The American Professor Pundit: Academics in the World of US Political Media 3030708764, 9783030708764

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The American Professor Pundit Academics in the World of US Political Media

Brian R. Calfano Valerie Martinez-Ebers Aida Ramusovic

The American Professor Pundit “For far too long there has been a gulf between the academic and media arenas. Thankfully this gulf has started to close as social scientists seek to ensure that their objective and data-informed research reaches more people and has increased impact. At the same time the media and policy stakeholder community has realized that social scientists are ready, willing and able to bring a crucial expertise into public discourse. Calfano et al.’s work is a key to further closing the professor-pundit gap and should be required reading for social scientists as well as all members of the media!” —Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, Assistant Dean of Civic Engagement, The LBJ School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, USA, and MSNBC & Telemundo Contributor “How many hats can a professor wear? According to this lively volume, quite a few. An academic mainly teaches and advises students, researches in chosen specialties, and publishes books and articles. But the modern era has added another dimension—taking one’s expertise to the news media and general public via TV, radio, and print interviews. As the authors point out, there is a long tradition of public intellectuals in America and elsewhere, but the “professorpundit” is something of a new role. The trick for busy academics is threefold: fitting in media appearances without detracting from their core university responsibilities; restricting interviews to their specialties so as to resist the temptation to become an expert in everything; and adding real value to media coverage by raising broader questions that take the audience beyond day-to-day headlines. The authors understand it isn’t as easy as it may look, and controversy can follow any sentence or phrase not clearly articulated to a mass audience. This volume is a very useful read for professors and reporters alike. The rewards of media commentary can be considerable, yet significant dangers are often unrecognized—until the TV camera bites back.” —Larry J. Sabato, Director at the Center for Politics, University of Virginia, USA, and EMMY Award winner

Brian R. Calfano · Valerie Martinez-Ebers · Aida Ramusovic

The American Professor Pundit Academics in the World of US Political Media

Brian R. Calfano Department of Political Science University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, USA

Valerie Martinez-Ebers Department of Political Science University of North Texas Denton, TX, USA

Aida Ramusovic Department of Political Science University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-70876-4 ISBN 978-3-030-70877-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70877-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book has a lot of purposes. It has just as many audiences. We designed the book to be part primer on the basics of the media effects literature, part survey of the media work that academics engage in, and part professional coach for doing media interviews. As such, there is something here for lots of reader types. For example, undergraduate classes in political science and related fields might like the overviews of several literatures and the accessible take on experimental design methods. Graduate courses in these same fields may use the book as a supplemental or main text in a variety of subfields, while graduate students and current academics will find a lot of use from the book’s practical advice chapters. Finally, general readers will appreciate the overall look at how the work of two sectors—academics and the news media—intersect in creating content that helps inform the public. Our substantive goals for the book are these (in order of importance). First, make media interviews—especially on television—easier for academics by offering professional and insider tips about the performance and technical aspects of media work. We especially concentrate on the COVID-19 reality that media contributors are more likely than ever to do interviews using a video conferencing service. Second, we resurrect consideration of political punditry by placing it in a context previously under -appreciated by scholars. Namely, academics, by dint of their research focus and expertise, can offer content that other pundits (and political watchers more generally, do not. By featuring perspectives v

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from media professionals and results from national survey experiments, we show that there is room for (and benefit from) academics engaging in the role we call The Professor Pundit. Third, we map some of the first-hand experiences that academics told us about as media interviewees. What our colleagues related provide examples of some of the same issues you may have encountered in your media contributions. And, it is not an exaggeration to say that this book would not have been written without the generous support of the various content contributors across media and academics as referenced in the chapters. We owe a great debt to each for sharing their insight and ideas with us. We are also grateful for the patience and support of our Palgrave team during the writing and editing process. Finally, thanks to Nexstar Media Group and Charter Spectrum for permission to use stills from their newscasts. Overall, we think the finished product is one that meets our objective of helping explain the use of the Professor Pundit approach in political news coverage. Cincinnati, USA Denton, USA Cincinnati, USA

Brian R. Calfano Valerie Martinez-Ebers Aida Ramusovic

Contents

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1

Introduction: The Needs of Political News

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The Variation in Media Influence

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Where Pundits Fit in Political News Coverage

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Who Are These Professor Pundits?

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The Public’s Views of Professor Punditry

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Professor Pundits Engaging with Vulnerable Populations

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Professor Punditry, The Performance

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Getting “Teched Up”

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Index

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List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1 6.1 7.1 8.1

Image 7.1

Image 7.2

Image 7.3 Image 7.4 Image 7.5

Summary of chapter content Summary of chapter content (continued) Summary graphic Chapter summary Chapter summary Chapter summary Chapter summary Chapter summary Chapter summary Smiling at beginning of interview example. Spectrum News 1 Ohio anchor Curtis Jackson and Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Charter Spectrum Hand gesturing example 1. RTDNA Executive Director Dan Shelley and Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Nexstar Media Group Hand gesturing example 2. Image courtesy of Nexstar Media Group Hand gesturing example 3. Image courtesy of Nexstar Media Group Hand gesturing example 5. Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, and Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Nexstar Media Group

27 28 52 91 108 149 172 228 258

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Image 8.1

Image 8.2 Image 8.3 Image 8.4 Image 8.5 Image 8.6 Image 8.7

Image 8.8 Image 8.9 Image 8.10

Look at the computer camera example. KOLR10 anchors Joe Murano and Jenifer Abreu with Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Nexstar Media Group Spectrum News 1 Ohio anchor Sophia Constantine and Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Charter Spectrum Spectrum News 1 Ohio anchor Curtis Jackson and Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Charter Spectrum Light improv using hotel room coffee maker positioned behind laptop Another look at front-project light using hotel room coffee maker Using natural light with laptop facing hotel room window for tv shot Framing office background for “two shot.” Spectrum News 1 Ohio anchor Curtis Jackson and Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Charter Spectrum Front projected light for home video conference set-up and video software settings “Legislative process” prop, Brian Calfano. Image courtesy of Nexstar Media Group Wired lavalier microphone and Macbook

234 235 236 237 238 239

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List of Tables

Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 5.5 Table 7.1

Subject pool statistics Pundit “common ground” experiment effects on media confidence Pundit “common ground” experiment effects on impressions of academic experts Pundit “constitutional rights” experiment effects on media confidence Pundit “constitutional rights” effects on impressions of academic experts Media types and information they feature

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Introduction: The Needs of Political News

We begin our book with the musings of author Brian Calfano about one of his many television media appearances. Since each of us brings a specific set of experiences to the topics across the following chapters, we will let you know about those cases where the content is produced specifically by one of us. “Am I ready for this?”

The voice in my head asking this question won’t stop until, if past experience is any guide, I start to answer the first interview question. It’s always a little tricky when you look at a small green dot and pretend to have a real degree of interaction with someone hundreds of miles away. Thankfully, my trusty computer web cam/Skype setup doesn’t allow me to see how my questioner, usually a television news anchor, reacts to my words and ideas. This might scare some people who need positive affirmation that their answers are well-received, but I’m one of those who gets nervous when reading faces in the middle of response. Seeing a reaction midstream often trips up the flow of my response, so it’s just as well that I don’t see my interview partner for many of these “hits” (i.e., on-air television appearances). It’s 6 a.m., and there’s no sleeping at this point. The question about being ready this morning continues in my mental background as a mix of anticipation and anxiety about being seen across Ontario takes hold. I © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. R. Calfano et al., The American Professor Pundit, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70877-1_1

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have to get up in a few minutes to shower and get dressed for a 7 a.m. “hit” on Global News Toronto. I am a political scientist by training, but fell into the habit of saying “yes” to many television news appearances, largely because I hope it helps to raise my visibility as an academic (and count for university service). I am not paid for this television work for Canada (but I am paid for my reporting and analyst work in the United States). In my case, I’m situated between political science and journalism, which provides a unique mix of theoretical and practical opportunities for teaching, research, and, if you’re up for it (literally), “real-world” experience with news media reporting and analyzing politics. My job for this hit will be to try to have the Trump Administration make sense to Canadians who, like many Americans, were bewildered by the 45th President of the United States, his policies, or his social media habits. I’ve been appearing on television news to talk about politics for almost ten years, and I’ve been around enough television producers at this point to know that a discourse on the seminal political science theories about the modern presidency is not what they’re looking for from me. The viewers would not get it, and I’d likely be dismissed as an “egg head” academic. While tempting to show off for the few academic colleagues who might stumble on an online post of my interview, phrases like “Neustadt found that . . .” will not leave my lips. That said, I do try to find ways to make general reference to “the research” or “what experts say,” but not lumping myself into that mix in the process. My goal is to be a middle-of-the-road (MOR) analyst of political persons and events, and to do so in a way that reflects quality in content and production for television. But the MOR approach, as was true of its 70s pop music reference, has its detractors. For one thing, if I’m booked with a reporter or anchor who wants to drive the interview in a direction that is strongly critical of Trump, finding something positive to say about the president on the issue at hand is a bad reflex that I have to work against. Depending on the issue, it may be that there is no “other side” in terms of any kind of credible (i.e., non-White House oriented) spin that I’d be comfortable offering to “balanced.” This is just one of the challenges of being an academic who does media appearances. The general gist of the interview this morning is Trump’s latest tweet storm. This is the only thing I get advanced notice of before we go live with the interview via Skype. I’m not given a list of questions before the interview, and often the anchor will simply toss to me with a lead-in of

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“Brian, what do you make of this?” That can seem like a daunting intro in its non-specificity, but it also allows me room to maneuver the interview into whatever direction I deem best. So, I can generally (but not always) set the temperature of the exchange. If a political figure (and it is not always President Trump) has really gone off the deep end on an issue, I’ll try to research a time or situation that compares to the event at hand to offer audiences some perspective and context. President Harry Truman famously offered the following indictment of much of the public in his time (and which is certainly true in ours): “There’s nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” Now, obviously, novel viruses and the specific idiosyncrasies of our elected officials are certainly “new” in the sense that these entities are having their moment on the public stage (which they previously did not). But Truman’s point is that the broader patterns of human behavior repeat themselves, including and especially political patterns. One of my favorite historical tidbits to offer audiences concerns criticism of Trump’s demeanor toward the press, which is usually characterized as combative and essentially unprecedented. I like to remind audiences that, whatever their dislike of Trump, President Richard Nixon may be the all-time champion of negative presidential demeanor, if not toward the press, then toward his staff. On May 20, 1973, Nixon attended a VFW event in California. Reporters trailed the president as he headed into the building. Annoyed that the reporters were too close, Nixon took his press secretary (Ron Ziegler) by his arms, turned Ziegler 180 degrees toward the trailing press corps, physically pushed Ziegler into the crowd of reporters, and then turned around to head back toward the building. And it’s all on film. Now, perhaps President Trump has done something similar, but it has never been recorded (or even alleged). To be sure, my point in raising the Nixon example is not to let Trump off the hook for his behavior in a given situation. But academics in media, who should have the time to research the history Truman spoke of, can at least help tone down the concern that “new” is tantamount to “unprecedented.” This is but one of the contributions academics in media can make (and that we discuss throughout the following chapters). Returning to Toronto, I think the producers I work with have found me to be competent enough by now to know that I can pretty much give decent “sound” (i.e., responses that make sense to lay people and are even a little punchy in terms of word usage and phrasing), and that they do not need to worry about overproducing my segments. As I’ve found

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working on the producing side of news (something I forced myself to do at a local CBS affiliate once I started teaching journalism), television staffs are stretched quite thin, so anything that looks like it works well enough for what’s needed in a show usually does not get enhanced attention. Of course, depending on the size of the television market (and station owner) in question, resources and attention may be both plentiful and detailed. But, with over 200 television markets in the United States, stations in smaller markets will, in general, be resource strapped. This is why some are surprised when I tell them, “no, there is no one to do my make-up.” That is something I’ve learned to do (after a good amount of trial and error). I’ve also made some technical investments in my “hits.” The television news lingo may annoy some, but now is a good time to make a distinction between a “hit” and other media activities. Generally, if you’re an interview subject where a reporter uses your question responses as material for an edited story and/or a live interview, it’s a “hit.” Technically, you can do a “hit” for any type of media, but the work involved may be quite different. My sense is that, much to the dismay of some old-time print journalists, easily half of the job in television news is how the visual looks. If your lighting and sound are good, and you look sharp as the guest in terms of hair, makeup, and dress, you have already gained credibility in the eyes of many viewers. No, this does not mean that you just have to sit there and look good to do the job correctly. Ethical journalistic practice, skilled storytelling techniques, and determination to enterprise (i.e., find) stories that the public should know about are critical. But, the vast majority of academics—for whom this book is written—will not be television news reporters or producers responsible for pitching and pulling together a story from start to finish. Indeed, this is not a book about how to be a reporter. It is a book examining what academics who do media work do, and might want to consider doing. The book also provides general readers a sense of the larger influence academics in media might have on public outcomes, including political opinions. Since academics will usually be the source used to help make sense of an event or public figure, the list of items to be concerned with is short: content and appearance (and I am not sure which should be first in importance). I say this because, like it or not, television is a visual medium. And it is probably not a controversial statement that many academics selected their line of work because the emphasis was on things other than visual presentation. To a large extent, the history of the academic in media

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allowed one’s intellectual argument to live in black type on gray paper. Exactly how the academic looked and sounded while offering reporters her wisdom was not of concern in the vast majority of cases. This is no longer true. Even if you’re reading this introduction secure in your work as a regular source for the political beat reporter at a major metropolitan newspaper, note that the convergence trend hastened by online delivery of virtually all forms of media means the smart money is on the continued expansion of the visual component of reporting news. This trend includes newspapers, news websites, and the social media pages associated with these outlets. Therefore, the video component of news will likely encompass more academics who take on media contributor roles in the future. And it is why we orient the book toward academic media work of a visual nature (whether one appears on broadcast of cable television news is, therefore, immaterial). Video-based media is the future. This is why I mention the importance of appearance as at least equal to content for academics in their media work. My view has more to do with the reality that academics have likely given much more attention to developing their content knowledge than they have focused on ways to present said content. And upgrading my communication game was a process—it was hardly an overnight switch. Borrowing knowledge from my CBS affiliate gig, I purchased a LED top light and lavalier microphone (the kind that pins to a jacket lapel). The light gets positioned on my backpack, which I standup just behind my laptop screen (front-projected light is key for television), and the lavalier has a USB plug that goes directly into the computer. Already, my shot looks like I work for the network—and this perception has only grown in the post-COVID period where remote interviews have become far more utilized than anyone would have imagined. Next comes the powder for my face to get rid of any shine and a quick check of my jacket to make sure it’s not bunching up around my shoulders. Then, comes the Skype call from Toronto. I’ve been up for an hour by now, talking to myself in the shower and while blow drying my hair. I usually try out some phrases or terms to hear how they sound, especially my pronunciation of them. Again, I only know the general interview topic ahead of time, so maybe none of these “practice swings” will come up during the interview, but the mental and verbal workout serves as a warm up. By the time I answer the Skype call, I am pretty much in a performance mindset. This means that I want to look and sound good to the viewers. Any chance to make the anchor chuckle with a witty response

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is an opportunity to build rapport with the audience, and to get invited back for more hits (where I will, again, lay in waiting hours before trying to figure out why I keep doing this). I work hard to keep my responses free of “uuuhs” and “umms,” and not to start every sentence with what seems to be perfunctory intro among academics giving an explanation: “so . . . .”. The Toronto producer, who is always cheery, greets me with a bright “hello, Brian.” She does a quick check to make sure my shot is framed as best as can be (I’m not always in the same location for these interviews, so the background sometimes requires “tweaking”). Once those last-minute checks are done, we are set for me to wait the few minutes before the interview starts and the anchor intros the story and me. I’m given a 30second countdown cue, after which I’m live on Canadian television, and am staring intently at the little green button in the top middle of my computer screen. The questions are generally what I expect this morning about the Trump tweets—there are no instances where I feel as though I’m unprepared for what is asked of me, although part of this may be because I successfully steer the interview in the direction I like (i.e., not making definitive predictions about Trump’s future, and not sounding too virulent about who was then the sitting American president). Per what I said previously about not going to far down a rabbit hole of onesided criticism, I like to make sure that my comments are measured and appropriate for the audience and, more importantly, my role. Recall that I see my best contribution as encouraging people to think through some of the historical patterns (if there are any) seen in the Trump presidency compared to his predecessors. But this work, and my political reporting job at the CBS station (which I balance with a full-time university appointment), has caused me to stop and think about what exactly it is I’m doing by appearing on television to report and comment on politics. More importantly, it has caused me to lift my head up (proverbially) and take note of the broader ecosystem of political and social scientists who contribute their domain-specific knowledge to all forms of media. I may be one of the few involved in the regular amount of television content I produce, but I am hardly unique in terms of being an academic in media. Indeed, my coauthors have an impressive array of experiences appearing in (and creating content for) national and international media. This book is an outgrowth of the ongoing discussions we have about how academics—though highly knowledgeable about their research—are not always positioned to make the most effective use

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of their expertise when it comes to the media appearances that come their way. Though the most obvious challenge might be the technical hurdles associated with television media; blogging, podcasting, and writing opeds for major newspapers are not tasks taught in graduate school (or even encouraged during the tenure and promotion process for that matter). At the same time, audiences and news managers, the key constituencies that determine an academic’s success in media work, may have little (or no) appreciation for how much coaching some academics might need to be effective in media roles, especially when the visual component is critical.

Punditry: The Problems, the Potentials In fact, elements of the preceding vignette may be a more common occurrence than we three authors think, as there is likely a similar set of rituals one follows when meeting a deadline to post a Vox article or traipsing to an actual television studio in one’s local market at 5 a.m. to analyze election returns. For better or worse, political and social scientists are perhaps more ensconced than ever in the world of media commentary and analysis and, yes, political punditry. We want to be careful here, however. Just because an academic makes media appearances (of whatever type), does not make this person a “pundit”. The term may, in fact, be considered pejorative given that many examples focus on political journalists bringing a public face (and social media dimension) to their reportage (see Rogstad 2014). In other words, reporters might simply like the notoriety of being quoted by their peers. Punditry itself is likely the outcome of an advancing trend in political commentary as a feature of traditional news reporting. In this model, the story’s reporter maintains a sense of balance in presenting the story elements and draws on a colleague’s expertise in providing content and analysis (and even taking a partisan side) (Nimmo and Combs 1992; Allern 2010). Of course, academics usually like to be quoted too, but as citations in the academic literature. In-and-of-itself, punditry is not a bad thing, but the so-called “chattering class” of analysts offering their views on all things political has earned this negative connotation for a reason. In many cases, pundits have become, in the words

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of one local television news director interviewed later in this book, “performance artists.” And the somewhat humorous explanation Nimmo and Combs (1992) give for what pundits offer media audiences is no more flattering: . . . a network news anchor reports news as fact: This, that, and the other thing is happening. For major events, however, the anchor turns to someone who gives a brief interpretation: This is happening because of X, Y, and Z but not A, B, and C: it is happening now because D, E, and F preceded it, bringing about the event; we can expect G, H, and I to come from what is happening but not J, K, and L. ‘Take my word for it,” the analyst seems to say. The anchor thanks the analyst and smiles at the camera, satisfied that the audience has received a quick and accurate insight into what is happening (1–2).

One does not need to conduct a national survey of academics to know that most political and social scientists would chafe at this description of their “public-facing” explanations for current political events. Though academic explanations of politics can be messy (and even indeterminant), how is this much different from the economist, whose monthly job number projections are almost always “revised”? This does not even touch the multiple shifts in knowledge and recommendations witnessed in scientific medicine’s response to the novel coronavirus. Whether the reader accepts these as fair comparisons to the punditry performance Nimmo and Combs described, a reality of modern life is that a nation (indeed, world) marked by complex specialization and economies of scale requires experts to offer insights that are the product of serious thought and investigation. The pundit offering a view of the latest political developments is no different in function than the tax advisor, attorney, family doctor, or local priest. Each has a domain of expertise, and each remains fallible, even when operating in that domain. Does this possibility of fallibility mean that no one consults these professionals when the need arises? Obviously, not. And given the public’s general malaise in civic activism, not to mention its basic lack of political knowledge (Converse 2006; Delli Carpini et al. 1996), why would people not look to experts to help them understand politics? Aside from quibbling about who qualifies as a political “expert” (there is, after all, no national certification for this kind of position), Nimmo and Combs (1992) seem to take consistent issue

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with what they consider the commercialization motive behind the rise of pundits in political news: In current politics, punditry has become a popular art form. Punditry proliferates, in part, because editors of newspapers and newsmagazines, radio executives, and TV producers think it sells. . . . That punditry can be merchandised, is, however, not the only reason why it proliferates. With the arrival of cable, and then satellite, television punditry shifted from a cottage industry of the occasional priest, bard, or oracle to the growth industry of media personalities, which includes thinkers, analysts, and experts, talk show hosts, guests, and callers, and a vast array of media critics (17).

We do not disagree much with this take on certain forms of punditry (even the majority of best known examples). But where we part ways with Nimmo and Combs is on the idea that pundits are almost always unproductive ornaments in the political process. Our sense is that most academics would eschew claiming the pundit mantle, but would take pride in recognition of their specific expertise as featured in public venues, including media outlets. The issue for academics may be more about the term “pundit” than anything else. Instead, “public intellectual”—with its connotative assumption of opinion and prediction grounded in expertise and systematic academic theorizing separate from a partisan worldview—is likely more what many academics have in mind. Frequent media contributors like Professor Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia fit the public intellectual label well. Yet the line between even serious-minded commentators like Sabato and network or syndicated “analysts” may be blurred, especially on television where academics are included on talk panels with journalists, activists, and, for lack of a better term, “performance artists” who are more interested in generating a segment that looks compelling to a broad audience. As such, and just as we have become increasingly concerned with production values in our media hits, focus on the technical trappings of media presentation in the twenty-first century may limit the academic’s voice and bring it closer to the more negative connotation of punditry. And, if punditry is what we as academics end up producing—either by choice or because of circumstances, how are we any different from the cadre of “analysts” employed by the cable news networks to carry water for one political cause or another? This a broad question we return to throughout the book. But now is as good a time as any to underscore that we consider the term

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pundit to need (and deserve) rehabilitation. As you might have noticed from our book title, we consider The Professor Pundit to serve a positive public function in the democratic process. This function can be substantially different than the traditional examples of punditry that fuel derision about the term. Our view of the “pundit” term is that it promises the public exposure to expertise that, if offered in the spirit of civic discourse and democratic deliberation, provides an essential public good. Though punditry is not new to American politics, the acceleration of media fragmentation, source selection by motivated partisans, and politicans’ application of the “fake news” label to any story they do not like overlap the rise of academics’ involvement in the daily political news cycle. Without available data to measure relative academic involvement levels across media types, we cannot offer a definitive statement as to whether there are now more academics providing media outlets with their expertise than in decades past. But the advent of Internet and social media technologies, which, in many ways, enabled the kind of source selection and fragmentation that defines today’s media landscape, suggests at least a greater potential demand for academic voices in media. But what are these academics contributing? Arguably, this is partially determined by the role one has (e.g., commentator versus reporter) and the media platform in question (e.g., television versus print or web). This is also true for those who use their academic research to provide analytical insights in the growing field of data journalism. The increasing popularity of quasi-academic blogs associated with major legacy news sources (e.g., The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage and The New York Times’ 538) have opened new opportunities for those trained to study and comment on politics in a mainly academic voice. Importantly, the kind of data-driven, academically oriented political analyses offered on Monkey Cage and 538 seem an effective antidote to the punditry concerns we outlined above. But contributor opportunities for these sites are few. What should the rest of us do, particularly those who are not in a position to provide data-driven presentations for their media contributions? It is these political and social science academics (i.e., those not directly presenting data-driven analysis) who have pride of place in our book. The reasons for our focus are three. First, and as our opening television “hit” example pointed out, television news is not conducive to talking about charts and datasets with specificity. For that matter, neither are most newspaper stories. Though infographics are popular, these are often used to simplify complex ideas through visuals (not to present regression lines

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and predicted probability scores). Second, and related to the first point, the dominant news sources in the United States are not Monkey Cage and 538. As valuable as these blogs are in promoting academic research to a general audience, the audience size in question is small compared to broadcast and cable news, not to mention popular news and commentary “magazine” websites including Newsweek, Politico, The Hill, and US News and World Report. Third, and perhaps most importantly, lifting the hood on the work that political and social scientists do (or might do) in bringing their expertise to the public outside of the quasi-academic blogs sheds light on the public’s generation of political and policy knowledge. This is because these scholars, intentionally or not, position themselves as part of the cue-giving class in American politics. To be sure, those featured on the Monkey Cage and 538 have a cue-giving role as well, but, again, audience size between these blogs and other more popular media outlets is a key differentiator—one that gives academics featured on these more popular media platforms greater visibility and their cues reception by a larger segment of the public. Scholars have long considered the effects of political cue givers, especially elites, on the American public (Zaller 1992; Iyengar and Valentino 2000). So it is perhaps ironic that more political and social scientists assume a cue-giving role themselves through in media work. This development may be welcome. On the one hand, infusing political and social scientists into the mix of media pundits may improve the overall selection of political perspectives for a less-than-informed public (Delli Carpini et al. 1996). Indeed, as Bullock (2011) finds, the public may effectively utilize policy-based information on issues, even in the face of available party-based cues. This suggests that if non-partisan, expert sources steeped in systematic approaches to evaluating evidence (e.g., political and social scientists) were better represented in the media milieu—and better equipped to provide quality media content—the public would benefit. After all, if media hold at least some influence in political agenda setting and gatekeeping, should not some of the most expert voices in the scientific study of politics be featured?

