TV tries on real-world politics for size, and finds itself sorely lacking

(Can't we all just get along?)

The following story (which ran yesterday) wanders all over the place and is hardly the proudest moment in my career, but it does offer a kind of interesting insight into what happens when you have to distill 39,000 words into 1,400, when you have to marry one timely news peg (a documentary about Helen Thomas, airing tonight) with a different one (cable-news coverage of the political conventions) and when you know what art you paper plans to run (photos of Keith Olbermann, Karl Rove and Wolf Blitzer, though not the delightful ones seen below) before you've even finished your story.

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It's appropriate that, in this Presidential campaign season, HBO is airing "Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House," a documentary about the 88-year-old correspondent, a woman virtually alone these days amid the White House press corps in refusing to lob softball questions. The film subtly underscores the evolution of the political journalist from intrepid truth-seeker to soundbite-spewing careerist and/or partisan hack.

(Conservatives clearly don't like Helen Thomas.)

"Part what drives her to keep going (at her age) is that she doesn't see someone to replace her," suggests Rory Kennedy, "Thank You, Mr. President's" director. "She still has to keep going."

Thomas has parried with every President dating back to John F. Kennedy. A tribute to her tenacity is the fact that President Geroge W. Bush no longer takes her questions.

"Helen makes important points - the press has become the fourth column of government, but without the press asking tough questions and getting answers, democracy doesn't work as well," says Kennedy, a documentarian who's the daughter of assassinated Presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy.

"That's been the case under this administration," she continues. "There's a real sense that if you went up against them, they would not speak to you. And if the President is not answering your questions, your job is arguably less effective."

As a result, in recent years, political coverage on TV has largely been reduced to talking points and barking pundits, with a side order of actual policy analysis if time allows. But as Americans weigh their choice between voting for John McCain or Barack Obama for their next President, the real world has demands more from reporters.

The war in Iraq has grown increasingly unpopular. The economy is in seeming freefall, with gas prices and home foreclosures drastically up and job security dramatically down. Can TV's news divisions forego the hyped rhetoric and focus on delineating policy differences between McCain and Obama, rather than debating their TV commercials?

Well, maybe, but only if they can stop slinging mud at one another first.

Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S., insists his network "embrac(es) wholeheartedly this idea that we're living in a post-partisan time. ... And it's our role as journalists to provide these voters with the tools they need to make up their minds.

"That might sound obvious but, in fact, our competitors do the opposite," he continues. "They're entrenched in calcified points of view, highly partisan, and that's what you're going to get from them, leaving the vast, open middle for us simply to provide the information. You could call it the Legos approach, where we'll supply you with all the pieces you need, and then you make out of it what you think you ought to."

(Yes, CNN's President compared his network's political coverage to this.)

Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace declares, "MSNBC ... went so far over the line in terms of being in the tank to Barack Obama that it lost a lot of credibility. For all the criticisms we sometimes get about allowing our politics to infuse our journalism ... you've got someone like (MSNBC's) Keith Olbermann, who's delivering ten-minute screeds against President Bush ... which is fine if he wants to say those things. It's an interesting show.

"But then (Olbermann) anchoring coverage, whether it's primary nights or debate coverage ... our feeling is the opinion-makers should deliver their opinions, and the journalists should cover the news," Wallace concludes.

Olbermann wryly counters, "Not to try to start an argument with Fox - as you know, I would never do anything like that, but ... on their primary nights, (Sean) Hannity (and Bill) O'Reilly were on for 45 minutes or more."

He adds, "We are asking (viewers) to be able to separate what they might see during Chris (Matthews') show or my show and what they see on election night. We know there are different rules for us. ... If you are fairly good at what you do in this business, you should be able to do a couple of different things and know which is appropriate in which set of circumstances."

(Keith Olbermann might not have posed for this publicity still had he remembered a certain scene in Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator.")

CBS News political analyst Jeff Greenfield notes that both sides love to claim media bias to rally their base, particularly conservatives.

