MEDIA

...are bound to fail because the real problem is not with the choice of guests but with the nature of television discourse...

...Meanwhile, progressive media-watchers had weighed in...

...But by limiting access to such programs, television news organizations restrict the scope of political debate and help throttle the democratic process...

...The Left was nowhere to be seen...

...ABC assigned Ted Koppel to cover the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, and by the, time the hostages were freed, Nightline had transformed in-depth news coverage on television...

...by the time they are on the air, journalists have cleaned them up, edited them down, and told us what they have in mind...

...Their politics tended to be safely centrist or right-of-center, since these were the only views deemed legitimate during the Reagan years...

...No longer...

...MacNeil/Lehrer isn't likely to change, so the Left, if it wants to gain exposure for its point of view, will have to learn to use the language of the media...

...They Real people just get in the way...

...Only by mastering the discourse of power will progressives find the means of reaching a broader audience...

...News shows are not parliaments, of course, and they are not required to be representative...

...An in-house study by members of the MacNeil/Lehrer staff a couple of years ago concluded that past or present Government people filled three-quarters of the guest slots...

...The Left has neither the opportunity nor the inclination to manage...

...Can't we get someone who's not a moaner...

...Today, MacNeil/Lehrer interviews real people out where they live, and then splices their remarks into taped reports put together by the program's journalists...

...MEDIA Robert Karl Manoff Quick-Fix News MacNeil/Lehrer plays it safe We're redefining the news," Robert MacNeil once told a reporter, back in the days when The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, a nightly half-hour debate on a topic of national interest, was the hottest news show on television...

...Such news is, in other words, an instrument of management, and MacNeil/Lehrer's guests are mostly former, current, or future managers...

...Processed and bracketed in this fashion, real people no longer get to express themselves in their own way...

...But it turned out, television being what it is, that real people just got in the way...

...As Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the show's third anchor, put it, "We're right up there with God, Mom, and apple pie...

...the Left is interested in root causes and systemic solutions...

...Putting power on display and airing its message is the program's ultimate purpose...

...not to debate principles but to discuss programs...

...they tended to be camera-shy, unpredictable, and inarticulate...

...are the stuff of its instrumentalist vision, according to which society is a machine to be fixed, political conflicts are technical problems to be solved, and designated experts are the technicians appointed to do the job...

...Real people don't work," producers say...

...Years ago, Middle Western farmers and unemployed steelworkers could be seen on MacNeil/ Lehrer alongside the experts who debated solutions to their problems...

...MacNeil/Lehrer invites its guests not to argue assumptions but to propose courses of action...

...All of the news interview shows, and particularly MacNeil/Lehrer, are interested less in discovering what has happened and why than in examining the management of the consequences...

...he is likely to ask when the staff proposes a guest who is not a Washington insider...

...They tend to be inarticulate...

...Jim Lehrer, the show's Washington anchor, refers to public-interest critics of official policy as "moaners" and "whiners...

...It's a form of what Stalin called democratic centralism: You tell us what you think and we'll tell you what you really mean...

...Koppel's show became the new standard...

...Sometimes you just want to know about today's story," says a former booker for MacNeil/Lehrer, "but progressives want to follow their own agenda a lot of the time...

...Alexander Cockburn of The Nation, as well as critics for Channels and Emmy magazines, called attention to the fact that MacNeil/Lehrer drew its guests mainly from the ranks of Washington insiders...

...he demands, pressing for a guest slot for someone who is accountable, responsible— perhaps a member of Congress...

...What's more, the Left neither wields power nor speaks the language of power, and MacNeil/Lehrer wants guests who do both...

...Who do these people represent...

...MacNeil/Lehrer went to an hour, varied its format, and lost its impact...

...A small survey by the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media found that of the eighty-two guests who appeared on the five principal interview shows around the time of the Geneva summit, fifty were present or former Government officials...

...Tools and techniques are of prime importance in such journalism, Andrew Kopkind wrote several years ago...

...The Left's failure to appear contributes, of course, to the very powerlessness that caused its exclusion...

...Real people don't speak in terms television recognizes, and they aren't managers but victims...

...In this respect, The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, as it is now called, shares the perspective of the other television news interview shows...

...It's a bad fit...

...Therefore, efforts to induce the networks to broaden their guest lists are welcome and important...

...The show wants a discussion of how to manage the latest crisis...

...But if we're talking about long-term structural change, such efforts Robert Karl Manoff is co-director of the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media at New York University...

...And mastering the media discourse is part of a greater challenge: learning to talk the language of American politics...

...Real people," as they are called around the program, fare little better than those who hold dissenting views...