Though we bring these questions to new generations of scholars and other interested observers, ours is hardly the first broad consideration of what it means for the press to include the perspectives of specialized

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members of society. At its core, academic participation in the production of media coverage (on any topic) is most often based on the interview approach to documenting someone’s assessment of a person, group, or circumstance. In other words, someone (usually a journalist and/or television anchor) probes the pundit for perspectives on the academic’s area of expertise. The class of partisan pundits who came directly from journalism or political backgrounds may have a professional perch to offer their perspectives as both host and interviewer. But the majority of academics whose punditry work is an adjunct to their full-time college or university posts, will mainly have their views mediated through interviews. This makes academic punditry virtually inseparable from the journalistic enterprise. Social media and blogs have changed this dynamic somewhat, but the broader notion of providing the public with “expert” perspectives on current events is traceable to Julius Caesar’s Acta Diurna, which was the first recorded newspaper in history (appearing in 59 BC). Though viewed now as a vehicle for self-aggrandizing Caesar’s political and military exploits, Acta demonstrated the efficiency with which news and, by definition given the subject matter and editor involved, expert opinion on politics could be disseminated. The ensuing centuries, including the Dark Ages, were not able to build on Caesar’s example. It would take Johannes Gutenberg inventing the movable type printing press in 1450 for progress to resume. The first newspapers appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century. The first British daily newspaper, the Daily Currant , appeared in 1702, while Benjamin Harris published the first newspaper in the colonies, Publick Occurances , in Boston in 1690. As the first newspapers developed in major cities, their content consisted mostly of human-interest stories: sex and violence recounted in sensational and engaging tones that were not always especially relevant to their readers’ lives. However, the concept of the news slowly started to be redefined. Journalists were hired to look for the news and were assigned to special sections: police, financial, sports, religion, etc. It is in this period when the concept of foreign correspondents was introduced, while the newspapers started to emphasize the social life of the rising middle classes. Perhaps the quintessential newspaper to fit the modern definition of what we now think of as mass media was the New York Herald. The paper was founded in 1835 and published by James Gordon Bennett. The Herald essentially shaped many modern journalism methods, and not least of these was the interview. “The interview was first employed as a

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vehicle of news by the New York Herald in 1859,” writes Shuman in Practical Journalism. Initially, and as with many innovations, the interview was heavily criticized as a journalistic tool. But this changed when President Andrew Johnson participated in interviews. Henry Grady’s interviews are useful. The Columbia Journalism School, the first professional journalism school in the world, helped develop the key techniques for news gathering based largely on interview techniques. Columbia University’s guidance on interviewing underlines four principles for a successful interview (see http://www.columbia.edu/itc/jou rnalism/isaacs/edit/MencherIntv1.html): • Prepare carefully, familiarizing yourself with as much background as possible • Establish a relationship with the source conducive to obtaining information • Ask questions that are relevant to the source and that induce the source to talk • Listen and watch attentively. These principles help journalists making their work purposeful in terms of providing quality content to the public. And, in addition, Kovach and Rosenstiel (1997) identify key principles of good journalism. • • • • • • • • • •

Obligation to tell the truth Loyalty to citizens Verification of information Practitioners’ independence from subjects Monitor those are power Provide a forum for public criticism Keep news interesting and relevant Keep news comprehensive and proportional Maintain personal sense of ethics and responsibility Citizens have rights and responsibilities.

The journalist’s role, and that of the media more generally, is sacred in upholding democratic norms (especially the consent of the governed). It is impossible for citizens to have the information necessary to fulfill their function of consenting to the government to run public affairs without

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timely and accurate information. But, in reality, the practice of modern journalism, particularly in its coverage of political topics, has shown plenty of examples where either the interviewer advice Columbia gives and/or aspects of the core journalistic principles Kovach and Rosenstiel enumerate are not followed. This is not to indict specific journalists or media organizations. Rather, it is to acknowledge that the responsibilities journalists have in our republic are too important to simply be left to the journalists to deal with alone. Just as the rest of the economy is defined by skill and knowledge specialization, so has journalism been cast as a trade where content and technological mastery (which require continual learning) are expected before any of the substantive work (i.e., providing information for the public) begins. This is why, whether certain critics find it a worthwhile endeavor or not, we believe strongly that academic contributions to journalism under the guise of Professor Punditry are a net benefit to the journalistic enterprise. Throughout the following chapter, we unpack elements that we argue make professorial pundits different, and more civically useful, than their traditional counterparts.

The Art of Scientific Explanation However, one area where we see academics in need of assistance is in the actual communication of their expertise. No, we do not make this book a Dale Carnegie seminar. Neither do we think that the vast majority of academics (most of whom hold Ph.D.’s) are incapable of intuitively grasping that the public-facing communication they offer in most media contributions must be different than how they would make similar arguments in the academy. But it is worthwhile to help remind ourselves as scholars that a public responsibility to use our expertise for the public good requires that we work to make dissemination of what we know, and what we research, as clear as possible to the average citizen. Alan Alda, the renowned actor, made a similar argument in a 2017 NPR interview: I think there are basic things about science that people should be helped to understand. For instance, any one study is not supposed to arrive at the truth for all time. It gets us a little closer to truth. Almost every

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research paper that I read says at the end: “More research is called for.” I wish articles about science would include that more. This is not the final word. Trust is really important, because . . . we [don’t] have the time in our ordinary lives to get up to speed on . . . nanoscience or quantum mechanics. It’s kind of important to have trust that we feel toward those people who have spent their lives doing that. Science and the public have separated so much that many people in the public consider science just another opinion (see https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/ 06/04/531271710/alan-aldas-experiment-helping-scientists-learn-to-talkto-the-rest-of-us).

Alda is not directly referencing the political dimensions of this trust problem, but he does not have to. The increasing tendencies of audiences to self-select sources offering views consonant with their existing political preferences threatens the credibility of science. The path to the current state of public suspicion about science was paved for decades, and we do not pretend that journalism or professorial pundits are a panacea. But journalism coverage of politics that features perspectives and insights informed by the best of what political (and other social) science experts have to offer can make a difference, at least at the margins. Think about it: in the absence of a political scientist talking about her latest research findings in a news article or television interview, political coverage might behave like water (in following the path of least resistance). In such a case, perhaps no expert voice is featured in the report, or the journalists run quotes from opposing party leaders about the issue at hand. Arguably worse is that the Traditional Pundits, whose perspectives are often not informed by systematic theoretical or empirical thinking, get called to talk about strategy or provide anecdotes. But, there is a difference between media merely featuring Professor Pundits and having these academics realize the potential of their media presence. Indeed, having political and social scientists more enmeshed in the media ecosystem carries potential drawbacks. This might include what some might view as the co-optation of an academic’s perspective into the more traditional “horserace” and salacious approaches to political news coverage (Patterson 1994). If anything, the business of media necessitates conformity to dominant norms, even for what was once considered avant garde changes in the journalism model (see Singer 2005). An interesting question is whether academic voices in popular journalism see themselves as bending the media arc toward a more reasoned and analytical form

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of political news, or whether academics end up moving closer to the performance artist pundits who populate cable news and other outlets. One of the main features of this book is interviews with academics and media professionals across popular media platforms. For this chapter, we conducted in-depth interviews with a cross-section of political and social scientists who regularly contribute to local, network, and cable television, regional and national newspapers, and popular news websites. Our questions were aimed at uncovering how these academics in media see their roles, balance their work expectations with their educational institutions, and perceive feedback from the media outlets in which they appear. The answers offer nuance to the considerations raised in this introduction, but they also raise more questions for consideration throughout the rest of the book. In each interview, we asked respondents about their impressions of what makes for a quality media appearance, how much of the political science literature they try to introduce in their analysis, how much guidance they receive from media editors and producers in their work, credit for their media involvement from their university, and how they deal with audience critics (among other items). Our interview panel consists of Professors Caroline Heldman of Occidental College, Lori Han of Chapman University, Stephen Caliendo of North Central College, Ryan Salzman of Northern Kentucky University, and Julia Azari of Marquette University. This group has a mixed set of experiences at all levels of media, and across platforms. We hear from academics like Larry Sabato and Victoria DeFrancesco Soto (both of whom have extensive experiences appearing on CNN and NBC Latino programs) later in the book. But this group of contributors might be best considered the model for the kinds of varied media experiences academics will encounter. These range from the aforementioned cross-platform contributions between television, blogs, and newspapers, and market size. For variety’s sake, we feature aspects of each contributor’s perspective depending on the question we posed.

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What’s a “Good Hit”? A “hit” certainly has multiple meanings, but, in television news at least, a hit is shorthand for an interview appearance where the guest fields questions from an interviewer (and the guest is usually not involved in planning or producing any other part of the story or coverage). In many cases, these hits are live, but this is not always the case (especially for tv stations in local markets). Professor Heldman, who has appeared as a contributor on MSNBC and Fox News Channel, offers a perspective that is decidedly pointed. Professor Heldman told us that she tries to make a good “hit” something that is grounded in fact and counters misinformation. “A good hit for me is conveying a fact (generally a statistic or a data-informed conclusion) in a clear way. A good hit is also effectively countering misinformed opinions from other commentators.” This does not mean that Professor Heldman never references academic research in her hits. In fact, a search of her media appearances shows she has (which she acknowledges in her quote to us). But Professor Heldman’s raison d’etre for her media work is grounded first in a sense of mission to get information into the public discourse that she believes counters misleading or false information already there. Academics engaging in media work with a primary focus on providing answers informed by their research (or the larger fields to which their research speaks) might not have the same primary motivation as Heldman’s, but there is an assumed corrective purpose in sharing academic insights. The larger distinction, however, between Professor Heldman and other academics in media is that she was sometimes overtly positioned in her hits as representing an opposing point of view from a (usually conservative) reporter or anchor. This is likely due to the reality that much of Professor Heldman’s work was for cable news channels (where ideological branding of content is strong). In pushing back on what she considers misinformation during these hits, Professor Heldman, in fact, has been the subject of some tense moments on air with cable news hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Stuart Varney (the latter who is presently with Fox Business Channel). Professor Heldman herself made headlines when she accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment in 2017. By that time, Fox News Channel had fired O’Reilly for the litany of sexual harassment claims made against him (not including Heldman’s). Heldman’s experience goes far beyond what most academics

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will encounter, and is rivaled only by Professor Melissa Harris-Perry’s acrimonious departure from MSNBC in 2016. Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Wake Forest University, declined to be interviewed for this book. But she claimed in press stories at the time of her departure that NBC News executives did not take her show (or her contributions as a news analyst) seriously. During her hosting tenure, Professor HarrisPerry did occasionally reference her well-received university press books on race and politics, but, being the host of an actual news program, she spent considerable amounts of time being the interviewer and host. As such, Professor Harris-Perry is in a unique category that few academics will ever be able to duplicate. As with Professor Heldman, Harris-Perry’s media work shows a clear emphasis on countering what she perceives as political misinformation offered by reporters and/or political commentators. Interestingly, neither professor made statements about the importance of their appearance in their media work (although both have a professional looking on-camera presence that easily matches that of full-time anchors and reporters). Their lack of discussion of appearance might be partially due to the disparities in gender and racial experiences these academics encounter compared to men in similar positions.

So How Much Political Science? Though the number of academics participating in media work has never been the aim of a probability-based survey sample, it is not a stretch to assume that the vast majority of academics making media contributions occurs at the local level. Professor Salzman, who regularly appears on the Cincinnati Fox Network affiliate to provide political analysis in segments featured on the station’s morning show, explained how he tries to balance the amount of academic material he includes in his appearances against the time constraints imposed. “I like to reference ‘political scientists’ or ‘experts’ in my commentary, but it is pretty vague. Stuff like Mayhew’s ‘single-minded seekers of reelection’ comes up from time to time. In general I find that 4 minutes goes too fast to get into the weeds. And the executive producer has mentioned frustration with academics being

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too academic.” What Professor Salzman does in his media work is exactly what we envision as the Professor Pundit model. Meanwhile Professor Han, whose perspectives have appeared in a wide range of outlets from Time to The Wall Street Journal to Fox News Channel says “I often find myself explaining basic concepts of American government to reporters; some are more knowledgeable than others. Explaining facts about the Constitution is common. Lately, I have also been talking a lot about voting behavior and what we know as political scientists. The research in this area often goes against media talking points about predicting an election.”

How Much Guidance from Media Managers? Feedback and critique are likely to enter into the process of working with a media outlet, no matter the type of platform. This is especially true if one is used as a regular contributor. But the scope and nature of said guidance vary. Generally, print-based journalists (and their editors) do not need to worry about giving academics feedback on how they present their ideas in interviews. To a large extent, academics should be able to effectively communicate their ideas in an interview, especially to the extent that journalists are willing to use email correspondence to take academic quotes for stories. The required aspects of communication are far more multifaceted when it comes to a video interview for television or digital platform, especially when the “hit” is live. Without the ability to edit content before broadcast, the media outlet is in a more vulnerable position when it comes to both what the guest says and how. Sometimes, producers have enough confidence in a guest (especially a recurring guest) to provide some degree of latitude. Other times, the issue may be more with the anchor than the guest, especially if the television reporter or anchor is concerned about “ad-libbing” about the subject matter in question. As we might expect, sometimes the preference, especially for local television, is to keep the focus just that: local. As Professor Salzman told us, “I get little guidance except encouragement. I will occasionally be asked to avoid talking about Trump.” The guidance here to avoid mentioning the 45th President may be the result of at least two factors:

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first is the mission that local media has to provide local news and information to audiences. As such, discussing political news and issues from a federal perspective—which is easier to do given the amount of media attention that national political leaders receive—does not generally serve local markets unless the news is of an extreme consequence. This localized mission is what enables local news to separate itself (content wise at least) from national and cable news. The second factor is more a matter of business concern: talking about Trump in anything but glowing terms in Professor Salzman’s television market (most of which is overwhelmingly Republican) invites viewer complaints and the (rather common) threat to change channels. Though the advice about avoiding Trump appears to have been seldom delivered to Professor Salzman, the same or similar instructions may be a developing trend in local market news. This does not necessarily threaten the work of Professor Pundits, but it can be a limitation that some academics might not be pleased by being told what they can and cannot speak to in their interview. Professor Heldman, given the volume and diversity of media contributions she has undertaken, had has more contentious experiences with media outlets (outside of the problems with O’Reilly): “They have mostly tried to muzzle me. I have lost a number of commentary jobs because producers like bland analysis instead of theory/data informed analysis. For example, I just lost a regular radio gig on an NPR show because the host didn’t like my (fucking data driven as hell) assessment that racial resentment, not economic anxiety, was a significant factor in the 2016 election. I was told that I couldn’t label racist positions racist, and to ‘stick with my professional training,’ disregarding the fact that I am a critical race theorist. This experience is pretty common when answers to questions require an answer that actually taps into my training as a scholar who studies systems of power.” What’s also important about Heldman’s response on this point is that, despite the growing emphasis on datadriven journalism, reporters and producers are not necessarily interested in a quantitative data approach to political coverage. This is readily seen in the number of political stories framed mainly from the anecdotal (or what Iyengar called the “episodic”) perspective of an individual dealing with an issue of wider importance. Professor Han’s experiences with media managers were more mixed, and largely the opposite of what Professor Salzman encountered in Cincinnati. “I have developed a good working relationship with reporters at a few newspapers, including the LA Times and the OC Register. These

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reporters ask good questions, and want to know how political science looks at particular issues. I also trust them to make a few comments off the record, sometimes just as a way of explaining an issue. For example, I am a registered independent, and I use myself as an example but don’t want that publicized in print. In the Trump era, however, I had a few negative experiences with reporters who try to put words in my mouth. Two separate incidences with the LA Times and Boston Globe were frustrating as each reporter wanted me to make derogatory comments about Trump (their views, not mine), and I had to keep reminding each that as a presidency scholar, it’s not my job to inject my partisan viewpoint into my scholarly analysis. Not all reporters understand that.” Professor Han’s experience is a fascinating reminder that it is not just cable news that finds a use for partisan views from those quoted in stories. At the same time, Professor Han takes a view of her media work that is very much in-line with what we envision for Professor Pundits. As we consider throughout the book, this interplay between media personnel and academics may be a key indicator of what academics end up doing in creating their media content—and how close they come to punditry, rather than academically informed analysis, in the process. But similarly, there is also the possibility that some academics actually want to offer partisan or ideologically based views in their media appearances. Though this is not the approach we focus on, it is clearly within an academic’s right to engage with media as s/he sees fit. Stating this reality might be considered overkill by some, but we consider it a useful reminder that, while we present a particular view of academics bringing their expertise to the media, we do not argue that all academics must engage with media in the same way. Though we view the Professor Pundit approach through a positivist lens, there may be many whose research and expertise centers on political theory, for example, or who conduct research using critical methods. Or, some academics may truly feel that the appropriate way for them to engage with media is to amplify their personal partisan or ideological concerns in whatever media they appear. Media contributions from these academics may, therefore, take on aspects of opinionation that more closely resemble traditional punditry styles. And this is fine. Our argument, however, is that there is more untapped potential for academics to serve as Professor Pundits than as opinion-oriented voices in media. In fact, like various professions whose work has become politicized, academics do not come to audiences enjoying widespread acceptance for their expertise. A 2017 Pew study found that partisanship has made

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academics unpopular in some quarters. 27 percent of Republicans in the survey rated college professors “very cold” on a 0–100 scale feeling thermometer (which is designed to assess positive or negative evaluations of a target). This compared with just 6 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of independents who gave professors the same rating. And it contrasts with the 50 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of independents who rated professors “very warm.” Not all was a loss among GOP identifiers, though: just over 1/5th (21 percent) rated these academics “very warm” as well. These percentages should surprise no one who has followed the critique by conservatives that universities promote ideological liberalism (and are not welcoming of conservative views). Obviously, academics do not bear individual responsibility for this perception (which borders on conventional wisdom for many on the political right). But the work of Professor Pundits may be useful in correcting misperceptions that professors simply espouse liberal or progressive opinions in their professional work. And there is also reason to think that how the public sees these academics remains somewhat fluid. Fully one quarter of respondents in the 2017 Pew study—irrespective of party identification—rated professors “neutral” (meaning the respondents did not have a strong positive or negative assessment). At the least, this suggests media contributions from Professor Pundits stand a chance of shaping public impressions of academics for the better.

Credit Where It’s Due? Of course, academics usually have full-time jobs in, well, the academy. This generally means that their media work falls under the banner of “university service” or other, institutionally appropriate designation. But, as with other aspects of academic life, experiences on this count are hardly uniform, and may vary by department, institution type, and the nature of one’s position at an institution. Professor Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics holds the kind of unique (albeit different) pundit role that Professor Harris-Perry did in that Sabato’s pundit role aligns with what many would consider the public intellectual model of bringing academic insights to political news and events. If there is a

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generalizable distinction between the Professor Pundit model we speak of and the public intellectual, it would likely relate to the latter having a universally recognized national profile that transcends a specific subfield or discipline (by contrast, most Professor Pundits make useful media contributions because of their ties to specific subfields or disciplines). Professors Cornell West, Kathleen Hall Jamison, Robert Putnam, Richard Neustadt, and Samuel Huntington would fall into the public intellectual category (though, like Professor Sabato, they may all act, or acted, as Professor Pundits at their discretion). Professor Azari, who contributes regularly to Vox and 538 as a story writer (not simply an interview subject), and, therefore, has a national following, is in a unique position to discuss her perspectives on being a public intellectual. So, does she consider herself one? “Yes, I do, although that term [public intellectual] means different things to different people. I would say that I try to bring insights in my writing that make readers stop and think. I don’t, however, consider myself merely someone who makes popular observations about the world. My research is much more involved than that.” And, as such, Professor Azari is a good example of an academic who uses the Professor Pundit model of informing her media contributions through her research-driven expertise, but who also enjoys the widespread name recognition that typifies a public intellectual. Public intellectuals are small in number, and usually reside at the nation’s more prestigious institutions. By contrast, the vast majority of Professor Pundits will work at a variety of institution types, each with different expectations about professors’ public engagement with media. Professor Salzman is generally positive about his experiences with university recognition of his media work. “My media responsibility is limited to one TV station, and I have a good relationship with the producer. I’ve developed a schedule that works for me and them. It is regular and at an ideal time in the morning. Also, the station is pretty close to home, so that helps. Because I have a regular gig I am more willing to turn down other requests. I find my media commitment worth the credit I get from my university.” Professor Heldman, however, has complaints. “I receive a whole lotta professional jealousy and colleagues telling me it isn’t ‘real work,’ but no credit for it. My institution buries the fact that I am on TV all the time, and am probably the best known faculty member beyond campus. (Not that I care about that, but the institution should be exploiting my public face to further its name recognition).” We suspect that many academics

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fall somewhere between these two posts in terms of getting professional work or service credit for their media contributions, and we focus further on this question later.

Media Skills As we stated from the outset of this chapter, not all media contributions require the same skill set. This is especially true concerning the difference between print and video-based interviews. A certain reality of working in a medium like television is that one must become better at the presentation side of the business (even if not elevating presentation over the content). We asked the interviewees about how much skill was inherent in the type of media work they do compared to other formats (e.g., television versus print). Professor Caliendo, who does regular hits for Chicago’s CBS affiliate, related that “Knowing where to look, how to move and how not to move, what to wear and what not to wear, how to interact with hosts, etc. were all very challenging. I would never want to see any of my hits from 20 years ago because I’m sure I was horrible. I see it done so poorly so often, and I really try hard to be better. In terms of substance, anyone could say what I say with the right research area. I think there is some skill in providing a good quote to a print journalist or to offer a good sound bite for a broadcast package story, as well, but those lessons are easier learned than what is needed for live tv.” And, lest we forget that the work of media is to inform the public, there are always the critiques that come from audiences, many of whom might have their partisan guards up when encountering political analysis and commentary (no matter how balanced and data-driven). Professor Caliendo offered advice on how he deals with so-called “snarks” and “trolls:” “I’ve been pretty good about staying away from providing analysis on social media. I don’t do it at all on Facebook or Instagram, and I am really reserved on Twitter, mostly because I don’t want to invite the criticism. I am very protective of my role as an objective media analyst, so

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I do not donate to campaigns, endorse candidates, etc. I only very occasionally sign petitions or attend rallies. In short, I haven’t had too much trouble.” Then there is work flow. How do academics, who already have a litany of engagements and diverse projects to undertake, fit media work into the mix? Professor Han says that “My biggest challenge has been finding time in my schedule, so I have turned down several requests in the last two years. TV appearances at LA affiliates are difficult due to where I live and work; a last-minute request usually doesn’t leave me time to get to the studio through LA traffic. I get regular requests from the NPR affiliate in Pasadena, and they often want me in studio, but it’s not worth my time to spend 3 hours on the freeway for 10 minutes on the air. They sometimes balk at the fact that if I am at home, it’s my cell phone or nothing. Being on the west coast can sometimes be an issue as well; I’ve turned down interviews with BBC and NPR simply because the timing didn’t work, or they send a request in the middle of the night (my time) and by the time I respond they have found someone else.” What about long-term goals? Do our academic colleagues have designs on being the next Melissa Harris-Perry? Per usual, results are mixed. Professor Caliendo: “The only aspiration I would have is for the local affiliate for whom I’ve worked for 10 years to have a more well-publicized, regular segment for me during the heat of the campaign season. Viewers expect to see me the morning after debates, elections, etc., and I’m there whenever they need me as things pop up, but I think it would be good for the station (and for my institution) to have a regular segment for the weeks leading up to the election that they advertise. Otherwise, I’m comfortable contributing as needed.” Professor Heldman: “I have done national media for ten years, and after experiences of serious sexual harassment, my media career aspirations are limited.” It appears, then, that we have hit on a topic area in need of further exploration. Not only are there many of our colleagues in the academy with quite visible media positions, but their experiences are mixed in terms of their work, how it’s characterized, and the contribution it makes. These insights, and the larger questions about professorial punditry and the academic’s role in political media animate most of the rest of this book’s content. Our goal is to provide both a broad overview of the role that academics can play in political media (and, in fact, already do as the above examples illustrate) from the perspective of academics, news

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managers, and the public, and to offer insight into how academics might effectively wade into these somewhat unfamiliar waters.

Coming Up Next Since this book may be used by readers in different fields and for different purposes, we include a series of elements in the following chapters that speak to the broadest number of interests. First, as a way to help make the content quickly accessible to a general reader, we include a series of content summary figures in each chapter, and the one for this chapter is located here (Fig. 1.1). For academics using the book as a teaching tool, or for those looking for a general background on major historical developments in US media and news coverage (and the academic literature on media effects), we use Chapter 2 to provide a primer. Obviously, the treatment given to the subject matter in a single chapter will be far less than some of the seminal reader’s available offer, but our broad summary points interested readers in the direction of additional sources for follow-on investigation (Fig. 1.2). Chapter 3 focuses our attention on what media professionals think about topics closely related to our assessment of academics in media. Our group of experienced contributors examine questions pertaining to local news coverage of political stories that are mainly national in context, efforts to provide “balance” in political news, and, most importantly, the value of including academics in media coverage of politics. Importantly, and while the views of these contributors differ in some respects, there is noticeable consensus in how to make local news coverage of politics valuable for the public (and how academics factor into this value). This chapter will be of particular interest to academics and media professionals, especially the latter who have news management responsibilities (or who aspire to take on these kind of roles).

