Why the Networks Should Still Be Covering the Conventions

This is the story about the significance of a man straightening his tie. A few years ago when I was researching the history of television I discovered that briefly one of the talked about events of the exciting 1948 Democratic convention was when the television cameras caught Harry Truman straightening his tie as he approached the dais to deliver his acceptance speech. The significance of the event was that millions watched it. There's a lesson in this for us and the networks today.

The networks say that they are not broadcasting gavel to gavel coverage of the conventions because the conventions are expected to generate little news. But what is news anyway? The assumption of network executives is that the conventions are not news because we already know who will be nominated. But this is far too cramped a view for the networks to take.

Any event watched by millions becomes news by virtue of the fact that millions watched. That was why newspapers like the New York Times took note of Truman's fixing his cravat. With television the insignificant can appear significant simply because it has happened in front of millions of people.

The equivalent of a president straightening his tie today could take any of a number of forms. It could be, for example, the way in which the conventions are scripted, which the networks use as evidence that the conventions are boring and therefore unnewsworthy. But there's news in the way a convention is scripted. The decision of the parties to put politician X on at 4pm and politician Y on at 8pm is news. The networks might respond that the decisions are announced in advance and therefore aren't news. But to take this view is to adopt an elitist's outlook. Most Americans do not follow the news carefully like news junkies. It is altogether more likely that they would discover that the parties had put X up at 4pm and Y at 8pm when X and Y actually appeared. If the networks insist on being news sticklers, the parties could accommodate them by refusing to say in advance when X or Y would appear, thus providing an element of surprise, which the networks could tout as news. In any case, the fact that millions are watching would itself be newsworthy.

The obvious objection to this is that the networks would then be creating a news event simply by covering it. But networks do this all the time. Any time the cameras show up at a protest rally of ten people and the videotape of the event is later shown on television the networks have in effect made news by covering it. The question should not be, are the networks creating a news event, but whether their coverage is serving a journalistic purpose. The answer in the case of the conventions would be yes.

With the candidates at the conventions outlining their party's platform, for instance, millions of people would be learning what the platforms say. That the platforms had previously been published is irrelevant. Who in the audience likely would already have read the platforms? Not many, you can bet. So they would be learning something new. That's news, right?

One of the conceits of the present is that we have more sources of news than ever before. This is true. But it is not presently of great significance. Most people still do not avail themselves of these alternative sources. Most people rely on television as their main source of news.

A consequence of the reliance on television is that people are generally less well-informed about events today than their grandparents were. As Thomas Patterson has repeatedly emphasized in his well-researched studies of voters, Americans knew more about the news when newspapers were their main source of information. When they switched in large numbers to TV in the 1960s they knew less.

Now because the networks fail to cover the conventions they will know even less than they did, presumably, just a few short years ago when the networks gave the conventions extended coverage. In a democracy this can only mean one thing. The voters will be less informed than they should be.

Television to be sure is not wholly to blame for the decline in public knowledge about the news. Several factors account for the decline: the weakening of political parties, which formerly served as educators of public opinion; the demise of unions, which helped educate their members about issues; the distrust of major institutions, which inspires apathy; and the infatuation with celebrities. But television's role is perhaps the most important.

To hear television executives say that the conventions are boring and they won't cover them is therefore distressing. The irony is that television executives in the 1950s at the birth of the industry thought that politics was so exciting that people would want to buy sets to watch the conventions. Buy a Stromberg-Carlson, proclaimed one newspaper advertisement and you "can see and hear more of the Presidential Conventions than the delegates themselves…. You're in the scenes and behind the scenes-with history in the making!"

That the conventions are now scripted and seemingly dull is a result of another irony. After the raucous Democratic convention of 1968 officials in both parties realized conventions needed to be scripted. The Republicans caught on faster. In 1972 Richard Nixon sailed to renomination at a convention in which every minute was scripted, as Dan Rather discovered when he came across a document the party wanted kept secret. The Democrats, by contrast, let George McGovern deliver his acceptance address in the wee hours of the morning. But that was the last time events at a convention were left to chance.

The conventions today are boring. But boring doesn't mean insignificant. If millions are watching and learning about what the parties stand for and who is in charge they deserve to be covered by the networks.