You gotta hand it to Tony Blair. With the Hutton Inquiry’s findings on the suicide of weapons scientist David Kelly exonerating Downing Street while pillorying the BBC, the PM demonstrated yet again his uncanny talent for emerging from deep doo-doo smelling like a prize English rose.
Unlike much of the British press, which was bristling with allegations of a whitewash, I am convinced that the BBC made some grievous errors in its reports of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Chief among these was the decision to assign journalist Andrew Gilligan to the story.
If only they’d assigned Ali G.
Instead of “sexed up,” the now-infamous intelligence dossier would have been described as “poonani for da masses,” Blair would have been forced to take it all in good fun, Kelly would still be alive and the Beeb top brass would still have their jobs. Buyakasha!
But the Kelly affair has not been without its positive consequences. For one thing, someone at the White House must have read the papers and told George W. Bush about Blair’s remarkable triumph, because barely a week after Hutton’s findings, not to be outdone, Bush announced his own inquiry into pre-war intelligence failures.
Admittedly, the announcement also came shortly after chief weapons inspector David Kay told Congress that there were no WMD in Iraq. That, in turn, had all the major newspaper editorials calling the administration to account. So this is not simply some “me-too” inquiry we’re talking about. Perhaps to make extra sure it isn’t perceived that way, Bush went one better than Blair: his administration plans to handpick the adjudicators itself, so as to leave no doubt that the American people will get all the facts.
Amidst all these goings on, the nation’s television networks were abuzz with indignation over the latest outrage.
Yep, that’s right: Janet Jackson’s spectacular breast-reveal during the Super Bowl halftime show on CBS. The FCC, America’s media regulator, was up in arms. Chairman Michael Powell immediately ordered a federal investigation and spent most of the following day hopping from one TV appearance to the next, condemning Jackson’s publicity stunt as “classless, crass and deplorable.”
At the same time, Powell’s lawyers were frantically lobbying the courts to approve new media regulations that would tighten the already vice-like grip of CBS and its ilk on the country’s airwaves. His alarm was therefore thoroughly understandable: appeasing corporate interests for political gain is all good and well, but not even the CIA could have foreseen the imminent threat to American freedom posed by prime-time bodice-ripping!
And in an election year, no less. Which brings me to the Democratic primaries. With the race in full stride, there is no shortage of intelligent debate on network newscasts clarifying where each of the candidates stands on the major issues.
Actually, I lie. According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, an independent watchdog group, the nightly news shows have spent 32% less time covering this year’s primaries than they did in 2000, and 62% less than in 1996. So, short of reading the papers, what’s a committed couch potato to do?
Fortunately, there is an alternative – one which is becoming increasingly popular, particularly among younger Americans: late-night comedy shows.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center revealed that while the majority of Americans still get their political news from network newscasts, the number drops to only 23% of Americans aged 18 to 29, down from 39% in 2000. Conversely, the number of young adults tuning into late-night comedy shows for political insight shot up from 10% to 21% over the same period.
One reason, according to the study, is that in attempting to embrace the myriad schedules, demographics and political leanings of viewers, TV news has contorted itself into a confusing knot of sensationalist horror stories, celebrity scandals, wild conjecture and partisan shout-fests.
This account is not without its critics (though it could be argued that it is without its critics who do not work for network news shows). Many cite the defection from TV news to late-night comedy as one more chapter in the inexorable closing of the American mind. But I ain’t buying. For one thing, you have to know what’s going on to get the jokes, which, if you’re not getting it on TV, requires reading a paper or getting news off the internet. For another, the late-night comedy shows are often more high-brow than the news.
DSTV viewers will be familiar with David Letterman’s Late Show and the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But the smartest of the lot – by a long way, in this columnist’s opinion – is John Stewart’s The Daily Show on the Comedy Central cable channel.
Though he reaches a far smaller audience than his broadcast counterparts, Stewart’s gift for hypodermic satire and John Cleese-like comedic timing has forced even the media old guard to take note. Newsweek recently featured Stewart on its cover, and veteran NBC anchor Tom Brokaw interviewed him after the president’s State of the Union address.
After David Kay rubbished US intelligence about Iraq’s arsenal, the inspector attempted to wipe some egg off his bosses’ faces by noting that France and Germany also believed Iraq had unconventional weapons.
“That’s true,” said Stewart pensively. “I guess the only difference would be that they didn’t use that information to invade anybody.”
The growing popularity of late-night comedy has not been lost on politicians. The shows have become a vital stop on the campaign trail. Fighting popular perceptions that he was too staid, Democratic front-runner (at the time of writing), John Kerry rode a motorcycle onto Leno’s set, while another hopeful, John Edwards, announced his candidacy on The Daily Show.
Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of satire is its ability to expose media spin. With the White House in damage-control mode after Kay’s bombshell (or lack thereof), Condoleezza Rice, appearing on NBC, responded to a question about dubious intelligence on Iraqi weapons: “When you’re dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive,” said the National Security Advisor, “you’re never going to be positive.”
After playing the clip, and noticing that Rice had repeated the talking-point phrases, “dangerous man,” and “world’s most dangerous region,” five times in as many minutes, Stewart responded:
“Secretive regimes that want to deceive— oh, but there’s irony in that statement— and not just the ‘rain on your wedding day’ kind.”
Tim Spira is The Media’s correspondent in New York.