How has covering the White House and the campaign trail changed over the past decade? Tara spoke with CNN Senior Washington Correspondent Jeff Zeleny to explore how the media has learned how to report on a presidency and campaign that is unfolding daily on Twitter.
How has covering the White House and the campaign trail changed over the past decade? Tara spoke with CNN Senior Washington Correspondent Jeff Zeleny to explore how the media has learned how to report on a presidency and campaign that is unfolding daily on Twitter. Produced by Wonder Media Network
Tara McGowan: Hey everyone, welcome to For What It's Worth. I am Tara McGowan. It may be hard for some of us to remember, but long before platforms like Facebook and Twitter came on the scene, presidential campaigns, primary means of reaching voters was through the press; traditional print newspapers and the evening news. While all of that has changed over the past decade or so, which is why you're all here listening, the traditional media still plays a really significant role in our elections and how the public perceives candidates. That's why I was really excited, a few months ago, to sit down and interview someone who's had a front row seat to presidential campaigns as a reporter covering them for over two decades starting in Iowa. That person is CNN Senior Washington correspondent, Jeff Zeleny.
Tara McGowan: Jeff, thank you so much for being here. It's great to be here. I just recently learned that you've covered presidential campaigns for nearly two decades. Is that right?
Jeff Zeleny: That sounds like a long time, but it's only six campaigns, so it's only a couple of re-elects. So, but I have, I started at my first presidential campaign was the 2000 campaign. If you think back to, I guess what used to, stand for excitement, the Al Gore/George Bush thing we thought would be the biggest political story of our time and it was a big one then. But now we're in a bigger one. But no I had the good fortune of, right out of college, I worked at the Des Moines Register, so covering Iowa is the place to be. So that was the first campaign and then slowly moved east. I covered the '04 campaign, '08 of course. For the New York times I covered Barack Obama's rise and always important to point out, I think about this constantly at this stage, 12 years ago, this summer, no one thought Barack Obama was gonna win. No one thought he would win the primary. So that is something that is sort of like my guiding principle to how we cover things. Let's keep an open mind folks.
Tara McGowan: Yeah, I think that's our guiding principle at ACRONYM is to challenge every assumption and conventional wisdom. But funny enough, I also was covering the 2008 election when I was a reporter formally before I went, went all in on the Democrats. But, the world has changed quite a bit even since then. But you started obviously in Des Moines, and as a newspaperman. So tell me just sort of at a 90,000-foot level. How has covering presidential campaigns since then changed?
Jeff Zeleny: It's changed, I mean, tremendously. If you think about, I mean, there wasn't digital, there was not, I used to, you know, sort of have a relationship with readers and I still try and do this, have a penpal with voters. I love voters and undecided voters and voters who are trying to decide things. But I used to have them take pictures of the mail that they got, the direct mail they got and send it to me. Now all this is happening digitally, but everything has changed of course. But again, to go back to the '08 campaign: no Twitter, and I mean it's an academic question, but I wonder if that campaign would've been the same if Barack Obama's rise would've been in the same, If this rhetoric and things had been so hot and Twitter had been around then. But look, everything has changed in terms of how campaigns do their job in terms of how people consume information. But I was a newspaper guy for I guess four of those cycles, so this is my second cycle in TV.
Tara McGowan: Yeah. That's great. I want to go back to Twitter because you have covered Trump in the White House and now his campaign, what is it like to cover the first real Twitter president? Does that make your job incredibly difficult?
Jeff Zeleny: Always have your phone charged. Always be, you know, ready to see what he's going to a tweet. I mean, there was a big discussion at the beginning of his presidency, at the beginning of the Trump administration. Should the media be amplifying these tweets? And it is a good discussion. I think we'll be having for the ages, but -
Tara McGowan: I don't believe you that there was a discussion. It didn't feel like there was.
