THE TICKET

BY SHARON TULLY

John McCain knew how important the battleground state of Missouri was to his campaign, according to the local Kansas City news station KCTV-5’s reporter Surae Chinn. In her exclusive interview, Chinn also discovered how important Kansas City Bar-B-Q was to McCain.

On July 30, 2008, Chinn sat down for an interview with McCain and his wife, Cindy, which had a total airtime of about two minutes and 15 seconds. The reporter closed the segment with this: “We couldn’t leave without asking about Kansas City Bar-B-Q.” McCain’s response to this question received more airtime than almost any other part of the interview.

“It’s wonderful, and I have had it on numerous occasions,” McCain said, “and I have taken some of the Bar-B-Q sauce—which I won’t name the label on it because it might be a commercial,” he laughed. “Oh, it’s not as good as my husband’s,” his wife replied lovingly.

Those were the final words of wisdom given by McCain and his wife during this exclusive interview, words that came from the kind of softball questions local reporters tend to ask during these interviews.

“We tried, still couldn’t pull that name of the Kansas City Bar-B-Q out from him,” Chinn reported, as she signed off. If only she had tried that hard to get the answers to some tougher and more relevant political questions, the exclusive interview could have had a little more potential. These are the kind of softball questions that leave viewers wondering what they just learned about McCain as a leader.

Throughout the presidential campaign, candidates from both political parties gave numerous interviews, on both the national and local level, but it was the questions asked during these interviews that require a more in-depth analysis. Some interviews were aired without more than a second glance, while others made headlines for days, or even weeks after the original interview.

These headline grabbers were often the result of a so-called “tough” interview, where presidential and vice presidential candidates accused reporters of attacking them during the interview. “From my viewpoint, the national political media may either play a very important or a very destructive role in covering a presidential campaign,” said Phyllis Kaniss, the executive director at the American Academy of Political and Social Science and author of “Making Local News.”

Perhaps it is those softer interviews like the KCTV-5 interview that tend to occur in local markets and often air without any controversy that should be given a second look, because it is often these interviews that are just a chance for candidates to stick to their talking points. Small-town news network reporters who have the chance to interview a presidential candidate face-to-face often seem to be “nicer” in their interviews, maybe because they are just excited that the candidate came to town. These interviewers tend to treat the candidates like celebrities, and the interviewer comes off as somewhat star-struck, asking questions that don’t require much of a thought-provoking response.

“Network crews that travel with the campaign may be a little more worldly, a little more skeptical, and not nearly as star struck as a young reporter in a small market meeting a presidential candidate for the first time,” said Scott Libin, Minnesota’s WCCO-TV’s news director. WCCO-TV’s political reporter has 25 years of experience, Libin said, so he isn’t afraid to ask presidential candidates some tough questions. But that isn’t the case for all local reporters.

In other local markets, where reporters tend to throw out softball questions, the candidate gets a chance to say what is important to him or her without the pressure of reporters who want to probe and prod. This can be good for the candidate because without the tough questions and the interruptions, the interview can come off as an extended campaign advertisement.

“Often, the local media will allow a political candidate more time to lay out what he or she would like to do in office — which can be a good thing for audiences not paying too much attention to an election,” Kaniss said. “In other words, because they are less likely to practice ‘gotcha’ journalism, they will allow candidates to speak to the issues, in a valuable way.”

But, in a local newscast that lasts only about a half hour, viewers also need to see an interview where the candidates aren’t only sticking to their talking points. These talking points are what the candidates deliver during national speeches and viewers are looking for a different side of the political candidate.

“I think the public relies on journalists to get past the message of the day, to get past the scripted responses, and force the candidate to respond to questions,” Libin said.

The Lear Center Local News Archive published a report during the 2004 campaign that studied local news coverage and found that the amount of time given to presidential news coverage on local TV stations was about equal to the amount of time presidential advertising was aired. If viewers are already getting that much political advertising while watching a newscast, then they deserve more than just scripted talking points from exclusive candidate interviews.

Reporter Cynthia Fodor from local news station KCCI-8 in Des Moines, Iowa, was granted a five minute interview with Sarah Palin, and she admitted later that she had to agree to submit the topics that she wanted to discuss ahead of time to Palin’s campaign in order to do the interview. Not the best representation of how a candidate thinks on his or her feet. By giving the candidate a chance to dictate the flow of the conversation, the reporter ultimately loses control of the line of questioning.

Other news stations won’t give in to a candidate’s requests just to get the interview. When Palin came to Maine, WCSH-6 anchor Rob Caldwell said that Palin’s campaign would only grant them the interview if they could select the reporter who would conduct the interview.

“We could not agree to that condition,” Caldwell said, as he reflected back on the situation, and so they were not given permission to interview Palin.

Caldwell is a local reporter who had the chance to interview McCain and steered clear of the so-called softball questions. Caldwell asked McCain a series of tough questions, which sparked a lot of public discussion.

Caldwell asked McCain about Palin and for some examples of her national experience. “You say you’re sure she has experience, but again I’m just asking for an example. What experience does she have in the field of national security?” McCain stumbled a bit while he came up with his answer: energy.

