Amanda Hess, a David Carr Fellow at the New York Times, who “writes about Internet culture for the [Times] Arts section,” recently took to its pages to tell us what she thinks of politicians who podcast. Executive summary: She doesn’t approve of them (“Politicians Are Bad at Podcasting,” Oct. 27).
Podcasting is a relatively recent phenomenon in the world of Internet culture, and as it happens, most (but not all) podcasting pols are Democrats. Bernie Sanders has his own podcast, as does his Senate colleague Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). So do Hillary Clinton and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. There are a handful of GOP podcasters—Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, for example—but Hess mentions Duffy largely for laughs: His podcast is entitled “ ‘Plaidcast,’ [which] references his rugged status as a lumberjack games champion and sets out to ‘humanize’ his colleagues by interviewing ‘neat, cool members of Congress.’ ”
You can easily imagine the rolling eyes in the Times newsroom.
To be fair, Hess is almost equally contemptuous of progressive podcasters. Listening to Rahm Emanuel’s “Chicago Stories,” she describes the “combative mayor [recasting] himself as a kinder, gentler interlocutor of anodyne local figures, like brewery owners and spoken-word poets”—as if that were a bad thing. I confess to harboring mixed feelings about Emanuel, Barack Obama’s foul-mouthed chief of staff; but a conversation with a Chicago brewery owner—imagine the accent!—might induce me to tune in.
For that matter, you would think that a writer for the Times Arts section might appreciate a combative mayor who seeks out, and talks to, spoken-word poets. But you would be mistaken. Not only does Hess fail to be amused—“the podcasts are . . . boring”—but she is indignant as well. Here she dons her hat as a David Carr Fellow: “The lawmaker podcast boom,” she explains in earnest tones, “is another way that our political news is becoming less accountable to the public and more personality driven.”
I don’t mean to suggest that a contributor to the Times Arts section has no standing to discuss such topics, but in her angry observations disguised as bemused contempt, Amanda Hess manages to express nearly everything that the public distrusts about political journalism. For her argument is not about aesthetics but power. When she talks about elected officials being “accountable to the public,” is she speaking on behalf of the electorate or the Times?
A. J. Liebling once observed that freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. Hess seems to believe that ownership also confers something like monopoly status. “On TV interview shows or at news conferences,” she points out, “reporters challenge the politician’s narrative.” But on podcasts—or, say, in social media—those same politicians enjoy “a hermetically sealed branding platform. . . . There are no actual journalists around to ask any pesky questions.” Worst of all: “None of these shows are the optimal conduit for understanding the political issues of the day.”
This is a near-classic expression of the press as the Fourth Estate, exerting influence on politics and public affairs while retaining an unofficial status within the political system. It’s an interesting and intuitive concept; but clearly of greater appeal to the press than to politicians—or to the public, for that matter. Rather like the doctrine of priests as interlocutors between God and man, the press tends to see itself as the essential, even exclusive, filter through which politicians and their policies must pass. A politician who somehow contrives to speak directly to constituents is not just avoiding those “pesky questions” but insulting the “optimal conduit” by which the public is supposed to gain wisdom.
As I say, it’s a nice conceit and may even, in certain cases, be approximately true. But who elevated journalists to this priestly status? Until very recently, the public has been almost entirely dependent on the media for information about politics and civic affairs, and the press has been mindful to preserve, and expand, its prerogatives. That is why, for example, campaign debates are not debates, in the usual sense of the term, but closely choreographed press conferences where the rules are laid down, and enforced, by a panel of journalists. It is also why the invention of such institutions as C-SPAN—or the cable/Internet universe, of which podcasts are a burgeoning component—has been seen by the press, and not without reason, as threatening to its gatekeeping powers.
This is not to say that politicians should never be held accountable or that reporters should fail to ask pesky questions. Of course they can and should, and a vigilant press is an integral gear of democracy. But just as journalists are free to report and interpret as they like, politicians are equally free to circumvent such influence and explain themselves as they wish. And the public can embrace or ignore both as it sees fit.
Nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt used radio to speak “directly” to his listening audience, and in our time, Donald Trump has adapted Twitter to his own particular needs. In Roosevelt’s day, the press regarded this tactic as demagoguery; now it argues that citizens are incapable of knowing their own minds—susceptible to spin, or Russian influence, or “personality-driven” politics—and need compulsory guidance.
Well, not necessarily. Podcasts “are an attempt to signal that [politicians] are listening to us,” writes Amanda Hess. “But that doesn’t mean that we should listen to them.” Maybe not—but who elected the Times to instruct us otherwise? With politicians, as with the press, the watchword remains the same: Let the buyer beware.
Philip Terzian is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
