Whether or not they realize it, American television viewers next year will be watching the White House perform an electronic end-run around the traditional television networks.
After years of frustration over being edited by journalists, with often critical interpretations, and competing with other news, administration officials hope to promote President Bush by going directly to local and regional television audiences.
They already are scheduling live interviews with the president on local stations, providing satellite feeds of videotaped presidential messages and setting up teleconferences between Bush and selected conventions and other audiences.
Getting the president`s speeches and interviews out live and, for the most part, unedited-Bush aides like to describe it as ”unfiltered”-is a dream that presidents have had since television became a prime medium for judging presidential timber three decades ago.
Now, satellite television has profoundly altered international relations by speeding up and adding a new dimension to the conversations of world leaders and diplomats.
While not as dramatic, the domestic impact has been just as important. White House officials and political operatives are beginning to capitalize on the evolving technology in promoting domestic policy.
Under a regional media strategy that maps out the large circles of voter territory covered by television stations, the president is interviewed by local anchors. Those quick interviews by satellite are heavily promoted and are usually more favorable than those on the national networks.
Covering a large state or sometimes several states, the campaign operation can switch from one station to another on a pre-arranged schedule that allows for five-minute interviews. On Dec. 17, for example, Bush was seen on ABC affiliates in five major markets including Chicago.
”… You get him on there and he has this interchange with the broadcasters and he calls them all by their first names and he asks them what`s going on out in west Texas and on and on. It just plays
magnificently,” said Clayton Yeutter, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Bush has been using the same technique in the last three years during his frequent trips around the nation. It also is a measure of how the president`s advisers see communications almost in terms of conflict, especially in the coming campaign.
”The press has assumed the role of setting the agenda, and the impact of that is the press tries to force the candidate to talk about its agenda,”
claims White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. ”We have two weapons against that.
”One is not to expose yourself in the question-and-answer sessions used to dictate that agenda. The second one is television advertising, which is the only other vehicle for reaching large numbers of people without having to go through the press agenda machine.”
Campaigns are like cross-country arguments, and as each side relies more on instant satellite transmissions, the debate is heard in almost hourly cycles. If the process has become tough and nasty, the satellite transmission is only increasing the speed of the blows.
Taking lessons learned during the last two presidential campaigns, the White House has developed an enormous expertise in presenting the president in almost personalized messages to mid-size and regional stations.
”There`s no rule that says a national political figure can only communicate his message through national media,” said Dorrance Smith, a special assistant to the president, whose special charge at the White House is to target presidential messages and promote teleconferencing.
The convenience of television as much as its power to attract large audiences is sweet inducement for any politician. For years, each house of Congress has had its own studio where members can link up directly with television stations in their home state.
”They go in there and they can do 10 at a pop,” a senior administration official said admiringly. ”Direct interviews, live on the local evening news (in) not insignificant size cities, allow them to see their congressman or senator commenting on the day`s events . . . without somebody else`s explanation of it.”
Using portable microwave transmitters to beam videotape signals to satellites 22,500 miles overhead, candidates and their representatives can speak one-on-one with local television anchors during their newscasts. The format provides immediacy and is a promotional tool for the local station. It gives the candidate a long and usually uninterrupted chance to appeal to voters.
Using networks of regional television stations, political leaders take their message directly to select demographic groups.
”At any given moment the sky is carpeted with video going back and forth,” said Peter Herford, director of the Benton Fellowship for broadcast journalists at the University of Chicago. ”It`s like direct mail in targeting an audience. You are now able to deal with single-issue groups and target them with a tailored message, whether it`s on the anti-abortion or gun issue, or by religion. Almost like the telephone, you can address them (the special interests) individually or in a conference call to all of them.”
Quietly proceeding with more and more exclusive coverage, the administration has hired professionals such as Smith, a former executive producer of ABC`s ”David Brinkley Show,” to manage the administration`s introduction to the television technology of the 1990s.
Not even the networks understand all the resources available, said Smith, whose role in managing the president`s media appearances may be a prelude to a more political job in the campaign. ”Affiliates are a network within a network,” he said. ”The affiliate market is more competitive.”