The video of the interview has appeared on several websites such as AmericaBlog.com, CBSNews.com and Youtube.com, and drew attention to the power of the local media. When a local interview ends up being aired on national news, the distance between the local and national markets begins to shrink. When a candidate goes into a local interview with the expectation that it won’t be one of their most difficult interviews, they are often surprised.

“The reputation is that local reporters are not as aggressive as the national reporters,” Caldwell said. “Whether that reputation is deserved or not is hard to say. To some extent, it is.”

When a local reporter has the chance to sit down with a political candidate for an exclusive interview, the first thing the reporter says should not be “I promise I’ll stick to my five minutes, sir,” as reporter Cammy Dierking from Cincinnati’s WKRC-TV said with a beaming smile in an interview with Obama. In that interview, Dierking ended the segment by asking Obama, “I know we’re just about out of time, but in about 20 seconds or so, can you tell me how in the world you keep your energy and your strength up during this crazy campaign?” And so Obama spent 20 seconds of this exclusive interview talking about his naps and working out. These are not questions that will get the in-depth answers about issues and policy that viewers need to see. These are the questions that will lead into other easier questions and allow a candidate to stick to their talking points for the entire duration of the interview.

“A lot of times the local reporters are not as experienced as national reporters because they’ve only been in the business a year or two,” Caldwell said. “They think it’s impolite to ask a tough question — they think it’s discourteous to ask a tough question, and I think that is part of the reason.”

Since more and more Americans are getting their news from local television stations, reporters and producers at these stations should use this to their advantage when given the chance to interview a political candidate.

In a Raleigh, N.C., interview with Palin on WRAL, reporter David Crabtree conducted a very friendly interview with Palin, asking her questions about what her greatest surprise and greatest frustration has been so far, and ending the interview with the question, “How is your son doing in Iraq?” Crabtree’s line of questioning focused more on Palin as a person, than on Palin as a leader.

These softer interviews can be a breath of fresh air for the candidates but are not always beneficial for the viewers who are trying to decide which way to vote. But these interviews are also a positive media hit for the candidates.

“The presidential candidate benefits from appearing with what is usually a well-liked local anchor and looking like they are in a personal relationship with this surrogate for the local audience,” said Kaniss, who also teaches courses on local media at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

After a string of “nicer” interviews, a candidate may be surprised to come face to face with a tough local interviewer.

“When presidential candidates give interviews to local TV reporters,” Kaniss said, “they are banking on a basic fact about those reporters: they know relatively little about the subject because they are generalists, and therefore tend not to be able to ask very hard-hitting questions.”

Reporter Barbara West from Orlando’s ABC affiliate, WFTV, was one of those local reporters who was able to ask the hard-hitting questions. Her interview with Joe Biden received national recognition after she was accused of asking questions that were too tough. West asked Biden questions about Barack Obama’s “spreading the wealth” comment and likened him to a Marxist, saying: “You may recognize this famous quote, from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. That’s from Karl Marx. How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?”

Biden did not appreciate the question, to which he responded: “Are you joking? Is this a joke? Is that a real question?” Following the interview, the Obama campaign cut off the station from any future interviews, including an already scheduled interview with Biden’s wife.

When Obama called a local news reporter from WXYZ-TV “sweetie,” during a campaign stop in Detroit, it caused a buzz that landed on the pages of The New York Times, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune and Newsday. It also landed the reporter, Peggy Agar, an exclusive interview with Obama after he called to apologize for the comment, during which she asked him, “What’d you make of that whole sweetie thing that happened between us?” Agar spent a good part of the interview discussing this instance and basically played into the entertainment factor of the comment.

Again, this is not the kind of question that reveals in-depth answers about issues and policy. It is more likely the kind of question that gets the station higher ratings for a brief period of time.

“All too often,” Kaniss said, “the media — sensitive to ratings and readership — blew up the most entertaining topics and allowed itself to be led by what I would call ‘sexy’ campaign topics.”

The entertaining topics also made their way into numerous amounts of national coverage. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer sat down with an interview with McCain, and the highlight of the interview that the network continued to play was, “Is Sarah Palin dragging down the Republican Ticket?” This topic was more prominent than the issues McCain was speaking about in the exclusive one-on-one interview.

Although the candidates have accused the national media for being too tough in their line of questioning, a strong majority of the public think otherwise, according to a report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The report found that strong majorities of the public believe the press has been fair to McCain, Obama and Biden, but more believe the national press has been too tough on Palin. The media has a responsibility to the public to ask the right questions and get the unscripted answers. Whether these questions are too tough or not should ultimately be left to the decision of the voters who are using the candidates’ responses to evaluate their qualifications.

Overall, the generalization that local news media give easier interviews is not entirely accurate, because there are reporters out there who are asking the tough questions in the local markets and getting the candidates to think on their feet. But there are also those media who still exhibit somewhat of a star-struck quality when interviewing a presidential candidate.

Caldwell had some advice for other local reporters who have the chance to interview a political candidate. “You’ve got to know your stuff,” he said. “You have to think in advance about the questions — try to think about the answer the candidate is going to give, and then come up with a different way to get at the issue.” Maybe more of the local news media will start to listen.

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