.

Alex Jones: Deborah Potter, how much of the old journalistic guard is represented there? A caller said earlier the Tom Wickers and the Walter Cronkites, are they in evidence?

Deborah Potter: Some of them certainly are. In fact, if you tuned in this morning to the television talk shows on Sunday, you would see a lot of those wise folks who've been to many, many conventions talking about this one. Many of those people are still working and reporting. It's not as though they've all retired and gone off the pasture somewhere. We do have a great deal of strength out here. I think particularly you see it on the print side, and those people are making the kinds of comparisons that I think are quite useful, big pieces in the newspaper about conventions past and how this one is different.

I think there is perspective out there, and we're getting some good knowledge from their base of knowledge and experience.

Alex Jones: Helene, thank you for your call. Appreciate it.

Merrill Brown: Alex?

Alex Jones: Yes.

Merrill Brown: One thing that's quite obvious this morning, and I've been watching coverage as we chat, is that the Republicans are exceeding enormously because all we're seeing on television is live boat shots of the Dole caravan coming on, moment after moment after moment, both on C-SPAN and on cable and to a lesser extent on broadcast. They're succeeding because CNN and MSNBC have nowhere to go right now but to the Dole boat.

Alex Jones: Well, MSNBC is just going to be on the boat. That's it. I mean, Merrill?

Merrill Brown: Frankly, I haven't watched MSNBC in an hour because it's not on in the room I'm on, I mean right now. CNN and C-SPAN are clearly doing everything in their power to capture every moment of this boat ride as candidate Dole comes into San Diego, and it's gloriously orchestrated against the backdrop of military carriers and so on and so forth.

Alex Jones: Now, Merrill, since we can't see it, we don't have television at the moment. We're radio. Why don't you just describe it for us? Vivid color description.

Merrill Brown: On a glorious San Diego day, the Dole flotilla has come in from a site where the limousine stopped. The limousine stopped miles short of the convention hall. They could have driven right into the convention hall, or into the convention vicinity. Instead, candidate Dole got out of a car and into a boat, and with [crosstalk]--

Alex Jones: Okay, thank you, Merrill. [chuckles] I think we got the importance of what you're saying.

Merrill Brown: I have somewhat of an advantage. I can see it from my window in my office here. It has been just the most gorgeous image you can ever imagine-

Alex Jones: I can imagine.

Merrill Brown: -of the candidate landing at a naval station and then taking a boat across and the fireboats. It's glorious. Is it news? That's another question.

Alex Jones: That's a very much another question. Donald in Monsey, New York. Hi, you're on the air. Donald.

Donald: Yes.

Alex Jones: Hi. You're on the air.

Donald: Yes, I had a comment, and I think that the job of the press in reporting this convention is probably the same as its job has been since the first convention in the last century. The purpose of the parties is to get their message out. There are other purposes as well, and conventions have always been controlled by the political ambiguity. The job of the press is to say one step ahead of that.

If they are advocating this, to put it across well, and if they're not advocating it to show the other side and to be as analytical as possible. I don't see that the job has changed. I see that the ability to do this job in the current context is very, very different and requires a great deal of work on the part of the press and the media.

Alex Jones: Donald, you've raised an issue that I think is a very important one in light of what was just the conversation we just had about the procession of the boats in San Diego. One of the things that's really changed is that with cable television and C-SPAN especially, there is now the opportunity to cover everything with whatever degree of sophistication or pure set up your camera and let it run kind of encyclopedic coverage that people want. I guess the question is there's going to be many, many different kinds of coverage. There's going to be the Republican Party's own coverage. There's going to be the C-SPAN coverage, which is going to be like of every person getting out of a limo.

There's going to be the much more specialized network coverage, which is, for instance, only going to be one hour in prime time on Monday night. Deborah Potter, is that really what's going on here, that everyone's going to be able to choose the kind of coverage they want?

Deborah Potter: I think we've been heading in that direction for some time, and it is one of the things we're going to see this year in a way we've never seen it before. Four years ago, I think there were more choices available. You had the switch four years ago where NBC said, "We're not doing this in prime time, but tell you what, we'll get into an alliance with public television, and we'll do it that way." There you had a different approach, one network doing regular programming up until the later hours of prime time, but putting their own people on public television. You had cable, CNN in particular, really pulling out all the stops and doing something like 50 hours from each convention.

This time what's really fascinating is the addition of the Internet factor. This really is the first convention that's ever been covered in this new medium. I do think that people, consumers of information, have more choices this year than ever before. By the way, that's not a surprise to anyone who's involved in running this convention. I think this is the first convention ever where the communications operation is larger than the political operation.

Alex Jones: Unbelievable.

Deborah Potter: It tells you something about how things have changed.

Alex Jones: Makes sense. Donald, thank you for your call. Our number, 1-800-343-3342. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Alex Jones. We're back with On the Media talking about the made-for-TV convention that's about to happen, and the democratic one is coming up in Chicago, and it won't be much different. We're talking with Merrill Brown, managing editor of MSNBC, Deborah Potter, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and Tony Perry, San Diego bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. Let me see. Greg in Somerville, Massachusetts. You're on the air.

Greg: Hi.

Alex Jones: Hi there.

Greg: I was involved with this third-party movement. It's called the Labor Party. We just had a founding convention in Cleveland a couple months ago, and there was literally no media coverage of it. I just heard on here that there's going to be 15 reporters to everyone delegate at the Republican convention, and people have been discussing what is it they're going to do. I'm not saying the Labor Party Founding Convention necessarily should get anywhere near as much coverage as the Republican Convention, the Democratic Convention. I'm wondering why you get zero versus [crosstalk].

