I would only add that bookers often seem to lose interest in booking you if it seems that you're not going to offer full-throated disagreement with your opposite number -- the point is to find two people who'll clash, not to find two people who the booker thinks have smart things to say and let the chips fall where they may.

This isn't what I've noticed.  I've noticed inept, luke-warm blooded Democrats arguing (sometimes) with died in the wool conservatives.  I don't see strong labor representatives.  I don't see people who can actually argue core leftist principles in an intelligent way.  I see stumblebums like Dee Dee Meyers, and faux-leftist quislings like Patrick Caddell, or people like Joe Klein, who spend at least as much time attacking Democrats as Republicans, while claiming to represent the left.  Just who are these "full-throated" disagreers you talked about?  You mentioned no names, cited no examples; neither did the joker in your linked piece.  

Curiously, or not, I wrote that last sentence before reading Bartlett's piece.  How did I know he would mention no names....

It'll be interesting to see how much impact podcasting and internet TV will have on this phenomenon.  

Might just decrease the barriers to entry to make news a more democratic competitive process--i.e., instead of studio heads deciding what kind of news will sell, consumers will have more input because there will be more channels.  CNN exists because cable allowed a new kind of niche marketing--I wonder what will develop when internet tv allows even more niche marketing.    

We could end up with even more screamy internet TV, but I acutally think that's not very likely--lower costs of production mean more niche marketing, means less appealing to the lowest common denominator of people who are willing to watch a TV news show.  Inasmuch as that "lowest common denominator" is making debate screamy, we'll see less of it.

I'd be interested to see if there's a split between the hacks and the wonks--hack TV tracking polls and messaging, wonk TV discussing policy stuff, and occasionally crossover episodes!  

Also, it'll be interesting to see if there's a sort of "high level opinion-makers" channel that develops.  Something that's designed to appeal to the people whose friends call them up every election cycle and ask who to vote for.  I wonder if that'll be slick, if it'll be screamy, what that will be like.  

And you're right, there's a really important question as to whether any revenue model exists that will support real investigative journalism.  That's the most expensive content to develop, but it's inherently the hardest content to find a revenue model for--I mean, once the cat is out of the bag, you can't expect people to pay to know what everyone is already talking about.  Additionally, fewer revenue approaches support it--once you start getting into centralized or indirect revenue sources (like advertising, for example), there begins to be a lot of pressure to not tell certain kinds of stories, even if your viewers would like to know them.  

Maybe we'll have to subsidize real news reporting differently--I dunno, rich people handing out a million dollar prize annually to the best investigative journo story of the year?  Ugh, that's a terrible idea.  Maybe some sort of investigative journalist guild, like the AP, but for more in-depth reporting.

The bad news is that the emerging media doesn't seem to be a natural fit for investigative journalism.  But I'm taking hope in the historical precedent of the printing press.  Making it easier to talk to more people was very good for liberal enlghtened government.  Hopefully, it'll happen again.

Am I the only person who thinks the edit contradicts the main body of the post, to the point where it is nonsense?  If bookers are really going for contrast, why would they regularly have all conservative panels?

Two different formats. On the one hand you have the two-pundit talking head thing. You see that a lot interspersed with other programming throughout the day on the cable networks and also on a bunch of radio shows.

The other format -- more frequently seen on the Sunday morning shows, or after major news events (presidential debates, state of the unions) -- involves a multi-person panel where some straight reporters will be "balanced" by conservative columnists.

I agree with everything you are trying to say here.

But you are leaving out something important. Professional wrestling sells. People are entertained by manichean contests, and they reward those who provide this infotainment with high ratings.

From reading about networks like Al Jazeera, I don't think it is just an American phenomenon.

It has been happening since talk radio became a big thing in the 80's. Talk radio hijacked the network news.

I don't see the great majority of blogs offering an alternative, I see them not just mimicking talk radio, but breaking it down into even more virulent opinionated market segments. Yes, there are nuanced blogs out there, just like there is Charlie Rose. But those blogs and those shows do not get high "ratings." What gets high ratings is echo chamber and dittoheading, a place where everyone knows your name and agrees with the tribal leader. (Atrios in methodology reminds of no one more than Rush Limbaugh.) All you need is to visit one big lefty and one righty once a day and you've got your talk radio back.

This is what I was talking about here: Et tu, successful blogs? What's it going to be? Are we going to pander to the hard won audiences with the same old same old where's-the-outrage-about the-other-side-shtick in order to keep the audience infotained with what they have come to expect so we can get the ads to pay for them, or are we going to challenge their thinking with boring old-style public radio/TV type nuance and with pointing out that everything is not black and white? Who's going to be the first lefty blogger to risk audience share to say maybe Bush is not always evil every single time? Who's going to be the first rightie blogger to risk audience share by pointing out that liberals are not evil every single time? Until you do, complaining about TV networks doing same is sooo pot, kettle, black.

