Page 133 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

122 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

red, white and blue. Haven’t you people figured out yet that the
picture always overrides what you say?’ 3
The 1988 answer was: apparently not. For the networks and the
candidates (successful candidates, anyway) share an interest in what
they consider ‘great pictures’, a fluid concept one of whose standard
meanings is readily decodable, myth-evoking images. Curiously, the
famous cynicism of journalists does not keep them from being gullible.
Indeed, in this setting, cynicism and gullibility are two sides of the same
con. The handlers count on the gullible side when they produce pictures
for television. Not for nothing were the Reagan staffers proud of their
public relations triumphs; their business was to produce what one of
4
them called ‘our little playlets’ —far-flung photo opportunities with
real-life backdrops. Print reporters, meanwhile, were unable or
unwilling to proceed differently. Although the pressure for ‘great
pictures’ doesn’t apply, at least in the non-tabloid press, print
gatekeepers are unwilling to cede the ‘playlets’ to television; they
compete on television’s terms, leaving the handlers free to set their
agendas.
What is not altogether clear, of course, is whether the Reagan staffers
were justified to be so proud of their public relations triumphs. We
don’t know, in fact, that ‘the picture always overrides what you say’.
Possibly that is true for some audiences, at some times, in some places,
and not for others. What is clear, though, is that when the picture is
stark enough, or the bite bites hard enough, journalists, especially on
television, are unwilling to forgo drama. To be boring is the cardinal sin.
Embarrassed by their role as relay stations for orchestrated blips and
bites, even amply-rewarded journalists purport to resent the way
Reagan’s staff made megaphones of them; at the least they have become
acutely self-conscious about their manipulability. The White House and
the TV-led press have been scrambling for relative advantage for
decades; metacoverage was, in part, the press’s attempt to recoup some
losses.

TOO HIP FOR WORDS
But to make sense of metacoverage I want to look at the dominant form
of political consciousness in a formally open but fundamentally
depoliticized society—which is savviness.
Already in 1950, David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd described what
he called the inside dopester—a consumer of politics who