Here’s a radical proposal for the cable networks: back away from televising the White House daily briefings and focus more on the developing news of this rapidly-shifting Beltway news flow.
In the interest of news gathering and news reporting, it’s time for cable news decision-makers to consider not airing the live broadcasts of the devolving daily discussion at the White House press briefing, and better invest viewers’ attention on the actual news occurring within this administration.
While making such a suggestion is anathema to most journalists and former reporters (like this writer) it also strikes me as worth considering while newscasts evaluate their coverage allocation in a crucial mid-term year.
The argument against this is obvious. On the one side, there is the inclination to feed the “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and “Open government is better government” ideals. However, we must acknowledge the reality that there is little news value to these briefings — by established design over decades, one can argue — and they serve today as a media rubbernecking ratings grab that generates far more heat than light.
In a battle between well-intended sunlight and news with zero nutrition value, I would suggest cable news networks choose to cover other things with that time: actual news.
When was the last time that an exchange in the White House press briefing room resulted in a headline of importance, and not just a fleeting snipe? At this point, it’s the equivalent of a Twitter feed of back-and-forth insinuation and refutation.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of where news from this administration is coming: Twitter, walking to Air Force One, on Air Force One (with the Masters on TV), in texts from administration staff members, from career federal agency staffers (AKA the deep state), from Cabinet members on their way out, from Cabinet members disputing their departure status, and from rallies outside the Beltway.
The one place the news nearly never emanates from? The press briefing room. And yet the cable news networks decide to give them daily air time for what one must presume is a ratings-driven move. If anything, this suggestion seems a bit of an anachronism, since the press briefings (until this administration and the curiosity it brings out) were shuffled off to the b-roll department years ago. This was in large part because press briefings are a spectacular contradiction: a news event that has been engineered skillfully over the years by pros in both parties to result in no news whatsoever.
It’s gotten to the point where it’s like the scene from “Raising Arizona” where the titular Nathan Arizona, who has had one of his babies kidnapped from his home, screams at the surrounding policemen questioning him in his own living room: “Dammit boys, are you going to chase down your leads or are you gonna sit here drinking coffee in the one house in the state where I know my boy ain’t at?”
Like Nathan Arizona’s house, the White House press briefing room is the one place in the environs surrounding 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where the news isn’t happening.
This is not an argument to halt the briefings altogether, nor to pull the plug on cameras monitoring the proceedings. Because: (A) White House and beat reporters do need quotes from the administration for inclusion in their daily reporting; (B) if news does come from the briefings, the cable news networks will need the footage to be able to air over the course of its news programming; (C) there’s always C-SPAN; and (D) that old concept of accountability.
But until the White House daily press briefings demonstrate they deserve to remain a lock in the daily news agenda — and they would do so by generating news, not ratings numbers — they should go back to being classified as roll tape, not live coverage.
We’re living in an attention economy, and the White House briefing doesn’t deserve the investment of time for news consumers when there is greater payoff elsewhere.
Matthew Felling (@matthewfelling) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former print/TV/radio journalist, media critic, and U.S. Senate communications director, now serving as a public affairs and crisis consultant with Burson-Marsteller in Washington.
