This is Democracy – Episode 11: The Media and Politics

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Introduction with many voices: This is Democracy- a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.
Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of “This is Democracy.” Today we’re going to be talking about the media and politics, I hope everyone listening has voted or will be voting very soon and one of the most important issues in this election, as in other elections, is the question of how the media covers politics, how it covers citizens, how it covers our candidates and we’re going to talk about that today with my friend and fellow colleague at the University of Texas in the Radio-Television and Film department, a pioneer in film making and political coverage, Paul Stekler. Paul, welcome.
Paul Stekler: Great to be here.
Jeremi: It’s great to have you on. Before we start with Paul, as always we have our scene setting poem from Zachary. Zachary, what’s the title of your poem today?
Zachary Suri: “Seasons of Knowing”
Jeremi: “Seasons of Knowing” well let’s hear it.
Zachary: “Late June when Texas begins to melt and the air conditioner struggles to find its stride, in my bedroom awake with my laptop hidden beneath the covers, watching England fall with all my sense because Brexit begs it that night with the voice over the BBC only singing a funeral tune. Middle of August when Texas begins to peel off the burnt skin that encompasses the whole state only to burn the next layer in the ever-burning sun, listening to the bulletin from Charlottesville like FDR’s day of infamy, I listen to the station, angry under the August fire. Early November when Texas finally wakes up from its slumber in the sauna, only to find the guts of Thanksgiving on top of it, watching Michigan, Pennsylvania slip, slip through the hands of every television until it’s only a shout through the hallway the next day, daybreak, dead afraid of dying. When it’s June again and I’m trucking through Alabama, still roasted under the oppressive sky, hearing of children stolen, so parents may be stolen so maybe a wall can fight against the blue sky and I can’t stop seeing, though what I see should never be seen. And suddenly it’s October again and I start to fall asleep in the classroom, one year older and that afternoon I vote at the library with my dad, see the lines in the cool rain and wait.”
Jeremi: That’s very thoughtful, Zachary, what do you make of the media and news coverage in your poem?
Zachary: Well I think it talks about how the media, the media fits into our everyday lives and effects our emotions, but also helps us have more empathy for different people and at the same time can sometimes lead us on a roller coaster of emotions.
Jeremi: Right, it can contribute to a lot of emotions. Paul, one of the things you’ve done so well in your documentaries on George Wallace and Anne Richards and others is help us capture their personalities and emotions, how has media coverage of candidates– like George Wallace and Anne Richards and then of course more recent candidates like Rick Perry and Barrack Obama and Donald Trump, how has it changed over the last ten to twenty to thirty years?
Paul: Well I think that the explosion in media, just the cable universe with so many channels and so many outlets and so many sources of information online with video has just made political figures, you know, much more knowable in terms of seeing them. You know, you see them all the time, it’s impossible to get away from President Trump.
(Laughs)
Jeremi: As much as you try.
Paul: Oh, on every single social media platform, you know, for every Fox News coverage of every rally over and over and over again so that, you know, where there might have been some mystery about candidates in the past, you know, their private lives were kept private, there is nothing private anymore. You take a look at this campaign and opposition research is, you know, uncovering all kinds of things in younger candidates because they grew up in a period of time of social media so that there were pictures online and there was video online, you know, and there was pictures of their– recordings of their band online.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: So that we live now in a 24/7, you know, I’m there on some sort of platform universe and I think it makes our relationship to what we think we know about candidates that much different.
Jeremi: How has it effected the way we talk about issues like healthcare or foreign policy?
Paul: Well you know when I was coming up as a political scientist years ago, the cliché was that people didn’t have issue stances so much as they had preferences for parties and for candidates and they would tend to associate those candidates with what they believe. Okay, so if I like Jeremi, I’d assume that Jeremi would just agree with me on certain issues. Now remember certain issues, some issues were important to me, and some issues I would just say “One way or the other on a poll I don’t really care that much about”, so it ignored single issue voters. You know I think that generally everything that’s happened in society over the last decade or so has led to hyperpartisianship and greater division. If you take a look at Bill Bishop’s seminal book in 2004, the big sort – the stuff that Bill was writing about then, about how America was sort of separating in terms of their political views, their religious views, and their social views. It’s just been hyped up and been reinforced by just the way social media and the media in general has opened up those things so we live in a much more niche society. So I think everything has tended to split us, if that makes sense.
