It's absurd that these news channel groups of people are viewed in the unreconstructed vacuum of "politically undecided". If Soledad approaches you and says
a) you're going to be on national TV,
b) we're going to live-track your response to every instant of the debate,
c) afterwards, you can tell us what you liked and didn't like,
how many people might be slightly INFLUENCED by how freaking empowering that is? And begin to find their way around the well-come-to-think-of-it-yes-maybe-I-am-undecided mindset? I don't mean they're dishonest or power-hungry, I mean they're human, and it feels really, really good to be "needed" by something as gigantic as CNN or Fox News.
I'm reminded of the woman after the second CNN debate who said that she was "more undecided than ever" after the debate. How is that possible? Might it be that because if you ARE decided, you don't get to come back?
It reminds me of colonial models of anthropology - but it's a hundred times more obvious. You don't just observe someone without them observing you back, and observing the moment that you have placed them in, and altering their behavior because of that.
Unless, like a political candidate or other experienced public actors, they're used to that attention and can find authenticity inside of it.
But for most of us, it's not that way. So many interviews I've done start with us arriving to find a spotless house and a dolled-up interviewee. For lots of people, when the cameras start rolling, it's their moment. And that's OK. But it's not OK when it lives as an a priori state of pure-politic personhood, as it does on these panels.
The BBC has a strategy with documentary filmmaking that is fascinating in this respect - they will often have their producers do audio interviews, in person, before coming back with a film crew. The producer records the interview on a regular small cassette recorder. When they return later, with lights, cameras, crews, the whole magillicutty, they just play clips from the audio interview, from the one-on-one moment, from before the whole thing seemed larger than life - and say please repeat what you told me when it was just the two of us.
TV changes us. Maybe the interet will change that eventually, but for now, when the lights go on, get out the grains of salt.
a) you're going to be on national TV,
b) we're going to live-track your response to every instant of the debate,
c) afterwards, you can tell us what you liked and didn't like,
how many people might be slightly INFLUENCED by how freaking empowering that is? And begin to find their way around the well-come-to-think-of-it-yes-maybe-I-am-undecided mindset? I don't mean they're dishonest or power-hungry, I mean they're human, and it feels really, really good to be "needed" by something as gigantic as CNN or Fox News.
I'm reminded of the woman after the second CNN debate who said that she was "more undecided than ever" after the debate. How is that possible? Might it be that because if you ARE decided, you don't get to come back?
It reminds me of colonial models of anthropology - but it's a hundred times more obvious. You don't just observe someone without them observing you back, and observing the moment that you have placed them in, and altering their behavior because of that.
Unless, like a political candidate or other experienced public actors, they're used to that attention and can find authenticity inside of it.
But for most of us, it's not that way. So many interviews I've done start with us arriving to find a spotless house and a dolled-up interviewee. For lots of people, when the cameras start rolling, it's their moment. And that's OK. But it's not OK when it lives as an a priori state of pure-politic personhood, as it does on these panels.
The BBC has a strategy with documentary filmmaking that is fascinating in this respect - they will often have their producers do audio interviews, in person, before coming back with a film crew. The producer records the interview on a regular small cassette recorder. When they return later, with lights, cameras, crews, the whole magillicutty, they just play clips from the audio interview, from the one-on-one moment, from before the whole thing seemed larger than life - and say please repeat what you told me when it was just the two of us.
TV changes us. Maybe the interet will change that eventually, but for now, when the lights go on, get out the grains of salt.