Jeff Zeleny: Believe it or not, there absolutely was. And we, you know, obviously decided, the bosses decided that we should cover them. But I think that was the right decision in the sense that, you know, it is a medium. It is just the same as the President standing on the South Lawn, shouting as the Marine One is waiting for him. So it is a presidential statement on Twitter. It's just as the same as him sending out a fax in previous years or an email. But I do think that over the last two and a half years, the media has been much more judicious in terms of providing context for these tweets. In terms of just amplifying it, I think that, you know, there was over-coverage at the beginning, no doubt, but to be a reporter doing that, you had to constantly be on the lookout. No aide or few aides or staffers in the White House knew what he was going to tweet, necessarily. Most of his personnel decisions were made on Twitter. He fired Reince Priebus on Twitter. So, you know, it's just a way for him to sort of get ahead of the curve, but we can't ignore it. And I think it would be wrong now to ignore what he's tweeting as well. I think it's our job to add context to these tweets.
Tara McGowan: Absolutely. No, you can't ignore it. But it is, it is an interesting question because you know, social media has made, has given everyone a platform essentially, right, including the president to be able to cut directly with his message to anyone interested in hearing it. And then the media amplifying it when, you know, the media is there to provide context but also to hold great powers and institutions accountable. And so, you know, it feels often that he's really driving the narrative on Twitter and then the media is, you know, amplifying and responding to it. And so that's, that's just challenging. That's a different landscape.
Jeff Zeleny: It absolutely is. And he is driving it. He's producing our daily digest of what we're consuming, what politics is doing. So it's taking the bully pulpit to an entirely new level that we have not seen before. I think a president often drives conversation and controls, you know, the narrative in the news. The party in power always does that. But this is in a much different way. And you'll remember that recent moment when President Trump of course went after the four Democratic members of Congress who called themselves the squad and he said, "go back to where you came from." I mean, that was certainly a moment in the campaign that will likely drive a lot of it. But you know, the decision to use that tweet and talk about that tweet live on television that day really drove the narrative, and we'll see where it goes.
Tara McGowan: And you know, you were saying, and like you, you actually wonder if, if it hadn't been covered, would it not have the impact that it's, that it's had already on the race.
Jeff Zeleny: Exactly, it's a, I think that's largely a, you know, an academic question. Like if a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, did it fall? If a tweet is sent and no one talks about it, but look, I mean it was having instant engagement. I mean millions of people saw it. So just because you know, some old people are talking about it on that old thing called the television, it amplifies it a little bit.
Tara McGowan: Right? You ignore it for a day. You're not going to be able to two days later when it's still out there. Yeah. That makes sense.
Jeff Zeleny: I do think at this moment we can't ignore what is clearly racism. CNN was one of the first to come out and say, no, it's racist. From the very beginning, our bosses are like, we don't, we're not saying critics say what he's saying is racist or some say it's racist. It's racist. So in this job, never before in my 18 years in Washington, you know, almost a quarter century - gosh, you sound old covering politics - have we had to call balls and strikes as much in real time and say, actually those words you just heard from the President of the United States, or whoever, aren't true, he's lying to you. And we would do the same if it was a different president X Democratic president X, you know, in the White House. I know some Trump supporters don't believe that, but I always tell people, what would you think if a President Bernie Sanders was saying some of these things on MSNBC that President Trump says on Fox, wouldn't you want there to be sort of a referee, if you will? But we're in interesting times.
Tara McGowan: But I think that Trump also understands that once he puts the message out there and broadcast it, not only is it gonna be amplified, but it's already had the desired effect in some ways. And so, you know, putting the context around it after the fact might not actually have the impact that we hope it has with audiences because it's already out there.
Jeff Zeleny: I think it depends on what voters we're talking about. Obviously this is intended to inspire and engage, re-engage his base. But the question is, you know, the voters in the middle, you know, this election is still going to be won on those amazing Americans who call themselves swing voters who vote on a variety of different things. Maybe the intent is to turn them off, which, who wouldn't be turned off by this sort of ugly conversation that this is not what's, you know, impactful to people's lives. But I do think it's important to call things out for what they are. But look, the media, is, you know, a complicit actor in a lot of this.
Tara McGowan: Yeah. I also agree that the election will absolutely be one at the margins. I do think though that in our increasingly polarized society and culture right now, which I think social media has played a role in, I want to talk about that a little bit. The same thing that can fire up the conservative base also fires up the progressive base. And so it does actually really escalate these narratives. And so you see the polarization in these moments, right?