Jeremi: Sure, and what’s interesting to me about you saying that is your own work has shown how partisan and divided Americans have been for so long. Um, take your favorite candidate George Wallace.
Paul: (Laughing) Right?
Jeremi: The differences and views on race. In that time, however though, the media seemed to bring people together, telling the stories of civil rights activists, you know? Why is it different today?
Paul: Well you know, back when the civil rights movement happened in the 1960’s there were only 3 major networks. Even PBS didn’t exist at that point. You didn’t have very much – you didn’t have many venues to go to. You know and people actually read newspapers, you know there were lots of newspapers when I was growing up. New York must have had at least five or six major newspapers. And we were a Journal American family. Try to find New Yorkers that even know what the – you know I say Journal American, what that actually is. They had a really good sports section.
Jeremi: Gotcha.
Paul: You know if you were a Yankees fan. You know so there was more of the possibility of having a conventional view of something.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: The concept that was really important, again when I was in graduate school, called the socialization of power. It was a concept written by a guy of the fabulous name E.E. Schatznier.
Jeremi: Oh yeah, famous political scientist.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, I think from Wesleyan university. And wrote a book called the “Semi Sovereign People”, and the concept was that – you know let’s say there’s a political fight between me and your son, okay? You know, I’m on one side, he’s on the other side, but I’ve got all the ammunition. I’ve got all the people on my side, or the lobbyists, or – more power, will I win that fight? Unless your son is able to socialize the conflict. You know, and be able to bring in a larger audience, to be able to put more weight on his side. Okay, and there are classic examples of this in the 1960’s. David Garrow, in his seminal book “Protest at Selma.” Applied Schatznier’s view to what happened in Selma, Alabama where left to their own devices, southern blacks would not be able to vote. So if they get themselves on national TV, getting beaten up by mounted police, all of a sudden a national audience is disgusted by it, watching it on TV that night, on a Sunday. And all of a sudden the voting rights act happens, pushed through by President Johnson at the time. That kind of thing, you know the whole rise of the environmental movement, the rise of the feminist movement, you know all of these things happened in the 1960’s. And I think they were powered to a certain extent, not only by social changes, but by a media atmosphere that made it easier to be able to figure out where to be able to illustrate what was going on. To be able to socialize your conflict. You know, today, it’s just much more difficult. It’s kind of like people have their own places to go to be able to watch and to be able to watch people they already agree with. I mean I know this is a cliché Jeremy, but you know the entire society has become much more niche. And I live in one universe and somebody else lives in another universe and becomes increasingly hard to talk about it, let alone have some sort of a dialogue.
Jeremi: And you don’t see the same dynamic though? From Schatznier and the “Semi Sovereign People” with the Me-Too movement and Black Lives Matter. And perhaps on the other side, with many of the white supremacist movements. How different is that?
Paul: Well I think to a certain extent they are niche oriented towards you know — I mean their niches may be larger, but they come with a much greater amount of partisan division, you know racial or gender division, than we’ve seen in the past.. You know, and there’s obvious backlashes on this as well, that are fed again by going to your own corner. And going to your own corner. I mean I think a lot of democrats have been very surprised that in the aftermath of the Kavanagh hearings, what’s the political legacy of that? Well the political legacy short term may be the reelection of a republican senate. I mean who saw that coming?
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: I’m actually wondering if Dianne Feinstein sat on that letter, because being an experienced politician, she took a look at this and she said there was a moral choice, but you know this was a political loser for the Democratic Party. And we have a midterm election coming up, and you know this is a different way to read. This is the way issues work in today’s world.
