We all of us have known for a very long time that television news only rarely produces real news, but a recent piece on NBC regarding the ongoing vote recount for the Minnesota Senate race, epitomizes in spades the emptiness that is all to often delivered.
The story itself comes from Media Matters - a report on how NBC reporter Lee Cowan used discredited claims of mishandling of some absentee ballots to suggest that tampering might be going on. (This diary adapts and expands on a comment filed at MM about their original report.)
What was most striking, however, was the near total lack of any real content in the report, and what it says about most television journalism in flagship network newscasts. Let's start with the transcript of the piece, below the jump:
MEREDITH VIEIRA (co-host): If you thought the election debacle in Florida could never happen again, wait until you see the situation in Minnesota. Just over 200 votes separate Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and former Saturday Night Live star Al Franken in the race for the Senate. A recount gets under way next week, and NBC's Lee Cowan has more. Good morning, Lee.
COWAN: Good morning, Meredith. It was the razor-thin margin in this race here in Minnesota that forced this recount, which is gonna be the largest in Minnesota's history. Nearly 3 million ballots were cast; they now all have to be recounted by hand starting next week, and both campaigns are bringing in a whole lot of observers and a whole lot of lawyers.
[begin video clip]
COWAN: Election night in Minnesota after a long and nasty race. The winner? Well, no one.
FRANKEN: I believe that when all the votes are counted, we're gonna win this thing.
COLEMAN: Save your energy, OK? Keep being hopeful. I'm very -- feeling very good right now.
COWAN: Republican incumbent Norm Coleman was ahead by a mere 725 votes that night. But Saturday Night Live favorite Al Franken was catching up.
FRANKEN: What? You -- you thought this was going to be easy?
COWAN: By the next morning, Coleman's lead had dwindled to 477 votes; by the end of last week, 336. And by Wednesday, Franken was behind by just 206 votes.
MARC ELIAS (Franken campaign lawyer): I mean, think about that. Seven one-thousandths of a percent is the margin between these two.
COWAN: But Norm Coleman's lawyers aren't happy.
KNAAK: It seems actually very odd to us.
COWAN: It has some remembering shades of Florida, of butterfly ballots and hanging chads. There are neither of those here. Still, ballots have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, including some found unsecured in an election worker's car. Count them or not?
KNAAK: It was sort of the classic, very Minnesotan, I suppose, "Well, you just have to trust us." I don't think so.
COWAN: The race turned Minnesota nice into Minnesota mean, and hand-to-hand recount of millions of ballots is sure to make it worse.
ELIAS: They're licking their wounds, and I understand their natural impulse to run out and say, "Oh, no, no, no, stop counting, stop counting." But that isn't the way democracy happens.
COWAN: And now that it's not really over, voters are scrambling for a silver lining.
"CJ" (Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist): The only good thing about the recount is that there are no TV commercials, because we're tired of the commercials.
COWAN: Still, the reality is --
JOHN LOTT (University of Maryland visiting senior research scientist): I would imagine it's gonna be a very emotional thing for a while.
[end video clip]
COWAN: And the very real possibility, Meredith, is that by the time the next Congress convenes, Minnesota may have only one sitting U.S. senator, because they're still trying to figure this out. The counting may be over, but the legal challenges may just be beginning. Meredith.
VIEIRA: All right, Lee Cowan. A mess in Minnesota. Thank you very much.
Now, stand back and really look at the transcript.
Read it carefully and closely. It includes:
An opener and closer from Meredith Vieira
Nine snippets from Cowan
Two items each from Franken lawyer Elias and from Coleman Lawyer Fritz Knaak
One each from Norm Coleman, a Minnesota newspaper columnist and John Lott (and yes that John Lott apparently IS the same John Lott who got caught fabricating data to support claims about guns and personal protection.)
So, we have quotes from six people (not counting Vieira) but virtually nobody utters more than two sentences at any one time throughout the entire thing.
And if you really start counting how many of those little snippets contain facts as opposed to opinions or feelings, the ONLY thing you can find of substance is that Franken's margin of loss is steadily narrowing. Nothing else. That's it Everything else is just plain filler.
This is a classic example of the general emptiness of most TV journalism today.
Except for Frontline or longer PBS stories, TV journalists never carry stories of more than about three minutes max (this one runs about 2:45)
They try to get lots of people in to make it appear that they are covering a lot of ground and balancing input from affected parties, but virtually all of the clips are VERY short statements, and in the end you really have not gained any useful insights.
Where is a summary of just where these ballots come in and how they are handled?
Where is a summary of where they go after election day?
Where is the story trying to get at the truth of the trail (or lack of it) of security used to ensure ballot integrity?
Who does the counting and how is it verified?
You don't find any of that....just sweeping allusions to hints of suggestions that this MIGHT be another Florida chad-fest.
And millions of Americans watch this drivel night in and night out and think they are being "informed." In this case, a great many will easily have walked away with concerns that ballots waiting to be tabulated in a very close Senate race may have been tampered with, when in fact, as the MM report notes, such claims had already been discredited and Cowen never should have used them. Add to it all Vieira's lead in and closer (The "Mess in Minnesota" tag line, uttered with a sigh as if this is all so inevitable was a capper) and it is easy to see why.