“A nation in mourning”?
I learned of Senator Kennedy’s death when I awoke at around 2:30 in the morning, flipped on my clock-radio, and heard Bob Schieffer giving a very graceful, carefully crafted summary of the Senator’s life. It had obviously been prepared well in advance and had been held ready for the moment, a practice as common as the obituaries of famous people written in advance and kept in ready at newspapers. When I got up around 7:00, I found the networks in full mourning-mode, with the major anchors on hand and, again, well-prepared biographical summaries. From then on, it was pretty much all-Teddy all the time. When I got back to D.C., I read a story in one paper that referred to “a nation in mourning.” I believe that the funeral was covered live today by some of the networks.
It all got me thinking about how “events” are shaped and even created by the media. Sen. Kennedy’s sister died two weeks or so before he did, and her death was noted in the media and in the press, but it didn’t take up a whole half-hour of the evening national news. Suppose the media and the press had treated the Senator’s death the same way that they treated Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s death. Would we still be able to speak about “a nation in mourning”? Senator Bird of West Virginia is well up there in years and has been ill of late. At his death does anyone expect from the press and the media anything like the reaction to the death of Sen. Kennedy? Will the nation be in mourning? Or does it take the media to plunge the nation into grief?
By coincidence last evening I came upon the hilarious review of a book on Ronald and Nancy Reagan that Gore Vidal published twenty-five years ago in the New York Review of Books. He makes a passing reference there to “the thundering sentimental scores” that Max Steiner composed to accompany Bette Davis’s acting in various Hollywood dramas to make sure that the audience wept at the appropriate moments. Are the media our Max Steiner?
Let’s not insult Max Steiner’s memory with comparisons to the near-tabloid state of the commercial broadcast media.
My jaded response is that the news media thrives on the freak show elements of the Kennedy family—tragedy, womanizing, assassination plots, secret mental illness.
Not once in all this hooplah did I hear a coherent assessment of Sen. Kennedy’s legislative successes and failures, though my guess is that Schieffer, one of the few network broadcast journalists still deserving of respect, might have offered one.
One only wishes that Vidal, who had some distant connection to Jackie O (their step-parents were married or something), had been invited to do “color” for Ted Kennedy’s funeral with Chris Buckley filling in for William F. At least there would have been far fewer cuts to fuzzy shots of Kennedy’s sailboat because Charlie Gibson and Friends couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Woke up at 2:30 a.m.”?? Haven’t those chickens got your sleep regulated yet?
Better Teddy Kennedy than Michael Jackson.
Jean, I actually read a good number of pieces that really burrowed into and chronicled Kennedy’s legislative achievements. I thought that was one of the better part of the coverage of the past few days, in fact.
As far as the media coverage, certainly the wall-to-wall event coverage is part of the blockbuster dynamic of media today. But I think it also reflects as much as it creates. Ted Kennedy’s passing was of a different order than Eunice Shriver’s passing–he was the last of the Kennedy “boys,” the last of Camelot (a group of fellows, don’t you know), the last of a fascinating and storied clan than has riveted Americans for generations. Hard to see how this was overkill, media wise. Kennedy was also a man of real consequence, whatever one thinks of him, in the public square. The last of the liberals, a story of redemption. There are real stories that capture our imagination.
I also think his last year, and his final days, and the funeral mass and burial, were the least ghoulish part of his entire saga. As with John Paul, I think people were generally moved. And as with John Paul, the media reflected what was happening.
Oh, and it’s late August and nothing else is happening. And no one wants to think of New Orleans.
But it was a few days of coverage, and now it’s done. All in all, a good sendoff, I submit.
The media tend to report to us how we are reacting to some events the media deem to be of public importance. I don’t think they influence how “we” react, except of course that if, for example, we did not hear that Edward Kennedy had died there would be no reaction. Inevitably some of us on any particular occasion do not react in a way that corresponds to the media “we”. That is just how it is. But I suspect that the media often guess right about how a lot of us feel. That is their business, after all.
I second David Gibson’s comment. And I’d add the following. When has so much media attention focused on the Gospel injunctions to care for the poor, the needy, etc? Or are we so jaded that when these ideals are presented, even in connection with one of us sinners, that we have to bitch about the media’s flaws instead of being glad that our fellow citizens were hearing that some people really do claim to be inspired by those gospel imperatives and try to do something about them?
