On October 19 during the final
presidential debate of the campaign, Hell did not freeze over.
Moderator Chris
Wallace of Fox News, where climate denial plays nothing but home games, passed
on the final opportunity to ask Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about climate
change.
This presidential campaign has been a
catastrophe for American democracy and for American political journalism.
Amid the relentlessly tawdry campaign
news, most Americans haven't even noticed the absence of virtually any
high-level campaign discussion of environmental issues, let alone what many
have called the biggest challenge of the 21st century.
For now.
Journalism —and the memes of our day—
have failed us.
I don’t mean to condemn all journalists, or even all political journalists. This campaign has seen Pulitzer-worthy investigative work, notably by old-media giants like the New York Times and Washington Post, on both major party candidates and their respective problems with veracity and transparency.
But the horse-race coverage, driven by Twitter, bluster and clickbait, has predictably left important issues in the lurch.
Those who are interested in climate change, environment, and energy shouldn’t take it personally.
Those who are interested in climate change, environment, and energy shouldn’t take it personally.
Income equality, housing costs, guns, privacy, prisons, drugs, national security, food and agriculture, and just about everything overseas that’s not ISIS are in the same neglected boat.
For questions or feedback about this piece, contact Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.
The
presidential debates used to be the best opportunity to shed some light on all
these things. But as the debates have gone from substance to showbiz, it
doesn’t work that way anymore. Let’s look at why.
Debate decline
Aside from the “Town Hall” debates—where
carefully selected members of the public get to ask questions—you have to go
back to 1992 to find a non-TV journalist doing the interrogating at a
presidential debate.
That
was the last election year in which a panel of reporters posed questions to the
candidates. Perhaps print journalists don’t fare as well on TV, but it could
also be argued that TV journalists don’t always fare well with journalism.
Since then, every journalist’s debate
question has come from a network TV anchor or political correspondent.
That's
six election cycles, 18 presidential debates where every question came from a
well-compensated news celebrity based in New York or Washington.
They
conduct the debates under the auspices of a non-partisan commission that’s
currently led by former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf
and Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton’s former Press Secretary. If that’s not an
inside job, I don’t know what is.
I read every debate transcript back to
1960. Let’s take the October 28, 1980, debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald
Reagan: The moderator was from ABC, and the questioners were from US News &
World Report, the Oregonian, the Christian Science Monitor, and ABC.
The
questions were on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; defense spending,
politics in the Persian Gulf; inflation and unemployment; balancing the federal
budget; crime, urban blight and race relations; the Iranian hostage crisis;
terrorism; nuclear weapons; oil imports and OPEC; air pollution; Social
Security; Medicare; and women’s rights.
The transcript notes no interruptions or
petty feuds between the candidates. Ronald Reagan did not threaten to jail
Jimmy Carter if elected, nor did President Carter dwell on the topic of p****
grabbing.
What a snooze. But until this year’s
three presidential pie fights, it was the biggest presidential
debate audience in U.S. history. So the argument that American
viewers can’t handle substance when it’s offered to them doesn’t hold up.
For the record, the last, and one of
only two, climate change questions ever posed by a journalist at a presidential
debate was October 15, 2008. Bob Schieffer of CBS asked about "energy and climate
control."
Props
to Senator John McCain for gently correcting the moderator and realizing that
the question was not about commercial property storage facilities. Then
both he and Senator Barack Obama pretty much ducked the climate part of the
question and talked about reducing foreign oil imports.
This year’s second debate offered prime
evidence of how easily we’re distracted by bright, shiny objects:
What was the question again?
Audience member Ken Bone came closer to
anyone in asking a climate-related question in this year’s second debate: “What steps will your energy
policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining
environmentally friendly, and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant
workers?”
Clinton mentioned climate change and
clean energy in her response; Trump touted the heavily damaged concept of
“clean coal,” and promised a thousand years of coal mining—a prospect that even
many miners find to be hallucinatory.
The Internet blew up—not because an
energy question was asked, but because Citizen Bone, a walking, talking Russian
nesting doll in a bright red sweater—was so damned adorable.
Bone
appeared with CNN’s Carol Costello the
morning after. She asked about his red sweater, his Internet fame, his recent
weight gain, and the poise and body language of the candidates. There was no
mention of his bringing a substantive question to the party.
Same deal on Fox & Friends, where
Ken was declared to have “won over all of our hearts.” Bone tried gamely to
raise his energy concerns, but host Steve Doocy deftly steered the discussion
back to The Sweater.
NBC’s Today Show added
that Ken Bone’s red sweater had sold out overnight on Amazon.com, presaging an
outbreak of Ken Bone Halloween costumes.
Bone did a CNN encore with Anderson Cooper Monday
night. Since Cooper was one of the debate moderators, it might have been a good
opportunity to disclose that Ken Bone is employed by the Prairie State Energy
Campus in southern Illinois, a struggling “clean coal” project. But the clock
ran out before The Sweater discussion did. No time here for an energy chat, or
even standard journalistic full disclosure.
On Tuesday, ABC’s Good Morning America played
a clip from the previous night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live—all sweater, but they cut
out the part where Kimmel made a fleeting reference to energy.
Wait, what was the question again?
Pee tests, flag salutes, and draft dodging
Ephemeral, fatuous issues are surely
nothing new. In the 1980’s, candidates were pressured to submit urine samples
to confirm that they weren’t drug users.
In
1988, George H.W. Bush pounced on the hapless Michael Dukakis for a
clumsy-but-legally-correct stance on the Pledge of Allegiance.
And
in virtually every modern presidential race through 2008, military service—war
heroes, draft dodgers and swift boaters—loomed large. Those three are among
many issues that have vanished completely. But at least they shared the stage
with more substantive talk, instead of hogging the stage as they often do now.
The decision by news organizations—
particularly TV news—to flee from informing the public in favor of holding
their attention through fear or diversion isn’t the only reason that things
have gone downhill. But it’s a major reason.
Our collective attention span for
serious issues is so small it can no longer be seen by the naked eye. The way
the news is delivered, particularly on television, enables this.
When debates veer off into petty
conflict, and literally he-said/she-said combat, two entities benefit: network
ratings, and candidates who don’t bother to prepare for substantive questions.
Our nation is already paying. A few
decades from now, when the realities of climate change have hushed even the
loudest, densest deniers, we may look back on October 2016 as the month
political journalism died because we couldn’t bring ourselves to have a serious
national conversation on topics that affect our lives.
For questions or feedback about this piece, contact Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.