July 5, 2009
Some Educated Opinions on Pundits
Do "Experts" Who Are More Media-Friendly Know What They're Talking About? To Find Out, We Asked Some Experts
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TV's hydra of talking heads. (CBS)
From the ranting on the radio, to the babbling in the blogs and the carping on cable, just TRY to escape other people's opinions.
Pundits are everywhere, and they're almost always at full boil.
Conservative commentator J.P. Freire, who aspires to pundit stardom, said, "I think that the better pundits are people who either can pretend that they know a lot about something, so they're an expert at pretending, or they're an expert in the actual issue."
Just 26, Freire is a regular on cable news.
Spencer asked Freire what his mindset is when he walks into a studio.
"I want to destroy the other person," he said. " . . . No, I'm kidding," he laughed.
"No, I don't think you are kidding necessarily," said Spencer.
"Not at all, not at all. It's more that I want to get my point across as succinctly and quickly as possible."
"So what is the biggest pitfall, then, that you worry about?"
"Saying something stupid," Freire said.
Saying something stupid probably didn't much concern early pundits. After all, the word itself means "learned man or scholar." It comes from 17th century Sanskrit.
But the concept is much older than that.
"Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Jesus. What are they doing? They're giving their opinions about the world, about how the world should be," said T.J. Walker, who spent 15 years as a political commentator on radio. "The idea of trying to shape public opinion - that's something that has been around since the beginning of time."
For Walker, modern pundits owe it all to just ONE man. The year was 1951:
"William F. Buckley wrote 'God and Man at Yale.' Then, he went from books to speaking to a TV talk show, and really was the first modern multimedia pundit."
William Buckley's "Firing Line" ran for more than three decades. But he never had to face the dilemma of today's pundits: too many shows, and too few real experts.
"They always want fresh faces," said Freire. "The consequence of that is that you wind up having to get people that you're not really certain about their credentials, but you know that they know something enough to pass through a pre-interview on the phone."
"What percentage do you think really know what they're talking about?" asked Spencer.
"Oh heavens, I think probably about maybe 40 to 50 percent."
"That's depressing!" said Spencer.
Suppose by now you're thinking: "Hey, I know a lot, maybe I could be a pundit."
Well, believe it or not, you can go to "pundit school," where, using an arsenal of cameras, lights and props, you too can learn the fine art of talking, expounding and, of course, interrupting.
"We coach people to look their best and sound their best any time they're on TV or talk to a reporter," said Walker, who is now the CEO of Media Training Worldwide.
He believes star pundits know that how-you-look is often more powerful than what-you-say.
"You have to come across as forceful," Walker said. "You can't say, 'Well, I think . . . ,' or 'It seems to me . . . ,' or 'Maybe . . . .'"
Also a no-no: looking up.
"It makes you look uncertain," Walker said.
Walker not only teaches clients where to put their eyes, but also where to keep their feet (one foot forward, one foot back), what to do with their hands ("What I recommend is elbows bent, fingertips almost touching . . . and then, when you're talking, just gesture"), and what not to do in a chair ("If you sit back, relaxed, this is the worst way to sit, It makes anyone look fat, rumpled, and just blah").
All this talk about talk doesn’t come cheap. Walker charges clients $7,500 per day to be trained.
"Is that pretty much the going rate in this field?" Spencer asked.
"I hope not," he said. "I hope it's at the high-end."
But even pundit school grads have to admit that looking like an expert is quite different from actually being one . . . and no one knows that better than University of Califronia-Berkely Business School Professor Phil Tetlock, an expert on experts.
"I think a lot of expertise you see in the media serves more of an entertainment function," he said.
His book, "Expert Political Judgment," examines the accuracy of roughly 30,000 predictions made by almost 300 supposed "experts," and finds a definite trend . . .
"There is gonna be a negative correlation between how telegenic you are and how famous you are, and how accurate you are," he said.
"So, the better you are on television, the less accurate you're likely to be?"
