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In the tool box that political reporters drag to work each day, the most important one is the chance to ask politicians questions, on behalf of you, especially at election time. So what’s the worst thing that has happened to block scribes from using that tool?
Is it: 1. Zoom. 2. Zoom or 3. Zoom?
If you selected Zoom you are right.
Like other technological advances using the Zoom call to meeting has its upsides and downsides. During COVID, it goes without saying that without it, the chance to interview officials in person was nil and the impact on the lack of public knowledge would have been as nearly problematic as the virus itself.
That said, the politicians have discovered using this Zoom thing is a handy-dandy way to manipulate the political press corps. How convenient for them and not so much for the journalist. More on that in a moment but first some ancient history.
Back in the low-tech 60’s and 70’s the only keyboard correspondents worked on was a contraption known as a typewriter and the only way to talk to sources was either by phone or in person.
And if you were one of those brave political souls running for governor or another higher office, you jumped on an airplane, hopefully provided for nothing by some wealthy big wig business tycoon and you flew around to every TV media market in the state telling the assembled cameras you wanted to be governor. It was a clever way to reach out to voters on this important day when the hat fell in the ring. And they harvested tons of valuable free media exposure.
And when a pol was in office, there were regular news conferences attended by the capitol press corps which crammed into the press wing of the governor’s office on the second floor of the state capitol. There was even a press assistant who recorded the exchange and provided a transcript, free of charge, to any reporter who wanted one. (There’s a box of them out in the garage some place gathering dust and mold.)
But then the “Hill” came along years later after the old system was working just fine thank you very much and changed everything and not for the better either.
Instead of jumping in a jet, or staging a news conference, Hillary Clinton broke tradition. She sat in front of a camera on the Internet and revealed she was running for president. Not drain commissioner but the highest office in the land but there was no way she was going to let the inquisitive media fire any hardballs at her on this important day. Her goal was to control the message unfettered by reporters trying to get her off message. And it worked. And still does.
You see in this biz there is a long running battle as politicians, many of whom are control-freaks, seek to diminish the nosey reporters from doing their job. The goal was and still is to manipulate the media so as to boost the chances of winning the race without media interference.
Which is why the zoom “news conference” is the weapon of choice these days.
The campaign sends out an email, not a fax or Xerox copy, announcing the gig. They pick the subject for the gig. But any reporter worth his or her salt will click on the link with hopes of asking what they want to ask.
Ah but, the campaign can easily put the kibosh on that by trying to limit the topic the boss has chosen.
Can they do that?
Will they ever review that final second of the Michigan vs. Western game?
You see the campaign knows who is on the call and it’s a good bet that it has a list of reporters who are naughty not nice and most likely to ask tougher questions. Since the campaign controls who gets called on to asked questions, by ignoring the bad guys, non-threatening reporters get all the questions thus achieving the goal of the whole thing in the first place; Get message out and don’t flub up on a topic that might make you look bad on the evening news. Oh yeah. It’s also a neat way to send a message to reporters who don’t play nice i.e. mess with us as we’ll block you out.
Yikes what a gift from above. To be honest campaigns would be stupid not to try and pull this off as two agenda clash head on. Their goal is to get elected. The media agenda is to dig into their candidacy for information citizens can use to decide for whom to support. By definition the two sides can’t agree on a compromise because they are mutually exclusive.
So forget weekly news conferences.
Forget making yourself available at public events. The first thing the campaigns check on is where is the quickest back door to slip out of to avoid the media.
It is true that some candidates will submit to attending a debate but only a few. Good for them and for you. But even that can be manipulated. A former governor with the initials Jennifer Granholm picked a date for her debate with Dick DeVos on a critical night when the Tigers were in the World Series hunt. Nice touch, hey. The only audience was among Amway distributors.
And so it goes leaving some in this trade wishing for those days when the biggest challenge was not being able to ask tough questions but where to find a new ribbon for that typewriter.