Jeff Zeleny: I mean, I think the big question obviously in this Democratic primary is, is the old belief that the center is the way to victory or is, you know, inspiring and exciting, the Democratic base, the way to victory. So that is a question that will be answered on social media and digital as well as obviously at the ballot box. But that I think is the central question that we don't know. So I think that we should use technologies as a way to remind ourselves that every campaign is not the same. We shouldn't always look to the campaign before to see what's going to happen the next time. So we do not know. I tell all of my colleagues, you know, some are covering their first campaign, some are not. Embrace what we don't know. And you know, we're not in the predictions business as 2016 should have shown to everyone. But you know, I think that is the central driving question of this Democratic race and we don't know the answer to it.
Tara McGowan: We don't. And it's very difficult because I think the candidates running in the primaries are speaking to one audience and it's going to be a very different audience they need to expand to in the general.
Jeff Zeleny: For sure.
Tara McGowan: In thinking about sort of how social media has really changed this and go looking at the, the 2020 election right now in the Democratic primary, which is obviously very crowded, something I've been really interested to see. I've been working in the intersection of digital and campaigns for about 10 years now. Not as long as you, but I'm getting up there. And we used to ask digital operatives, quote unquote, used to, you know, fight to make it relevant in the press narrative, in even campaigns and organizations we worked within, we sort of sat at the kids' table a bit. This election cycle and this primary election in particular, I have noticed that political reporters are covering what campaigns are doing online in a really big way. Would you agree with that and why do you, why do you think that is, if so?
Jeff Zeleny: I think no question, I think we have more information now in this campaign than we have before in terms of real-time digital spending on Google ads, on Facebook ads. I mean there are these monthly reports, which never existed before. But you know, the story has been around for so long: this is going to be the campaign where digital is more important than television. And then of course, at the end of the cycle, you know, there are a lot of ad consultants who make a lot of money off television buys.
Tara McGowan: They sure do.
Jeff Zeleny: And so, you know, and TV is still important. You know, there's Wheel of Fortune ads, if you know, that hit the grandparents right after the local news. It's still important. But digital, I think without a doubt, I agree with you is it's not new media anymore. I guess it hasn't been new media for a few cycles, but I remember that, Oh, the new media kids are like sort of -
Tara McGowan: Maybe you can call TikTok new media.
Jeff Zeleny: Yeah exactly. But, no, I think it is like, it's just sort of baked in now and I think the Trump phenomenon on Twitter probably has helped that along. Like this is the space where this election is being played.
Tara McGowan: It's also the space where the majority of Americans get their information now, right? And so while television isn't going away, it is moving to streaming, et cetera. I've always been frustrated by that debate between, you know, TV versus digital when really it's like you need to meet people where they are with your message, right? And I think that's definitely part of it. Is it changing how you have to cover these campaigns in terms of their ability to really drive their own message? And, you know, right now a lot of the spending, or early in the campaigns, a lot of the spending on Facebook and Google, to your point is really around building lists and online fundraising. But the way that Trump uses it is really to drive the narrative and define, you know, a race or an issue on his terms and we'll likely see that with the other candidates too. How do you expect to cover that moving forward?
Jeff Zeleny: I mean, there's so many candidates and I think one of the things that's also been cleared, he wants an opponent. President Trump likes nothing more than running against an opponent. I think what's been challenging for these candidates is to break through. We thought that social media would be the great equalizer in terms of anyone can send out a tweet, anyone can add like a meme or go viral. Gosh, how challenging to break through. So I think that, how it's changed our jobs is, and I do work at CNN, but I will tell you probably the most, it's clear from the reporting side that at least in this cycle, the idea of digital-first is really true. We are much more concerned with the eyeball or as concerned with, and there are more eyeballs on digital. So I feel like I am sort of back to my roots a little bit more as a print reporter. I'm writing longer stories than ever before. There is a hunger for policy and part of that is driven by the candidates. Elizabeth Warren, of course, "I have a plan for that," and you see the other candidates sort of like weighing in now with their own plans.
Tara McGowan: Hey, me too! I've got a plan too! But they're tnever going to get that meme though. She owns it for the rest of the race.