But I'd like to move on from old arguments and move on to specifics. Regarding this:

Update [2005-12-29 18:12:59 by yglesias]: It should be said that the other thing you see a lot of, especially in multi-person panels, is just a "no liberals allowed" policy where you get a reporter, a host, and two rightwingers or some such thing.

Is TPMCafe on a trajectory where "no one right of center allowed" or is it not? I am seeing much evidence of the former. I wish others would join in not making that so. I see evidence of wanting to make this a safe protected place for liberals where they can cry on each others' shoulders and make fun of conservatives and where no one with other scary and mean thoughts that make liberals unhappy can intrude.  Perhaps I'm nuts, but I like Socratic method: wide variety of interpretation is how learning and progress works, at least for me it does. That varied market, the nuance, it doesn't come unless one welcomes it. And it may have to be subsidized, because it's an small elite group that likes such stuff; most people still get a high from emotional expression and the performance art of professional wrestling.

one finds triumphalist put downs by the masses in their jammies against all the suits who don't know what they are talking about...nothing different from yelling at the coach on the game on TV, telling him he's an ass and just did the wrong thing...

Interesting analogy.  Many moons ago, I was a huge baseball fan.  Went to the games, obsessively read the sports pages, participated in some of the first rotisserie leagues (made a fair chunk of change, in fact), read extensively about baseball history.  Eventually, I came to the conclusion that most coaches didn't know what they were doing, and I lost interest in the game because the conventional wisdom that ruled the day was simply wrong in my opinion.  Flash forward 20 years (how time flies), and the things I believed were true back then, are now the conventional wisdom in baseball: the coaches really were doing the wrong things.  Some of them were even asses.  

Of course, that's baseball, and this is politics.  In baseball, at least I felt confident that the coach of a team I liked was trying to do the best thing for the team, even if he didn't really (in my jammie-wearing opinion) know what he was doing.  Sometimes when some of these think tank people post here, I lack that same confidence. :-(  

well, luigi, if you read my post, I don't think you'll find evidence that I think the all the coaches know what they're talking about, but rather that I see same old same old and nothing new, back to Roman times.

Personally, I don't have much hope in a "democratic," small d, vox populi fourth estate as an alternative to encouraging and rewarding high quality thought and framing somehow. As much as I adore pop culture of all periods, my studies of culture and of totalitarian movements also make me fear movements away from also having some kind of rewards for greatness and talent as a balance, that not everyone can be a great coach. I'll leave the musings at those big whopping generalizations just to titillate lest I get into boring old rants and divergences by saying more...I'm not one of those talents, you see.

:-)

p.s. oops I lied, I'm back, because your comment offered great inspiration and made me think of a good metaphor. If you could make pro football totally interactive where there was no coach, but "the coach" was actually the viewers by democratic vote, like in a focus group or a video game, the viewers had dials to vote what the players should do next and they had to do it, I think that over time, you would eventually end up with scenario that would make the old christians and lions in the coliseum look G-rated and complex and nuanced by comparison.

The political spectrum has shifted so far to the right in this country that most people have fogotten what the left used to look like.

When was the last time you saw a socialist, communist, green, populist or anarchist on a talk show? How about an economist like Herman Daly who is concerned with sustainable development and disagrees with the whole "growth" premise? 

I claim what we have is Republicans and Republican Lite. They all take the "free" market, "free" trade, growth will solve everything model as the only true religion. They only  differ in a how big a bone to throw to the under class.

With the stagnating working class that keeps being talked about in the blogosphere and the pressures from runaway worldwide population growth one would think that issues of the carrying capacity of the planet might get a little exposure. Also where is the populist sentiment that arose the last time the US wealth got so far out of balance?

The truth is that both parties are beholding to big businees for politcal contributions and aren't about to rock the boat. And let's not forget that all the big networks are parts of huge industrial/media enterprises and are unlikely to invite on guests that criticize their corporate masters.

When was the last time you saw an expose of GE on TV? 

"When was the last time you saw a socialist, communist, green, populist or anarchist on a talk show?"

This misses the point entirely. When was the last time you saw a New Deal Democrat on a talk show? One who would argue that we should not abolish capitalism but that we should harness it with effective government regulation. That Big Government is not the problem but has historically been the solution to a wide range of problems from Rural Electricfication to seniors starving to death.