Jeremi: Right, so it might have reinforced both sides of the argument, which would help the republicans in the senate and the democrats perhaps in the house.
Paul: You know and this might happen, but it might have woken up the republicans, in an election where the democrats had all of the enthusiasm. I mean we’ll see obviously, I mean who knows? But it’s – I think the idea that it’s hard to be able to have an issue that has one side, where there’s one consensus, it becomes increasingly hard, if not impossible, in a world where everything is divided. Where if I say something and I’m a democrat and you’re a republican, you just naturally go to the exact opposite side. You know it’s – our political system was based to a certain extent on compromise, or some sort of compromise.
Jeremi: Right, right.
Paul: And now if you’re a compromise candidate, you’re seen as a total sellout
Jeremi: Right
Paul: on both sides, and I don’t know where that leads to in terms of actually coherent public policy. So…
Jeremi: Well, I think we’ll get to that, but before we do that, I just wanted to focus on this issue with another question. How has this changed the way that people in the media do their job? How is the job of a reporter, or a documentary maker, like yourself, how has that changed?
Paul: Well I think for documentary folks, I think it puts more pressure on you to be an advocate as opposed to a sort of a neutral arbitrator
Jeremi: Gotcha.
Paul: of issues and — in history, because you’re looking for an audience.
Jeremi: So like a Michael Moore or Dinesh D’Souza, or something.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. You know both of whom who make films that to a certain extent, I’m not interested in. But there’s an audience for both of those.
Jeremi: They’re terribly predictable aren’t they?
Paul: Well it’s again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: I wouldn’t mind learning something when I — I wouldn’t mind actually thinking for myself. The problem for a filmmaker right now is exactly what do you put out there that allows people to think for themselves? You know it’s a hard calculation. And also you need to be able to raise funds, you need to be able to get people interested. You know, there’s a reason I think that some people –I mean yesterday I was talking about Tucker Carlson. I knew tucker years ago, he was a great guy. What happened? This is a conversation I had, and this may be going to a different direction…
Jeremi: Well what happened?
Paul: I think what happened was cable news, and I think – Yesterday literally I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who was – been very successfully involved in republican national politics, talking about how we thought that Fox News has been the worst thing to happen to American politics, in generations. It’s just horrible. You know, and I’m sorry to sound partisan about this, but I watch Fox at night, and I go “What universe are we listening to?”
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: I mean I’ll give you an example – and this was like a few years ago, and stop me if this is going off message. But back in 2008 I helped produce Front Line’s big documentary about the 2008 election, you know, McCain and Obama.
Jeremi: Sure.
Paul: I thought we did a really good job. It was pretty balanced, it was very balanced. We went out of our way to make sure that it was. They’re both interesting guys, interesting interplay. Fox News had their big historical film on one night, and I was curious to see how they differ with us. Just in their approach. And it was another two hour film, I believe, and they spent a large amount of their time tracing two Indonesian students who might have known Obama, going back to Indonesia, because they might have ties to terrorists. And I’m watching this going “What universe is this in?” I mean it’s – you know and the Tucker Carlson with the bow tie, who used to be on crossfire with Paul Begala, is not the Tucker Carlson there is today. Why is he doing this? The ratings are high. You kind of throw the red meat out there. But does this lead to in terms of the amount of anger and rage in the population? Especially if that’s all you’re watching. You know my apologies to Fox News viewers, but I cannot watch their stuff at night. Now again, I’m not a big fan of MSNBC and CNN, I can’t think of a single person I actually want to watch there, but it’s mostly a personality thing as opposed to an ideological thing. So. I don’t know Jeremi, it’s – I find it incredibly depressing.
Jeremi: Yeah it sounds – it’s certainly challenging. Do you think it’s fair to say that news coverage has become entertainment rather than education?
Paul: Well I think news coverage was always to a certain extent entertainment, I mean, you know we talk about the golden age of news, whatever is the 50’s and maybe the 60’s.