Alex Jones: Greg, you've got a good point, because the thing is now with all of these media resources, especially with the Internet, perhaps, this would lend itself, you would think, to inclusion not just by parties of one persuasion or another, but all across the spectrum. Merrill Brown, is there really any interest in that kind of broadening?

Merrill Brown: That is hopefully the dream of the Internet, that covering "a convention" of a somewhat smaller group like that, one gets easy because one person can do, for instance, one reporter can do many, many things at a convention like that, provide audio, provide video, even interview people on the Internet live in real-time. Yes, we would hope that our service, as others have before us, will be allowing for room for lots of new fresh, minority group kind of voices. Absolutely.

Alex Jones: Now, Tony Perry, what about the LA Times? Huge media company with an enormous investment in this convention. Is it something that would not interest the LA Times? I assume that you did not cover the labor, the labor one or any other outside, maybe outside Ross Perot.

Tony Perry: We're covering Ross, we're covering the Reform Party. We've actually covered a lot of the smaller parties as nascent political movements worthy of a look and worthy of looking at. Do we on a routine basis? No. Why does field hockey gets less coverage than pro football? There's a presumption that history tells us that some things are of more interest to larger groups of people. I don't think we are totally ignoring smaller movements or runt movements or dissident movements. In fact, if anything, we probably play those up beyond their size and beyond their staying power.

We may magnify them sometimes because we're looking for something new, fresh. As I think Deborah said, we're hooked on controversy and confrontation. I think we do a pretty good job at chasing down people like that.

Alex Jones: Greg, thank you for your call. Barbara in Manhattan, you're on the air.

Barbara: Hi, yes, I'm a regular Internet user. I'm wondering what I'm going to get which isn't going to be filtered through either Republican public relations people or reporters. Is there any way that I can find out about-- I'm most interested in future Supreme Court appointments. I don't want any more Scalias and Clarence Thomases repaying debts to the hard right. That's, to me, very, very important.

Alex Jones: Now, it's an interesting point that you raised. You want like a dispassionate provider of information rather than a reportorial one or a political party one. Is that what you're saying?

Barbara: Well, yes. The reporters do really a not such a hot job. They're always just all asking the same question. "Mr. Dole, have you and Kemp settled your differences?" They just keep going through these things instead of really going to something which is--

Alex Jones: Okay. Now let me ask Merrill Brown. Merrill Brown, does Barbara have a resource at MSNBC that could be helpful in this kind of regard?

Merrill Brown: She is welcome to ask delegates and newsmakers in significant numbers, questions specifically about some of the stuff that the media isn't doing very well, like this platform, which is fraught with controversial things getting little attention, like an end to federal agencies and programs which have barely been examined by the media. We're hoping through the unfiltered medium of chat on the Internet, she can get her questions answered. We'd love to help her and she can write to us this very moment at msnbc.com. if she'd like to get answers in fairly real time to those kinds of questions.

Alex Jones: Deborah Potter, is this journalism of a new and different stripe that we're talking about here a kind of direct, you ask, we'll try to get the answer. Is that journalism, or is it something else? Is it news retrieval?

Deborah Potter: [laughs] It's journalism. I'm not sure it's news, and there's a difference there that may be developing. I think that we're going to see a lot more of this kind of approach to covering information or to providing information, particularly given what's happening with the Internet, because individuals such as Barbara can call up and actually request information that perhaps only they are interested in. It is not mass information. It becomes much more individualized, targeted, almost pre-ordered information. I think that organizations with a background in providing information, that is to say, news organizations, are among the best qualified to answer those questions.

They come at it with a tradition of open-mindedness, of unbiased perspective, and that's perhaps the best way to go. What I should say is we've talked a good deal about MSNBC's provision of Internet connections for this convention. Other outfits are providing this, too. For example, Prodigy is going to have an area in which people can chat with delegates and get information from the convention. The Republicans themselves have their own Internet site where that kind of thing can go on. There's a good deal of action going on. The other news organization groups that have Internet presence, like politics now, for example, have this kind of activity going on.

It's not just in one place, there's a good deal of it. What's going to be fascinating for the reporter who's covering the Internet is trying to keep up with all of it in the course of the next week.

Alex Jones: Barbara, thank you for your call. I want to thank you all. We've come to the end of this very fast and interesting hour, and I think it's going to be very interesting to see now how this unfolds because it's going to be a pattern for the Democratic one to come. It's going to have some surprises. I think maybe that's a surprise in and of itself. It's going to be interesting. I want to thank Merrill Brown, Deborah Potter, and Tony Perry for coming to talk about the Republican Convention.

The producer for On the Media is Judith Hepburn Blank with Associate Producer Jennifer Nix and Assistant Producer Kavita Menon. Production Assistant Devora Clar with production assistance by [unintelligible 00:51:08] Walsh. Our technical director is George Edwards, with Audio Engineer Michael DeMark. Executive Producer Larry Orfaly. I'm Alex Jones.

[music]

Narrator: If you have questions or comments about On the Media, call 1-800-343-3342. Funding for On the Media is provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the Edith and Henry Everett Foundation, the WNYC Foundation, and National Public Radio. This program is a production of WNYC New York Public Radio in association with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies at St. Petersburg, Florida. This is NPR, National Public Radio.

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.