Smith has promoted the use of a new White House television studio for Bush because its more economical and a more efficient use of the president`s time than traveling aboard Air Force One. The studio, with its bookcases and salmon-pink faille wallpaper, is not actually in the White House, but across a driveway to the west, on the fifth floor of the Old Executive Office Building. Though modest in scale, the studio symbolizes the future of satellite technology, the decline of the commercial networks and the fragmentation of the television audience.
”Ten years ago, the three networks had a 90 percent share of the audience. Now they are lucky to get 60 percent,” Smith said. ”This is a critical time for us. If the president of the United States makes a statement, and even if the networks use it, then up to 45 percent of the American people are still not getting the message.”
What may be important in San Antonio, Albuquerque and San Diego is not necessarily important in Chicago or Cleveland or Portland, Maine, Smith said. Earlier this year, before the vote to win congressional approval for a fast-track trade treaty with Mexico, the White House aimed its campaign directly at senators and representatives who opposed the president`s position or were thought to be faltering in support of administration policy.
”With fast track, we looked for who was against it in Southern California, Texas and Florida,” said a former administration official who worked on the project to win congressional approval. ”Though it was a Capitol Hill fight, we took it to their regions and did regional briefings.”
They hooked up local anchors with such Cabinet officials as Yuetter, Robert Mosbacher and Lynn Martin and Carla Hills, the U.S. trade
representative.
”People don`t realize that the networks have a hard time keeping their affiliates happy,” the former official explained. And the administration was more than willing to see if it could make them happy. For example, Yeutter, who is fluent in Spanish, did 15-minute interviews with each of the Spanish-speaking news anchors in all four of Texas` major markets.
For all the tension about media coverage, television and political candidates-Republican and Democratic-have a relatively cozy relationship, at least when it comes to presenting campaign images.
Each morning during the 1988 campaign, officials from the Bush campaign and Michael Dukakis` staff consulted separately with executive producers of the network evening news shows to suggest the type of pictures they would be providing later that day. At national party conventions, the party apparatus regularly provides live television feeds from different camera angles of the convention podium and floor.
During a meeting earlier this year with the planners of the 1992 political conventions, two senior network negotiators proposed saving network costs by halving time for the convention, cutting it to two days; the other network officials were appalled by the suggestion and said television had no business getting so involved in the political process.
The decline of the number of viewers and the news budgets at CBS, ABC and NBC, a precipitous fall detailed in Ken Auletta`s book, ”Three Blind Mice,” is contributing to the networks` compliance with the new push by the administration to take over the packaging of presidential news.
For day-to-day coverage of the White House, three of the major networks have begun pooling their coverage of presidential events strictly for economic reasons, contributing to the White House move to promote its message independently of national media outlets.
With budget restrictions, newspaper and television correspondents and camera crews are traveling less frequently and in smaller numbers on the White House press charter that follows the president`s plane in the U.S. and abroad. ”Eventually we`ll do it ourselves,” Fitzwater said as he spoke about filming and producing presidential speeches. ”The day is coming when we have a remote camera in the Oval Office . . . It`s clear when we want a photo op, we`ll just turn a switch and that baby will take the pictures and send it back to the network studios.”
When Bush gives addresses from the Oval Office, the networks take turns transmitting them. The network doing the production uses a camera operator, sound technician and an elaborate setup that involves 15-20 people. But technology is available that makes most of the network camera crews unnecessary. A remote, permanent camera in the office could simply send the address out electronically. Said Fitzwater: ”I don`t know if there`s anything wrong with that. It just means we`ll become a provider of communication services.
”I think what that says is that technology drives that. Number one is the ability to do it and two is the trust that journalism has in the technology. Journalism is coming to the point where they say we`re willing to admit the camera doesn`t lie to us, therefore we don`t have to be there.”
That generates Orwellian shudders among some journalists. And the White House has been sensitive about usurping the traditional role of the broadcast networks.
”We`ve toyed for years with the idea of a video statement from the president,” said a former White House aide who was involved in those discussions. Unlike a typed copy of the president`s formal statement, the video would allow people to see and hear the president read the words.
