I agree with Zakaria. It's awful. And he doesn't mention the fact that there is absolutley no requirement that the "pundits" actually know anything about the topic at hand.

So you have dedicated and ignorant partisans yelling talking points at each other, with moderators who are equally partisan and uninformed. This passes for debate.

Is Robert Novak always a George Bush Republican team player? Is Pat Buchanan? Tucker Carlson?

Not the last time I checked.

Zakaria is right, and not just about what's on television panel shows. Television interviews of elected officials are usually this way as well; the media demand it, and the respective campaigns demand it.

If news is entertainment, the audience has to be able to follow the story line. If you have someone like Richard Lugar -- who is indisputably a Bush supporter -- go on the tube with criticism of some aspect of Iraq policy it just confuses the story line. Think of the closest analog to the political panel shows, WWE wrestling. Matches have to have a face and a heel; in talk shows the audience can divide on which panelist is which, but the same dynamic applies. The WWE often mixes up its story lines -- faces turn heel and vice versa -- and political shows can't do that, but otherwise it's the same kind of thing.

As for Virginia's friends at the think tanks, well, who cares how diverse and respectable they are? They are not entertaining.

Zakaria wrote a column on John Stewart? Anyway, isn't "message dicipline" part of the problem. Why should the goal on TV be message discipline? Unless you want to say "I am an utter hack who should be scorned from society for my complete lack of integrity". Postrel doesn't really make an argument, she asserts. She might be right, but she isn't convincing. And the diversity is rather useless if people refuse to discuss these issues with the American people.

Lots of truth in what both Zakaria and Postrel have posted. Is there anything which doesn't get seriously distorted by the entertainment focus which is behind all TV? The WWF analogy if very apt. If I didn't happen to actually KNOW lots of liberals from my church I might think they were all jerks like Paul Begala; and they might well equate me with (Rush, O'Reilly - fill in the blank).

Somewhat unrelated, but I've always hated the way networks turn their coverage of the Olympics into a set of melodramas about specific individual athletes. Just show me the events, dammit.

The real problem is that most Americans don't know that there are these distinctions within the Democrat and Republican camps. They don't know of Drezner, Fukuyama or the Economist's endorsements of Kerry, or of Will's or Brooks's reservations concerning Bush. I don't care about the partisan b****-fests on TV, but the oversimplification that leads to the Bush=Conservative and Kerry=Liberal (with no in-between) positions is harmful.

Anybody have any ideas on what to do about this? Shows are like this because they sell. I don't know how you change the market preference for partisan hackery without some wholesale mass education of the public, and nobody with the resources to do that has the inclination because the electorate is more easily manipulated the way it is now.

Hunter - "Just show me the events, dammit." I agree. During the World Series I kept wishing that it was being carried on C-Span. We missed a Bellhorn hit in order to watch Fox interview a guy who is famous for being in a (tasteless) Fox tv commercial. (I know this is slightly off topic, but as Dan is a Red Sox fan I'm sure this ticked him off, too.)

I'd have to say that the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is consistently surprising on this score. They slip up occasionally, but they usually find informed commentators, rather than partisan spin-doctors. They rarely invite politicians, and the journalists and academics they bring on the show generally keep their political views fairly modestly veiled. It seems to me they may have changed their guest invitation policies back in 2001 after too many Israeli and Palestinian officials ended up in shouting matches.

My only consistent objection to the NewsHour is its slavish dependence on the NYT (and Boston Globe).

It's not entirely fair, I don't think, to cast the aspersions directly at TV or other media punditry without pointing out that the "both sides must be represented" is in large part a result of intense pressure from both sides on the media to make sure that their sides are represented. The media, which is fundamentally scared of publicity shining on itself (think about it), has responded by making sure that both sides are represented and being cautious of using people who don't clearly represent a side, so they don't get blindsided by the supposedly unrepresented side complaining about bias.

What I probably hate most is when they bring in some Democratic or Republican hack to talk about something about which they have no knowledge aside from the talking points that have been handed to them by their party.

For instance, Rudy Giuliani spinning Al Qaqaa. What the eff did he know about it? Find somebody who knows what they're talking about and can speak from personal experience.

It surprises me that someone as starkly pro-Bush as Postrel isn't "committed" enough to go on TV.

Here's another anecdote for you. I recently had the chance to talk to John Avlon, author of the book Independent Nation, and former head speech writer for Rudy Guiliani. He currently writes a column for the New York Sun from a centrist perspective.

Recently, he's been talking to producers of various political shows and trying to convince them to include someone from other than a liberal or conservative point of view in their panels and discussions. He's had some success, apparently, but the first reaction he gets from people is "hey, I've got a split screen here -- one guy on the left, and one on the right -- so where do I put you?"

Someone mentioned The News Hour as an example of high quality commentary. I would also suggest the Charlie Rose Show. He avoids the kind of sterile partisan rhetoric, asks tough but fair questions and really tries to engage his listeners. The problem with both of these shows is that they are on PBS, which attracts relativele few viewers. Mainstream channels like CNN are looking for controversy to attract viewers and shows like Crossfire get all the attention.

At one time in this country, people had a committment to reasonable, non-shouting debate, in part because we were taught to be polite and civil. IN the same way that we were taught that you didn't showboat after touchdowns, home runs, etc. These standards no longer exist. Civility and politeness are things from another era. From what I am reading on blogs, there are large numbers of people (on both left and right) that think civility is a joke and believe that the only way to debate or discuss issues is to try to crush the opposition. Viewers are drawn to verbal combat because it's more interesting and requires less thought than having to digest boring complexity.

The NewsHour does do a reasonably good job at choosing moderate partisans, but it is still usually (though not always) stuck in the structural position of one "pro", one "con", and possibly one neutral.

This is part of the tyranny of balance that the media forces on itself.

Being a locally elected official who is asked from time to time to engage in these kinds of interactions, I prefer and usually ask that both sides be given an amount of time alone not in opposition, hopefully significant, to cover the topic.

Once this is done, then I think its just fine to sit the two down with each other. But the food fight forum, always forces each to sell to win rather than to discuss, and to simplify rather than explain.

I read somewhere that the debate forum between Lincoln and Douglas gave each man an hour or so to speak alone, and a similar amount of time to rebut.

Finally, do you really think that most viewers want to listen to four hours of technical policy? The truth is that politics is a form of entertainment, and politicians and the media have both adapted to provide the most competitive entertainment forum. Voters do still get what they deserve.

Panu
Menlo Park, CA