Prime Time by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Artwork by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

I’m old enough to remember when the Watergate hearings aired in May of 1973. The Senate had established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to uncover unlawful activities—including the Watergate break-in—during the 1972 presidential campaign. Of course, thanks to the incredible investigative reporting at the Washington Post, the public was at least somewhat aware of criminal activity during this election, but according to the Official US Senate Report, Committee Lead Counsel Samuel Dash coordinated a big media push that included extensive print media coverage as well as live TV broadcasts of the Watergate hearings.

I was in high school at the time and had a nebulous understanding of what has going on; my mother, however, was a Watergate junkie. She had devoured all the news stories and afterwards bought nearly every book published on the subject. It was compelling viewing. I remember watching John Dean testify about the White House involvement, implicating himself and the president with criminal activities. It was not a particularly exciting production; the medium headshots switched back and forth between Dean and whoever was doing the questioning.

Last Thursday, the House committee investigating the January 6^th Capitol riot convened its first public hearing. Like the Watergate hearings, this event was also broadcast on national television, but this being the 21^st century, the event was streamed on a number of online sites. Unlike the Watergate hearings, however, the first installment of the hearings was broadcast in prime time on NBC, ABC, YouTube, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC, as well as being streamed live on NPR. Fox News, that bastion of far right recalitrants, declined to air the proceedings.

The hearings were produced by long-time ABC News Executive James Goldston, who according to NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik, “told associates he sees this as a civic duty, that insurrection should not be seen as a partisan question but one of good citizenship. And he has promised the committee it will all be factually based” (NPR).

The broadcast featured live statements from Committee Chair and Vice-chair Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, respectively, as well as previously unseen video footage from the riot, taped interviews—including those of former Attorney General Bill Barr, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, Trump senior adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who fought the rioters for hours, gave testimony about the harrowing experience of being attacked and knocked unconscious by the crowd. Filmmaker Nick Quested, who had embedded himself with the Proud Boys to attain film for a documentary, provided raw footage of the Proud Boys conducting what seemed to be a reconnaissance of the Capitol while the former president spoke to his minions.

It was a compelling presentation designed to gain the attention of the American public and to make the case that Donald Trump led an attempted coup against the United States. Even though almost twenty million people watched the first installment of the hearings, whether this hearing will change the hearts and minds of those Trump devotees or even traditionally minded Republicans remains undetermined.

On February 5, 1973, Senator Ted Kennedy offered the resolution to create the Watergate Committee. Two days later, the United States Senate voted unanimously to pass said resolution. Unanimously. Today’s Senate can’t even agree to vote unanimously on whether the sky is blue. And, at the time, ninety-seven percent of those polled had heard of Watergate and sixty-seven percent believed that President Nixon was involved in the scandal.

Things are different today. Instead of a cooperative bipartisan body dedicated to preserving the Constitution, today’s Senate has become a polarized body of partisan gridlock geared to attaining and retaining the fortunes of its members—some of its members. Rather than prioritizing the health of the republic, like the senators who voted unanimously to install the Watergate Committee, some of today’s senators seem reluctant to even acknowledge that the January 6^th riot was a riot. Others were allegedly involved in the insurrection itself, leading tours of the Capitol Building to constituents, some of whom were Proud Boys, the day before the riot.

Other things have changed since 1973. The very nature and value of factual evidence has somehow come into question. The once-respected institution of the free press has come under fire. Instead of a shared set of truths, the news is distorted, tailored, or ignored to advance one particular group’s political agenda. The American people have become so factionalized and divided in their political views that we have become a nation unwilling—and possibly unable—to listen to viewpoints different from our own.

Tough room. Saddled with the responsibility of first ferreting out the truth of who was responsible for the January 6^th riot and then presenting their findings to the American people, a significant segment of which will be determined not to listen, the Committee decided to hire Mr. Goldston, an experienced TV news producer, to make the hearings—what do they call it? Must watch TV.

The American electorate has changed since 1973, relying not on respected and established newspapers but instead getting much of their news from unsubstantiated online sources or social media. As a result, there is no common source of shared information, no universally trusted source. Journalistic standards, while as stringent as ever, are not enough to earn the trust of many Americans, who instead turn to unreliable information and partisan news outlets. Like I said, it’s a tough room.

Congressional hearings have sometimes become sensationalized sideshows. Joe McCarthy and others have sometimes used them as a springboard to national fame, but even though the January 6^th hearings are being produced and molded into a compelling and engrossing narrative, it is still a narrative composed of facts and nothing but facts. It is prime time because prime time is what it takes to grab the average American’s attention. It is prime time because this was an incredibly important moment for our republic. It is prime time because the forces that began this treasonous behavior against our democracy still exist and are gaining strength.

It is a crime story, a psychological drama, a cautionary tale, and an historical drama—and a tragedy. It must watch TV.