Jeremi: Walter Cronkite’s usually the person that people talk about.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. Your grandpa out there telling you how to think. Um, but remember that for large parts of American history, the media was pretty partisan, you know the republican papers, the democratic papers.
Jeremi: Sure, William Randolph Hearst and
Paul: Sure, and they (inaudible 0:15:25) in terms of their denunciations of opponents. Right, and people knew what they were getting, you know so maybe people knew what they were getting. So maybe I’m contradicting myself, maybe we’re just going back to the bad old days. The problem is that, you know the reach of these things is much greater. You know where you wake up in the morning and you have your coffee, you know assuming there’s water to have coffee with it. And you go to your favorite blogs. You go to your favorite websites. So every morning I get up and I, before my eyes are even up I go to Politico, I go to 530A, I go to The Washington Post, I go to the New York Times, and of course I go to Sports Illustrated dot com.
Jeremi: That’s where you start.
Paul: Yeah but now that the Yankees are out it’s kind of like – Why do I care?
Jeremi: Who cares about the World Series? What’s that Boston team called again?
Paul: Yeah, yeah. And I think everybody else who does this. Now remember one thing. Most Americans are not as obsessed with this stuff as I am. You know I’ve got a PhD in political science, I’ve done politics my entire life, I can’t stop myself from making political documentaries, but there are other people who actually have lives.
Jeremi: (Laughing)
Paul: And now many of them are nonvoters.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: You know because they have other things they’re concentrating on. So that – But I do think that it’s interesting, in terms of what the future in terms of what media might be, you know I have no idea what’s going to happen with Beto O’Rourke, okay, but his campaign has been really fascinating to watch, if you believe the future is less TV commercials and more Facebook live. You know where you were talking about how we know our politicians. I mean, gosh, if you were following Beto O’Rourke, you’ve been 0- you got to know him almost as much as his immediate family.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: You know where he just Facebook living as he’s driving from city to city around here.
Jeremi: Waiting for Whataburger and playing the air drums, I mean.
Paul: Or you know skateboarding. It’s forgetting whether you like him or you don’t like him – it’s – is this the future? The future of politics? And if that’s the case, then boy are we really going to know our candidates. And how much of this is actually issue based, and how much is this do I like the candidate or not? Do you want to see Ted Cruz Facebook live, hours on end? Evan Smith had an interesting quote that I read, I guess maybe in the Tribune. And he said that O’Rourke and Cruz were both in their mid-40, but Cruz was running as an 80 year old, and O’Rourke was running as a 20 year old.
Jeremi: Absolutely, right.
Paul: You know the 80 year old is relying on the old ways of doing stuff, and the 20 year old is relying on the youthful enthusiasm without a whole lot of experience in terms of how to run campaigns. We’ll find out on Election Day, if this actually works in terms of get out the vote in Texas, which is again, a non-voting state. But you know who knows?
Jeremi: And there was high turnout, for the first day at least. I mean we certainly have –
Paul: I mean yeah, yeah. That’s not always an indication, you know. It’s like everybody is so pent up, they can’t wait to vote. I’ll wander over and vote right after we’re done here.
Jeremi: Good, I’m glad you’re doing that. What are though the opportunities for young people? I want us to spend the last seven or eight minutes on this. I mean there’s so many young people who want to get involved in politics who see the challenges that you’ve articulated so well.
Paul: Right.
Jeremi: And recognize however, that these things change, generation to generation. So what are the things – the areas of exploration, I mean you’re a super creative person. What are the things you’re encouraging young people to do?
Paul: Well I think everything is always storytelling.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: You do story telling through different medias, you know so even like old documentary filmmakers like me as opposed to telling war stories in class or essentially just going “What kind of story do you want to tell?”, you know and how do you tell it well in your medium. And again, it’s a different thing for a thirty second commercial than a news piece than you know like an hours and hours long film. But it’s also different in terms of just what can you get away with doing stuff online. What can you get away with being Facebook live? How long is somebody going to watch? You know so you get the tools of telling a story, okay, and then you apply it to whatever medium there is. I mean Jeremy for old folks like us, or older folks like us.
