Page 135 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

124 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Coverage of the horse-race and metacoverage of the handicappers
both suit the discourse of savviness. They invite and cultivate an inside
dopester’s attitude toward politics—vicarious fascination coupled with
knowing indifference.
It might well be, then, that Lesley Stahl’s 1984 piece was really three
pieces at once. A critical audience got her intended point —Reagan was
a hypocrite. An image-minded audience got the White House’s point—
Reagan personified national will and caring, even as the nice-guy
martyr to wise-ass Eastern commentators. And inside dopesters got still
another point—Reagan, master performer, was impervious to
quarrelsome voice-overs.
Perhaps, too, there was a fourth piece—the backstage piece in which
the White House made a point of showing Lesley Stahl her place. This
must have been humiliating for any reporter so old-fashioned as to want
to take the measure of theatrical images against social realities. The fact
that Stahl is a woman may not be incidental—the White House may
have felt more comfortable humiliating her. Stahl’s story points to a
radical moral: the only alternative to complicity would be the damn-it-
all spirit of an outsider indifferent to whether the handlers will favor her
with scoop-worthy tidbits of information the next time. While telling
Stahl that she’s been had, the White House knows that, given the
conventional understanding of the job of a political reporter, she’s going
to be coming back for more stories. White House handlers know that the
surest way to make a reporter complicit is to feed her with stories. As
long as the agenda is set by the White House or the campaign, the
watchdog is defanged.

AN AUDIENCE FOR THE SPECTACLE

More must be said about what I just called the image-minded audience.
For 1988 was not only the year of metacoverage; it was the year of the
negative commercial, the bite, the image-blip. In statewide elections too,
subsequent metacoverage has quivered with both righteous and ironic
indignation about the prevalence of commercials casting aspersions on
the rival candidate’s one-time drug tastes, dubious votes, unsavory
connections, etc. In theory, both positive and negative associations are
television’s distinct forte: emotionally charged images in which an
entire narrative is instantly present. The image of Willie Horton or the
flag is what makes a lasting impression. Research done by Ronald
Lembo of Amherst College shows that some TV viewers are inclined to