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Fig. 1.2 Summary of chapter content (continued)

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Having heard from media professionals about the impact that Professor Pundits might have as part of political news coverage, we use Chapter 4 to evaluate the extent to which academics engage in this type of media work. As part of our research for this book, we fielded a survey of more than 100 political and social scientists. Chapter 4 examines what these academic professionals told us about their media work. Our findings indicate that, like the professors quoted above, academics in our survey look to use their media contributions to advance public recognition of their (or their colleagues’) research. We also provide an empirical analysis of punditry (and how the public perceives it). Chapter 5 reports results from two national survey experiments that expose randomly assigned subjects to examples of academic punditry differentiated by what we refer to as “traditional” (which includes mention of general observations or conventional wisdom) versus the “Professor Pundit” approach (emphasizing perspective derived from political or social science research). Using a wide array of outcome measures, we find a systematic (but small) positive increase in public perceptions among those exposed to the Professor Pundit approach. We use this chapter as an example of the kind of media effect studies that focus on academics (and other elite-level cue givers for that matter). Returning to an issue raised earlier in this chapter, the skills involved in participating in media work are not equal across media types. For example, there is a much bigger set of issues to contend with when participating in a video-based interview. At the same time, there are likely academics who read this book and become interested in making media contributions, but who have yet to do so. Others, by contrast, may wish to become more involved in different media platforms than they were previously. Still others might seek to parlay their punditry into assisting certain marginalized communities to find their voice through media coverage of these groups. Chapter 6 continues the focus on the academic perspective to punditry by discussing ways that these experts can help direct local and national media toward coverage of marginalized groups that reflects the academic literature and the groups’ lived experiences. We use Chapter 7 to offer practical advice to academics in their media appearances, drawing on the expertise of several industry professionals and performance coaches. This chapter aims to provide would-be Professor Pundits, and even those with experience in this work, a skill set that enables them to flourish in bringing their academic expertise to the public.

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Finally, Chapter 8 builds on its predecessor by discussing the basic technical components Professor Pundits can leverage in making their media appearances “in the field” (e.g., at home, in a hotel room, etc.)

References Allern, Sigurd. 2010. From party agitators to independent pundits: The changed historical roles of newspaper and television journalists in Norwegian election campaigns. Northern Lights 8: 48–67. Bullock, John G. 2011. Elite influence on public opinion in an informed electorate. American Political Science Review 105: 496–515. Carpini, Delli, X. Michael, and Scott Keeter. 1996. What Americans know about politics and why it matters. New Haven: Yale University Press. Converse, Philip E. 2006. The nature of belief systems in mass publics (1964). Critical Review 18: 1–74. Iyengar, Shanto, and Nicholas A. Valentino. 2000. Who says what? Source credibility as a mediator of campaign advertising. In Elements of reason, ed. Arthur Lupia, Matthew D. McCubbins, and Samuel L. Popkin. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. 1997. The elements of journalism: What Newspeople should know and the public should expect. New York: Crown Publishing. Nimmo, Dan, and James E. Combs. 1992. The political Pundits. New York: Praeger. Patterson, Thomas. 1994. Out of order. New York: Vintage Books. Rogstad, Ingrid Dahlen. 2014. Political news journalists in social media: Making everyone a political pundit? Journalism Practice 8: 688–703. Singer, Jane. 2005. The political j-blogger: Normalizing a new media to fit old norms and practices. Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism 6: 173–198. Zaller, J.R. 1992. The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Variation in Media Influence

The basic reality behind this book’s purpose is less about the importance of academics, pundits, and/or public intellectuals. It has much more to do with the reality, steeped in communication research paradigms, that media content can be a pervasive influence on human attitudes and behavior (Lowery and DeFleur 1995). News coverage, including that of political topics and issues, presents a mediated view of reality even when reporting tries to stick with “just the facts” (Tuchman 1978; Nimmo and Combs 1983). The same is true regarding aspects of life without direct application to politics and political news coverage: media influences the public’s sense of reality, morality, and what it means to live in a larger society. This is because mass media platforms are usually the telescope through which people experience large-scale situations and events (Johnson-Cartee 2004). This argument is not controversial in the broadest sense; scholars across disciplines have articulated it for decades (Lippman 1922; McCombs 1997). Media’s influence, however, is not uniform across contexts, and there’s a clear irony that a mass media with such potential public influence is in the midst of its lowest recorded levels of public trust (Swift 2016). In terms of political content, media influence is usually understood through an agenda setting mechanism that brings public attention to issues and events. Agenda setting on political matters is most effective

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in cases where the public lacks direct experience with an issue (Zucker 1978), when the content is conflictual (MacKuen and Coombs 1981), and its dimensions are relatively clear (Yagade and Dozier 1990). We might also add in the current political context, where media sources covering politics are highly fragmented and tailored to audience expectations, audiences seem to distrust the media as a whole, but like their preferred political media sources for the usual reasons (e.g., motivated reasoning, selective exposure, etc.) (Stroud 2011; Williams and Delli Carpini 2011). At the same time, an answer to the question of just how influential media are in fostering public political knowledge raises more uncertainty than clarity. Scholars report findings ranging from no media influence (e.g., Patterson and McClure 1976; Gerber et al. 2009) to substantial influence (Leshner and McKean 1997; DellaVigna and Kaplan 2007). In addition to differences in research design scope and methodology, some of the discrepancies may also be the result of long-standing difficulties matching valid measures of media exposure to increased public knowledge (Bartels 1993; Dilliplane et al. 2013). We consider additional perspectives on media effects in this and later chapters. But, to be sure, there are far more studies on (not to mention approaches to studying) media influence than we can reference in this book. Several mass media readers do a better job of providing overviews of the respective literatures in communication, journalism, political science, and related disciplines (i.e., Graber and Dunaway 2018). Our goal in this chapter is to offer a general road map regarding media as it intersects with politics, and with an eye to the contributions academics might make at that juncture.

This Instrument Can Teach Media’s variable effects on public knowledge notwithstanding, the reason a free society needs a powerful media is for truth telling about government and politics (Friendly 1967; Arnold 2006). But the Fourth Estate’s effectiveness in this information role is often influenced by the type of media in question. As you can tell by our discussion in the prior chapter, we elevate television in exploring academics’ role in media. This is not to

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disparage other platforms, or the relative advantages they provide audiences in accessing political news. But what tv news represents over other mediums is a combination of a comparatively large and diverse audience (albeit one diminishing in the digital age), coupled with the reputational legitimacy of established organizational news brands (Nielsen and Sambrook 2016). Even more importantly from an audience effects standpoint: tv news already leverages the power of visual storytelling. These visuals, even when used briefly, can have substantial impact on public opinion and candidate evaluations (Grabe and Bucy 2009). In fact, it is more than arguable that tv news will maintain an edge in production values over other platforms that use video to deliver news (including newspapers and digital news services). For academics wading into this media world, avoiding video may become more difficult as audience expectations and tastes become accustomed to the convergence of cross media news production on digital delivery platforms (e.g., tablets, laptops, and smartphones) (see Erdal 2007). The rolling tide of technological advancements aside, tv news is an intriguing environment to understand academics’ role as Professor Pundits because tv news has suffered from a long-standing critique that it does more societal harm than good. Indeed, and as we discuss below, there are ingrained impressions (aided by research findings from various fields) that cast tv (and tv news) as the worst of Edward R. Murrow’s fears expressed in his seminal 1958 RTNDA convention address. Murrow, of course, did not live to see the Internet and digital media convergence. But his impressions of both American society and the general state of mass media (and tv news in particular) contain several insights that resonate well into the twenty-first century. The former CBS News journalist offered these observations in what became known as his “Wires and Light” speech (see https://www.rtdna.org/content/edward_r_murrow_ s_1958_wires_lights_in_a_box_speech). I am aware that the networks have expended, and are expending, very considerable sums of money on public affairs programs … But we all know that you cannot reach the potential maximum audience in marginal time with a sustaining program. This is because so many stations on the network—any network—will decline to carry it. … I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything, but the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.

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… It may be that the present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent, the media of mass communications in a given country reflects the political, economic, and social climate in which it grows and flourishes. … We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. And our mass media reflect this. … To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent, and insulated, I can only reply: there is … considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even inspire. But it can only do so to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box.

Murrow’s speech outlines several themes relevant in describing the context in which academic contributors to media might add value to the truth telling mission. Perhaps the most obvious is that the public is averse to a deep focus on politics and current affairs. Here Murrow broadly reflects some of Lippman’s (1922) concerns about the public’s penchant for either avoiding more challenging moments of reflection on public and political subjects, or its inability to consider said subjects at all—although Murrow was far more gracious (and a bit more optimistic about the public) than Lippman, who offered (48): The mass of absolutely illiterate, of feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and frustrated individuals is very considerable … a wide popular appeal is circulated among persons who are mentally children or barbarians, people whose lives are a morass of entanglements … and people whose experience has comprehended no factor in the problem under discussion. The stream of public opinion is stopped by them in little eddies of misunderstanding, where it is discolored with prejudice and far fetched analogy.

Lippman’s concern was that journalism would have difficulty enlightening a public that was incapable of comprehending, let alone controlling, the political tides around it. But Murrow’s view of the press, while acknowledging the public’s proclivities as Lippman described them, is much closer to John Dewey’s (1927) optimism that the press can (and must) find a way to inform the public about the critical issues of the day. Though Dewey was highly skeptical of a society run by “experts,” academics

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working in media represent an interesting combination of expert voices that can inform the public (and who generally do not have their hands on the levers of power).

A second Murrow theme, which Lippman also touched on, is three pronged. It concerns the profit motive of a free press, the determinations required in satisfying consumer demands while balancing the public’s need for political information, and the media’s government watchdog role (Blasi 1977; Aucoin 1997). Third is the reality that how a nation’s journalistic enterprise evolves is dependent on contextual factors related in many ways to population characteristics. Fourth of the Murrow themes is the notion of promise—specifically: television’s (and television news’) potential as an educational tool (including in its informative role about government and public affairs). Murrow’s fourth theme was partially defensive, as television news was playing on a newspaper-dominated media field at its inception. In fact, newspapers and national news weeklies like Life and Time were basking in a half-century of unrivaled influence by 1958. No longer vessels of Gilded Age partisan propaganda, newspapers had become defined by the kind of “objective journalism” Schudson (1978) described as essentially casting journalists as scientists devoid of philosophical perspectives or social allegiances in their work. Adopting Progressive Era mantras about professionalization and public service, newspapers established themselves as sources of independent impartiality skeptical of government and political interests (Alexander 1981). This appeal to objectivity represented a shedding of the historic partisan-aligned, tabloid-oriented content of the Penny Press and yellow journalism eras. Irrespective of the type of content offered, the application of mass production techniques enabled the newspaper industry writ large to enjoy a successful business model from the 1830s on. There was no competing, mass distributed news medium to challenge the printed word until radio’s rise in the 1920s. By the time of the Progressive Era, newspapers were the source of record for political, and virtually all other, news. Television news’ dominance as the preferred media platform by the 1970s obscures some of its developmental history. Tv news grew out of the nation’s two dominant radio-turned-television networks, CBS and

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NBC. Murrow himself was a somewhat reluctant holdout from CBS Radio, having gained an international reputation for his nightly reports during the London Blitz. Perhaps because it was not a visual competitor to the printed word, radio existed as a complementary news medium to newspapers. And, as with early television news operations, radio news was often an amalgam of content from local and national papers. Fearing that broadcast signals might be co-opted by partisan forces in the way newspapers had almost a century earlier, reform-minded politicians crafted the Radio Act of 1927, resulting in the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) as an oversight and licensing body of the nation’s broadcast radio stations. Like its more recognized successor, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the FRC’s mandate was to ensure radio stations worked in the public interest. The Communication Act of 1934 established the FCC. But, unlike radio, which enjoyed a longer experimental period before government regulation began, television required much more oversight. After World War II, the FCC found itself neck deep in technological questions about regulating available station frequencies in local television markets (i.e., the geographic regions where broadcast signals reached) and patents for television receivers and color technology (NBC and CBS had competing color systems). Against this backdrop, exactly what stations and networks offered audiences in terms of content was generally less scrutinized for its public interest value. But in this period of television development (i.e., between 1945 and 1952), early observers of the new visual medium were optimistic about its potential as an educational tool. News reports were the most obvious manifestation of this potential. CBS News was first on the air with an evening newscast in 1945, followed by NBC News in 1946. These programs eventually developed into the network evening news programming seen today. But television news was not an instant media game changer, as not all local tv stations wanted a network affiliation in those early years. The alignment of local market stations with television networks in the late 1940s was a spotty process owing to the slow rollout of the coaxial cable needed to carry network programming outside of New York. Eventually, microwave towers and satellites enabled wireless transmission (for a comprehensive historical account of these technological developments, see Ponce de Leon 2015). This meant that, by 1948, the FCC had granted more broadcast licenses than could be paired with network programming where coaxial cable could deliver it. Local stations

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in this situation included KTLA in Los Angeles, which became one of the nation’s best known “independent” stations of the era (Wilbur 1978). The generally lax posture FCC commissioners took in insisting on a set and substantial number of broadcast day hours for public interest programming meant that NBC, CBS, and newcomers ABC and DuMont, could fill their schedules with popular entertainment content during peak viewing hours. Thus grew the tension between entertainment and news content that Murrow felt compelled to discuss publicly by 1958. But in those still early years of television, those holding out for an educational mission for the medium gained at least a limited concession from the FCC. In 1952 the Commission set aside licenses for 242 noncommercial stations to provide educational programming. These stations became the framework of the current PBS. Likely owing to the power of the visual medium, television news gained popular ground over newspapers rather quickly. Roper surveys from the early 1960s showed a slight edge in public trust of television news content versus newspapers, although differences in survey measurement and sampling approaches made declaring television the preferred source of believable news problematic (Carter and Greenberg 1965). For better or worse, and likely because of its longevity, print media maintained its prestige as an authoritative news source relative to broadcast media (something else Murrow lamented in his 1958 speech). But longevity is not the only characteristic recommending newspapers as the journalistic medium of record. Newspapers have not only decades more experience producing the type of enterprise and investigative journalism critical for informing the public about its government, but the slow, plodding pace of uncovering new or hidden information is generally at odds with the television news business model of “day turn” stories (especially at local affiliates) (McManus 1994; Higgins-Dobney and Sussman 2013). Though newspapers are themselves strapped for resources, the workflow norms in print-based media are often more accepting of the time it takes to do investigative journalism, and do it well (Ettema and Glasser 1998). And, in almost willful defiance of Murrow’s “wires and lights in a box” warning, television news trends continue in the wrong direction. Many times driven by corporate profit concerns and news director perceptions that audiences want shorter, more visually stimulating stories (Rosenstiel et al. 2007), television news managers may have an aversion to airing investigative stories on less dramatic topics (including those with a political or policy tie-in).

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And these trends do not even scratch the surface of the growing “soft news” (e.g., tabloid news programs, daytime talk shows, etc.) influence on audience views (Baum 2003). Newspaper and other print-oriented outlets can also exhibit “soft news” characteristics, but not with the same impact as a purely visual medium like television. Papers generally provide an agenda setting function for television news to follow in enterprise and investigative reporting, although some have that found wire service (e.g., AP, Reuters, etc.) reports shape content featured in both print and broadcast (Epstein 1973). Yet, other things equal, the relative format differences in text versus visually-based reporting, and the print media’s stronger association with investigative journalism, solidifies the print media’s position as the medium of record, especially in politics. Not inconsequentially, social scientists usually produce text-based research, which may mean academics end up contributing more frequently to printed and digital text-based platforms out of a sense of familiarity. At the same time, an enterprise or investigative journalism focus lend themselves more to the need for expert perspectives (while tabloid or breaking news—genres television news excel in—do not). As such, the so-called “media logic” (see Altheide and Snow 1979) that textbased journalists use to describe and interpret events may simply be a better perceived fit for academics. But to modify Schattschneider’s (1960) critique of democratic pluralism: predominantly print-based audiences (and their modern digital versions) read their news through upper-class monocles. Political struggles in a self-governed society occur on uneven playing fields that advantage those with resources like income, education, and social connections (see Hero 1992). The obvious barrier to using text-oriented media is the literacy requirement, but complex investigative and political analysis stories may also come with a high cognitive tax on readers as they process the information provided. This explains why print audiences are generally better educated and more affluent than broadcast media consumers (see Graber and Dunaway 2018). And these affluent audiences are usually more likely to achieve the virtuous circle of political efficacy.

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The great benefit from broadcast television (and earlier, radio) news’ advent, therefore, is that it is a great leveler for people to access to the same content—including political information (Graber and Dunaway 2018). Perhaps because of this role, television news, particularly local television news, is the most frequently consumed news medium by the largest percentage of the public. This, even though audience demographics skew older and younger generations have not adopted the news watching habits of their elders (Nielsen and Sambrook 2016). But local news still commands the highest trust levels (relative to national television and cable news at least) in these polarized political times (Sands 2019). This is why, whatever an academic’s preference might be in making media contributions, participation in video-oriented media (like local television news) is a good idea. Which is not to say that the contrasts we make between traditional text and video media are fixed, especially with trends in media convergence (i.e., the merging of the production and sharing of stories across digital media platforms). Interestingly, convergence may bring increased credibility to television news as it pools resources with print-based outlets—drawing on newspaper reporting while paper websites leverage television news video, etc. (Newman and Levine 2012). And while the pace of convergence is spotty, especially in local news (Holcomb 2018), the process also helps to blur the lines between which media platforms are considered visually oriented (like television), and those that are word or text-based. The impact that visuals, particularly moving images, have on audience political knowledge can be significant, especially for those with less formal education (see Prior 2014). This visual effect carries over to online platforms, including websites, and, to some degree, social media (Vraga et al. 2016). The large layout templates that most news websites use (often accompanied by infographics and statistical figures) enhance audience learning. However, and different from traditional broadcast platforms content relying on cellular or WIFI signals to support video runs the risk of causing interruptions. Combined with the higher cognitive load involved in processing information on small screens (see Dunaway 2016), mobile-based news content is not necessarily a reliable way to get information. What is more, people are generally less likely to use mobile platforms to consume news (relative to entertainment programming). All of this is to say that, while the technologies in terms of digital content delivery might change, the core advancement in providing political information to a broader segment of the public is in the video or

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image-driven format. While whether one consumes video through traditional means (e.g., broadcast television), the computer, or a mobile device may lead to differences in attention and comprehension rates, none of this undermines the great informational leap forward that video-based news content represents. This leaves what we will term “text-based” and video-oriented media as potentially competing (and complementary) news formats. Despite its leveling effect on who can access the news and Murrow’s optimism, social science researchers are not positive about television when it comes to encouraging civic and political participation (Gentzkow 2007). But, neither is the positive association between newspaper readership and voter behavior deterministic (see Morgan and Shanahan 1992). Much depends on which type of paper one reads (see George and Waldfogel 2006). Generally, local paper readership drives political participation, not the readership of national dailies like The New York Times or USA Today. For that matter, some, like Chaffee and Schleuder (1986) think at least some of the bad reputation television news garnered stems from researcher focus on tv exposure, rather than what media news audiences actually know about politics (a point we return to below). Much also depends on the dependent variable of interest across the academic literature. There are several outcomes of interest including: efficacy, trust, knowledge, interest, and even emotions like fear and anger. The insights researchers provide may be context and time-bound, which helps explain why the literature is so mixed in its findings about television’s effects versus other media sources (see Avery 2009). Furthermore, and despite whatever diversionary effects television has, recall that public opinion polls as early as the 1960s showed trust in television news to outpace print and radio (Lee 1978). At least some of this public trust is attributed to the natural advantages television has in showing (or giving the impression of showing) what “really happened” “live” in a given situation (see Chang and Lembert 1968). Across these different permutations of study a trend emerges: television news is not an automatic candidate for the bad public influence trophy. But neither is there overwhelming and consistent evidence that television news improves what audiences know about their government (and their confidence in it).

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We Have Some Disturbing New Information To be sure, those defending the benefits of television news in their scholarship fight an uphill battle. The weight of major impressions from the likes of Patterson (1993) and Putnam (1995)—who argued that television’s political coverage decreases social capital and public interest—firms up the recurring expectation that television news is a net negative influence. The problematic trend (for Patterson and Putnam at least) is that television shifted audience focus toward an interpretation of events, with its unlimited permutations, rather than a description of issues. Television is not the only media platform with effects of this type but the ubiquitous talk panels on cable and tabloid news magazine shows makes television the most ostensible example (see Peters 2010). Also powering much of the negative impression cast on television is Robinson’s (1976) term “videomalaise” to describe television news’ capacity to stoke public cynicism. Of course, audiences are not homogenous, so negative effects are often conditional on personal and social characteristics as people make sense of the information they encounter—recall Murrow’s third theme here (see Newman et al. 1992). For example, Valentino et al. (2001) found that those without a strong partisan attachment became more cynical than their partisan counterparts when exposed to media content about political strategy rather than issue substance. Meanwhile Mutz and Reeves’ (2005) assessment shows that television news depresses trust in those who are conflict avoidant. Media influence on audience partisanship is also a going concern, especially as people self-select their preferred media sources consonant with their party and ideological loyalties. It is not necessarily that media drives polarization—audiences may already be polarized. Different from the broadcast era (which Murrow exemplified), audiences now have specific outlets to cater to their differing ideological worldviews. Even more concerning for democracy, media choice enables large numbers of citizens to stop paying attention to political news altogether (see Arceneaux and Johnson 2014). Though scholars have found the number of people who consume partisan media is a relatively small percentage of the general public, watchers of content from these outlets are more likely to adopt negative impressions of “the other side,” thereby reinforcing partisan divides (Levendusky 2013). Ironically, television’s strength in terms of making news content broadly accessible is also the source of challenges, or, more specifically,

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characteristics that make it vulnerable to ridicule. Some of this has to do with the visual and often dramatic nature of television news, and its use of images that elicit emotional responses in audiences. Of course, this emphasis stems from the inherent entertainment value of visual content more generally, but television news has often failed to erect guardrails to keep its material from emphasizing more style than substance (McQuail 2001). When television news covers politics, it can be hard for producers to break away from the media logic inherent in creating television news to industry expectations (which are often set by precedent). This may be why, for example, “horserace,” character, and contest-driven narratives feature frequently in television political news, especially in election coverage (Lichter and Noyes 1996; Sabato 2000; Han and Calfano 2018). The darker side of visual influence on audiences does not always or necessarily impact political news coverage, but the impact of certain approaches to informing the public through visual means helps explain how television political coverage garnered its negative reputation. Dramatic reports about violence produce emotional reactions that some might consider a not ideal basis for democratic deliberation. Unz et al. (2008), for example, find that violence in television news reports elicits audience anger, which might make a careful consideration of the issues motivating the violence more difficult. Meanwhile, Newhagen and Reeves (1992) show that audience attention to (and, therefore, memory of) content that follows what the authors refer to as “negative compelling images” is better remembered than the material presented prior to those negative images. This bias toward recalling images of a negative construct might limit the available examples people can draw on when discussing an issue or event. Yet psychologists often demur in labeling emotions as “irrational” on their face (Parrott and Schulkin 1993). Indeed, an entire literature focusing on the impact of negative emotions in galvanizing audience attention to available information (e.g., Marcus et al. 2000; Marcus 2002) suggests that audiences may behave more deliberately when emotions (like anxiety) are heightened. As such, the visual impacts of television content on cognition, much like effects on political outcomes, are variable (and not necessarily negative for deliberative democracy). In fact, to the extent that television news is the product of an editorial process following ethical journalism standards, the stimulation from visually dramatic or compelling stories may be a net benefit for audience

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engagement. But scholars have found that television news effects can be eclipsed by the messages contained in another form of visual media: television political ads (see Brader 2005). These ads can feature a potpourri of false claims and attacks on the opposition that selectively resonant with partisan audiences (Jamieson 1992; Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1996). This may explain why Brians and Wattenberg (1986), echoing Patterson and McClure (1976), discovered that televised political ads (not television news coverage) were significantly associated with the public’s knowledge of candidates. Perhaps reflecting differences in content and/or audience trust levels in regional and local news coverage, Chaffee et al. (1994) and Chaffee and Frank (1996) find that television news is politically informative, especially given the broader population it reaches.