Jeremi: (Laughing)
Paul: Being your senior. Who would have thought that you would read newspapers not only on your laptop, but on your phone?
Jeremi: Yeah, It’s amazing.
Paul: You know who thought you’d be reading emails on your watch.
Jeremi: Yeah.
Paul: And what’s next, you know? Something implanted in your head? Well maybe. Where you’ve got glass – the old glasses that didn’t seem to work, but maybe they will work at some point. You know living in a virtual reality world where in a Beto O’Rourke campaign you’ll put on your virtual reality glasses and you’ll be there with him, in that car.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: You know driving to the panhandle for hours and hours and hours. But that – the younger folks will figure this out, because they’ll have to be able to reach an audience. Financially if nothing else, you have to be able to sell stuff as a maker of material, and they’ll figure that out. It’s probably I’ll be sitting there with Moses on top of a mountain looking over to the Promised Land.
Jeremi: Issuing some more commandments, I’m sure.
Paul: Sure, sure, to myself at least.
Jeremi: What about the nature of storytelling though? I know it’s something you’ve thought a lot about, because with each change in the nature of the media that you’ve gone through so well here, the way stories are told changes.
Paul: Sure, you know I don’t want to go Joseph Campbell here, you know with the hero of the ages or whatever. But, stories depend on characters.
Jeremi: Right, right. I think there’s something to Campbell’s work, actually.
Paul: Oh yeah, of course, of course, yeah. But it’s – stories depend on characters, compelling characters. You know why do you like the movie you just saw? Okay, because the character spoke to you. There’s something about them that compelled you, and it works the same way in politics. Again, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the O’Rourke – Cruz race, I really don’t, but I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening with the general hysteria of his supporters around Beto O’Rourke.
Jeremi: Right, right.
Paul: I mean the guy’s got something and I think when you see that, and then with the other candidates that have that, quite frankly Donald Trump without the popular vote in 2016 because he was a very unique character.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: And the news media couldn’t stop covering him because it was like “What’s he going to say next?”
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: So political leads might look down and say “Oh he can’t win after saying that, he can’t win after saying that.” and just kept saying it, so he created his own persona.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: Okay, so we’re talking about stories that are really driven by characters that we can’t stop watching.
Jeremi: And isn’t there always, in different times and in different media spaces, isn’t there always the allure of the story of youthful integrity and new frontiers? I’m thinking of Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Beto O’Rourke, right?
Paul: Yeah, of course but then how do you explain 70ish year old Donald Trump winning the presidency? You know it’s always the eternal cliché battle between experience counts and it’s time for a change
Jeremi: Right, but of course Trump was running against another 70 year old.
Paul: Sure.
Jeremi: I mean that might have been part of the issue, right? That there was no youthful alternative.
Paul: Yeah, sure. You know it really just depends. You always have a sense of which candidate has more of a bump, because of those personality traits, that kind of youth, or whatever, but every campaign is different, you know and there are some younger candidates who are duds and there are some old folks that are very lively. There’s no one way of looking at this. But I think in terms of stories, I think again you’re looking for characters that are compelling and they have a story to tell. Every character has – every candidate now has a book. You know, it’s the same book.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: Over and over again. We all struggled, we all were born in a log cabin.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: So um, I saw Ken Burns’ film Huey Long, I showed it in class the other day, and Huey used to talk about being born in a log cabin, and they had a picture of this log cabin. It was like a three story building. His sister laughing about how “Yeah, he had logs.”
Jeremi: A luxury log cabin.
Paul: Yeah.
Jeremi: But I mean this is the strength of your work, of course, because George Wallace and Anne Richards, two very different people, and Molly Ivins, three very different people. These are larger than life characters.
Paul: Sure, sure. And that’s why you’re drawn to them. You know as a filmmaker here in Austin, I never would have guessed that I would have gotten to know on some basis Molly Ivins and Anne Richards, you know and the film that we just finished, the short film “Molly and Anne”, you know makes use of footage that we shot of them, in the years right before they passed away.
