{"id":16071,"date":"2015-12-07T13:52:05","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T18:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16071"},"modified":"2015-12-07T13:52:05","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T18:52:05","slug":"the-press-loses-its-leverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16071","title":{"rendered":"the press loses its leverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Dayton, OH) Traditionally,\u00a0politicians have spoken\u00a0directly to relatively small numbers of people, and the press has reported their speeches to much larger publics. The\u00a0intermediary role of the press has given it leverage\u00a0that it can use for good (to enlighten and hold accountable) or for ill (to distort and influence).<\/p>\n

For instance, at the end of the first contested US presidential election, John Adams gave a conciliatory inaugural address to a few score dignitaries assembled in a room, and the partisan opposition newspaper, the Aurora<\/em>, decided to praise it. Adams, a Federalist, reached many thousands of Republican readers via a\u00a0Republican publication, although the Aurora\u00a0<\/em>quickly turned against him.\"\"<\/p>\n

The current election is very different. Donald Trump has five million Twitter followers, and Hillary Clinton has 4.83 million. They can reach those people directly. Meanwhile, the single most popular US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, has 3.78 million subscribers; the\u00a0most popular cable TV news show, “O’Reilly Factor,” has 2.67 million viewers. Politicians who have\u00a0millions of followers exchange Tweets, and then newspapers and TV shows report what they have\u00a0said to smaller<\/em> numbers of people.<\/p>\n

The change in leverage is palpable. Reporters cannot demand access and no\u00a0longer have much effect when they\u00a0call out errors, inconsistencies, or even lies.<\/p>\n

Certain exceptions just reinforce the rule.\u00a0For instance, the\u00a0televised debates have been drawing on the order of\u00a015\u00a0million viewers. Trump threatened to boycott the CNN debate unless CNN gave $5 million to charity–showing off his leverage. But then he realized that 15 million viewers are more than 5 million Twitter followers, and\u00a0he backed down. “‘When you\u2019re leading in the polls, I think it\u2019s too big of a risk to not do the debate,’ [he said<\/a>.] ‘I don\u2019t think I have the kind of leverage I\u2019d like to have in a deal and I don\u2019t want to take the chance of hurting my campaign. So I\u2019ll do the debate.'”<\/p>\n

Still, if any\u00a0candidate\u00a0lies flagrantly to the 15 million viewers of the debate, and the next day’s cable news host reveals that\u00a0lie to an audience of just 2 million, it’s still a win for the candidate.<\/p>\n

It’s good that citizens get direct access to politicians’\u00a0speech–it’s as if we were right there in the\u00a0hall with John Adams. And it’s good that presidential primary candidates feel that they must\u00a0participate in debates, even if they don’t like the host network. But it’s not so great that the press no longer has enough leverage to make candidates pay a serious price for speech that violates basic norms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Dayton, OH) Traditionally,\u00a0politicians have spoken\u00a0directly to relatively small numbers of people, and the press has reported their speeches to much larger publics. The\u00a0intermediary role of the press has given it leverage\u00a0that it can use for good (to enlighten and hold accountable) or for ill (to distort and influence). For instance, at the end of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-criticism","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16071"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16122,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071\/revisions\/16122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}