Jeff Zeleny: Exactly. Because she was smart to get it first. So who would think that substance would break through? But that is actually what's happened. So I think that the digital space allows a room for something like that, much more than television. So I can feel it. You know, my sole job, I guess, I mean I am on television, I do television stories and packages and we talked endlessly on TV, but, I view my job and my bosses view all of our jobs as digital-first. So you'll see a lot of the TV reporters, many have, newspaper backgrounds or print backgrounds or things. So I think the substance, yes, it's noisy. I do think there's more substance being covered in this campaign than I really remember in the last few.
Tara McGowan: Yeah, no, I would agree with that. It might be though that it's mostly a Democrats that we're covering. So that would be my opinion. But, no, I think that that's right. And I, you know, I think it's also hard to break through because these platforms have an enormous amount of power over the debate because of the way they've monetized and how algorithms work. Right? And so, it's not enough to just practice industry best practices if you're a campaign or even a media company, right? You have to, it's almost gotten to the point where you've got to think about what is, what is sticky, what's going to grab people's attention, et cetera. And I know that the campaigns are all focused on that day-in and day-out. Is that something as a reporter you also have to focus on when you think about your own coverage?
Jeff Zeleny: Sure, absolutely. And I think that one thing is it has been interesting. All viral, all kinds of things being talked about in presidential races are not necessarily good things. And the thing I'm thinking about is the Beto O'Rourke sort of live streaming his life and it worked in a Senate race. It worked very well. People followed along. He was widely mocked and ridiculed for the Facebook live, I believe it was of his visit to the dentist. And yes, he makes the argument that he was trying to tell the story of the hygienist who was a recent immigrant, totally fine, but that was lost in a presidential race. So I really think that, again, there's been more substance in this race on a variety of things. So I think something is more likely to be successful for a candidate or to be covered in a way in the Elizabeth Warren kind of way. Or Bernie Sanders or others with specific policies. I've been really surprised by it. You know, perhaps it's in the era of Trump where there has been sort of a lack of specifics and policies that there is a hungering on the other side. But I think that that is something that I can tell you the O'Rourke folks have been surprised at the seriousness that people view a presidential campaign versus maybe a Senate race running against Ted Cruz.
Tara McGowan: I think you could do both, though, and I think that could be really powerful because people are also hungry for authenticity. And you know, I think it is both alarming and interesting to see presidential candidates as real people with real lives and everything. And I think that Beto and his Senate race, ran a very digitally native campaign and I think he stepped back from that in some ways, probably because of that criticism you mentioned about the dentist. I don't know if that was the right idea because he definitely had a lot more eyeballs. It felt like at that point in time.
Jeff Zeleny: No, for sure. And you know, but I think you have to have something to a backup of the narrative. But really quickly, Elizabeth Warren, one thing that didn't work for her, I remember she cracked open that beer and it was so awkward. It's like, are you really having a beer? Actually happened to be sitting next to her at a bar in South Carolina after the Clyburn Fish Fry. It was the night of her 70th birthday and she and her husband were sitting there. They didn't know that we were there. We're kind of across the way and she was drinking a beer and it was a hot night out, so she had one and ordered a second one. So she does actually drink beer, but it seems so inauthentic. She was cracking that beer. So what's worked for her is policy. She has like risen through. So I think that social media and digital things are sort of, you know, they show you I guess who you are, but that, you know, clearly, I don't think she's had something since then, opening a beer.
Tara McGowan: But that's the thing about social media, I advise people on this all the time, is that you just need to lean into who you are. You don't need to be AOC or another personality that seems to get a lot of engagement. If you're authentically yourself, that's gonna come through and people are going to respond really well to that. And that's, I think the value and Instagram in particular, Instagram stories that I think play a huge role in campaigns today is I, you know, you're seeing snapshots of people's lives and it's the closest thing you can get to a one-to-one conversation. And we've not had that before now.
Jeff Zeleny: For sure.
Tara McGowan: Well thank you so much Jeff, for joining us. It was a pleasure. I hope you come back.
Jeff Zeleny: Happy to do it. It's been great and wow, what an interesting campaign we have ahead.
Tara McGowan: Absolutely. Good luck on the trail.
Tara McGowan: That's all we have for this week. If want to take a deeper dive into the state of digital politics, and if you're not already a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, also called, for what it's worth, you can sign up at anotheracronym.org/FWIW.