Over the last twenty five years a narrative has been sold to the point that even the Democratic Party establishment (as exemplified by the DLC) has embraced it. This narrative sold by Cato and AEI and Heritage is that private is always better than public and its Poster Child is Social Security. Social Security has been held up for two decades as proof that New Deal solutions are fundamentally failures.

Well my friends that narrative is going to be turned right around over the course of this next three months, and a lot of Randian Republicans and Third Way Democrats are going to be reeling back on their heels.

Because we are going to be unleashing our Inner FDR and for good measure our inner Francis Perkins.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/fperkins.html

Why don't we have some type of coordinated effort to inform and prepare our spokespeople?  If I were a candidate or an elected representative or a pundit, I would have someone in my office plugged into the blogosphere 24/7.  

I don't get the feeling they care all that much about being informed and prepared.  They certainly don't care what is said on the blogosphere, which, like good "elitists," they probably snicker at.  They are the insiders, they know how the game works.  We're just the unwashed.

Some of the partner contributors who have posted here have done so with posts that are simply insults to the intelligence of this place.  And those are the ones who bother to participate in the blogosphere.  I wonder how contemptuous the attitude is of the people who don't even deign to participate.      

This misses the point entirely. When was the last time you saw a New Deal Democrat on a talk show?

Yeah, they're gone too!

Over the last twenty five years a narrative has been sold to the point that even the Democratic Party establishment (as exemplified by the DLC) has embraced it. This narrative sold by Cato and AEI and Heritage is that private is always better than public and its Poster Child is Social Security. Social Security has been held up for two decades as proof that New Deal solutions are fundamentally failure.

One of the most pernicious manifestastions of this phenomenon is in the general approach to the budget.  Republicans of late like to slash revenues, but don't do anything much about spending.  Then the witless New Democrats come along and say that they are going to slash spending too.  So now the only thing that is supposed to distinguish Democrats from Republicans is that Democrats are "fiscally responsible", and Republicans aren't.  And Democratic fiscal responsibility is manifested in their willingness to cut spending to go along with the Republican-eviscerated revenues.  So the Republicans create their fiscal train wreck, and then get the Democrats to do what they wanted them to do all along.

The idea that we might choose the option of raising revenues to preserve the programs we have created over the years, and even create some shiny and exciting new programs in the process, seems to be ruled out from the beginning.  "Oh, we can't do that!  That would mean raising taxes.  And no politician can ever raise taxes, ever again!"  To adapt a phrase from Richard Nixon, it looks like we are all Republicans now.

I have read and heard expressions of this New Democratic willingness to make "hard choices" about "runaway spending" held up, with a straight face, as a "new progressive model."

Some of the partner contributors who have posted here have done so with posts that are simply insults to the intelligence of this place.

And others are dramatically new and interesting takes on the world.  That's why I'm here.  Maybe you'ld say the same thing?

My point was not that we should adopt another utopian philosophy (libertarianism being the current one), but that the people espousing these positions are not allowed to express their views in any of the mass media.

Even though the Populists didn't achieve any real electoral success at the turn of the 20th Century they did influence the public debate. As a result many of their ideas got adopted (co-opted?) by Teddy Roosevelt. As a result we got better drug and food safety laws, labor laws and anti-trust legislation.

I say give those with opposing ideas some chance to express themselves and let the pubic choose. It is obvious that the capitalist model is not equipped to deal with the coming limitations on natural resources and the exploding population.

Capitalism can maximize allocation of available resouces, but has no mechanisms to deal with problems of scale. The rise of leftist regimes in South America and the resistance to the next wave of "free" trade shows that there are many looking for a new model. The US can be part of the solution, or part of the problem.

The first step is education. 

The DLC exists because there are large regions of this country that have always been hostile to liberalism, and if Democrats cannot compete in those regions, they will become a tiny, insignifigant minority, completely unable to influence national affairs.

As a thought experiment, let's assume we "real" democrats are pure socialists. We are that, presumably, because we really believe that socialism is the best economic system for our country. Now, we decide that we must get our candidates elected, but the voters don't like socialists, so we start advocating strong capitalism so as to get elected. Isn't there something wrong with that?

I think a political party needs to be about something besides getting elected. It has to be about believing that its solutions to the nations problems are better than anyone elses. Then it has to advocate those solutions so forcefully and effectively that the voters buy into the program. I don't see Democrats doing that today.

Today, Democrats seem to care about nothing as much as getting elected or reelected. Then, once elected, they back off from their better ideas and go for the popular "wisdon" instead, for fear of the voters at the next election. What is the point of this? If you aren't going to sell your programs to the voters after you are elected, or before you are elected, why bother to run at all?

And others are dramatically new and interesting takes on the world.  That's why I'm here.  Maybe you'ld say the same thing?