Regardless of whether ads or news are more influential in a given election, news coverage of politics, though different in tone and content between local network affiliates and national network and cable news, receives harsh criticism for its effect on audience perceptions of the political system. Generally, researchers focus on media effects as a function of priming (increasing the frequency with which a topic is mentioned) or framing (highlighting certain aspects of an issue for consideration) (Domke et al. 1998; Druckman 2004). It is in describing the effects from these uses of media content that the literature offers the greatest criticism of television news. Most notable of this line of research is Cappella and Jamieson’s (1997) finding that exposure to political coverage emphasizing conflict or strategy (e.g., what one side in the political process can do to advantage the outcome favoring its interests) drives up audience cynicism about politics (although, on the bright side, the authors also find that nonconflictual framing of sides on an issue can have the opposite effect). Cappella and Jamieson’s work builds on much of the insight Iyengar (1991, 1996) generated in his studies of news framing effects. Iyengar examined audience response to different policy issues according to whether news content stuck mainly with exposition of a specific occurrence (e.g., terrorism, poverty, etc.) or expanded the coverage to provide context. As stated, framing is a psychological concept that pertains to how choices and issues are described (see Kahneman and Tversky 1984). This may include how an issue or event is labeled, or the attributes about a

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person, issue, or event that are played up (or ignored). The “pro-life” “pro-choice” labels describing abortion are perhaps the quintessential examples of political issue framing in the United States. Though political scientists have often studied framing in terms of the word or phrase choices used by political leaders—“frames in communication” (see Druckman 2001, 227; Calfano and Djupe 2009), framing may also refer to how people cognitively perceive something, as in thought frames (Nelson et al. 1997). Framing matters in the larger consideration of media influence on audiences because there is consistent evidence that the public is generally not equipped to make determinations about what it prefers politically. This is because the public lacks enough information and knowledge to do so, and/or is ripe for elite manipulation in deciding its preferences (Converse 1964; Zaller 1992; Somin 1998). In emphasizing particular elements of a topic or issue over others, framing effects essentially generate what we know as public opinion (Chong 1993). This is not to suggest that people are, necessarily, like weathervanes in terms of their political views and preferences (Page and Shapiro 1992). Particularly politically active persons, and with the socio-economic resources to devote to learning about political issues (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996) are more likely to know a fair amount about politics, and why they hold the preferences they do. And there is some positive news about framing effects in that the reporting of core facts may have the impact of framing choices in television news (see de Vreese 2004). At the same time, to the extent they have ideological or partisan identities in these highly polarized times (see Abramowitz and Saunders 2008)—the public can resist framing effects by using cues like partisanship to know what information they should accept (or what they should discount) (Zaller 1992; Lau and Redlawsk 2001). These framing impacts align with characteristics of political news coverage, especially in terms of the decidedly partisan editorial perspective of outlets like Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and a litany of Internet sites. The inherent challenge for public competency in forming political preferences, however, is in evaluating what key facts might be missing from the self-selected media diet one consumes (Prior 2007). Which brings us back to Iyengar’s appraisal of television political news coverage. Iyengar situates framing within television news in terms of differences between episodic and thematic coverage. Episodic is the approach television news (and other media for that matter) often take to

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a story, which is to treat topics as specific and isolated incidents (although the degree of emphasis varies by topic and station). Thematic framing tends to provide more history and context for a topic. Iyengar’s key finding is that thematic framing can alter audience views of issues like poverty—moving people from holding individuals responsible for circumstances to viewing society (not individuals) as more responsible for the situation. But the thematic coverage influence seems to be dependent on the specific issue covered.

Joining Us Now, the Pundits Operating within this multifaceted media environment are the so-called “pundits,” who Nimmo and Combs (1992) describe as a group of purported political “knowledgeables” that media companies—especially television networks—use as essentially professional political talkers who offer perspectives, observations, interpretation, and analysis that regular journalists cannot. These pundits guide discussion about political figures and events, thereby adding a layer of mediation between the public and political reality (Edelman 1988). Some might argue that the line today between journalist and pundit is blurred by the increased presence of journalists as social media personalities (see Rogstad 2014). But the genesis of some journalist punditry is the featuring of a reporter as the interview subject of another journalist. In the context of deadline and accessibility constraints, the journalistto-journalist interview (which shows like MSNBC’s Morning Joe have elevated to a bona fide sub-format of political news coverage) solves several problems with news production. And, in the case of some journalists, the decision may be made to step away completely from an objective approach to reporting and toward political commentary. In addition to journalists, political pundits may be anything from current or former party leaders, officeholders, lawyers, business leaders, candidates, campaign personnel, interest group leaders, political fundraisers, celebrities, and, yes, academics. As the public became acquainted with the televised version of pundits, these talkers gained

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other labels, most notably “talking heads,” although “political commentator” and “political analyst” are also used. But since pundits can come from various backgrounds, they also fulfill differing roles. While generally dismissing pundits’ overall usefulness, Nimmo and Combs (1992) do a good job mapping out the type of functions pundits fulfill. These include technicians, “Chattering Class” members, and media critics. Generally, academics would fall closer to the technician or critic, but it might be that academics carve out their own niche. A charitable explanation for why pundits serve a legitimate purpose in political news coverage relates back to the reality described at the chapter’s outset: most people understand politics (and much of the rest of life) through mass media lenses (Johnson-Cartee 2004). Pundits can, like other elites, provide the information people need to make political decisions because, at least historically, the pundit was thought to have considered insight into a topic (Nimmo and Combs 1992). The pundit role also touches on the Lippman/Dewey counterpoints described above: a substantial portion of the public is incapable of making informed decisions about political matters (even those that align with their actual preferences) (Converse 1964). But by also acknowledging that public political discussion and deliberation are critical in any democracy (Conover et al. 2002), pundits, at their best, can effectively model the consideration of available choices before the body politic. The need for media pundits with substantial public reach stems from the reality that many citizens will not ordinarily seek out political discussion partners with heterogenous views (Huckfeldt et al. 2004). At the same time, media use of pundits may turn Zaller’s (1992) seminal “receive-accept-sample” model into something of an educational opportunity by exposing the audience to deliberative points to access in later political conversations. In fact, Lippman (1922) saw the use of pundits as part of the journalistic process that illuminates a reality on which to base action. This may be largely due to the fact that Lippman himself is considered a forerunner of today’s political and social pundits (Bro 2012). In making room for the democratically useful work pundits might do, Lippman is answering Dewey’s (1927) call for journalism to find a way to bring decision-making empowerment to the public. Murrow might have even found this line of argument persuasive.

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To be clear, television did not invent punditry. The editorial columnists of the nation’s major newspapers were an obvious forerunner to the television (and now digital) pundit, at least in theory. And there are certainly a number of political pundits running regular columns (often syndicated) in newspapers across the country. Academics, like Professor Julia Azari referenced in the introductory chapter, can make meaningful contributions to political discourse using these mediums. But, again, if we allow that visually compelling content is more attention grabbing, then television, and the various digital platforms its content reaches, has pride of place. Unfortunately, these theoretical potentials for punditry often go unrealized, in part, because of the afore-mentioned negative aspects of television as a visual medium prone to preferencing entertainment and simplification. In fact, Hallin (1986: 11), echoing Murrow’s second theme, succinctly described television news as “… both journalism and show business, a key political institution as well as a seller of detergent and breakfast cereal.” Meanwhile, Graber (1994: 504), quoting Sparry (1981), underscores that television news has a baked in preference for dramatic elements in relating information to audiences. By structuring an event as a plotted story, involving all the drama of filmed confrontation … and the portrayal of complex matters as simple conflict … the television newsman deliberately invites his audience to respond to news in the same way that it responds to entertainment programming.

But this is not to say that that political punditry—or television news more generally—cannot fulfill the promise of encouraging democratic deliberation and citizenship, or that it never achieves this function in the present. From our perspective, Murrow’s admonition about television’s potential paves the way to consider pundits, and the help academics can provide punditry, in supporting democracy and public political engagement. The television pundit phenomenon is often traced to ABC’s use of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley as guest commentators during the 1968 political conventions. Vidal and Buckley were generally regarded as successfully meeting ABC’s objective to break out of traditional approaches to political coverage. The pundit innovation was not the only effect that 1968 had on television, however. It was, in fact, a transformative year for television news given the intensity of events, including

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multiple political assassinations, riots, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (Pach 2000). And 1968 was the year the power of these intense visuals found a new, profit-driving vehicle: the news magazine. CBS debuted 60 Minutes on September 24th. 60 Minutes is generally considered the first network news program to produce a profit. Though not a showcase for punditry, 60 Minutes showed that television news content could make money—just like the entertainment programming had for years by that point. Combined with the power of the compelling (often violent) visuals, the general approach to television news soon underwent a shift toward emphasizing sensational-looking and sounding, though often not factually edifying, content. Note that this is almost ten years after the Murrow RTNDA speech. Whereas Murrow seemed to assume that news programming would counter entertainment fare on the airwaves, 1968 showed that news might become its own type of entertainment (and, in the view of many scholars, it did). Pundits fit into this new television news era gradually, first during live network coverage of major political events and Sunday morning political/public affairs shows, and then, in much greater frequency, and wider roles, as cable news formats matured in the 1980s and 1990s. If Buckley and Vidal were the originators of the dueling television pundits, they were not the most relatable as television personalities. Replete with patrician accents and self-importance who dominated the print medium, the general viewing public would likely not have found these pundits worth watching on a nightly basis. Buckley, of course, was successful in bringing viewers a weekly dose of his intellect as the host of Firing Line, but to the more select audience watching PBS (not commercial television). These two were also not the most reliable in terms of team spirit. Buckley and Vidal had long-gestating animosity that resulted in lawsuits stemming from Buckley’s use of an insult describing Vidal’s alleged sexuality during their 1968 ABC commentary stint. CNN, the first 24-hour cable news channel in the United States, explored more accessible versions of political debate shows beginning in the early 1980s. Taking a cue from the talk radio format that came to dominate the AM band in the 1980s, CNN launched “Crossfire” in 1982. As cable news competition intensified with MSNBC in 1995 and Fox News Channel in 1996, pundits became an increasingly used fixture on some of the networks’ most popular shows. Fox News Channel became profitable in essentially bringing a stylized form of conservative talk radio to much of its

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daily schedule. Seeing the Fox’s financial success, MSNBC followed suit, finally determining in 2003–2004 that its best programming approach was to offer a more liberal alternative to Fox. CNN was the holdout, keeping most of its primetime news programs more objectively journalistic than opinion or commentary-based. But this changed in 2015 when then-candidate Trump called CNN “fake news” and continued to target network correspondents for ridicule. Television pundits did not transform political news alone. Sabato (2000) warned decades ago about the media’s penchant for character and conflict-driven stories, many presented as objective political journalism. Television news will always be part entertainment, and the so-called news business, like any private industry, requires a sound business model to generate revenue—something Murrow acknowledged in his speech’s second theme. But television news pundits, when used essentially as performers to advance a conflictual or ideological frame that contests with a counter-frame, are essentially set up to fail audiences. This does not mean that what we might term “performance pundits” never offer audiences anything of substance, or that the largely self-selected nature of news audiences is put off by these professional talkers. But, on the whole, what cable news and opinion media have done is to take away virtually all good that can come from one acting in the traditional pundit role. Connotatively, pundits are often not considered in a positive light, likely owing to the reputation television news has cultivated. But this is ironic because denotatively the term pundit originally referred to learned teachers in India. Indeed, Merriam-Webster defines pundit as “a learned person; a person who gives opinions in an authoritative manner usually through the mass media.”

We wish to rehabilitate the pundit’s connotative reputation by encouraging academics to engage with media from the position of experts. In many cases, the “Professor Pundits” will be featured on air, on the web, and in print offering their informed opinions authoritatively. But being the public expert on an issue is not the only way the “Professor Pundits” might contribute to public knowledge. In fact, the need for academics to feature as a subset of the pundit class is best seen in a 1963 article from Science. That essay lamented the difficulties scientists encounter in

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having the mass media reliably and accurately report scientific findings (Tannenbaum 1963). Much of the concern involved the assumptions reporters and news managers made about scientific results, particularly the public’s interest level in the material and perceived need to report scientific news with entertainment value. While not advocating for a scientific pundit class, Tannenbaum concluded “… we need to train good science writers …” (583) for work in media roles. Realistically, given the pervasiveness of industry budget cuts, science writers are a luxury not afforded in many newsrooms. But, a useful alternative would be academics and researchers with scientific knowledge who can effectively translate the complex language of science into meaningful material for the lay public. The same is true from a specifically political news perspective. Ripley (2019) admonishes journalists to “complicate the narrative” by injecting the complexity often inherent in competing policy choices into their political stories and analysis. Her insights, based on the research findings of various studies completed at Columbia University’s Difficult Conversations Lab, point to a pattern whereby those forced to engage in consideration of the complexities surrounding a political topic became more satisfied with the exchange of ideas over the issue. While participants said they experienced the discomfort of disagreement with someone over an issue, the deliberative conversation left participants feeling they were heard, and even enlightened by perspectives that they had not previously considered. These outcomes are all part of Ripley’s larger admonition for mass media: cast a wider frame on a policy or issue, explore motivations for why people and groups feel as they do, and highlight the contradictions that those who support (and oppose) a policy or candidate might exhibit. This is generally not the approach taken by journalists who consider “objectivity” to require telling “both sides” equally. While a “both sides” approach sounds fair, it can end up elevating falsehood to a level on par with verified facts as part of the effort to give balance to competing claims. Though some stories might be explored through this type of simplified treatment, the promise of television on which Murrow reflected is found more in exposing the complexities of the political world. And it is here that academics can shine brightest in the value they bring to the creation of political news. Contemporary politics has reached a partisan fervor that erodes trust in institutions, including media. Combined with public crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and public reactions to instances of police brutality,

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the state of the nation’s politics can aptly be described as in an emergency posture. This is why Nimmo and Combs’ (1985) typology of journalist approaches to reporting about disasters has relevance for what academics might contribute to political news. Specifically, the authors divide the approaches into (1) populist/sensationalist (emphasizing dramatic elements featuring the stories of ordinary people—a staple approach of local television news), (2) elitist/factual (relating verified information in a straightforward presentation), (3) ignorant/didactic (assuming a lack of audience knowledge and simplifying the complexities for broad consumption), and (4) pluralist/feature (situating a topic in broader historical context to apply to a wider audience). In reality, news stories can feature a mixture of these approaches, but there is a general consensus among scholars that news, especially television news, relies on recurring reporting patterns (which are sometimes resource-driven) that limit the scope of perspectives and information offered audiences (Roscho 1975; Tuchman 1978; McQuail 1983; Broder 1987). Generally, if something worked well (and relatively easily and cheaply) before, news organizations are of a mind to repeat their approach to future coverage of a similar story or topic in much the same way. The goal for academics interested in elevating public understanding of political issues and events is to make themselves part of the reporting pattern news media use. Different from the “performance pundits” however, these “academic pundits” can help media—especially television news—fulfill the potential Murrow described in 1958 (Fig. 2.1). One of the most obvious ways for this to occur is for academics to become involved in investigative reporting projects. As mentioned, investigative journalism is highly prized across topic areas, but is especially critical as a check on political abuses of power. As Ettema and Glasser (1998: 3) describe it, investigative reporting yields stories that are carefully verified and skillfully narrated accounts of special injury and injustice. … Their stories call attention to the breakdown of social systems and the disorder within public institutions that cause injury and injustice; in turn, their stories implicitly demand the response of public officials—and the public itself—to that breakdown and disorder.

But quality investigative journalism is lacking, especially in television news (with cost being a major determinant—see Abdenour 2017). The

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Fig. 2.1 Summary graphic

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good news is that Professor Pundits can help. This does not necessarily mean applying for a reporter job (although part-time work may be available, and can be an exciting change from traditional academic work). Instead, becoming known as an available expert voice or consultant on topics relating to one’s specialized academic interests, while also bringing journalists into larger academic networks, enables a “Professor Pundit” to offer expertise but without necessarily going public as a story source. As part of offering expertise, a Professor Pundit can help simplify for both journalists and audiences what complex political issues mean for them. This is a larger take away point from Lupia’s (2015) recommendations on how to generate political knowledge that gets people closer to understanding how their personal values match up with the policies under consideration by all levels of government. Here, the irony is that, from Lupia’s perspective (which we share) simplification in explanation is not tantamount to misrepresenting facts or misleading audiences. Simplification as a value added for audiences in making political decisions based on understanding of what the issues mean for their lives dovetails nicely with what Rosenstiel et al. (2007) recommend as a path forward for political coverage on local television news. While Murrow’s vision for television news stories featuring a “clinical survey” or “thorough going” examination of critical issues might never be realized, specific mediums like television news can do better. We think “better” in this case suggests a tailor-made role for the Professor Pundit. Here’s what Rosenstiel et al. suggest to improve local political coverage Focus on government—the community problems government is trying to solve and what government is doing about those issues—when covering local politics. Do solid enterprise reporting. Provide multiple sources that reflect a balance of opinions. Use hard information and interview experts on screen for credibility. Focus on issues and ideas in campaign stories that affect voters instead of the horse race/strategy.

Overall, this advice is not new or earth shattering. Like the idea of complicating narratives, it has only been adopted in sporadic piecemeal form for any number of reasons. Yet one that has generally not been explored is the role of the Professor Pundit in supporting journalists in a more meaningful vision for political news. We work to delineate what this vision might look like in Chapter 3.

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CHAPTER 3

Where Pundits Fit in Political News Coverage

A critical component in understanding what academics can effectively contribute to media requires a sense of what political goes into the creation of political journalism, the trends inherent in this work, and where adjustments in favor of democratic health are needed. Like any human endeavor, journalism can be approached in a variety of ways. But political journalism takes on a bit more specificity than, say, the travel show feature about the most efficient ways to pack clothes for a beach vacation. And, as such, it is useful to draw on Bennett (2007), who references Graber, to define what we mean by “political news.” In the vast majority of cases, political news is something political entities promote as important, news organizations determine how to cover and transmit, and the public receives. In the digital age, it is more than arguable that the public’s reaction to political news completes a feedback loop on a rather fast-paced cycle, which, in turn, influences what political entities promote to news organizations and so on. But the public’s participation in the news enterprise should be considered separate from the intentional decisions made by journalists and media organizations. After all, if journalism is a profession requiring skill and experience, it is critical to ensure the proper functioning of this professional sector apart from public participation. “Proper” in this regard focuses on journalism’s theoretical importance to a democratic society. But here, the process of generating political news—as Bennet describes the core definition Graber (1989) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. R. Calfano et al., The American Professor Pundit, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70877-1_3

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uses—is instructive because of what it reveals in terms of how political journalism can often fail in fulfilling its envisioned democratic role (11): . . . Graber suggests that news is not just any information, or even the most important information about the world; rather, the news tends to contain information that is timely, often sensational. . . and familiar. . . the news is constructed through the constantly changing interactions of journalists, politicians, and people seeking ends that are sometimes similar and sometimes very different.

A problem with political journalism, therefore, is that the three entities interacting in Graber’s definition are not on equal footing. Unlike the politicians and journalists, the public (broadly speaking) relies on the other two to work on its behalf (i.e., the politicians) and inform it (i.e., the journalists). To put a stronger point on it, the public has a deep need for timely and accurate information in order to fulfill its responsibilities of consent in a democratic system. It is at an inherent information disadvantage versus politicians and journalists (unless the latter is systematic in how it covers the former). This is why political news, and news of almost any form for that matter, plays a key role in empowering people to make informed decisions about what they agree to at the ballot box. But decisions made by journalists in terms of what political news to cover (and how) can also exacerbate information disadvantages that harm some segments of the public (while benefitting others). It does not have to be this way. In terms of political news, the sheer number of subject areas potentially covered suggests that the availability of voices to feature in reportage is virtually unlimited. But despite the rather wide pallet reporters have to practice their craft, political coverage tends to look more homogenous than one might expect. The similarity, in many cases, spawns not a reliable way of telling a political story from a broad array of viewpoints, but a rather narrow focus on familiar patterns of coverage: like the “horse race” and other forms of conflict. As with anything else, sometimes these approaches to political journalism serve an important purpose, but not to the extent they almost take the place of more substantive discussions of policies.

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Trends in Political News Beyond a fascination with framing politics as a sporting event where sides “are in it to win it,” scholars have documented several trends in political journalism that some might consider problematic for a democracy. On their own, or at least in theory, each of these trends may have a positive aspect of public usefulness. However, and more often, these trends present problems for an informed public that is capable of making vote choices based on the information available to it. What is more, these highlighted trends have various implications for political coverage (and the role of Professor Pundits). As stated, the inclusion of diverse voices and different perspectives— particularly those relating to the experiences of a wide cross-section of residents—does much to help bridge distances that citizens feel between their experiences and the work of government. But not all voices with a stake in political outcomes can realistically feature in a single story or even a series of stories. Decisions about who and what gets featured in political news, therefore, constitute an important trend. These decisions are called gatekeeping. The basic definition of this activity springs from the process inherent in reporting news. Unless the report is on the narrowest of topics that affect a handful of people, journalists must determine whose voices and perspectives to include in their coverage. The immediately noticeable problem is that almost nothing in today’s political environment affects a handful of people only. Layer on top of that the law-making and taxation power of government, and competing interests quickly multiply into what can be seen as a zero-sum contest for the distribution of goods and services, recognition, and other preferred policy outcomes. Even more challenging is that the professional class of political figures (i.e., politicians and those working for them), along with the group of actors trying to influence these figures (i.e., lobbyist and interest group leaders), become a population unto themselves. Without an effort to include diverse voices and different perspectives—particularly those relating to the experiences of a wide cross-section of residents—there are fewer information bridges to help citizens.

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In defense of dominant forms of gatekeeping, Cook (2005) argues that the news media have actually become indispensable in the role of facilitating communication between members of the political class. This role actually enables the modern government to function. Cook makes a useful point, but “beltway” insider style political coverage is not the media’s democratic function. Left unchecked, the prominence of this professional political class—and fixation on these voices as subjects in political stories— can lure journalists into covering political news in a way that sticks close to how political leaders want to frame topics. These frames generally contrast with the needs and experiences of regular citizens except in rare occurrences (see Gamson 2001). That said, in some cases reporting on what the political class says and does captures the key voices that best inform the public. Examples of what we might call a “politically insulated” story are reports about government procedures, including congressional roll call votes and attempts by “whips” to garner enough support for the passage of certain bills. Likewise, the reasons behind a president’s selection of a new special assistant for domestic policy has less of a need for an average citizen perspective. But there are far fewer of these insulated stories, especially on cable and national network news. Returning to Congress as an example, a story about a congressional sub-committee’s report on the effect of subsidies included in the last “farm bill” does involve lawmakers and interest groups, but the obvious tie-in to farmers and the wider public is also firmly in the constellation of voices that journalists should feature. Yet gatekeeping decisions, some of which involve logistical and cost-based choices about how much investment to make in bringing diverse and representative voices into a story, will more than likely continue. Affecting this gatekeeping dynamic is how public an issue disagreement becomes between political leaders, and the efforts these elites make to mobilize public action on behalf of a side in the debate (see, e.g., Kernell 1997). But, when taken with the larger fragmentation trends in media discussed in Chapter 2, it is not clear that the publics becoming mobilized are broadly representative of the citizenry or its actual preferences on an issue. The multiplication of political news sources, combined with the sophisticated microtargeting efforts afforded by social media platforms, do not necessarily help. Though such microtargeting may increase the use of non-elite voices in political coverage, the reach of this information may be much more limited (and perhaps intentionally so) than the mass media’s public role during the print and broadcast eras. As such,

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working toward improving gatekeeping decisions in political journalism is a paramount consideration.

A second trend of consequence related to political journalism is the advent of so-called “soft news” as a framework for political stories. Returning to Bennett (2007) to survey the lay of the land: A common journalist hard-news standard is that it should consist of what an informed person in society should know. This standard applies to many government activities, the positions of candidates in election campaigns, international developments that may affect us, policies that may change our lives, emerging social problems, environmental hazards, and historic events, among other things. By contrast, soft news is emotional and immediate. It requires no justification beyond grabbing the attention of an audience . . . soft news is not based on the journalistic ideal of what citizens or members of society should know; it is largely meant to be entertaining (21).

It is not controversial to suggest that the shifting focus to soft news is best seen in television news, but the trend is hardly limited to videobased media. Across legacy news formats, including national newspapers and newsmagazines, hard news coverage of politics declined by double digits starting in the 1990s, mainly in favor of soft news-oriented stories (see Hickey 2001; Patterson 2000). While soft news can still hold a political education function for audiences (see Baum 2003), the presentation of political news cannot likely fulfill its most important democratic function if soft news approaches to story selection and framing are the mode. But we should be careful not to equate the aspects of “soft news” with a replacement that looks and sounds like Buckley’s Firing Line. Unless reporting for a news organization with a niche audience, providing political news to the public requires a broader way of pitching information while making the conveying of this information accessible to an average adult. And, there is nothing inherently wrong with political news using emotion or leveraging sensational aspects of a story to inform the public. In fact, and as Tompkins (2012) argues, the act of informing and education is made more effective by getting people emotionally involved in

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the content. This means, in Tompkins’ telling, giving audiences a reason to care by aligning story material with core motivators audiences have in wanting to learn about an issue, candidate, or event. In political news, the key is to provide a payoff for audiences that gives them information to use in fulfilling their democratic responsibilities. One could argue that citizens should engage more with the process of becoming politically informed, and we agree. But the journalist remains responsible for conveying useful information in a way that facilitates citizen learning. A consequence of the 1996 Telecommunications Act’s enabling of media ownership expansion was the consolidation of news organizations. Though some associate this consolidation with an uptick in ideologically driven news, the more convincing argument about today’s media ownership is that it prefers approaches to news coverage that drive profit margins. Railing against ideological “bias” in political news is a hobbyhorse of right and left-aligned interests, but there is little systematic evidence that professional media entities and their journalists, as a whole, are ideologically driven (Lee 2005). What this suggests is that ideological slant is not a systematic threat to political journalism, but soft news preferences might be. To the extent that soft news attracts audiences, and, in the social media era “engagement” with the content shared on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, media owners might prefer to increase the soft news emphasis because of the anticipated business value produced. Note, however, that the issue is not as simple as “soft news” representing a financial bonanza that hard news does not. Rather, the editorial decisions that are now commonplace in generating soft news coverage are likely to represent what many journalists and media professionals consider a quality product. If the judging criteria concerns production values and assessments of how entertained audiences are, then these appraisals might be correct. But recall the principle democratic function of political journalism is to provide citizens with information they can use in evaluating policy and politicians. By and large across issues and events, soft news will not measure up to these expectations.