"I suspect the McCain campaign want their people energized by the fact that they're fighting a battle against the media," he says. "The folks that I've talked to in the McCain campaign, they don't necessarily think that the media is in the tank (for Obama, but) that's going to be part of the dialogue."

BBC America's "BBC World News America" executive producer Rome Harman, whose newscast is dedicated to covering the Presidential campaign from a global perspective, divines no evil intentions behind partisanship.

"Have networks seen commercial potential in testing the wind and riding it one direction or another?" he asks, rhetorically. "Sure; it would be silly to say that hasn't been the dynamic."

And still, "BBC World News America" anchor Matt Frei says of domestic cable-news coverage, "During the election year, it's ... very lively, engaging, political journalism that reflects the lively and engaging nature of the election. ... But we can't spend hours talking about it the way that they do, and we don't believe that you have to.

"This election's about reintroducing America to the world," Frei continues. "That's what a lot of people in this country feel, so we can say: 'Let's see how (a candidate is) being received in India, Pakistan, China, South Korea, and we can then call on (our) bureaus to give us instant reaction to that."

All that said, the cable news networks do have interesting insights to offer into the upcoming Democratic and Republican Party Conventions.

Ted Koppel, who as an ABC reporter, pointedly walked out of the 1996 Republican Convention, arguing that "it was really nothing more than a picture show (with no) news happening," will be covering the conventions for "BBC World News America."

He now says, "I don't think anyone can make that observation about this year. This has been one of the most remarkable political years we've ever seen."

Fox News scored a coup - and not just for its fan base - when it signed Bush Administration advisor Karl Rove, known as "The Architect" behind the last two election-night victories, as a political analyst. (In an attempt to provide balance, they recruited Clinton campaign advisor Howard Wolfson.)

Regardless of whether you think Rove saved the Republic or should be imprisoned for his crimes against it, there's probably no one who can provide keener insight into 21st-century campaign politics.

"It's actually a sickness," Rove jokes of his acuity. "You know how some people can name the 1954 starting lineup for the Cleveland Indians? I can give you (election) precinct returns. It's a very sad thing.

(If the Constitution was a person, Karl Rove would do this to it, too.)

"It's not like we're coming from a completely neutral position," Rove continues. "But we gotta be aware of that and try to help people understand the process, what's happening, what's unfolding in front of them."

So here's what you should expect from cable-news convention coverage:

CNN's Wolf Blitzer says, "Barack Obama's Democratic party is going to be very different. He's a 47-year-old African-American who wants to change the Democratic Party, wants to bring in young voters. So how is that reflected in the platform, in policies?

"Over the years, I've always found that there's so much going on behind the scenes at conventions - we'll be streaming (speeches) at cnnpolitics.com, but we won't be on the air with that; we'll be assessing what's going on and reporting on what we're hearing," he continues. "It's an opportunity for all of us to have access to people who have a good sense of what's going on, and we can pick their brains and hopefully do some serious reporting in the process. We're not going to simply be stenographers."

(Wolf Blitzer sees no evil.)

MSNBC political analyst Chuck Todd adds, "Both nominees have a unique thing in common, in that there's this middle period in their professional lives that nobody knows anything about, and one of our jobs is to educate people on John McCain from 1974 to 1994 and Barack Obama from 1980 to 1996. ... Our job is to say, 'Who are these people? ... How are these guys going to govern? What's going to be the big difference?'"

Fox News' editorial vice president John Moody says, "It's up to the Republicans to make it sexy and as interesting as the Democratic Convention. Clearly, the Democrats have a historic convention coming up. I think (Republicans) will have a hard time matching the historic proportions of this kind of candidate that the Democrats have and the surroundings in which he's going to accept this historic nomination."

It all sounds palatable and compelling, but filmmaker Kennedy isn't convinced.

"It used to be that the news portions of networks were not profit-oriented - they were for the public's interest," she says. "But, because of changes in laws and the way corporate America operates, the proliferation of news channels has become more competitive. They know you'd rather tune into stories about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie than stories about civilians getting killed in Iraq. That's not going to change until TV news is exclusively devoted to the public interest."

- "Thank You Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House," 9 tonight (and Thursday), HBO.