I can count on one hand what I've learned from the contributors here, and probably have 4 fingers left over.  The reason I like this site is the discussion among the masses.  Some of them have a lot of interesting things to say, some others are  buffoons, but you can learn as much from buffoons as you can from wise people.  

I look at the blog posts here as stones tossed into a pool:  the stones are less important than the ripple of discussion they start.  

It may be a stretch but I will try to link sports, politics and news with examples of success challenging conventional wisdom and opportunities for the taking.-As a sports fan living outside Boston I watch baseball and football teams, Patriots and Red Sox, going against the cultural and sports grain. I like winning as much as the next person but I am equally fascinated by the innovative thinking behind their success.-The team strategies are not contrarian simply to engender controversey or inflate ratings.  In many respects the strategies and players are the antithesis of sexy entertainment.  The teams use smarts to devise innovative plans to negate the strengths and/or exploit the weaknesses of their opponents. While strengths and weakness lingo is most often business school pablum, for these team there is substance. 
There is a football example that exemplifies how each team uses superior analysis and creativity.  In my mind I see a direct application to electoral politics. The Patriots' coach, with considerable football intellect and hours of watching an opponents' past games, discovered a hidden offensive pattern that held true 75% of the time. With that fact-based insight he concentrated his defensive resources to win the battle on a mere 5 by 7 yards of grass and win the game. So simple to execute but so much work and smarts to find that key. 
In electoral politics discovering that unseen but significant leverage point could enable a concentrated application of resources to win what the pundits say is unwinnable.   When I hear a pundit, operative or coach mouth cliches that are merely versions of "this is what we have always done/thought so we will do/think it again" I see mediocrity in search of luck to win. 
In baseball it is relatively rare that a front office (i.e., decision makers) and coach actually rely on a fact-based understanding of causation to make decision.  But when they actually do the numerical and probability analysis of what baseball actions have the highest chance of maximizing runs by the good guys and limiting scoring by the bad guys they find that baseball's conventional wisdom is often exactly wrong. An example, one that is true but counterintuitive, is that the probability of scoring a run is higher with a man on first than with a man on second and no one on first.  The Red Sox are expanding on what was  described in Moneyball by Michael Lewis (author of Liar's Poker about Wall Street).  Lewis lays out Oakland Athletics' approach to winning using quantitative analysis.  With that verifiable basis they select players and devise on-field strategies that leverage market inefficiencies and beat opponents who have two to three times the budget.
If you are still with me I am at long last back to where we started with media bookers looking for screams to offend or platitudes to mollify.  For those of us who abhor both the fault is further up the media hierarchy. They have fallen for the conventional wisdom as to what "sells."  The market inefficiency open for "exploitation" is the audience who wants insight.  We will be waiting until someone finds the unseen pattern or does the quantitative analysis leading to a different strategy.    [Note: Short of reading Moneyball, which I highly recommend for  insight which applies far beyond baseball, a Slate conversation in June 2003 will give you a feel.http://www.slate.com/id/2083857/entry/2083881/ ]

Bush is allowed to do just that by a complicit media which brings us back around to the point of this post.  Not only do the hosts on tv chat shows not hold Bush accountable or call him on his deceptions, the producers who book guests don't even attempt to find someone who can present a strong case for the opposition.

He's not held accountable because people on the left would rather attack their own than attack Republicans.  It's so easy to yell at the side that can't yell back.

The guy from dKos was interviewed by Newsweek, I think it was this week, if you want to look it up.  One of the things he said was that Hillary Clinton "Has every position" on the war in Iraq, or something to that effect, using the Republican talking point that she "stands for nothing," and will "say anything to get elected."  As far as I know, she supported the war from the start and supports it now, but somehow that support, in dKos' eyes, equals "every position on Iraq."  He's generally a hyper-excited idiot, like most of the people who lap up the slop on his site, but you'd have thought he'd know better by now, but obviously not.  Kerry got the same treatment from the dKos set (in fact, he mentioned Kerry with the same disparaging "every position" comment), and so did Gore.  Is it any wonder, then, that the media pick up and amplify that?  Yet these same people moan and cry about "media bias."    

People like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan rarely get any time on the MSM to criticize anybody. Just because I think Hillary Clinton has been a disaster on Iraq doesn't mean I don't want to defeat the Bushies.

I would agree with the poster who stopped watching TV news 20 years ago. The MSM using of the 'War on Terror' and 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' logos for their news (brainwashing) reports were the limit. You are talking about an administration that has dealt in lies since before it's inception.

Thanks to TPM for asking questions like, why no 'terror alerts' since the last election, and for concisely wading through all the dirty details of the Republican scandals in congress.