A related (and third) trend to the “soft news” phenomena are specific ways of framing news that reflect fragmented, personalized, and dramatized treatment of news. In other words, while partisans run around

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claiming ideological bias in political news, they miss the bigger picture of how news production is skewed and the negative effects this brings. Bennett (2007) again sets the stage when he focuses on . . . a deeper but less obvious sort of news bias—one that favors dramatic and personalized aspects of events over more complex underlying political realities. . . If there is a single most important flaw in the American news style, it is the overwhelming tendency to downplay the big social, economic, or political picture in favor of human trials, tragedies, and triumphs that sit at the surface of events. . . The tendency to personalize news would be less worrisome if human interest angles were used to hook audiences into more serious analysis of issues and problems (38–41).

As with the other trends discussed, personalization and dramatization are not, in and of themselves, the issue: making these the overwhelming go-to frames, however, is. Personalizing political stories without offering the public a wider, more generalized, and analytical view of a political topic makes it more difficult for audiences to know what to do with the personalized story you just presented them. This is the critique made of fragmented approaches to news. While good journalists can create stories that compel audience emotions to engage their thinking, if there is not a link to how political actions (including citizen participation) might address the issue then the link to a democratic purpose is missing. The point here is not to advocate for a side in order to counter fragmented coverage. Instead, it is to assume that the viewers do not necessarily make the connection between the tight, personalized focus on viewing politics through a human-interest frame and how they can address the issue raised in their capacity as citizens. Dramatization as referenced here should not be confused with the sensational aspects of news that make them interesting from the standpoint of tension and suspense. Life and politics can be full of these elements naturally. Where dramatization becomes a troubling trend is when production hype in the form of focus on conflict, cynicism about government and elected officials, and a preference for stories that have a natural, visual appeal (but may not have anything of political content value) are the regular news outcomes. This is not unrelated to the “if it bleeds, it leads” criticism of crime and mayhem found on certain local television news stations. But, just as Rosenstiel et al. (2007) demonstrate the conventional wisdom that viewers respond only

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to overly dramatic content that lacks substance is unfounded, we see a similar argument working across media platforms covering politics. A critique of this assumption about audiences might reference the trend toward ideologically driven political coverage, especially in cable news. But while it is undeniable that a preference exists among some for ideologically branded media (an outgrowth of the Fox News model), it is important to remember that average nightly ratings for the major cable news networks combined (outside of special events coverage) is around 5 million viewers. This is roughly 1.5 percent of the total US population. Adding talk radio audiences to the mix boosts these numbers, but only into the tens of millions range. Meanwhile, social media platforms tend to function as an aggregator of sources that dilutes brand loyalty based on ideological self-selection. What this means in the broader view is that the trends effective in the past are now unlikely to reclaim massive audiences for a single media company. If heeding the combined advice of the authors cited above, news managers would reform gatekeeping practices, rethink the proportion of “hard” to “soft” news in their programs, emphasize key motivators that compel audience attention to topics (including politics), and balance the personal focus with broader context for audiences. Of course, doing all of this is easier written than anything else, and we are certainly not the first to make these recommendations. We are, however, the first to consider the role of Professor Pundits in media coverage of politics (at least from this vantage point). What is apparent to us is that the internal professional and economic forces at work in journalism may make it more difficult for reform to come from within. Instead, it might need to come from without, and this is where the academic can step in not simply as voices for quotes in a story or election night analysis on set, but as guides for journalists and their news managers in correcting trends that are out of balance. We discuss more about this possible role below. Again, we do not mean to imply that print-oriented media are not in need of academics’ contributions in covering political subjects. But as academics, whose work includes using prose to advance their ideas, offering written analysis and related content on political matters is much closer to their traditional professional activities (versus playing the same role on a visual medium like television). Nimmo and Combs (1992) correctly observed this difference in political punditry. In their estimation,

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academic expertise is not the defining characteristic of a pundit (what they call “academic savants”): . . . academic savants are but one more variety of individuals whose technical expertise in a given subject area provides the wherewithal to project them into the national limelight and portray them as having special insight into the problems of the times. Expertise and insight alone, however, are not enough. What these individuals must also possess is the capacity to voice their views in a style suitable for consumption and distribution by the mass media. They must develop a technique of performing for the media (114–115).

Reconsidering Political News Coverage If performance is the great differentiator among academics in media, we want to bring in the perspectives about covering political news from a cross-section of those who have made the news industry their career. Our goal is to understand both what these professionals consider to be the challenges with current political coverage and the way academics might best fit into a reformed approach. We asked a series of questions about the current state and possible future of local news—with an emphasis on tv news political coverage—to professionals ranging from station news directors, to educators, on-air interviewers, corporate talent recruiters, and media personnel whose existing responsibilities exemplify aspects of what a Professor Pundit can be. We begin with having our professional panel assess the state of local political coverage. What’s wrong (and what’s right) with local political coverage today (broadly and with local Tv in specific)? Al Tompkins (Former reporter and television news director/Senior Faculty for Broadcast, Poynter Institute) All politics is local, but all political coverage is not. Local journalism, especially tv does not spend as much time as it should and could on local races

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that affect our lives. The reasons for the lack of coverage are predictable; the size of the tv market is larger than the size of most of the districts covered by the race, so a story about an issue in a particular race might not affect a large percentage of the audience. But that should not stop journalists from addressing candidate positions on big issues such as health care reform, climate change, college debt, and other ubiquitous issues that cross all political map lines. Politics may be boring to most people, after all most eligible voters don’t vote. But that does not mean the issues are not interesting. Cover issues more than politics.

Chip Mahaney, currently the head of emerging talent recruitment for the E.W. Scripps company (an owner of local network affiliates in various US markets known for its sponsoring of the National Spelling Bee) expands the critique to include resource-driven concerns in both print and broadcast news. Chip Mahaney (Former CBS producer/news director/talent recruiter for E.W. Scripps) From the newspaper side, it’s clearly a lack of resources. Having few onthe-street reporters to take on neighborhood and suburban beats, to cover the smaller races down the ballot, is a big loss, not just for their businesses but for the community as a whole. From the local tv side, for most stations, it’s getting deeper than the “hits, runs and errors” of covering daily campaign events. Beats have disappeared (if they were ever there) from so many local TV newsrooms. It’s good for business that many tv newsrooms now have so many more hours in the day to fill, but that requires the reporters you have to be tied to live shots for much of their shifts, and that means fewer resources (people and time) to drill down for deeper coverage.

Both Tompkins and Mahaney offer perspectives on this question that are clearly in-line with what industry observers have long complained about in terms of political coverage—a missing focus on issues with crosscutting ramifications across political lines and the lack of resources to create quality content. But Lissa Hamblen, a news director for Nexstar Media Group (currently the nation’s largest local broadcast television owner) sees journalist experience (and, more precisely, the lack of it) as a critical liability.

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Lissa Hamblen (News Director and Former Producer, Nexstar Media Group) What’s wrong is the same thing that’s been wrong for decades: politicians are way too polished at NOT answering direct questions. They conveniently make themselves not available when the questions will be difficult, and, if they are available, they deflect to other topics. Journalists can only badger so much to refocus the question without looking like bullies. The other wrong part centers on the level of skill on the part of the reporter. If you’re a 23-year-old reporter in Joplin, MO, and you land an interview with your district’s congressman, how do you muster your confidence to challenge the politician on issues? Even tenured reporters get nervous or don’t do well with conflict. Our industry needs more confident reporters who know their material so well they won’t be derailed by a masterful politician. If you are that rare jewel who can hold your own, what’s right is this: there are so many platforms available now to hear from the people we elect, it’s great for the voter. Thirty years ago, that politician was interviewed on air for about two minutes and that was for the broadcast (print was a little better), but now social media has broadened our ability to let interviews breathe.

Hamblen raises an additional point—one we pointed out earlier: there is room now for news organizations to offer much more political content that is not part of their main broadcast material. When factoring in website and social media presence, reporters are able to produce coverage that can go well beyond what they used to have to limit to sound as part of an interview to air. This increased flexibility is a blessing in terms of allowing for more in-depth coverage of issues and candidates, but it likely compounds the issue Hamblen raises concerning a relative lack of journalistic experience and poise when interviewing political figures. Chuck Maulden, a news director for various companies, including Gannett, Nexstar, and Griffin Communications, offers the view that the news approach made popular by cable news has made local television news a more difficult enterprise. Chuck Maulden (News Director for Gannett, Nexstar, and Griffin Communications) Most political coverage on local tv is not opinion-based reporting like most of the national cable channels. Local political coverage is based more on facts and less on the latest rumors or the opinions of pundits. Opinion is

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easy-to-produce television news because it’s just talking heads. It’s a lot harder to hit the streets and scrape up real news based on real facts and seeking out real sources. The problem is the practices of the national cable channels have colored the practices of local journalists. Local journalists are unfairly painted as the same by the public with a broad brush. More and more viewers tune in to watch the national cable channel that delivers only the news they want to hear. So when they see a local channel report on an issue they do not like, they want to “kill the messenger” and label the local channel as biased.

Then there is the charge that trends in covering politics as a sporting event reduces the value of political journalism. But Tim Geraghty, news director of Cincinnati’s Sinclair Broadcasting Company’s CBS affiliate, makes the point that local television news coverage of politics does rise to the occasion in terms of providing quality coverage. Tim Geraghty (News Director, Sinclair Broadcasting Company) I think tv newsrooms do a lot of things correctly. Many of us will carry the presidential candidate visits live on tv and digital screens, expanding access for people who can’t attend the rallies in person. Last cycle – and again this year [this interview was conducted in 2020] – we, and other stations, will offer Congressional candidates unedited air time to explain to viewers why they should be elected to the office they are campaigning for. Debates give viewers an opportunity to hear directly from the candidates. For example, we will offer two in October. One of local tv’s biggest challenges is getting to the micro-local level. Some elections can include hundreds of elections, and many impact a very small percentage of our viewership. We always try to do those election stories that will have the broadest impact.

In addition, Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) suggests some hope when it comes to local television’s political coverage. Dan Shelley (Former Editor and Director of Digital Content, WCBS/Former Senior VP iHeartMedia/Executive Director, RTDNA) The biggest thing I see as wrong – and this is a long-standing problem – is the over indexed reliance on polls, and the superficial coverage of the “horse race” aspect of campaigns. Historically, there has been too little

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focus, particularly on local campaigns, on substantive issues and candidates’ positions. On the positive side, we are seeing more companies that own local TV newsrooms invest time and resources into candidate debates and other fora, actually now doing deeper dives into the substantive issues and candidates’ positions on issues of particular local concern. Also, many companies that own local tv newsrooms have made significant investments in fact-checking initiatives and debunking disinformation and misinformation.

Shelley’s point about “debunking disinformation and misinformation” is, of course, a highly salient concern across the political and journalistic spectrum. But the prevalence of alternate media sources—some of which are highly partisan or ideological—coupled with the ease with which consumers can self-select into source isolation, make the work of fact checkers more difficult now than even five or ten years ago. A related issue for fact checking and political journalism more broadly concerns debates within newsrooms and industry groups about objectivity when reporting on political matters. Recall from Chapter 2 that the Progressive Era standards that pursed objectivity set modern American journalism on the course it took for the rest of the twentieth century. But while objectivity may be an unattainable (and hard to define) standard, what many likely mean when referencing the need for “objective” journalism is the coverage of “both sides” of an issue. Yet this notion, likely borne from the dominant binary perspective imposed by America’s two-party political system, is not necessarily a useful proxy for objectivity in political reporting. We asked our experts about the notion of covering “both sides” in every situation. We also raised Ripley’s (2019) point (which we introduced in Chapter 2) about “complicating the narrative by not giving into a binary framework in reporting political news.”

What about journalistic objectivity in covering politics? Do we worry too much about covering “both sides” in every situation? Should we do more to “complicate the narrative”? Tompkins Journalists are not objective but our journalist methods for reporting should be.

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Journalists should embrace complexity and avoid simple solutions to complex problems. Journalists can also reject false-equivalency notions that every angle of a story, every opinion weighs the same. Be fair, accurate, thorough and report without fear or favor.

Mahaney Journalism is a quest to report facts and multiple perspectives, especially around complex issues. But If you’re ever thinking there are just two sides to a political story, you’ve already sold your community short. There are at least three sides to every complex or controversial issue. Two of those sides would be those of the opposing litigants of the issue. Others would come from elsewhere in the community: perhaps people who have questions, or would posit a third or fourth or fifth view of the argument. Sometimes, the quiet people in the middle are the ones to hear from.

Both Tompkins and Mahaney are, again, in lockstep in their perceptions about the need to break away from the dominant focus on “both sides.” But Geraghty brings up the critical point that balance in political coverage needs to be assessed over time. He also makes clear that part of the trouble with journalism trends exacerbated by social media “sharing” includes the promulgation of political opinions by political correspondents. Geraghty We will always worry about providing balanced coverage. What I worry about is the belief among some viewers that the balance needs to happen with every segment or newscast. When I speak to viewers, I emphasize to them to look over time for the balance. For example, when one presidential candidate visits a community, that day will have more coverage of that candidate than their opponent. The challenge comes to balance that coverage over time. I agree with your question: we need to complete a story narrative. But I do not believe the two concepts are separate. I believe that there are times where you can use balanced coverage to complete the narrative. As far as objectivity in general, everyone has opinions. I am concerned that more journalists find it acceptable to share their political point of view on social media. To me – a journalist for 33 years – that’s wrong. The only person who knows how I voted through the years is my wife. And I plan to keep it that way as long as I work in this business.

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We also heard from Spencer Kimball on this issue. Kimball would know something about how politics discussed and considered. He is a professor at Emerson College in Boston, and head of the college’s polling division that conducts national political surveys throughout the year. Spencer Kimball (Professor, Emerson College/Head of Emerson College Poll) There are rarely two sides to any issue. There are many more sides, but generally minority groups, not just racial, but also issue groups like gun rights advocates, are marginalized but not having a voice in the coverage. A goal of local news would be to have widespread coverage of different constituencies.

Meanwhile, Shelley offers a real-world example of how the journalistic effort to “balance” coverage of a political issue can distort the clarity reporters work to provide. Shelley The concern here is that so much attention and energy is paid – usually rightfully so – to objectivity, balance sometimes overamplifies marginal points of view. For example, while 98% of the scientific community believes climate change is real, many journalists, in a well-meaning effort to be “objective,” give the two percent (“climate deniers”) equal weight in their stories. The same is true with other needlessly controversial yet polarizing issues, i.e., in this era of a pandemic, the anti-mask viewpoint. The role of journalists is to help explain and clarify the issues in a political campaign, candidates, and issues, not add to the confusion, and certainly not engage in spreading disinformation or misinformation.

Maulden’s response references Kovach and Rosenstiel’s (1997) seminal book The Elements of Journalism in putting a more academic point on Shelley’s view. Maulden Kovach and Rosenstiel say balance is also an aim, not a method, and, ultimately, it is subjective and can lead to a distortion of the truth. Seeing balance in a story often means making it well-rounded. It’s similar to fairness but a little different. It’s not as overt as seeking fairness. Even though it’s more subtle, the quest for balance can be just as unknowingly deceptive and not truthful. For instance, you are doing a story about something like crime stats. Let’s say the crime stats are overwhelmingly bad. Yet, to bring balance to the story, a reporter might also concentrate on

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some small nugget of positive news to bring balance to the story. There’s nothing wrong with finding some positive news as long as the truth is not forsaken in the process. Kovach and Rosenstiel say often there are more than two sides to a story and sometimes balancing them equally is not a true reflection of reality. Balance, if it amounts to false balance, becomes distortion.

Working against these journalistic trends is the promise of recruiting journalists who are more skilled at providing political coverage. In other words, what about insisting that political journalists be political experts?

To what extend should a local political reporter be a subject expert (and to what extent can s/he rely on experts to provide effective coverage)? Tompkins Stories that are likely to recur require some research. Newsrooms, increasingly, do not have as many expert beat areas as they used to, so journalists have to “come up to speed” on complex issues sometimes. Newsrooms should encourage journalists to become more knowledgeable about a range of areas including business, environment, healthcare, housing, personal finance, mental health, urban planning, transportation. And journalists should be encouraged to embrace data reporting skills since so many greats stories are hidden in data sets waiting to be graphed, mapped and understood.

Mahaney With the Internet making the basics of news (such as event coverage or viral stories) almost universally accessible in real time, we need journalists, especially journalists working in broadcast newsrooms, to tackle deeper issues. There’s no way a broadcast newsroom can replace what newspaper newsrooms used to be able to provide, in terms of reach and community connection. So, we have to pick and choose. To any extent that we allow our broadcast reporters to pick a specific beat, develop sources, turn regular stories, we’ll be doing our community a huge service, because that one reporter’s focused coverage is unlikely to be replicated by anyone else.

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Hamblen I would encourage any political reporter to be a subject expert. It’s the only way they can know when a person in authority is giving them a bogus answer. Know your material so you can challenge incomplete answers.

Kimball In the political realm, reporters, when speaking with a candidate, need to be subject matter experts in one area, as this makes you better in other areas in order to keep the candidates honest in an interview or debate. But few reporters are well versed in economics and similarly in survey research—they don’t want to do math to be a journalist. If the reporter allows the candidate to control the interview and say what they wish without fear of rebuttal, the audience at that time will take that information as accurate and most likely never look back to a video or conduct additional research. It is beholden on a local political reporter to do their homework on the candidates and to control the conversation.

Our working theory concerning Professor Pundits is that academics are best situated to provide their political expertise in local media markets, and that includes local newspapers, television, radio, and related platforms. But the playing field across local media markets in providing more expert coverage is unequal, both in terms of resource disparities across markets and the relative position each newsroom is in to improve their political content.

How equipped are local media (and especially local tv affiliates) in most markets to effectively cover political stories? Assuming your response is not “they’re in the greatest position in history,” what are some immediate reforms that would bolster coverage effectiveness? Mahaney In order to get something you want, you have to be willing to give up something you don’t want as much. To get more enterprise political reporting, you have to be willing to give up or reduce attention to 1)

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another beat, or 2) stories from the daybook (that your competitors will likely cover, or even 3) breaking news. The last of these three, of course, is anathema to any competitive newsroom. But ask yourself, what do you want to be known for in your community? The choices are tough!

Hamblen First, you have to have a reporter with fire in their belly to cover politics. Second, give them some leash to work a deep subject. If you put your political reporter on day turns constantly, they won’t improve their political reporting. Third, once you spare them some time, insist they deliver heavily researched and well executed material for your shows and website.

Kimball The system is set up for the local outlets to come up short. Financially, they get entry level reporters who are trying hard but lack subject knowledge. Media outlets are owned by conglomerates, and if you don’t toe the company line you are likely pushed over the line. An effective reform would be to break out the concentration of media ownership, but with such a tangled web woven from the outside, it seems to be something that might be impossible to untangle.

Shelley The answer to this question is that it depends on the market size, an individual newsroom’s staff size, and whether the local tv newsroom’s parent company has a strategy in place to supplement locally produced political coverage with deeper-dive coverage of important campaigns and issues of the day. Several parent companies have Washington, DC bureaus that help their local newsrooms cover the intersection between national issues and their impact on various specific markets across the country. These DC bureaus also serve as a valuable conduit between local tv newsrooms and their markets’ senators/members of Congress. That said, the lifeblood of local tv journalism is trust, and that trust is built – in part – on reporting that exposes problems in the community (related to politics/campaigns or otherwise) and, therefore, serves as catalysts for positive changes in the communities they serve.

A plan for better local news political coverage might include the view that local news should stay “local” in terms of the political stories it offers.

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In this way, the local news would potentially avoid the criticisms befalling national and cable news outlets. Interestingly, our industry experts did not see the wisdom in this idea if it means only focusing on local.

National surveys show that local news is trusted somewhat more than national outlets, but part of this may be because partisanship is less apparent in localized stories. Does this mean that local news is best advised to avoid national issues unless there is a clear local tie-in? Tompkins Not at all. Especially in the morning, viewers have a limited time to consume news. If there is a big story that is national or international, include it. But realize the real value of a local newscast is in covering what the national newscasts and cable cannot.

Mahaney Rather than abandon any local coverage of national stories, choose wisely which national stories to localize. If all you’re going to do is illuminate locally the same exact controversy floating in the national arena (and spreading so quickly on to Facebook and Twitter), choose to illuminate the national stories where you can add a specific local angle – a unique fact or a historical perspective from your market that could shed a new light back on the national dialogue. And whenever you do tip your toe into these hot waters, tell your community why you’re doing it.

Hamblen Yes and No. Local is always the preferred coverage route because we want to deliver news our viewers can’t Google and find online. In other words, we won’t do a list, such as five things to improve your retirement nest egg. That’s something our viewers can Google. Instead, give them something your reporter found on the street talking with locals, such as a controversial new city ordinance that impacts local business. Focus your coverage this way and partisanship doesn’t have as much of a chance to enter. Stations

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must still cover some stories related to the president, policies, lawmakers’ votes, etc. Watch your wording as you get copy from the networks. A simple phrase like “public outcry” will infuriate some viewers when you could have just said “opponents say.”

Shelley This is best epitomized by an analogy that is trite, but true: Many say “I hate Congress, but I sure like my own member of Congress.” Similarly, many people say, “I hate the media, but I sure trust the people who give me the local news on tv each night.” This phenomenon does not mean that local TV newscasts should avoid national issues, but local tv newsrooms would be better served by explaining clearly in their coverage what the impact of each particular national issue is on people in their specific markets.

Maulden No. Local news should cover every aspect of political coverage from the myriad number of local school boards and city councils to the statehouse to our nation’s capital. The best way to report on national issues is help the viewer understand the relevance/impact or the compelling nature of decisions being considered or made at the national level. It is up to the local journalists to report on the actions of the elected officials—the representatives, senators and the president—so the public can decide how to cast their vote at election time. The issues being reported on do not necessarily require a local tie-in. Many actions taken by elected officials are often national in scope such as issues of state or defense spending. No matter the issue, this reporting must be done without bias or opinion. Journalists should supply the facts so citizens can make up their own mind. The goal is to simply report what’s happening in DC because what is paramount in our democracy is the public’s right to know.

Shelly, in his capacity as RTDNA executive director, has led a sustained campaign to educate the public about the press’s necessary role in a democracy, the increasingly hostile actions of government officials toward journalists working in the United States, and best practices for newsrooms confronting charges that their political coverage constitutes “fake news.” Shelly offers us the following advice on what newsrooms should engage in.

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Shelley • Serve their communities through their news coverage and consistently remind viewers they are serving their communities through their news coverage. • Provide more depth and context to their reporting and, when appropriate, thoughtful analysis (NOT commentary unless it is clearly labeled as such). • Prolific and consistent outreach to community influencers—on-air, online, and in other ways—to explain not just what the journalism they produce is, but to help viewers understand why certain stories are reported and others aren’t, and to explain the newsgathering and editorial processes in their newsrooms.

Professor Pundits and Political News Coverage One area that Shelley did not address in his recommendation list is the use of academics in some type of Professor Pundit role. In fact, there are good examples of Professor Pundits working in media now who offered us what they consider to be the critical interplay in the relationship between pundits and journalists. We heard from Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a contributor to NBC Latino, and Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia. DeFrancesco Soto Effective political reporters need to “know what they don’t know,” which in itself requires them to have a working knowledge of the variety of political topics they cover. This is especially true for reporters at small outlets where they have to cover a variety of topics. The key for these reporters (and all reporters in general) is to develop relationships with the subject

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experts. This is where academics come in and where there needs to be a better flow of communication between scholars and those in the media.

Sabato A veteran journalist has probably developed a terrific list of sources in key fields. Over time, I’ve found journalists who have more expertise than the experts. Academics are happy to talk to experienced reporters because it is almost peer-to-peer exchange of ideas, useful all around. The jack-of-alltrades reporter is a thing of the past at top outlets, and we’re better off on account of that.

Kimball also offered his perspective on the work that Professor Pundits can contribute, but echoed Nimmo and Combs’ (1992) sentiment discussed earlier. Kimball Teachers have a responsibility to teach students to be concerning consumers of news. As such, these skills can be transferred to the community at-large, and those in academy can help viewers continue to critique the coverage they see. Having dialogues and more contact with journalists would better educate both the academic and the journalist. The academic could give a historical background, could be a country expert, and the reporter can inform the academic of what is happening in the world and help the academic explain things briefly (for example take down the 20page research paper to two paragraphs). Neil Postman described nearly 40 years ago that the news business was all about show business. Some academics might not fit this style of delivery, thereby making the news a bit less flashy, resulting in lower rating, less ad revenue, etc. This pressure for ratings forces even academics to become characters on a news show who try to give short, pithy sound bites ready for a package instead of the critical thinking needed from them.

In assessing what Professor Pundits can bring to improved political coverage, we garner the views of those who engage in the actual act of helping shape the contributions of academics pundits in the news—those who lead the interviews where pundits offer their assessments. In this next section, we report perspectives from a series of seasoned news anchors and reporters who offered their views for our chapter.

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What do you find makes for a good interview with an academic? Jeremy Hubbard (Anchor KDVR, Denver/Former Anchor ABC News) Creating compelling or “good” television is tougher than ever in the era of social media and shortened attention spans. We’re trying to appeal to an audience that is now used to getting their information in 10 second viral videos on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook – with the volume turned down! That makes it increasingly tough for anyone to successfully convey a message – much less an academic who may not be well-versed in being on tv. But I don’t think a good interview with an academic is much different than a good interview with a laundromat customer. The biggest key is using common-sense language that’s easy to understand, and having an affability and approachability. Those things can be difficult for someone who’s spent years in higher education. But it’s crucial.