"The lower profile, more boring experts, are more likely to be accurate," Tetlock said.
"Yeah, try to sell that to a TV producer!"
"It's a hard sell," he said.
It's a hard sell because TV producers aren't likely to book the pundits Tetlock calls the "foxes" - people who have complicated thought patterns, but tend to get things right more often. Their opposites he nicknames the "hedgehogs," a TV producer's dream.
"They're more strident," Tetlock said. "They're more enthusiastic about their ideas. They offer better sound bites."
Spencer asked Walker if the public has a right to expect that people who are on television opining at least have some expertise.
"They do have expertise," he said. "They have expertise on opining. And in many cases, they don't know any more than your crazy uncle who's had too much to drink at the Christmas party."
So . . . where exactly does that leave the viewer?
"Viewers have a right to assume that they should be skeptical any time someone is identified as a pundit," Walker said.
Freire says the public "gets" it: "The American television audience is nowhere near as close to the doe-eyed idiots that a lot of people think them to be, because they can watch and they can see when someone's genuine. They can watch and they can see when someone knows what they're talking about."
But can they? Really?
How about all those angry investors who took boneheaded financial advice from the TV pundits last year, before the economy crashed?
Their willingness to go along with "expert" opinion doesn't surprise Dr. Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, who studies how our brains react to such information.
In a nutshell, he says our brains pretty much check out.
"If we bring someone in who kind of has this billing as an 'expert,' it's just much easier to, you know, turn over your decision making to that person," Berns said.
You even can see it on brain scans: The areas that usually light up when we're weighing our options go completely dark when an "expert" offers an opinion.
So, we asked our expert, Dr. Berns, would we be better off ignoring the experts?
"My advice is to have confidence in your own decision-making, and use it. Yes, absolutely use it."
And as for the endlessly opining pundits . . .
"I think it's just entertainment," Berns said. "It's just simply attention-grabbing."
Walker said, "People like conflict. People like professional wrestling. They like ultimate fighting. That's part of what two pundits fighting is."
And sometimes, of course, the experts and the pundits are even RIGHT, Just keep that grain of salt handy.
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Add a Comment See all 17 Comments
- Your viewers expect the reporter, especially when reporting on PUNDITS to check the facts in their report. I am wondering about this statement "Saying something stupid probably didn't much concern early pundits. After all, the word itself means "learned man or scholar." It comes from 17th century Sanskrit." Does the reporter really know what time period Sanskrit comes from? May be she should look at sources like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit" and others on the web.
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- Most experts are those that have 'mastered their opinion'. They have rehearsed their spill so well , they can answer the most convoluted of questions without getting trapped. Right or wrong they are very good at diffusing others questions and turn the tables on them with a hypothetical or a question.
Next time you watch one on TV, observe them because they are very good at 'their craft'. When you can see the corner of their mouth turn into a smile and their eyes twinkle, they have already anticipated the question and it is though "I know that one" - Reply to this comment
- Most experts are those that have 'mastered their opinion'. They have rehearsed their spill so well , they can answer the most convoluted of questions without getting trapped. Right or wrong they are very good at diffusing others questions and turn the tables on them with a hypothetical or a question.
Next time you watch one on TV, observe them because they are very good at 'their craft'. When you can see the corner of their mouth turn into a smile and their eyes twinkle, they have already anticipated the question and it is though "I know that one" - Reply to this comment
- The pundits run back and forth between cable news shows. I see pat Buchanan here and I see pat Buchanan there. It seems he runs every where to spread his opinion. The question is why do they care about what a washed up politico has to say? I guess it is what the author of the piece sad, it is all entertainment
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Oh, p.s.