”So far we`ve hesitated, though (former chief of staff John) Sununu has advocated it from Day 1,” the former aide said. ”After all, why not? We put out statements on paper, the president does radio . . . on Saturday. But so far a video clip manufactured and produced in the privacy of the White House has been taboo.”
The White House is experimenting with the ever-expanding technology, however, and is using fiber-optic cables to transmit presidential speeches from the White House and new TV studio to a company that sends the signal to satellites such as Westar 5 and Spacenet 2 in stationary orbit.
Plans are also under way to equip Bush`s home in Kennebunkport, Maine, with fiber-optic cables, especially after the experience during the Soviet coup attempt when Bush had to leave the presidential compound to send a live satellite television message aimed at leaders in the Soviet Union.
Whenever the president travels, the White House Communications Agency carries its portable microwave transmitters to send telephone calls and videotapes to satellites and keep in touch with events around the nation and the world.
There is a major difference, however, in the way policy-makers view those developments.
”The six o`clock news is not the final judgment as it used to be,” said a senior presidential adviser. ”It`s not as scary as it used to be because there are so many other outlets.”
To emphasize the White House view and promote the president`s initiatives, Bush and his aides have developed another strategy that indirectly employs the latest satellite technology.
White House staffers believe that with CNN they can help shape network coverage by neutralizing a critical report or overwhelming it with more current news. ”Even the evening news is old news now,” insists Sig Rogich, a former advertising executive who is a special assistant to the president.
At any time, the presence of all-news networks, with their enormous appetite for news every hour, insures that some presidential events are covered while they might not have been with only the commercial networks.
”People recognize a truth about CNN: They`re 24 hours a day and they`re dying for news. Just about anything you can do from the White House, you can make an argument for coverage and they are willing . . . ,” said James Cicconi, Bush`s former staff secretary, who earlier this year left for a private law practice.
”They`ve got a lot of air time to fill and there are some days there`s not a lot going on. Because they have so much air time they are more inclined to cover more than a network that is struggling to pare things out of a 30-minute time frame. They make news judgments, but they also use things that may be borderline at the other networks.”
One of the things that CNN and C-Span do provide is the ability for people to see a speech or a news conference in its entirety, which makes viewers less reliant on a correspondent`s characterization.
”It`s amazing how many people will watch a speech or a hearing . . . and the more that occurs, the more it frees people from the tyranny of the sound bite,” Cicconi said.
But such use of satellite television, especially CNN, ”gives a natural advantage to the people in power. They are able to monitor the news agenda and now it gives them instant access to a channel that has agenda-setting capacities,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.
”When there`s no (political) campaign, it`s the president who runs the news agenda, and he can make it difficult for Democrats to run that campaign because he controls the perspective on the news,” she said.
Still, the White House has not yet perfected its blend of governance, politics and high-tech.
In what is now called the ”Black Hole Speech,” the president in September delivered a three-minute talk, produced in the White House studio, supporting two of his nominees, Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court and Robert Gates as CIA director. Hundreds of local television stations were alerted that they could take the statement off either of two satellites.
The coordinates were wrong, however, and a later attempt to transmit the statement on a third satellite failed. Bush`s message was never seen.
In a recent attempt to show the president`s concern for the nation`s schools, the administration hired a private film company to produce a presidential speech on education. It was staged before a class of 8th-graders at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington and transmitted live by satellite to the Public Broadcasting System and CNN.
Journalists raised a small ruckus, and Democrats such as Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri decried it, saying it was unfair for the president to use his office for political gain. They especially complained that the White House sent the $26,000 production bill to the Education Department.
Administration officials, however, dismissed the criticism as carping. It was only a minor storm, they knew, in a much larger change in the technological climate.
The other networks were banned from the classroom while the private production crew checked out the location, camera angles and lighting and then positioned cameras to film the audience reaction.
Despite the complaints from journalists over lack of access and the staged nature of the president`s exchange with the children, administration officials denied prompting the grade-school class. That was technically accurate; their teacher, Cynthia Mostoller, said later that a White House aide had told her to instruct the children to keep their eyes focused on the president.
———-
Next: Television and the president.