Marcia MacMillan (Anchor, CTV News Channel Toronto) Good, or memorable, interviews contain the same ingredients – knowledge, enthusiasm, energy, passion. The so called ‘good talkers’ are the ones who can convey, with confidence, their opinion or expertise, in an articulate and conversational way. With academics, the challenge is usually around brevity. Interviewers want someone who can be concise. The ability to ‘dumb down’ a topic is an underrated skill! Any good interview boils down to a good conversation.

Todd Vanderheyden (Anchor, CTV News Channel Toronto) Definitely the following three things: knowledge, energy, and a conversational way of communicating make a huge difference. We need guests to know their stuff, but its much less effective if they can’t communicate it in a way that people understand. Low key doesn’t translate well in broadcast media (tv/radio/podcasting). The more energy, passion, and dynamism the better – as long as it doesn’t come across as phony or like the guest has just had 10 cups of coffee. I find that academics can *sometimes* be a bit too (ahem) academic because perhaps they are used to lecturing students. In broadcast, we are looking for concise, solid, punchy commentary that hits the key points. This doesn’t mean answering complex questions in

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30 seconds or less…but when the answers go beyond a minute…it can start to drag for audiences. It sounds very clichéd, but the key is to ‘just talk’ and have a comfortable conversation. And it’s important to remember it’s a conversation, not a monologue, and, typically, the anchor or reporter will have other questions to keep the conversation going.

Curtis Jackson (Spectrum News Anchor, Ohio/Former Network Affiliate Anchor in Detroit, Cincinnati, and Cleveland) Academics can bring an almost esoteric perspective to any conversation, like peering behind the curtain. Their knowledge goes beyond facts. It provides insight that incorporates what happened before with the significance of what’s happening now. This is an especially important asset when it comes to interpreting data. Numbers reveal a lot about a subject, but they can be intimidating to most or dismissed as superficial to avoid the effort needed to understand them. Interpreting such information is a task best suited for academics who not only understand methodology but the human factors or costs.

In the broader enterprise of reporting political news, what’s the best way media can use academics in stories and/or breaking news? Hubbard It’s funny, a lot of institutions of higher education have wised up to the importance of putting academic “experts” front-and-center for local journalists on a daily basis. We routinely get pitches from local universities, offering up their professors for comment on the news of the day. This is a genius approach, because it involves those universities in the news cycle, and it sends the message that they employ smart people who know what’s happening in the world. So I would encourage any university to do this. If a story is breaking in the Middle East, offer up your professor of Middle Eastern studies for comment. Be proactive. Newsrooms are short staffed, and journalists are over worked. If you can help them with their job, and improve their coverage, everyone wins.

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Vanderheyden I am a big fan of using academics for commentary on political stories – especially because they tend to hew toward objectivity as opposed to partisan scorched earth commentators with agendas. That isn’t saying we want bland, beige, or dull middle of the road answers – because that doesn’t work either. But when you have an academic who has studied a topic, it gives an added level of expertise on the subject at hand. Media should be encouraging and cultivating academic guests and making sure they have a certain comfort level to appear on our programs. There is no doubt that broadcast appearances are intimidating…with the lights, cameras, pressure of being ‘live’ and the tight timeframe. That said, practice makes perfect. We routinely use academics for breaking news. Kamala Harris’ nomination as Biden’s running mate being a great example. The story broke while I was on the air and we ended up doing a 45 minute mini-special with no breaks…tapping into our political commentators, academics, and professors to get a half dozen voices weighing in immediately. The proliferation of platforms like Zoom and Facetime also make the process for broadcast interviews much less cumbersome (no more need to get to a studio!). And as the technology and connections have improved, guests can connect from the comfort of their office or home – which also makes the process less intimidating.

Jackson In a breaking news situation, academics have the added value of historical knowledge. An event unfolding before someone’s eyes is fairly matter of fact: who, what, when, and where. Academics are needed to understand why something is happening. So on broadcast and/or digital platforms, the academic is the flashback sequence or that little “for more information box” in a story, respectively. I remember when 9/11 happened and we needed to explain to people the significance of UBL and al-Qaeda. Neither were familiar names to the public, and both were very different from terrorists that were typically associated with the Middle East. Understanding that significance was critical to understanding why 9/11 happened, and how much greater the threat was that the country was facing. At that time, most people didn’t know what a terror cell was and how al-Qaeda was operating differently from more familiar terrorist entities like Hamas. Academics connected those dots in real-time.

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How do you think audiences generally respond to academics and their expertise? Hubbard It depends on the academic. If it’s a telegenic, interesting, charismatic academic like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Michio Kaku, viewers love them. They embrace the nerdiness! But if it’s a dry, boring navel-gazer, viewers are turned off. At the end of the day, television news journalists have to produce a compelling and interesting story. A good academic will make that story better. A “bad” (or boring) academic will make viewers zone out. That defeats the purpose for everyone.

MacMillan In the blur of guests on 24 hour news channels, it’s hard to say whether viewers can distinguish between an academic, an author, a consultant, or an expert. I do think when academics are highlighted as such, they carry a bit more weight. There is built-in credibility.

Vanderheyden Our audiences respond well to academics, and, in fact, I think they may well appreciate those voices in addition to and even as opposed to, partisan voices. Academics can be seen as more neutral, thoughtful, balanced, and less aggressive – in other words, more credible overall. This *may* work better in Canada than in the United States. Remember that Canadian media are still very much about the objectives of journalism: neutrality, balance, information, trust, and credibility. We are very resistant to the “infotainment” model that we sometimes see south of border!

Jackson It depends on the demographic and what is being conveyed. People tuning into say Rachel Maddow are more receptive to academics and their expertise. I suspect the fact that she is herself an academic makes her show more attractive to like-minded individuals. Her viewers tend to be more

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educated and they tend to be more critical thinkers. Whereas, less educated audiences will pay more attention to academics if they validate already held beliefs. That makes finding the right academic to interview very important. You want someone who not only considers the other side of any given issue or person but can also explain the opposing view. Perhaps there is nothing more threatening to balanced and informative journalism than an academic who is also an ideologue. This is because academics are credible by virtue of the fact they know more than the average viewer who will not bother seeking out opposing viewpoints.

It’s clear that these seasoned television news anchors, all of whom have spent considerable time as reporters as well, consider value in what academics can contribute to political news coverage. But, there is the mass media technique issue that Nimmo and Combs (1992) rightly raised, and that we asked our anchors to think about too.

What’s the biggest thing you see academics do in interviews that you’d advise them to stop doing? Hubbard Hard to say, because I think most academics I’ve interviewed in recent years have become savvy enough to know what makes for an interesting interview. I guess my advice would be to avoid the urge to lecture. In a television news story, we have just a few seconds to convey an idea or thought. So if you give an answer to a question that’s a rambling 30 seconds soundbite, you might not make the cut in the finished product. I would encourage schools and universities to offer coaching to their academics, to show how to give a short, sharp soundbite that conveys exactly what the academic is thinking.

MacMillan Stop making lists! I cringe when a guest will say they have three (or worse, five!) points they want to make. We only have between 3 and 5 minutes so please keep the answers succinct (but not clipped). Also, invest the time and effort in a proper set up with your computer. There is nothing worse than a bad shot up the nose or weak audio.

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Vanderheyden Acting as if an interview is an academic lecture or a dissertation. That can really undermine the interview. Think concise, punchy, energetic, and conversational. Lengthy roll-ups, deep dives, lengthy lists highlighting several key points…don’t work. In fact, they can cause viewers to tune out. Like it or not, there is performance quality to broadcast which is very different (obviously) than print, either online or newspapers. The best way to get the points across is to understand the method of communication…as Canadian media visionary Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message” – and in this case, the medium is video, audio, and competing with a million other channels, platforms, and social media. It makes the stakes higher to ensure the communication is done properly. Networks will rebook guests time and again who are proven to add value. To be blunt, I would rather someone who is an A - level expert and a great communicator versus an A + level expert who is a poor communicator.

Jackson I sometimes worry about academics sounding too professorial. This leans towards cliche, but it has some basis in fact. That is not to say they should be overly concerned with being too plain-spoken at the expense of their expertise. But the information they convey should be approachable and, with respect to broadcast, succinct. That can be a function of the question being asked. Some journalist/anchors bare some responsibility for a longwinded or turgid response to a question. Some academics need to keep answers within a general framework that can work with almost any question or redirect the conversation to what viewers can understand given the subject and the amount of time available. It’s not a problem for academics to go into an interview thinking, ‘here are the main points that I believe, based on my expertise, that viewers, listeners, and readers need to know.’

Issues with performance aside, we wanted our anchors to think through the question of comparing academic pundits to the more traditional versions often seen in the press—those who are former politicians, campaign officials, interest group leaders, journalists, etc.

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To what extent might academics be a useful counterbalance to a lot of the professional political pundits often featured in political news? Hubbard I think this is where research, history, and polling come in. Say our news station is doing six hours of election coverage in November, and we have a pundit from the right and the left on the air, duking it out and offering up half-truths and dubious claims, a political science professor could join us from the newsroom and serve as an instant fact checker. Same goes for day-of news stories during an election cycle. This is crucial, at a time when facts are under assault.

MacMillan Tremendously useful. They can provide context and perspective without the overt bias of the pundits. The challenge is being able to convey information to the masses and have it heard.

Vanderheyden Extremely useful. This is why academics are so key – especially when they “get” the medium and how to communicate effectively. There is so much noise out there right now and academics can help to make us think about both sides and especially, the big picture. This is not to say that pundits aren’t great because they really are…! It’s always very interesting when people are passionate, when they debate, when they have a stake in the game, and when they defend their positions and viewpoints. But it’s important to bring viewers and listeners a variety of voices – pundits, yes absolutely…but also academics who can broaden out the debate, frame it without being biased and give audiences context and analysis that won’t be suspect!

Jackson If I could have an academic for every pundit then I could fix cable news. It may not be necessary to contradict or confirm what a pundit it saying. Perhaps it would be more beneficial if academics told people what the pundit didn’t say. This is especially important when it comes to politics. I may have a pundit who says, ‘this is what this poll means for these candidates.’ But an academic can tell audiences where a poll falls short or what factors contributed to the responses. What’s more, academics can

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look beyond the politics of the moment (or look back) to explain how we got here. I remember some pundits crowing about how wrong the polling was in 2016. But academics were aware that the polling really wasn’t as error prone as pundits were saying. In the case of Donald Trump, for example, they pointed out that his polling tracked along the same path as most Republican candidates. He won white males, Christian conservatives, and mostly white and male Independents. More to the point, academics understood the significance of margin of errors in polls and the fluctuations in them over time. Had we heard from more academics in the wake of the 2016 election and fewer pundits and/or pollsters, the public’s confidence in polls may not have been so radically and easily shaken.

Jackson’s comment about fixing cable news is high praise for the Professor Pundit’s potential. The built-in assumptions, of course, are that academics will not end up offering essentially the same content as their more Traditional Pundit counterparts. But Nimmo and Combs (1992) suggest another possibility that leads—in their estimation—to the academic pundit not providing much value: gravitation toward a scripted contribution as part of a profit-driven exercise: TV producers plan the story script and then undertake a talent search. . . . screenings and tryouts assist tv journalists in their craft, but what is the punditry that is evoked? One of its characteristics . . . is that academic commentary becomes predictable and even trivial . . . For pundit professors at colleges and universities, there is another problem. Television and radio stations, newspapers and news magazines are in business to turn a dollar’s profit . . . Is it the proper province of the academic to be used in such corporate enterprise—to help produce profits or raise money, even indirectly, to sell products and produce consumers? (Fig. 3.1)

These are certainly important points to consider about the role academics might play, although the bigger concern (from our standpoint) is on what the academic pundits contribute to media coverage of politics. The possibility that academics might merely offer “trivial” insight in their media work is worthy of additional exploration. What exactly do academics who contribute to media hope to accomplish? What concerns do these would-be Professor Pundits face in the

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Fig. 3.1 Chapter summary

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process? Furthermore, how might audiences respond to news coverage featuring these academics? We explore these questions across the next two chapters, beginning with an assessment of what academics told us about their media contributions.

References Baum, Matthew. 2003. Soft news goes to war: Public opinion and American foreign policy in the new media age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bennett, W. Lance. (2007). News: The politics of illusion, 7th ed. New York, NY: Pearson Longman. Cook, Timothy E. 2005. Governing the news: The news media as a political institution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gamson, William A. 2001. Promoting political engagement. In Mediated politics: Communication in the future of democracy, ed. W. Lance Bennett and William A. Gamson, 56–74. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Graber, Doris. 1989. Mass media and American politics, 3rd ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Hickey, Neil, 2001. Doing local news. Columbia Journalism Review 40: 50–65. Kernell, Samuel. 1997. Going public: New strategies of presidential leadership. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Lee, Tien-Tsung. 2005. The liberal media myth revisited: An examination of factors influencing perceptions of media bias. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 49: 43–64. Nimmo, Dan, and James E. Combs. 1992. The political pundits. New York, NY: Praeger. Patterson, Thomas E. 2000. Doing well and doing good: How soft news and critical journalism are shrinking the news audience and weakening democracy– And what news outlets can do about it. Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Harvard University. Rosenstiel, Tom, Marion Just, Todd Belt, Atiba Pertilla, Walter Dean, and Dante Chinni. 2007. We interrupt this newscast: How to improve local news and win ratings, too. Cambridge University Press. Tompkins, Al. 2012. Aim for the heart: Write, shoot, report, and produce for TV and multimedia. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

CHAPTER 4

Who Are These Professor Pundits?

Unlike Melissa Harris-Perry, Larry Sabato, Brian Calfano, and some of the other scholars identified by name in this book, we suspect most political or social scientists are not regular political media contributors, or have years of experience doing this work regularly. Instead, the vast majority of professors in the academy are more likely “occasional contributors,” described by their university public relations offices as substantive experts available for comment on specified topics. So, in this chapter, we ask how occasional participation affects professors’ views of how they want to be perceived, what they want to contribute, and the type of experiences they want when interacting with journalists? What we find is that (1) professors are generally not as interested in video-based media as we recommend, and (2) the work these academics do in bringing their expertise to the public is steeped in their research (and those of their colleagues).

How We Obtained Our Information As noted in the introductory chapter, there has never been a national survey of political and social science academics focused on their experiences and perceptions as political media contributors and content producers. To fill this void, from May to July of 2020, we surveyed scholars from colleges and universities across the country who reported to

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. R. Calfano et al., The American Professor Pundit, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70877-1_4

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have made a least one media contribution during the past three years. We do not make any claims about the representativeness of our survey respondents, but there is little systematic or aggregate information about the size or characteristics of the population of scholars who are active media contributors, and much less is known about occasional contributors. Our information was obtained from an online questionnaire that we constructed and administered using Qualtrics. The questions focused on respondent experiences during the past three years, including the number of media contributions made, the range of topics covered, and the types of media outlets in question. We also asked respondents what their media experiences entailed and whether there were common concerns or issues associated with the media appearances. Along with basic demographic questions, we had respondents indicate how their race and gender may have influenced their experiences. If respondents referenced findings from the political and/or social science literature(s) in their media contributions, encouraged them to share strategies used to successfully convey this information given media format limitations (e.g., segment time, word limits, responding to specific interview questions as segues, etc.). We also asked what respondents hoped to accomplish as a result of their media participation. Finally, we inquired about the level of support respondents received from their institutions for their media work. We emailed a survey link to the membership of multiple organized sections of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and to other social science academics that we knew to have experience contributing political content to various media outlets. We also posted the link on Facebook and on academic websites. To get as diverse a sample as possible, we made a point of soliciting surveys from scholars of color. Finally, the survey link was tweeted by an organizer of Women Also Know Stuff (WAKS), a non-profit organization that maintains a searchable online database of women political scientists to assist journalists in identifying women to interview as expert sources. Our outreach efforts resulted in completed surveys from academics at primarily four-year colleges and universities (N = 101). More than 90 percent of those answering our survey held doctorates representing thirteen different social science disciplines. However, approximately 75 percent were political scientists (N = 90). Forty-five percent were women (N = 54) and 57 percent were Anglos or non-Hispanic whites (N = 68). Only one of the respondents had less than one year of experience contributing to the media, while the plurality (34 percent, N = 41) had between 13 and 25 years of media

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experience. This spread is considerable and points to the likely reality that a noteworthy segment of academics already fulfills an academic punditry role.

Where and How Much Do They Contribute The frequency of media contributions among our survey respondents varied greatly, but well more than half (60 percent) said they had contributed to media content more than eight times during the past three years. There were 40 respondents who claimed they had contributed 13 or more times. National newspapers, local newspapers, and local TV network news were identified as the type of media outlets where their contributions appeared most frequently (identified by 26, 24, and 19 percent, respectively). In fact, during the past three years, 71 percent said they provided content at least once in local newspapers, 51 percent said they appeared on local tv news, and 49 percent offered content to national newspapers. Participation in radio broadcasts at both the local and national level also appeared to be fairly common, with about onethird of respondents making at least one appearance. Overall, in addition to the type of media outlet where they contributed most frequently, 88 percent said they had appeared on two or more of the following additional media options over the last three years: • • • • • • • • • • •

Local TV news affiliate, US Local newspaper Local radio station National TV network news, US National TV network news, non-US National newspaper National radio network Cable news, US Local cable public access, US Spanish language, US Spanish language, non-US

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• • • • •

TV podcast, English TV podcast, Spanish Radio podcast, English Radio podcast, Spanish Website/blog.

Overall, it seems that academics who get involved with the media end up participating with a wide range of outlets. Interestingly, almost 10 percent of the respondents reported involvement with Spanish language media in the United States and slightly more (14 percent) said they worked with national television news stations outside of the country. Those participating in Spanish media outlets and on international stations were all political scientists and were some of the most active contributors. Almost 90 percent indicated they provided media content 13 or more times in the last three years. For example, one political scientist said he gave “a lot of interviews to international media organizations- Germany, Italy, Japan and Mexico.” We can speculate that the reason for higher activity is that Spanish-speaking political scientists are in high demand and short supply, and that other countries are very interested in US politics.

What Topics Are They Talking or Writing About? As you might imagine, the political topics that academics discuss or write about for media outlets are as varied as the interests of media consumers. These topics include everything from local politics to the politics of other nations. Academics share their knowledge and views about various issues, including LGBTQ rights, and whether to terminate the Electoral College. In addition, more than 56 percent of our respondents said they “often” or “always” were interviewed or wrote about voting and get-out-thevote efforts. Polling and minority voters were tied for second among the topics that 48 percent of the respondents indicated they covered their media contributions. Local politics was third, discussed by 41 percent of the respondents. Political history was also a popular topic covered by 38 percent their media contributions, and fits with Calfano’s discussion about his approach to media appearances in our opening chapter.

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To get a better understanding of what their media experience involved, we asked respondents: “How frequently have you done the following in your media contributions (including COVID-19 topics) over the last three years?” Have you “Never,” “Rarely,” “Sometimes,” “Often,” or “Always”: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Wrote or collaborated on questions for reporters Read tele-prompt-ter Wore certain clothing and/or makeup (at media request) Discussed topics not in your area of expertise Used Skype, FaceTime, or similar for an interview Explained political content to media before an interview Redid your contribution because of a stylistic issue Participated in an editorial meeting to determine an outlet’s political coverage Redid your contribution because of an editorial issue Referenced yours and/or a colleague’s research Posted your contribution to social media Sent your contribution to institutional leaders (e.g., Deans) Sent your contribution to community or political leaders.

When academics appear on television, irrespective of whether it is for the local station or a national broadcast, they have less control or influence over the topics they speak about than those featured in other types of media. Part of this is because only 10 percent of academics on television have written or collaborated on questions with reporters and even less (four percent) participated in an editorial meeting to determine the outlet’s political coverage. More than half (56 percent) reported they had to discuss topics outside their expertise, compared to those who appeared in newspapers (21 percent) or on radio (49 percent). What we might call the “television academics” were also more likely to have to explain political content to reporters before an interview (72 percent) compared to those working with newspapers and radio (64 percent, and 50 percent, respectively). Even taking into account questions about our sample’s representativeness, these responses highlight the reality of video-based media contributions: they impose a greater cognitive and performative task on academics. At the same time, our characterization in Chapter 2 about tv news coverage of politics is reflected here in the percentage of

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respondents who say they had to explain content prior to engaging in the interview. This is not to disparage reporters covering politics. In fact, it is a sign that these journalists recognize their relative shortcomings in expertise. However, the lack of “beat” type political knowledge likely means that the quality of the questions asked, and the opportunity for academics to really provide the kind of nuance they want to in relating their expertise, is limited. In terms of how television interviews were conducted, only 39 percent said they used Skype, Face Time, or something similar for the interview over the past three years. This relatively low percentage may be because local and/or national tv reporters sent camera crews to meet academics and film the interviews (or academics traveled to tv studios or other set locations for these interviews). We suspect the percentage of virtual interviews is likely higher now due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, and anticipate that the regularity with which video conferencing and interviews are used across media will only increase the likelihood that academics get asked to “remote in” for video interviews using Zoom, Skype, WebEx, FaceTime, and similar platforms. This is why we devote considerable attention in Chapter 8 to the technical considerations Professor Pundits should be aware of when engaging media interviews in this way. Unsurprisingly, given that they are the interview subjects and not the segment host or interviewer, reading a tele-prompt-ter or using infographics and/or other visuals to explain their point were not common experiences among our sample. Only 11 percent reported having used a telepromptter. Meanwhile, just three percent had ever concerned themselves with using visual aids in their television appearances (we recommend in Chapter 7 that academics consider use of these visuals to the extent they might help relate content during an interview). Interestingly, 12 percent reported that at least sometimes they wore certain clothing or makeup at the media’s request. Also unsurprising given the performative aspect of representing ideas and expertise verbally is that the vast majority of our sample (i.e., more than 60 percent) who made television appearances said they were often or always concerned about speaking clearly (diction), as well as being concise and accurate in their remarks. About half also expressed a similar level of concern about distilling social science research into sound bites. Again, the art of presenting one’s expertise for consumption by wider public audiences is something that we all need continual work to perfect. Few have this skill naturally, and even those

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who do have aspects of their presentation that could use improvement (again, this is a major reason why we wrote this book). That much of our sample expresses concerns about these aspects of relating their expertise during media interviews underscore the reality that we are on the right track with this project. For academics whose media contributions are primarily in print outlets, it was fairly common for them to collaborate or write their own questions: 31 percent said they were sometimes or often involved in the writing of questions, while approximately six percent said they always were involved. At the same time, print contributors were more likely to redo their work at the request of an editor (18 percent) than those who worked in television (11 percent) or radio (less than one percent). These responses underscore that while video-based media have a high cognitive and performative responsibility, academic participation across media platforms require work on the Professor Pundit’s part. Particularly in cases where a print-based article provides an in-depth analysis of a candidate, policy, or legal issue, the expectations journalists and editors have of the content that academics deliver in the story will likely be of a more technical nature, perhaps requiring additional interviews, email discussions for clarification, etc. As such, academic work in these media should be considered easier vis-à-vis video-based entities. The difference has much more to do with the skillsets the different media types draw on, with academics usually more confident in expressing their ideas and expertise in written form or, at the least, without the sharp time-boundedness found in tv coverage.

Speaking of expertise, our sample is clear: respondents rely on their research-derived knowledge to inform what they contribute to media outlets. This research-driven perspective, we argue, is what makes the Professor Pundit model far different from the more common—some might say traditional—punditry forms. For all the scholars who answered our survey the most important influence on their media appearances was their own research. Other research was the second most important influence. And, when asked how influential the views of government officials or business leaders or the expectations of the media outlet were on their media contributions, respondents overwhelmingly replied, “not

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influential at all,” (91 percent, 97 percent, and 89 percent, respectively). Interestingly, the one exception was among those whose primary outlet was television: 20 percent said the expectations of the media outlet were “somewhat influential.” This difference in view might be at least partially due to the reality that academics engaging in television work are engaging in much more technical communication medium where they are less comfortable (and familiar). And this technical nature may open the door for the direction offered by news managers and journalists at television outlets to have more influence over what academics say (and how they say it), although this is merely informed speculation on our part. Another important aspect concerning academic media contributions is the role perceptions of other academics and ideological views play. All respondents, regardless of their primary media outlet, indicated media reports, social media information, and the views of academic colleagues had little to no influence on their contributions. Meanwhile, only 30 percent acknowledged that personal ideology had somewhat or more influence on their media work. A plurality (33 percent) said their ideology had no influence while the rest said it had “a little influence.” Similarly, respondents also professed that partisanship played a minimal role. Only 36 percent reported that party identification was somewhat of an influential role in their media appearances. The question of whether Professor Pundits should incorporate their ideological or partisan preferences into their media appearances is one that we do not directly address. Our overall assumption is that academic punditry is best performed when it is grounded in research-driven insights. However, while we consider academic forays into media to be the most useful when they are researchoriented, it is also likely that at least some academics will find their way to media work as a result of core ideological or partisan commitments. In these cases, ideological commitments are the motivation for engagement in public-facing activities. As such, we leave open the possibility that at least some academics will view pundit-like action as a way to bring their ideological or partisan view to the public square. Again, we see nothing wrong with this approach per se, but it is not in line with our broader vision of the Professor Pundit model of academic media contributions. In terms of what academics do in their media contributions, three activities standout for their frequency among all respondents across the various media outlets: referencing research, using historical examples, and posting their work to social media. First, the research, which we

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consider the core of what defines the Professor Pundit model. Eightysix percent claimed to sometimes (or even more frequently) reference their own or a colleague’s research. This is encouraging in that it means our understanding of academic punditry is sufficiently distinct from the treatment the enterprise received in Nimmo and Combs’s (1992) work. Specifically, academics offering media content are not the quasi-public intellectual caricatures wheeled out on cue to offer the perspective news managers and journalists want in their stories. Instead, academics offer their research-driven expertise for the audience. Though we acknowledge that, by definition, a mediated relating of academic perspectives means that journalists have most of the control over how Professor Pundits appear in news content, academics have a clear interest in defining their media voice in ways that are different from the conventional wisdom and “beltway” talk that operative pundits will normally provide. And this difference is steeped in the referencing of academic research. At the same time, our respondents seem to agree with Calfano’s opening example message that relying on historical examples is a key way to convey political insight and analysis. Fully 87 percent of our respondents used historical examples in their media interviews. Though we do not know from these data whether historical references were made in all interviews respondents gave, we consider it likely that the vast majority of academic interviews benefit from putting current events into historical context. Our third activity measure concerns publicizing the interviews in which one is featured. In this digital media age, sharing interview links is a priority for media outlets of all kinds, and our respondents show a key willingness to participate in this effort: 71 percent said they publicized their media work on social media. For those who said they referenced findings from the political and/or social science literature(s) in their appearances, we asked them about their strategies or approaches for getting the information across given the various format limitations (e.g., segment time, word limits, responding to specific interview questions as segues, etc.). The answers to this question varied depending on the type of media outlet respondents worked in. But there were a few common themes in their strategies, such as avoiding jargon and using language that is accessible to a general audience. Multiple respondents agreed with the following comments: “to keep it simple,” “identify ahead of time the two to three points you want to make,” and “avoid going into too much detail.” One respondent offered this similar advice:

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[I] typically would spend time translating the material into shorter pieces for online blogs or into accessible language for TV and radio interviews. Sometimes translated large groups of information into a table or chart if possible. In general, when asked for an interview on a subject I tend to think about the three things I want to get across to the interviewer about the topic (regardless of the actual questions asked) and hammer those three ideas as much as possible throughout the interview. I learned from studying campaigns not to let the interviewer drive the interview, but be clear delivering a message that is grounded in research.

