TV Obama Observer Affect
by Mark Rhoads
Issue 110 - June 25, 2008

For those who have studied physics, you have at least heard about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which makes it impossible to pin down both the momentum and location of a sub-atomic particle because both the location and speed are inexact variables that cannot both be measured precisely at the same time. The related "observer affect" suggests that one cannot observe such an event without also affecting it just because the act of observing alters the event.

There is a version of the observer affect often at work in political reporting in America. For more than forty years starting before the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, the TV news divisions of ABC, NBC, and CBS regarded themselves as the gatekeepers of American elections. At first, some pretense was made to really be observers of the news and reporters of events. Soon, that pretense dropped and assignment editors and reporters actively became part of the story while still posing as observers. Maybe this is a harsh judgment, but It always seemed as if Dan Rather as a floor reporter at the 1964 and 1968 conventions would relish opportunities for confrontations so he could be carried off the floor.

With each presidential election, the hubris of the three major networks grew to the point where Election Nights were considered to be the Super Bowl for political commentators and reporters and it was hard to tell any difference between the two species. As far as viewers were concerned, there were no county clerks or state counting boards that were in charge of counting votes and certifying their accuracy. The networks ran the "show." It literally was a "show."

By the 1970s, the network news divisions actually had their announcers make pronouncements, backed by appropriate theme music and drums, such as "We now award the state of Illinois to President Ford." "We now award New York to Gov. Carter." States and voters, in the language of networks, became their gift to award to some candidate at the time and place of their decision. Even when networks got it wrong, they still seldom apologized for major mistakes as for example when former Chicago reporter Frank Reynolds announced on ABC that Presidential Press Secretary Jim Brady of Centralia, Illinois had died of his wounds on the day that John Hinckley shot and wounded President Reagan. It turned out the impeccable ABC source was someone on Capitol Hill listening through a keyhole in the office of a Senator who had no inside information at all other than indirect rumors from the George Washington University Hospital several miles to the west of the Capitol.

Only in the last eight years have the traditional networks lost ground to cable networks because of more money devoted to political coverage by cable and as a consequence of the nonstop 24-hour news cycle. Now the cable networks, CNN in particular, have shown in 2008 more arrogance than their network ancestors did in their late 20th Century glory days. Not only did CNN "award" states based largely on fallible exit polls, but on Tuesday night, June 3 CNN "Declared" that Sen. Barack Obama was the nominee of the Democratic Party. Sometimes they used qualifying terms such as putative nominee and sometimes not. For those of you who think Democratic delegates will nominate Obama at a convention you are mistaken. CNN has nominated him and the delegates are mere window dressing. At the same time, the "observers" reverted to their same form as before the Saturday Night Live "debate" during which a reporter asked Sen. Obama if he would care for a pillow.

In 2000, the media was for John McCain because he was not Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. McCain was the media candidate just as surely as Gov. Bill Clinton was the media candidate in 1992 or John Anderson was in 1980. But America has not until this year seen anything like the overwhelming media crusade in favor of Sen. Barack Obama at the expense of a patina of objectivity to any candidate in either party who is not Obama.

Yes it is both historic and newsworthy that Sen. Obama will be the first African American to win a major party presidential nomination. Few remember now that Rep. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman to be nominated on a ticket for Vice President in 1984, or that Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith ran a serious campaign in 1964, or the Republican Sen. Charles Curtis of Kansas was the first American Indian to actually be elected Vice President on a ticket with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1928. These events also were historic.

One cannot take away the achievement of Obama and even those of us who shake our heads in wonder that such a poorly-qualified lawmaker with no major accomplishments attached to his name must take note of his political and rhetorical skills. Sen. Obama will now start the fall campaign with enormous advantages including the "neutral observers" in the news media who will by their voice inflections and spins make in-kind donations to the Obama campaign worth tens of millions of dollars. Remember how much was made of the fact in 2000 that Vice President Gore had 500,000 more popular votes than Gov. Bush did on election night? Few have ever studied the observer affect of network spins that night long before the polls closed in the mountain and western time zones. The spin was, why even Virginia is in doubt and "too close to call" when such was not the case. But if California Bush supporters were being told, in effect, there is no point in you going to the polls that could easily have made a huge contribution to the popular vote of Vice President Gore in the western time zone states.

So Sen. McCain will not be the favorite of CNN this year. Sen. Obama has in effect already been endorsed by the group that never tires of calling itself the "best political news team on television (or some similar boast)." Maybe some day there will be someone who takes pride in hiring the most objective reporters on television. But that day will have to wait. For now, the cable news outlets are enjoying their time in the sun. They have the heaviest thumb on the scale of American politics and if Sen. McCain can overcome that handicap, it will be quite a story.

Mark Rhoads is a former state senator from Illinois, a political activist and analyst.