One quick, and easy, example of the level of thinking from Joe the American News Consumer
Look at the upper left corner of this page ... as of about 4:30 EDT, the top 5 most popular stories here at CBS
1 Oops: Teacher Accidentally Gave Self-Made Sex Tape to 5th Graders
2 Teacher Gives Sex Tape to 5th Graders
3 Palin E-mails Show Infighting With Staff
4 Sarah Palin To Resign As Alaska Governor
5 Palin A "Shooting Star Crashing To Earth"?
Sex and Palin
And guarantee you folks aren't interested in Palin for her intellectual abilities
;-)
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Epistemology 101
Tain't rocket science folks, but what you should have learned on the street
Or in the sandbox at Kindergarten
When is someone talking out their azz ?
Well, if you have your head up yours, you'll never know ;-)
As long as the PT Barnum Law of Human Nature continues, "pundits" will always have a job.
And if they could be entertaining in the least bit ? If they had any charm and style ?
Then they'd be on stage as a comedian, or go into politics.
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Now, to mriannucci
Welcome to something that many of us have known for 30+ years
Glad to have you join the tradition of Kuralt, Cronkite, Morrow, et al
Better late than never
;-)
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- My previous comment was auto edited by a CBS computer program. The **** that appears above refers to the Securities Investor Protection Corporation also referred to as SIPC. My submission had a typo that reversed the 2nd and 3rd characters.
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- A quick clip of this program highlighted Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money stating that your money was safe with Bear Sterns. The clip was taken out of context.
Cramer was responding to a caller's question as to whether their money/securities held in an account at Bear was safe not if an investment in BSC stock was safe. Cramer's answer to the question was and still is correct. Most investors do not hold stock or bond certificates but have an account with a brokerage firm. Those accounts are generally safe and protected and insured by regulations and ****. I don't know of any losses ever incurred by an investor in such an account, even when the firm, such as Lehman Brothers, goes pop. In order for a person to understand the answer, they should first understand the question. CBS editors are no more informed of the rules and protections afforded to investors than a lot of the individual investors and CBS should not be considered a source of factual information any more than the typical pundits highlighted in today's program.
Jim Cramer gave a quick (and correct) answer to a quick question. Individuals that don't fully comprehend a question or an answer should learn to seek additional advice. - Reply to this comment
- To the producers of Sunday Morning and Charles Osgood,
Thank goodness I accidently changed to CBS this morning. What a wonderful show! Every segment was thoughtprovoking and some were inspirational. Where did you get the info about the soldiers who reconciled!? I need to watch this show again - if they are like this -
What a way to begin the First Day of the Week - You are to be applauded! Thank you! - Reply to this comment
- I guess that you're pundit story made me think of my favorites, who violate the rules that you outlined today. Tim Russert, Charles Krauthammer, Ben Stein don't do any of those things that the media trainer talked about.
The hand gestures from the elbow (Krauthammer can't), looking up in the air (Ben Stein does that), and Tim Russert came across as humble. not so confident at all. They are three of the all-time greats.
My favorite person on TV has not been rehearsed at all, I'm sure. I'm a great Charles Osgood fan, have been watching the show since he took over from Charles Kerault. I believe what he says, though he's not a pundit...if he was, he'd have the world following him.
And, they wouldn't have to rehearse with some media guy. - Reply to this comment
- I'm really glad that people have finally come to the same conclusion as I did. Most, if not all of these 'experts/commentators' actually do not know what they are talking about. All they are doing is muddying the water and please let them know that many of think they are fools. If it really is an uninformed personal opinion, then put them in running shorts and conduct the interview on the street. The news media tries to control the setting and has a clown in a suit, trying to imply to the audience that who they see is the leading authority on the subject.
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- This is my comment ... it is both from me and by me. RWM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf6gTIITc5w&feature=channel_page - Reply to this comment
- I suggest you make sure all the CBS News producers see this report. They are the ones in control.
How I decide: 1) A pundit that is not afraid to say they were wrong. 2) A pundit who takes a position contrary to what you believe their core beliefs to be. 3) A pundit who respects the opposition but provides reasoned counterpoints and talks in a reasonable level and tone. 4) Like Ainsley Hayes on "The West Wing". 5) A pundit that is more informative than entertaining as opposed to more entertaining than boring. - Reply to this comment
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