We pick up where this respondent’s advice leaves off in our “how to” assessment in Chapter 7. Among those whose medium was television, several said they knew they had to be “concise” and that it helped tremendously when they “prepared and stuck with a just a few talking points.” One TV contributor offered this extended advice: Tv-especially national cable news, is massively time constrained. You have to know that going in and have a strategy for keeping things simple. And you have to understand that you can’t treat it like an academic conversation, which is unfortunate, because that is about depth and breadth. Tv is the opposite. And often, the interviewer sets you up to fail by asking complex questions with several components. I assume the reason I had success with my media career was that I could stay focused on answering 1 or 2 specific aspects of complex topics. And you also need to be have a knack for reading other people, because most hosts will have a “running out of time” look that will come across their faces and if you see that, and wrap up on your own, they’ll see you as an easy, organized guest and call you back. This is especially true for academics, because so many of us are ramblers and then just keep rambling even when it’s obvious everyone needs you to stop talking. Anyone who has EVER attended a conference knows exactly what I mean. In any public speaking situation, it is far better to say little, but say it empathically and with good delivery than to rapid fire verbal diarrhea that is so jam packed with info the host’s head spins after. I’ll say, it should also be enjoyable. I enjoy my media appearances. If I had to spend time preparing for them (more work!) or if they made me nervous and ill I wouldn’t do them. People should only do them if they find it enriching and pleasurable!

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We resume where these respondents left off in our “how to” assessment in Chapter 7.

How Do They Feel About Their Media Work? The last respondent (cited above) ended her comment by advising others not to do the media work unless they found it to be pleasurable. This seems like sound advice, but we also were interested in how others felt about their media appearances. After all, not everyone will consider media participation to be enjoyable. We, therefore, asked respondents: “How frequently did you feel the following after providing media contributions over the last three years?” (“Never,” “Rarely,” “Sometimes,” “Often,” or “Always”): • • • • • • • • •

Excited Appreciated Knowledgeable Accomplished Influential Proud Anxious Disappointed Misunderstood.

“Sometimes” was the plurality answer for each emotion regardless of the media platform in question, with one exception. Those working primarily in television were more likely to indicate they often felt disappointed and anxious after their media contribution. We think this is another indicator that Professor Pundits have less control when they appear on television and it supports our belief that academics could use more training and assistance in this area. There are multiple ways to view the returns that academics receive from appearing in media. Perhaps the first thing to note is what they typically

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do NOT receive: monetary compensation. Only 18 of the 121 respondents reported being paid for their media work and only one person expressed any dissatisfaction with this situation. This particular person seems to be very dissatisfied in general because he went on to say: Faculty get abused by local outlets. They get unofficially hired and fired without contract or agreement. Some are able to work as Independent Contractors, but the pre-COVID newsroom was already empty and pay, non-existent. Though, as an African American in a majority white media environment, I do believe race, in part, accounts for “who gets paid, and who does not” in media expertise. One outlet paid for the entire 2010 midterm, but the relationship was allowed to end without notice and no discussion was ever had, including [no] thank you.

Irrespective of the lack of monetary compensation, the vast majority did indicate positive benefits from their appearances in the form of receiving their employer’s active support or approval. With less than a handful of exceptions, colleges and universities were regarded as generally supportive of the media work performed by faculty. But the level of institutional support varied. A few respondents said their administrators encouraged media participation because it was perceived as free publicity for the university. Yet their media contributions did not count in these respondents’ annual performance evaluations. By contrast, more than 40 percent indicated media work was formally counted in evaluations under their university’s service requirements for faculty. Ten percent said they were allowed to count media contributions as part of their tenure and promotion standards. Related to that, one respondent explained: They let me count the longer articles and analyses I wrote for media in my merit and promotion record and helped to promote incidences when I was interviewed on camera or over the radio through campus newsletters.

Another stated: They are enthusiastic about promoting it and counting it towards tenure (at least within my academic division).

One respondent even received a course release each semester for media work. We wish we had her/his job! A majority said their institutions actively encouraged them to engage with the media, promoting their

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expertise to media outlets, and sharing news of their media appearances, quotes, stories, etc. Approximately 36 percent said their institutions provided instruction on how to successfully interact with the media. Perhaps the best characterization of how many universities and colleges typically provide support for faculty willing to engage in media work comes from a respondent with administrative responsibilities in an academic department: As head, I have done training on talking to the media three times and the university has provided support for this. I provide a sheet of my faculty’s media expertise, comfort level, and contact points to our office of marketing and communication and the local NPR affiliate. They in turn have circulated this to the media.

How Do These Experiences Compare with What We Advise? The respondent experiences described here help to highlight some of the advice we provide in Chapter 7. We cannot stress enough that word choice is critical! Also knowing as much as possible in advance about the questions you are going to be asked enables better preparation. More than a few respondents commented on needing to put their knowledge into a language a layperson could understand. And some were honest in admitting that they struggled with this task. The most experienced or media savvy among our respondents also said they liked to prepare a short list of key points of information to use for the interview. One respondent said: I have to have several key answers or sentences prepared in advance before I agree to start an interview. I make sure the answers are succinct and free of jargon. I learned this lesson the hard way. Whenever I answer questions off the top of my head, I automatically use the language I would if I were writing an article. I can tell immediately the reporter does not really understand what I am saying and probably will not get the point I am trying to make in his story.

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This respondent’s comment also speaks to the importance of building good relationships with local news people. When you are acquainted with the people interviewing you, it is much easier to ask for and receive the questions ahead of time. The better you know the journalist, the easier it is to anticipate her/his questions. Additionally, establishing a relationship with the individual journalist increases the likelihood that if the reporter does not understand what you are saying s/he will admit it and give you more opportunity to explain. If time allows, the reporter will also be more willing to let you review the article or report before it goes public. Bottom line, when you are on good terms with the journalist, there is a much higher possibility of you being satisfied with your message. We also asked respondents to provide general ideas or thoughts they find germane to their media contributions. The quotes below came from open-ended response options in the survey. Each highlights an important aspect of consideration for Professor Pundits of all perspectives and experience levels. We begin with a focus on the aspect of academic punditry we consider essential: research-driven insights. This respondent is clear about how far academics should go in relating research findings in their media response. Don’t speak beyond the evidence. Visiting with the media can help improve our public dialogue. It can also help raise one’s profile IF they are basing their comments on evidence and research.

There is also an angle to academic punditry that we did not consider: concern that some of what one offers in their media contributions will end up being used against them in their academic promotions or related advancement opportunities. Though a large majority of our respondents noted that they were not concerned with reaction from their colleagues to their appearances, this is not necessarily the same as having concern about institutional pushback or bias against offering an academic perspective in media work. For instance, one respondent said: I’m extremely hesitant to provide media commentary at this point in my career. I am on the tenure track and I don’t want to say or do anything on the record that could be perceived as partisan or controversial that could be used against me when I go up for tenure. Along the same lines, I have received zero media training, so I find preparing for media contributions

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to be too time consuming and stressful during a point in my career where I have to focus on research/teaching first.

In terms of some basic pointers about appearing in media, we think this book speaks to the respondent’s concerns. But we are less sure about the advice to give to one who feels as though media comments might end up harming career advancement. Clearly, no one should be forced to contribute to media outlets as part of their academic work. But, at the same time, it is disconcerting to think that the perspectives an academic shares in media interviews might have a negative affect her/his academic position. Without knowing more about this respondent’s situation, it is hard to provide more of an assessment. Though one could argue that offering media content that is empirically driven, rather than ideologically based, might help, some of the research agendas scholars pursue are perceived (fairly or not) to have certain ideological bents that make them controversial to certain constituencies. Our hope is that this respondent, and academics encountering similar circumstances, will find a way to engage in media work without the threat of such negative professional consequences. Finally, and while we spend more time delving into the specifics of media presentation with a specific focus on television news in Chapters 7 and 8, one of our respondents volunteered some insight on what s/he does in making contributions across all media platforms (Fig. 4.1). I usually have three points I want to make (depending on the context of the media interaction), after I talk with the interviewer I am able to focus those points to engage more directly with the story being told by the media outlet. I am brief; I am more likely to reference findings and disciplinary knowledge than authors or particular studies. But again, this depends on the context. Talk radio there is more time, live tv often more time, short interviews, no time. I think about audience, purpose, and my goals in the interview in making these decisions.

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Fig. 4.1 Chapter summary

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What Is the “Take-Away”? Overall, those responding to our survey, while sensitive to the requirements of the media setting, generally view themselves as research-based public intellectuals as opposed to traditional mass media political pundits. A clear majority (65 percent) felt it was best to avoid writing or talking about subjects outside of their expertise. Multiple respondents said they viewed their media work as similar to teaching undergraduates. Overall, respondents emphasized the importance of academics sharing their knowledge with the media to provide a nonemotional and evidenceinformed view of political issues. Indeed, successfully interacting with the media requires preparation beyond an expertise in the subject of discussion. But media interaction also requires skills that many respondents readily indicate they lack. We pick up on this thread in later chapters.

Reference Nimmo, Dan D., and James E. Combs. 1992. The political pundits. New York: Praeger.

CHAPTER 5

The Public’s Views of Professor Punditry

Chapter 3 showed that there is a need for academics to contribute more frequently to media coverage of politics. In most cases, academics’ work in media will serve a pundit-type function, although this is not meant in any negative sense. Remember that a core purpose of our book is to resurrect the notion of what a media pundit can (or at least should) be, especially when these pundits have academic backgrounds. Generally, academics will function as sources (whether they embrace the pundit label or not), not reporters (although a few might aspire to the kind of role that Professor Harris-Perry had in hosting her own weekly political show on MSNBC). Scholars have spent considerable effort understanding the role of sources in news production, with some arguing that news sources tend to skew toward politically elite and powerful voices (Entman 2004; Bennett et al. 2007; Hayes and Guardino 2010). The result is that news framing takes on the views and preferences of the powerful. Others counter this perspective by arguing that elites compete as much as they cooperate, making it less likely that only elite perspectives are represented in news

With Jeffrey Layne Blevins and Kevin Swift

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. R. Calfano et al., The American Professor Pundit, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70877-1_5

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coverage, or, more precisely, that a consistent elite perspective features in the news. Then there is also the question of whether sources that were entrepreneurial in seeking out media to advance their preferred story frames should be penalized for their initiative. When it comes to political news specifically, the decisions made in source use and story frames are often not the direct result of what “the media” want to feature. Instead, media follow narratives advanced by political parties, officeholders, candidates, and their surrogates. But scholars have found at least some media use for nonpolitical actors, including academics, “neutral” pundits, and researchers. While this is good news (pardon the pun), the difficulty, as Cross (2010) found in her content analysis of political media coverage, is that the academic or “neutral” pundits were overwhelming used to talk about campaign issues, and hardly ever about policy choices confronting voters. Though talking about campaign strategies and the horserace can be worthwhile, the tenor of the advice given by news managers and onair interviewers in Chapter 3 suggests that when these voices are used in media, their expertise should be focused on topics of greater substance and public impact. Of course, a recurring theme in this book is that academics who offer their expertise to media organizations should keep an eye out for ways they might effectively contribute to media political coverage, including and especially on television. Though certainly not the only way academics can feature in media, the convergence of media technologies toward video-oriented content—even on legacy newspaper websites—suggests the days of academics offering their perspectives in their pajamas via textbased communication are numbered. Obviously, the pajamas comment is an intentional exaggeration, albeit one that is probably true for many of us at least some of the time. What one wears while working is not an indicator of the thought put into the content offered, and academics certainly have a variety of roles to fulfill in their professional lives that requires flexibility. This is why extending one’s work to include public communication of expertise, research findings, and general perspective on politics may be a step steeped in trepidation. The playing field has shifted a bit in recent years, however. How academics engage in what Peters et al. (2014: 749) call the “public communication of science 2.0” can (and often does) include the selfpromotion of research and commentary through social media and blog— two platforms that give academics much more control of the content they produce in outreach to nontechnical audiences (Blanchard 2011). This

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does not necessarily mean that the public learns much from these formats, however, especially when discussion turn into “nasty” exchanges in the reader comments section (see Anderson et al. 2013). But these avenues for talking about one’s political insights likely to only grow in frequency given both the lack of editorial hurdles academics have in using them and the ability to have direct public contact (even if things sometimes turn tense in social media discussions).

Voice of Authority and Public Service For many who step into the Professor Pundit role, offering expertise via social media and related digital platforms can be considered a public service (whatever credit one gets from their institution notwithstanding). This work is the culminating stage of Cloitre and Shinn’s (1985) science communication process in which specialty peer-reviewed papers make their way to increasingly broad scholarly circles (and then into textbooks) before being popularized by the general public. Scholarly punditry through social media and blogs may circumvent this progression to some extent, but the idea that scientific knowledge (and we certainly include political and social scientific knowledge in this consideration) should be popularized in real time for public value remains ingrained in the ethos of science’s value as a public good (Batts et al. 2008). This focus on bringing scientific expertise and perspectives to the public takes on a combination of missionary zeal and a sense of public responsibility in service to one’s community (be it geographically proximate or broadly scattered via digital connections). This is best seen in the following example of Professor Punditry offered by Campbellsville University Political Science professor Shawn Williams. Professor Williams opined to us about how he views his role in community engagement and education through regularly (i.e., at least daily) Facebook posts about political news and issues. Though he does not tend to engage with videooriented platforms, Williams represents the kind of Professor Punditry that many who work at smaller, private, and liberal arts colleges can easily engage in (in either their pajamas or full business attire!).

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Williams’ main reason for engaging in punditry has a lot to do with how he views the work and life dynamics confronting most of his neighbors. Most spend their time rightly concerned with themselves and their families. So much of their energies are focused on their day-to-day lives that they pay limited attention to the broad images being painted across the historical landscapes in which they live. The average citizens’ view of politics is, therefore, mostly based on personal impact. People rarely fully consider the long-term consequences of a governments’ choices on the health of the community or the lives of others. Williams then explains what he sees as his responsibility as an academic, particularly as it regards engagement in actions related to punditry. But being an academic is different. Society has invested resources into academics so that they have the training and the luxury of the time to evaluate, contextualize, and communicate a view of living history. This investment places on the academic the responsibility to be a piece of the intellectual conscience of their community in much the same way clergy often serve as its moral conscience. We are obliged, to take the time necessary to engage others beyond what we do in the classroom both because we are personally impacted by how our communities function and as a way of providing a return on that social investment. We should also be willing to engage in those communities where they are. Traditionally this could involve hosting campus or community events or giving quotes to the newspaper. Increasingly, however, this involves direct engagement through social media.

But remember: punditry according to our definition is not simply offering conventional wisdom for public consideration. As Williams underscores about his own regular content posts on Facebook, the goal is to introduce scientifically based insights and objectivity into public discussions that are often characterized by partisanship and polarization. One way academics can serve as the intellectual conscience of their community is by helping to shape and direct the lens through which we see the world. This involves drawing attention to specific issues or events before their importance breaks into the lives of the average citizen. It also means helping to connect the dots so our community understands the causeand-effect relationships between the choices we make and the futures we create. In both of these roles, academics should do their best to remain

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as objective as possible while being honest about their own biases and preferences.

To be sure, not every example of Professor Punditry need be a matter of offering the latest research-driven insight up for public consumption. Sometimes, it is well enough to make a useful historical reference or simply an appeal for people to look more deeply into claims made by a party or candidate. But Williams also sees a broader outcome from the engagement as a Professor Pundit—inspiring citizens in their roles in a democracy. But from time to time, academics have an even greater responsibility. Much of our training, indeed much of our academic literature, focuses on when and how systems change both for good or for ill. We spend months if not years of our lives obsessing over when and how systems break down or trying to understand those rare moments when social and political progress can become possible. It is in those moments when academics need to be more than simply the framers of the debate. Academics should try to help mobilize and motive our fellow citizenry. We must, in short, become persuasive. And given the tools available to us, among the most effective ways an academic can persuade is by calling upon the research that we have personally conducted or that has been provided to us through the vetting process of our academic community. It is through our work, and the work of others, that we can take on the mantle of one of the most effective tools of debate: The Voice of Authority.

Williams makes several useful insights, not the least of which is to offer up different models of Professor Punditry, especially in the sense of referencing academic research. This is not always necessary, however, but grounding one’s expertise in what the literature shows concerning an issue or event goes far to distinguish the punditry that academics offer from that of political consultants, politicians, and activists of varying sorts. To some extent, the decision to infuse one’s media contributions with references to the academic literature may be easier to make (and execute) through the kind of offerings that Professor Williams provides. But what about the wider world of media punditry and its emphasis on television and other video-based content? Professor Punditry of this type is, for the reasons discussed in previous chapters, harder to pull off. Gripsrud (1999), in his evaluation of the pressures and expectations associated with scholars and the televised media, summed up well the cross-pressures of

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this form of Professor Punditry. For example, there are built-in tensions between the academic and mass media fields that are generally not at issue on social and digital media platforms: Relations between academia and the dominant mass media—newspapers, radio, and television—are normally considered problematic. … Journalistic media will tend to work within constraints and pressures related to time and space … which are alien to normal academic research… . large circulation newspapers, broadcast television and radio tend to strive for the widest possible audience reach, while publications of academic research will normally be addressing quite narrowly defined, more or less highly qualified, specialist audiences (39).

The punditry platform that Facebook presents Professor Williams is insulated from these journalistic pressures, as Williams is his own content creator. But what he sacrifices with this approach alone is the breadth of public reach. … it is not surprising that academics who often appear on television, and, more generally, those who are frequently interviewed or otherwise referred to even in newspapers, may risk condemnation from their peers… . On the other hand, academics will have to admit that television is … the absolutely central medium of communication in today’s world. It is the central stage in the public sphere(s) of modern societies. Consequently, any academic who for some reason feels obliged to communicate, or is simply interested in communicating, knowledge or perspectives to a wider audience will have to consider some form of participation in television (Gripsrud 1999, 42).

Again, the growing popularity of video as part of legacy media’s digital footprint makes appearing on an actual tv station or network less necessary than when Gripsrud wrote his essay, but television’s continued popularity in reaching the broadest possible audience means that Professor Pundits will need to strongly consider the video medium as an outlet. And that means, unlike for the kind of punditry Professor Williams engages in, a public evaluation of the pundit as a substantive authority and, for lack of a better term, a performer. Returning to Gripsrud (43): One cannot simply count on the permission to use television for one’s own purposes … Rather, one can expect to be used for someone else’s purposes—those of tv journalists, producers, programmers, and (other) executives… . Consequently, scholars or other intellectuals who appear on

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television to talk about or present various more or less scholarly issues will necessarily be subjected to the kinds of evaluations of screen ‘personalities’ … They will be characterized as more or less sympathetic, more or less credible, more or less interesting, etc.… .

But what makes perhaps the most compelling case for bringing academic punditry to the broader journalistic world (including, but not only, television), is that Gripsrud essentially ends up in the same place as Professor Williams in terms of why academic contributions to media are crucial: Our task is simply—to the best of our ability … contribute to wellinformed democratic decisions. A wide range of media forums must be used for this purpose, from the classroom to the scholarly article to the op-ed piece to the newspaper interview and television appearance. Television is probably the most difficult of all media to handle meaningfully, and there is no reason why all scholars or other intellectuals should always feel obliged to participate there (51).

Indeed, television (and video-based) media are the most difficult to handle, which is why they get so much attention in our book’s practical advice chapters. What we do for the remainder of this chapter, however, is to pick up on the types of punditry that Professor Williams varies between in his Facebook posts. Recall that Williams sometimes offers commentary on contemporary political topics that is more in keeping with what we could call a “traditional pundit” as the kind of general media observer or journalist might provide in offering analysis. This is in contrast to the Professor Pundit approach, which incorporates at least some mention of academic or research-oriented insights. Generally, we think these are the most commonly available approaches for academics to share their expertise through media contributions. Of course, there may be others, including combinations of these pundit styles or even a more technical approach. Technical blogs, podcasts, and even certain analyses featured in forums like The Monkey Cage would apply here. What we do not know, of course, is how audiences perceive these pundit offerings. To shed some light on this question, we focus now on how the punditry approaches might be featured in a news frame that appears within increasing regularity in political coverage: an appeal to “common ground.” Other things equal, academic pundits are inherently better positioned to claim a middle ground between inherently partisan voices in political

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coverage. Given this, is journalistic and academic credibility enhanced when professors act as pundits? The question has practical implications given that media organizations and journalists may build trust in their reporting by using descriptors of their work to appeal to audience sensibilities. These cues tell audiences how they should perceive either a journalist or the reportage presented. Focusing on “common ground” news themes in a polarized political time makes for a useful reminder that there are certain areas of agreement that Americans can at least acknowledge. And though much of the political coverage, especially in election years, focuses on inherent conflict between factions, an obvious use of academics as pundits in driving political coverage toward more value-added material for the audience is to frame political news from the standpoint of common policy impacts. These impacts are a natural segue into discussing “common ground.” Another useful theme that offers a sense of commonality is the discussion of citizens exercising constitutional rights of some kind (e.g., peacefully assembling to protest). Both of these themes automatically focus coverage away from the “inside baseball” approach to covering politics that is heavy on the Machiavellian speculation about electoral strategy and light on applicability to actual voters and their daily struggles. Of course, academics might be invited to contribute to this horserace coverage, but this is not usually the best showcase for academic punditry. Use of these alternative themes or contexts in providing political coverage is not mere window dressing. American journalism faces substantial threats. The largely private-sector enterprise of gathering and reporting news in an ever-democratized media environment—where audiences may dismiss facts based on confirmation bias and related tendencies. This puts legitimate, ethically grounded journalism in a race to shore up public trust. Public-facing descriptors of journalists and their story approaches provide media organizations with new options to make reporting more attractive, while increasing audience trust in the process. Part of the way media organizations do this is through the terms they use to describe the journalistic enterprise. Another way to do this is to feature academic punditry to add value to the political information presented. Changes in the public description of reporting and journalism reflect the evolving nature of managing how society views the profession (see Aldridge and Evetts 2003; Birkner 2016). Among other uses, the descriptions journalists adopt function as cues—intentionally signaling to audiences the impressions that the journalist wants the audience to accept

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about their work. The types of experts featured in news programming are also an essential signal to audiences. That said, and while professors might be better positioned to claim a more neutral space within politically oriented media, there are sharp partisan divides about how the public perceives academics. For example, Pew Research Center studies show that Republicans have an increasingly negative view of the impact that higher education has on the direction of the country (see Parker 2019; Brown 2018; Fingerhut 2017). Of primary concern for Republicans is the perception that professors bring their (generally liberal) politics into the classroom (Jaschik 2018). And public perceptions about journalists and their work matters as much now as it ever has—a reality the COVID-19 pandemic has made more vivid. Unrelentingly, alternative news sources, many of which lay no claim to following journalistic principles or ethics, criticize traditional media outlets for misleading audiences (Jamieson and Capella 2008), with the criticism often falling along with partisan lines (Lee 2005; Hansen and Kim 2011). Perhaps as a result, the public appears resistant to corrections of erroneous information, preferring instead to cling to the incorrect reporting or perspectives as initially presented (see Nyhan and Reifler 2010). This suggests that journalists cannot be passive in allowing outside entities to define their work. In response, media outlets and journalists have gravitated to terms like “common ground,” likely intending to garner audience confidence in the process. Thus trust and confidence are perhaps the most basic of conditions that journalists need to be credible in doing their job of informing the public (see Hovland et al. 1953; Tsfati and Cappella 2003; Engelke et al. 2019).