Jeremi: Anne Richards, governor of course of Texas, and Molly Ivins the great columnist and humorist.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, and they were larger than life characters.
Jeremi: They really were.
Paul: And that’s partially why they were so compelling to people then, and why so many people remember them now. So they were wonderful subjects. As a filmmaker, you want to be able to work with material of people that were that interesting and also there is some sort of video, visual record to be able to make something out of…
Jeremi: They’re really interesting, and they matter, right? Those things together. So the last question I wanted to close on, and I think it sort of – is in the architecture of everything you’ve said so well today, Paul. There’s a mystery about all of this. I mean you’ve been studying this all your life, you have a PhD in political science, and in the best way, someone who is actually studying politics.
Paul: Right.
Jeremi: Studying politics, not political theory. And you’ve covered this in so many ways, but yet as you’ve said so many times, we really don’t know what’s going to happen with Beto and Cruz, and we don’t know what things are going to look like in the media space in the next few years. Why does it remain so mysterious?
Paul: Because people are mysterious. You know it’s – who was it that wrote “My Antonio”, um, Willa Cather?
Jeremi: I think that’s right.
Paul: You know there’s a wonderful quote. I should remember this, it’s hanging over my desk, where it says that people tell just two or three stories, but they tell them over and over and over again, and they always differ because of the internal passion and the characters they bring to it. You know we’re not all that different. We’re born, we live, and we die. We have relationships, you know and some of them are just more interesting than others.
Jeremi: Yeah.
Paul: Every life is interesting, every life has a narrative, so that there is always a mystery. There isn’t a mystery to where it eventually ends up, but there’s a mystery in terms of just how that life gets led, you know? Which choices do you make? Which goes one way and which goes another way? For me as a political documentarian, that’s what I try to work on. You know, why did somebody do something, and not do something else? Why the choice here was made, which changed history? Or won an election, and what was the consequences of winning that election? Sometimes winning an election seems great election night, and it leads to a lot of pain and defeat in the future.
Jeremi: Right.
Paul: So, you know that’s what makes this interesting. If you’re a political junkie, obsessed as I am, it’s something that’s endlessly entertaining.
Jeremi: Well and it echoes what Karl von Clausewitz, the military strategist said, which is that the simplest things are actually the most difficult. And I think the excitement for me, because it’s a mystery, and we kind of know the stories, but how the stories play out are going to be different with each year and with each generation, that’s such an opportunity for young people to figure out a new way to tell the story and to tell the story in a new way.
Paul: Yeah.
Jeremi: In a sense, Beto O’Rourke, regardless of what happens in the election, has shown us that possibility.
Paul: Yeah, I agree.
Jeremi: Zachary, what do you think? I mean do you and your friends think about political stories? What draws you in to these conversations?
Zachary: I think that you were both correct. I think that the stories and the compelling stories are really what draws young people in, I think. Because – and also the way he’s able – Beto’s able to connect with younger people through the use of things like Facebook live, and um more social media campaigns. And I think it’s really important for candidates, if they’re trying to reach out to young people, to not focus on simple like red and blue issues, but actually just talk about people’s everyday lives. And I think what Beto has done really well is make him seem like – make himself seem like an ordinary person.
Jeremi: Right, an authentic person.
Zachary: And I think Cruz has tried, tried to do that, but he had trouble because he’s been in politics for so long.
Jeremi: So you and your friends are drawn to the stories, of the new candidates in particular?
Zachary: Yeah.
Jeremi: Great. Well this has been a tremendous conversation. Paul, you’ve educated us on so many of these issues, given us a history and a context for understanding the present, and you’ve mixed some very honest assessment of our challenges with some hope, and I think that’s what we need, today more than ever. Thank you for joining this episode of “This is Democracy”.
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Speaker 1: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 2: The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at harrisonlempke.com.
Speaker 3: Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday, featuring new perspectives on democracy.
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