The insatiable appetite of the 24/7 news cycles has begat an unfortunate dividend – an explosion in the demand for pundits. They are all over Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS – you name it. Now the media keeps blurring the lines between job descriptions, but for the sake of this argument, allow me to clairfy the titles and job descriptions of what you’re supposed to be seeing on TV:
Reporter: someone who reports the news, usually on the scene, as it happens (or immediately after it happens), without bias, and without expressing any opinions.
Anchor: a news reader (preferably with a certain degree of gravitas) that serves as a conductor or ringmaster for the broadcast.
Commentator: A host who freely expresses his or her opinions, usually in the course of interviewing newsmakers, pundits, or a candidate’s minions.
Pundit: a recognized expert in a given field, hired to share their expertise with viewers.
Problem is, punditry has undergone a change over the last decade or so. In the good old days, a pundit on military matters was invariably a retired Colonel, Major, or General (or Admiral). An economic pundit was someone with a PhD in economics, usually having served in a cabinet position, or for some well-respected think tank or financial/economic organization. A political pundit was usually someone who had been a campaign manager for a major political figure, or a high-ranking party official.
Today, it seems that anybody and their cat can be a pundit. And pundits are no longer limited to professions associated with a field of expertise. In particular, a slew of reporters for one organization now become pundits for another media outlet. The result is a bunch of Washington insiders sharing their “wisdom” with each other, and feeding off their own, isolated perspectives.
Case in point, last night’s debate. I approached the final joust between McCain and The Anointed One with a sense of anticipatory dread I usually reserve for tax audits and dental visits. As the debate began, however, McCain came out swinging, and didn’t stop. The debate went from “Hey…McCain’s not laying down and playing dead,” to “McCain is landing some good punches,” to “McCain is knocking Obama back on his heels.” Everybody I’ve spoken to about the debate agrees – McCain won. He was a different person, and, frankly, a revelation.
Cut to the aprés-debate gab fest with said pundits. Fox News offers a panel comprised of Britt Hume, the “Beltway Boys,” Juan Williams from NPR, and a couple of other wonks I find to be virtually interchangeable.
I don’t know if these guys didn’t see the same debate that I did, or if they need to get out (of the Beltway) more, but their spin was “McCain didn’t outright win, so Obama won.”
Huh?
Of course, it didn’t help that the punditryhood all seemed to come to a unanimous consent and decreed by executive fiat that McCain Must Deliver a Game Changer Or He’s Toast.
Game changers are wonderful (when they benefit your guy), but this election is a LOT closer than the pundits would have you believe. When you have a bunch of insiders that believe anyone outside the beltway or New York City is a country bumpkin, unfit to render an opinion on anything loftier than what they should have for lunch, their opinions are, by default, going to be somewhat skewed. If you go into a debate believing in the infallibility of your own opinion, nothing that happens is really gonna change your mind.
The wonderful part about punditry is that you are automatically granted a modicum of infallibility, based largely on the fact that, if you’re on TV, you’re supposed to be right – therefore, since you’re on TV, you must be right. When a pundit blows a call, is proven wrong, or simply makes a mistake, their brother- and sister-pundits rally round, offering help, support, and one great big honkin’ stonewall, to protect their little cottage industry. They typically (and conveniently) forget their inaccurate prognostications, preferring to look forward to the next opportunity to tell the country what to think.
The problem with punditry is something that Noam Chomsky referred to as “manufactured consent.” If you can get enough pundits to tell you that, oh, say…”McCain lost the debate,” then you have manufactured consent, and the public (or so the theory goes) must not deviate from the conventional wisdom.
Horse hockey.
I do my thinking for myself, thank you very much, and I don’t need the Beltway Boys, Juan, Nina, Britt or any other talking head to usurp that responsibility. I think we’d all be a lot better off if we avoided the pundits completely, and simply made up our own minds. And that goes for when the pundits both agree and disagree with me. Don’t need ’em. Don’t want ’em. And they don’t add one bloody useful think to the national discourse.
Here’s my two cents: I think McCain bitch-slapped Obama from start to finish. I think McCain controlled the tempo of the debate, landed more punches, and shut down Obama’s arguments. Even better, McCain did not allow Obama’s lofty rhetoric to go unchallenged (at least for the most part…when you’re up against a world-class B.S. artist like Obama, it’s hard to bat a thousand).
Your results may vary. But I would advise you to take the pundits spin with a huge grain of salt – or even better, simply tune them out, altogether. The country will be better off when we all do our own thinking, and tell the pundits to all go hang.
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