Punditry and Managing Public Impressions We said earlier that the terms journalists use to describe activity in their stories, and the types of people they interview to provide perspectives for audiences function as cues for the audience. This is not entirely unlike similar signals that political, economic, and social leaders send (Popkin 1991; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Zaller 1992; Nelson et al. 1997). Much of this cue-giver reality is based on the notion that the public, when

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deciding whether to trust a reporter, story, and/or news outlet, will evaluate several elements about the person or entity offering the information (Perloff 2003). The nature of these cues is not simply about the content that news media report, although much of the literature focuses on said content (see Perse and Lambe 2017), and academic pundits contribute to it. Instead, the labels that reporters use are descriptors for the quality of their coverage and/or role as a fact finder. These labels can signal intention and characteristics to audiences. That said, we use the term “cue” here to simply mean a signal in how journalists describe themselves and their work to audiences. Our theoretical expectation for the motive journalists and media outlets employ to cue audiences comes from the impression management concept in psychology (Goffman 1959; Schneider 1969). The goal of impression management is currying favorable responses from targeted audiences, which incentivizes the signaling of one’s roles, attitudes, beliefs, and public attributes through a subcategory called impression construction (Leary and Schlenker 1981; Tedeschi 1981). There are few cases where scholars have applied an impression management framework to understanding cue labels that journalists and media organizations use. None involved reaction from American audiences leveraging randomized exposure to cue stimuli (but see Carah and Louw 2012 for a qualitative analysis example). Given the literature’s general lack of attention to impression management theory as a framework to understand journalist cues, we see the utility in this perspective to assess terms like “common ground” on audience impressions, as well as the different ways that academics might engage in punditry and its effect on the same. From the perspective of journalist intent, using the “common ground” cue in a story as an impression management attempt may help counter long-standing assumptions about biased political reporting. This might also explain why the cue has caught on among media outlets. A current example is the joint Knight Foundation/USA Today project “hidden common ground.” Meanwhile, Murray and Stroud (2018) documented several journalistic efforts to build tolerance across an array of issues often used to drive political wedges. Common to these programs is the effort to bring people of diverse views together in a mediated and face-toface conversation intended to build empathy through contact (see Allport 1979).

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These efforts might be worthwhile for professional reasons, but a larger theoretical and practical issue for journalists and news organizations concerns audience perception of the cue itself. Impression management is more than merely the desire to look good to audiences. How audiences and other targeted publics perceive efforts to manage one’s professional image is even more critical (Kramer and Winter 2008). Furthermore, any discussion about modern journalistic cues leads back to the prevailing political climate in which news collection and reporting occurs. Even on issues that are not inherently political, such as the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, differences of opinion tend to map onto larger ideological and partisan divides. The same may be true for even local policy issues once considered distinct from national-level partisanship. Of course, reporting within a partisan framework is not new for some journalists and media organizations. Prime-time cable news opinion programming and the social media feeds of partisan political pundits present the clearest examples of selective exposure and related psychological phenomena. It is against this hyper-partisan backdrop of national media that journalists in local media markets often work to differentiate their reporting as unaffiliated with larger partisan fights. These efforts can build on the public’s perception of local news as less partisan-oriented— a view that may explain why local news has substantially higher public trust than national media outlets (see Guess et al. 2018). Nevertheless, partisan reflexes in audience response are not the only challenge journalists face. Local television, for example, receives criticism for lacking in serious, analytical content (Dominick et al. 1975; Wulfemeyer 1982; Briller 1993). Additionally, with the increasing cuts and salary reductions facing newspapers, the pursuit of in-depth, analytical reporting by these organizations is likewise threatened (see Besley and Chris Roberts 2010). These macro trends might diminish audience willingness to believe local news reports about substantive topics (Austin and Dong 1994; Graber 1994). And this says nothing about the increasing influence of national ownership consolidation of local media outlets affecting news coverage (see Martin and McCrain 2019). Aside from the “common ground” theme, focus on citizens exercising their rights under the Constitution might also run into some challenges in terms of journalistic coverage, especially if those rights involve actions seen as threatening to the life and property of other groups. Both protesting and gun use, under the First and Second Amendments

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respectively, fall into this category. That said, dealing with controversy in political coverage is not necessarily the same as emphasizing conflict for dramatic effect. The United States has an adversarial political system by design, making sweeping change difficult on matters of high stakes. Acknowledging this reality as a way to explain to audiences why they need to know about a topic, figure, or event—perhaps by using the expertise of an academic pundit in the process—is a good thing. It may even help to garner audience attention, which is not a problem so long as value is provided from the information about the issues at hand. Still, widespread polarization, and the fragmentation of American political media, may make a focus on constitutional rights less useful as a method to drive the kind of thoughtful political coverage that contrasts with the partisan rancor available on cable news. At the same time, there is reason to suspect that the “common ground” cue is not on equal footing in terms of potential effects on audience trust, as journalists cueing “common ground” (particularly in political stories) may encounter resistance from a highly polarized public (see Abramowitz and Saunders 2008). But, these potential drawbacks aside, focusing on “common ground” in reporting provides an opportunity for audiences to reconcile with opponents, build consensus, and promote continued dialogue between sides (Botes 1996; Ozguness and Terzis 2000). US political polarization is arguably as high as it has been since the Civil War, and with media content driving much of this partisanship (Arceneaux and Johnson 2013). Irrespective of what set the intensity of American polarization in motion (see Fiorina et al. 2004; Abramowitz 2010), media outlets both supply and react to what conventional wisdom suggests drive ratings and revenue. The view may be that conflict, tension, and fear are more useful than sober analysis and limited speculation in the absence of verifiable facts (Maguire et al. 2002; Dahman 2018; Kerbel 2018). Some of this is the artifact of a political system where parties become proxies for group identities and offer only two dominant options, taking on something akin to a sports contest where conciliation with the opposition is not part of the “game” (Han and Calfano 2018). Adding to this dynamic are electoral and campaign finance laws that advantage a narrow interest set at the expense of the broader public good (Mann and Ornstein 2012). However, signaling that one’s reporting focuses on “common ground” may effectively differentiate it from partisan political coverage more generally. Where the cue has the desired effect is another question.

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To be sure, just as a “constitutional rights” focus is not always appropriate, stories about finding “common ground” consensus are not always appropriate in politics or in media coverage of political events. This may be particularly true for minorities suffering prolonged discrimination and where “common ground” is tantamount to maintaining a disadvantaging status quo (see Levin 1996). That said, on a host of other issues, a broader sense of perspective and goal orientation among the public is often considered overdue (see Dionne 2012). It is telling that one of the reforms Gutmann and Thompson (2012) see as necessary for American politics to overcome its polarized paralysis is for media to cover politics more substantively and without highlighting conflicts. Whether one accepts that it is feasible to make political coverage appealing to the public if stripped of its conflictual narrative, the option of accentuating something other than a horse race or high stakes legislative battle in favor of “common ground” or in the legitimate exercise of constitutional rights gives journalists a different framework to help manage public impressions of their work. And this is where the use of academics as pundits may be extremely helpful in talking about issues important to people across partisan boundaries. To assess the possible effects from these frames and the presence of academic pundits, we report findings from two national survey experiments that randomly expose subjects to different news stories featuring alternate ways of framing political stories—“common ground” and “constitutional rights.” These are two separate experiments (though they share the same list of outcome measures, which is why we report their effects side-by-side). Both experiments feature three different types of news stories relating to framing. The “common ground” experiment focuses on a news story about members of different racial groups who feel economically threatened coming together to talk about their experiences in a small group setting. The “constitutional rights” experiment includes news story elements talking about protestors marching against recent episodes of police violence. The three randomly determined groups feature similar elements. The control group in both experiments includes still pictures and a script for a television news story focused on providing audiences an overview of what occurred in each setting, with no inclusion of a pundit. The first treatment group, based on the example Professor Williams set, is what we call the Traditional Pundit. This version of punditry features a professor included as a guest interview following the main story. However, and rather than referencing the professor’s academic expertise

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and/or allude to social science research, the Traditional Pundit offers generic analysis that, while factually correct, does not show the extent to which academics can leverage their expertise in media contributions. In other words, the Traditional Pundit performs the role of offering conventional wisdom about the story’s content, but this is content that just about any pundit could provide—it is not specific to an academic’s unique knowledge. By contrast, the Professor Pundit treatment is a modeling of the kind of expertise sharing we consider a good use of academics in media contributions, and a theme we found in reviewing the academic survey response data from the previous chapter. Recall there that several of the academic respondents said they engaged with media in order to share insights from their research (or, at least prefer to reference research when discussing current political events with media). In these Professor Pundit treatments, the professor references findings from the academic literature about the importance of contact with those of different backgrounds (for “common ground”) and the effects of protesting on informing the public about what minority groups think (“constitutional rights”).

Professor Pundits in Randomized Experiments Though we cannot make direct comparisons in effects between the two experiments, we report these effects according to the common outcome measures we evaluate below. Our analysis is from an online-based experiment featuring nationally representative subject pools maintained by the sampling firm Lucid. The two experiments, fielded in August 2020, randomly assigned subjects to different representations of punditry—what we refer to as the Traditional Pundit or the Professor Pundit style. In experiment one, subjects were assigned to portions of a television news story featuring a group of residents discussing various issues and with the term “common ground” included three times in the story script. Three versions of this “common ground” story were randomly assigned to subjects: 288 received the story including comments in the “traditional pundit” style, while 273 received the story version featuring the “professor pundit” approach (the 247 subjects assigned to the control condition received the “common ground” story with no pundit featured).

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Meanwhile, in the “constitutional rights” experiment, which included a news script focused on the-then recent protests related to George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, 288 subjects received a story version featuring the “traditional pundit” style, 278 received the “professor pundit” approach (and 274 received the control condition story that did not include any pundit commentary). None of the story versions in either experiment featured mention of real-world politicians or political parties. We include the text from the stories in both experiments below. “COMMON GROUND” TREATMENTS “Control” Story (no punditry) [JESSICA AT ANCHOR DESK] A COMING TOGETHER TO TALK THROUGH WHAT DIVIDES US. GOOD EVENING AND WELCOME TO ACTION NEWS, I’M JESSICA SMITH. LET’S GO LIVE TO JACK PARKER IN RALEIGH. JACK… [LIVE VIDEO OF JACK ON SCENE] THAT’S RIGHT JESSICA. THIS WAS A GROUP OF AROUND 200 PEOPLE BROUGHT INVITED TO THE EVENT CALLED “BE CIVIL, BE HEARD.” PARTICIPANTS APPLIED TO TAKE PART IN DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THEIR POLITICAL DIFFERENCES AS A WAY TO LEARN ABOUT THOSE WITH DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS, ALL IN AN ATTEMPT TO FIND SOME COMMON GROUND. [SOUNDBITE] “THIS IS A GATHERING OF FOLKS FROM AROUND THE REGION. IT’S SO GREAT TO SEE SUCH A DIVERSE GROUP COMING TOGETHER PEACFULLY TO TALK THROUGH THE CHALLENGES WE FACE.” JAY DAVIS, “BE CIVIL, BE HEARD” ORGANIZER. [JACK NARRATES OVER VIDEO] THIS IS THE THIRD SUCH MEETING IN TWO WEEKS LED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS FROM AROUND THE REGION. [SOUNDBITE] “IF YOU WANT TO GET THE CHANCE TO TRY AND EXPAND SOMEONE’S VIEW OF HOW THINGS ARE AS YOU SEE IT, YOU HAVE TO FIRST SHOW THEM THE RESPECT OF LISTENING TO THEIR SIDE AND UNDERSTANDING WHERE EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE DIFFERENT, BOTH OF YOU STILL HAVE THINGS

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THAT ARE SIMILAR TO BUILD ON.” SAM SMITH, CHURCH LEADER [LIVE VIDEO OF JACK] BUT THE EVENTS, WHICH SEVERAL LOCAL COMMUNITY NON-PROFITS HAVE SPONSORED, WERE CRITICIZED BY POLITICAL GROUPS FOR WHAT SOME CRITICS SEE AS AN ATTEMPT TO SHAME PEOPLE WITH SPECIFIC VIEWS ON SOME OF THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES, FROM BEING ABLE TO SPEAK OUT. [VIDEO AND SOUND AND SIGNS OF COUNTERPROTESTERS] “CIVIL IS A SHAM” “YOU MEAN HERD, NOT HEARD!” [SOUNDBITE] “WE’RE SICK AND TIRED OF THESE RIDICULOUS ATTEMPTS TO TELL US WHAT WE SHOULD THINK AND BELIEVE. EVERY TIME YOU HAVE ONE OF THESE EVENTS, IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT REPROGRAMMING VIEWS THAT SOME FIND UNCOMFORTABLE TO DEAL WITH.” JESSICA SMITH COUNTER-PROTESTER [LIVE VIDEO OF JACK] THE CRITICS MIGHT HAVE BEEN SMALL IN NUMBER, BUT THEY WERE CERTAINLY VOCAL ABOUT THEIR DISLIKE FOR THE ATTEMPT TO FIND COMMON GROUND. BUT “BE CIVIL, BE HEARD” ORGANIZERS SAY IT COULDN’T DAMPEN THE POSITIVE MOOD AND WHAT THEY SEE AS PROGRESS IN PEOPLE UNDERSTANDING HOW THE OTHER SIDE SEES THINGS. AS THIS SITUATION DEVELOPS, WE’LL BE SURE TO BRING YOU EQUAL COVERAGE OF BOTH SIDES. JESSICA, BACK TO YOU. [JESSICA AT ANCHOR DESK] THANK YOU, JACK. TRADITIONAL PUNDIT TREATMENT (added after “Thank you, Jack” in control story) AND WE’RE HERE LIVE IN THE STUDIO WITH PROFESSOR SARAH WILLIAMS, A POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR AT WALTON STATE UNIVERSITY. PROFESSOR, HOW DOES THIS “BE CIVIL, BE HEARD” EVENT COMPARE TO OTHERS WE HAVE SEEN RECENTLY?

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[PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] JESSICA, THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT FINDING COMMON GROUND IS ALL ABOUT. PEOPLE COMING TOGETHER TO TALK THROUGH THEIR DIFFERENCES AND FIND THINGS THEY CAN ALL AGREE ON. THESE PARTICIPANTS SHOULD BE COMMENDED. IN SOME CASES WE’VE SEEN CRITICS OF THESE EFFORTS, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN IN A SMALL NUMBER OF CASES. [JESSICA] HOW MUCH EFFECT DO THESE CRITICS HAVE IN OPPOSING FORUMS LIKE BE CIVIL, BE HEARD? [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT. IN SOME COUNTRIES, COMING TOGETHER TO TALK ABOUT POLITICAL DIFFERENCE IS DANGEROUS, OR PEOPLE CAN JUST TUNE OUT THE SIDE THEY DON’T LIKE. SO EVEN JUST MAKING ONE’S VOICE HEARD TO BRING A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE TO SOMEONE’S THINKING CAN REALLY HAVE AN IMPACT ON OUR POLITICAL CONVERSATIONS AND THE POLICIES THAT FOLLOW. [JESSICA] THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE PROFESSOR. WE APPRECIATE IT. [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] THANK YOU, JESSICA. PROFESSOR PUNDIT TREATMENT (added after “Thank you, Jack” in control story) AND WE’RE HERE LIVE IN THE STUDIO WITH PROFESSOR SARAH WILLIAMS, A POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR AT WALTON STATE UNIVERSITY. PROFESSOR, HOW DOES THIS “BE CIVIL, BE HEARD” EVENT COMPARE TO OTHERS WE HAVE SEEN RECENTLY? [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] JESSICA, THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT FINDING COMMON GROUND IS ALL ABOUT. PEOPLE COMING TOGETHER TO TALK THROUGH THEIR DIFFERENCES AND FIND THINGS THEY CAN ALL AGREE ON. THESE PARTICIPANTS SHOULD BE COMMENDED. IN SOME CASES WE’VE SEEN CRITICS OF THESE EFFORTS, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN IN A SMALL NUMBER OF CASES. [JESSICA] HOW MUCH EFFECT DO THESE CRITICS HAVE IN OPPOSING FORUMS LIKE BE CIVIL, BE HEARD?

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[PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT. ACADEMIC RESEARCH SHOWS THAT PEOPLE COMING TOGETHER—INCREASING THEIR CONTACT—TO TALK ABOUT POLITICAL DIFFERENCE CAN CHANGE VIEWS, EVEN AS PEOPLE CAN ALSO JUST TUNE OUT THE SIDE THEY DON’T LIKE. BUT RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT EVEN JUST MAKING ONE’S VOICE HEARD TO BRING A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE TO SOMEONE’S THINKING CAN REALLY HAVE AN IMPACT ON OUR POLITICAL CONVERSATIONS AND THE POLICIES THAT FOLLOW. [JESSICA] THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE PROFESSOR. WE APPRECIATE IT. “CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS” TREATMENTS “Control” Story (no punditry) [JESSICA AT ANCHOR DESK] A MARCH IN SUPPORT OF BLACK LIVES MATTER ENDED IN TWO ARRESTS TODAY IN RALEIGH. GOOD EVENING AND WELCOME TO ACTION NEWS, I’M JESSICA SMITH. LET’S GO LIVE TO JACK PARKER IN RALEIGH. JACK… [LIVE VIDEO OF JACK ON SCENE] THAT’S RIGHT JESSICA. NEARLY THREE-THOUSAND PEOPLE MARCHED, CARRIED SIGNS AND SANG ON THE STREETS OF RALEIGH TODAY IN SUPPORT OF BLACK LIVES MATTER. [SOUNDBITE] “THIS IS A GATHERING OF FOLKS FROM AROUND THE REGION. MOSTLY FROM CHURCHES. IT’S SO GREAT TO SEE SUCH A DIVERSE CROWD MARCHING TOGETHER PEACFULLY FOR EQUALITY.” JAY DAVIS, MARCHER [JACK NARRATES OVER VIDEO] THIS IS THE THIRD MARCH IN TWO WEEKS LED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS FROM AROUND THE REGION WITH A SLOGAN OF “PEACE, LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.” [SOUNDBITE] “WE’RE NOT OUT HERE TRYING TO CAUSE TROUBLE OR DAMAGING PROPERTY. WE’RE ALL ABOUT BEING PEACEFUL AND MAKING OUR VOICES HEARD IN THE STYLE AND

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MEMORY OF THE REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING. ALL ARE WELCOME.” SAM SMITH, CHURCH LEADER [LIVE VIDEO OF JACK] WHILE ALMOST THREE-THOUSAND PEOPLE MARCHED PEACEFULLY TODAY, A SMALLER GROUP OF COUNTERPROTESTERS FOLLOWED THE GROUP THROUGH THE STREETS CARRYING SIGNS LIKE THESE AND SHOUTING EXPLICATIVES AT THE MARCHERS. [VIDEO AND SOUND OF COUNTER-PROTESTERS] “GO HOME TROUBLE MAKERS. ALL LIVES MATTER…ETC.” [SOUNDBITE] “WE’RE SICK AND TIRED OF THESE RIDICULOUS PROTESTERS, BURNING AND LOOTING OVER COPS DOING WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO…AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO BE SILENCED.” JESSICA SMITH COUNTER-PROTESTER [LIVE VIDEO OF JACK] THE COUNTER-PROTESTERS MIGHT HAVE BEEN SMALL IN NUMBER, BUT THEY WERE CERTAINLY VOCAL ABOUT THEIR DISLIKE FOR THOSE MARCHING. BUT THE MARCHERS SAY IT COULDN’T DAMPEN THE POSITIVE MOOD. AS THIS SITUATION DEVELOPS, WE’LL BE SURE TO BRING YOU EQUAL COVERAGE OF BOTH SIDES. JESSICA, BACK TO YOU. [JESSICA AT ANCHOR DESK] THANK YOU, JACK. TRADITIONAL PUNDIT TREATMENT (added after “Thank you, Jack” in control story) AND WE’RE HERE LIVE IN THE STUDIO WITH PROFESSOR SARAH WILLIAMS, A POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL. PROFESSOR, HOW DOES THIS MARCH COMPARE TO OTHER MARCHES WE HAVE SEEN RECENTLY? [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] JESSICA, THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS ALL ABOUT. PEACEFUL PROTESTERS AND NO VIOLENCE. THE MARCHERS SHOULD BE COMMENDED. IN SOME CASES WE’VE SEEN VIOLENCE ASSOCIATED WITH THESE MARCHES, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN IN A SMALL NUMBER OF CASES.

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[JESSICA] HOW MUCH EFFECT DO PROTESTS HAVE IN CREATING THE KIND OF CHANGE PROTESTORS SEEM TO WANT? [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT. IN SOME OTHER COUNTRIES, NEITHER GROUP WOULD BE ALLOWED TO VOICE THEIR OPINIONS, SO EVEN JUST MAKING ONE’S VOICE HEARD CAN REALLY HAVE AN IMPACT ON OUR POLITICAL CONVERSATIONS AND THE POLICIES THAT FOLLOW. [JESSICA] THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE PROFESSOR. WE APPRECIATE IT. [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] THANK YOU, JESSICA. PROFESSOR PUNDIT TREATMENT (added after “Thank you, Jack” in control story) AND WE’RE HERE LIVE IN THE STUDIO WITH PROFESSOR SARAH WILLIAMS, A POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL. PROFESSOR, HOW DOES THIS MARCH COMPARE TO OTHER MARCHES WE HAVE SEEN RECENTLY? [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] JESSICA, THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS ALL ABOUT. PEACEFUL PROTESTERS AND NO VIOLENCE. THE MARCHERS SHOULD BE COMMENDED. IN SOME CASES WE’VE SEEN VIOLENCE ASSOCIATED WITH THESE MARCHES, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN IN A SMALL NUMBER OF CASES. [JESSICA] HOW MUCH EFFECT DO PROTESTS HAVE IN CREATING THE KIND OF CHANGE PROTESTORS SEEM TO WANT? [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] OUR ACADEMIC RESEARCH SHOWS THAT PROTESTING AFFECTS WHAT PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE ISSUES THE PROTESTORS BRING UP. SO, BASED ON THIS RESEARCH, WE REALLY THINK THERE’S A LOT OF IMPACT THESE PROTESTS CAN HAVE IN SHAPING PUBLIC OPINION AND POLITICAL ACTION.

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[JESSICA] THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE PROFESSOR. WE APPRECIATE IT. [PROFESSOR WILLIAMS] THANK YOU, JESSICA.

Upon logging into the survey experiment, respondents answered a series of demographic questions. After this, respondents received either of the two treatments or the control version of the survey-embedded story. Respondents then answered a battery of media impression questions taken from Pew, the General Social Survey, and the American National Election Study. These questions spanned a series of topics related to both the impression subjects have of media, but, just as importantly, how they perceive the academics some were exposed to as pundits in their assigned stories. We include these questions and their response scales below. Given these design choices, ours is less of a full-on media effects study, and more an evaluation of academic punditry when it is featured as part of these alternate news frames. As such, and in order to give our design greater statistical power, we did not include a pure control group (i.e., those randomly assigned not to receive any media story). This means that we are not comparing whether people not exposed to media stories about politics have a specific view of media and academics, but, rather, are only comparing how those exposed to these media (and academics, in the case of the treatments), perceive media and academics as pundits. Like any experiment, the design choices limit the breadth of contexts in which we can test for impacts on audiences, and we offer additional discussion of other possible directions for studies of this type in the future. In addition to the outcome questions for our analysis, party identity questions and a manipulation check rounded out the survey questions. As Table 5.1 shows, the demographic distribution of both subject pools closely tracks with US Census targets. Random assignment in both experiments was not correlated with respondent age, sex, race/ethnicity, or partisanship for either subject pool. There was no indication of nonrandom attrition based on respondent demographics, nor that the attrition was due to treatment condition exposure (the reported numbers in the following analysis are attrition adjusted) (Tables 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5).

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Table 5.1 Subject pool statistics Professor Pundit Treatment Traditional Pundit Treatment Control Female Black Latino Democrat Republican Median Age N

Common ground N (%)

Protesting N (%)

273 (34)

276 (33)

288 (36)

288 (34)

247 405 124 145 262 273 39 808

274 425 105 112 295 285 41 838

(34) (50) (15) (18) (32) (34)

(33) (51) (13) (13) (35) (34)

Table 5.2 Pundit “common ground” experiment effects on media confidence Frequent source Covariate models

Odds ratio/Robust SE

Americans’ source Odds ratio/Robust SE

Professor sis> Pundit Traditional Pundit Female African American Latino Age Democrat Republican Education TV News Use Index Cut 1 Cut 2 Wald Chi2 /Prob Log-Likelihood N

1.7/.29**

1.6/.26**

1.6/.26**

1.8/.30***

1.0/.17

.91/.15

1.3/.22

1.3/.22

.86/.12 1.1/.17 .93/.15 1.0/.05 .81/.14 1.3/.20 1.1/.07* 1.0/.06

1.3/.18 .89/.18 1.2/.20 .95/.05 .77/.13 .94/.16 1.0/.06 1.0/.06

1.1/.06 1.3/.26 1.1/.19 .95/.05 .83/.14 .96/.16 1.2/.07** 1.1/.06

.89/.12 1.1/.21 .92/.15 1.0/.05 .87/.15 1.1/.19 .99/.06 1.1/.06

.22/.49 1.0/.29** 28.4/.002 −829.3 808

.30/.33 1.1/.33** 19.1/.040 −801.6 808

.39/.31 .99/.31** 21.4/.000 −802.4 808

.40/.32 1.0/.32** 17.2/.070 −811.6 808

*=p