All The World's A Stage
Yesterday, President Bush sat down for what had been billed as a frank discussion with troops in Iraq. It didn't work out as the White House had hoped. Instead of reporting on the event, the press corps has focused primarily on the fact that it had been carefully choreographed in advance "to match [the president's] goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution," as the Associated Press put it.
This kind of thing happens all the time, of course. Cynical reporters have come to expect political events involving both parties to be staged, and the Bush administration in particular has a reputation for carefully managing these kinds of events. But if the situation itself was unsurprising, the press reaction was just the opposite: Instead of downplaying or ignoring the staging aspect of the event, as they so often do, the media has reported it widely. It was even the lead story on last night's NBC Nightly News. Which begs the question: Why this time?
One reason is simply that the administration made it so easy for the media to point out that the event was staged. According to CBS News producer Carter Yang, who produced the CBS Evening News piece on the subject, there was a live feed going out to the networks before the event that showed the soldiers being coached. That footage gave ammunition to television news outlets, many of which showed the coaching in their reports. "From a public relations standpoint, it was clearly a mistake for them. All they had to do was not put the feed out that early," says Yang. He adds that "when you have a rehearsal an hour and a half beforehand, it makes it clear that it's not entirely spontaneous."
The mistake was particularly surprising because the White House has faced questions about staging before – on everything from the president's appearance under the "mission accomplished" banner on an aircraft carrier to his town hall-style meetings on social security. Even if they won't admit it, many White House reporters have no doubt been waiting for an opportunity to express their irritation with the administration's careful management of events. And they took it when it was handed to them.
"The White House press corps has a certain frustration that they seek to express when they have an opportunity," says Republican strategist Terry Holt, former national spokesman for Bush/Cheney '04. "[The White House] is a fairly difficult thing to cover if you're a reporter who relies on a range of sources…If you cover the White House, you're pretty much stuck with whatever they give you. Over time that breeds a certain resentment."
According to Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell, reporters might have given this story less play if it had happened at a different time.
"It's part of people feeling perhaps Bush is now on the way down, and they feel a little more free about pointing out that the emperor has no clothes," he says. "Months ago they might have been a little afraid to do that or feel it was unfair to the poor guy. But it's now become so obvious they feel they should point it out."
The botched-staging story also squares well with the emerging narrative in the press that the White House and Republicans, stung by scandal and blowback from the Harriet Miers nomination, are coming apart at the seams. There was a time when the press corps seemed inclined to suggest that the White House could never do wrong. Now it looks more like they're focused on explaining how it can never do right. David Wade, the former national press secretary for the John Kerry campaign, put it this way in an email: "When Iraq, gas prices, or Katrina are going badly, and you throw in a dose of grand jury testimony, subpoenas, and indictments, the media's not going to swallow a fantasyland, make believe alternate reality about anything."
The dustup raises questions about to what degree the staging of events should be covered. Staging itself, after all, had been going on forever. (And not just by the politicians: One of the more amusing recent examples involved a television reporter standing in knee deep water to file a report. Only when the camera pulled back could you see that he was standing a few feet from dry land.) In late August, some conservative bloggers were up in arms because of a photo-opportunity involving liberal activist Cindy Sheehan. Most images of the event focused on Sheehan and Rev. Al Sharpton in a tender, seemingly largely private moment. Only from further back could one see the swarm of cameras surrounding the pair.
What do you think – should news consumers be getting more information about the stagecraft behind the news? Or are the media already too focused on style over substance?