Listening and watching MSNBC I found “media” members, Chris Matthews and Gene Robinson, sounding like mourners, albeit distant mourners.
The Kennedy myth, over the years, has been belabored and abused; and there seems little in the younger Kennedy generation to warrant the idea that the myth still lives. Yet I couldn’t help feeling today watching the funeral and the internment that Americans might be mourning an idea and an ideal of the political life of our better selves that died long ago, but which Teddy Kennedy somehow kept alive as an alternative to what our politics have become.
On another score, I am curious what you, Joe, made of Cardinal McCarrick’s graveside homily, quoting Kennedy’s letter to the pope, and the pope’s reply (obviously a bit formalistic).
The business of what makes something newsworthy isn’t a science, but there are criteria. Journalism students learn them, and professionals have internalized them. There isn’t any question that Ted Kennedy’s death should be the big news it is.
Peggy: I didn’t watch the funeral or the interment, and the Times doesn’t give the text of the two letters, so I can’t comment.
Mr. Dauenhauer: I wasn’t “bitching” about the media’s flaws, but drawing attention to the fact that they create, or at least largely shape, the event we may think they are simply reporting. This is not so much a “flaw” as a fact-of-life, probably inescapable.
First: The 24/7 media cycle demands expansiveness .
Beyond that, what sells drives a lot of what we look at and hear.
Second, having said that, I think we overstate the media’s influence on us as opposed to us on the media.
So I think an earlier discussion on this blog about Michael Jackson’s death insufficiently unederstood his power in the Africna american community and its influence on perception of ability to be a major factor in arts entertainment.
At the same time, the 24/7 media need truly makes the murder aftermath coverage overblown.
Third: I don’t think that’s the case with Senator Kennedy, who as a part of that larger than life clan carried deep significnace for the nation and who, though to some at this blog may be seen in too parochial a frame, had major meaning in people’s lives.
Four: Personal view:
Last night at Mass our JPII conservative pastor preached against self-righteousnes -something I think he is quite good at himself.
After the prayer of the faithful, my wife whispered to me that she was offended that there was no mention in petition for the dead for Teddy.
So, at the greeting of peace, I urged those around me to say one for Teddy.
I think Teddy stood for two things we need desperately today, the ability for people to talk to each other across lines – a lost art (and, as in the “seamless garment ” thread above and a comment there how maybe his voice was more about how than what); and, equally important ,that the role of government, especially in helping the poor, was not just the “big government” “bunch of beauracrats” drivel that drops from the lips of those who have so easily.
I thought the coverage in the Sunday Times today was right in terms of issues to be covered in our world. I think it’s right to be concerned about the medias’s flaws, which are many (thank God for PBS and NPR) but the power of media to shape should not be overestimated either.
David G., I think I made it clear I was talking about broadcast media; yes, the print media has done (and always has done) a better job taking the longer, broader view of events.
Paul M., yes, journalists are supposed to inculcate the classic news values–timeliness, impact, magnitude, conflict, oddity, proximity and prominence–but the ones that broadcast journalists have chosen to emphasize have largely been prominence and oddity–the famous and freaky. Impact and magnitude–how Kennedy’s legislative efforts affected broad swath of the citizens of the country (and perhaps the world)–were not the values the broadcast news elected to highlight.
Rita, in my view, the broadcast media have done their best to give Sen. Kennedy’s death the same sort of Michael Jackson treatment–the focus on the troubled family, the wealth, the ill-health, the big family dynamics.
Bernard, I agree that never has one heard so many references to the Gospels. But is that to the credit of the media? Or to the careful planning of the funeral observances by the family, who sought to establish Sen. Kennedy as a man of faith?
Not trying to be combative here. My sense is that any media’s presentation of the news is only half the story–we filter its meaning through our own experiences, opinions and prejudices. And that’s about as philosophical as my pedestrian mind runs.
Jean, last evening I sent an email to my children and their families saying that I hope that they had seen something of the ceremonies for Sen. Kennedy and added that if they did, then, whatever they might think about the man, they would have heard expressed what we Catholics believe about what makes for a good life, namely care for the poor etc. and that so much else that is today presented as significant is, in the end, tinsel.
Who might have been manipulating whom for what in all this is something that I for one will worry about another day.
Bernard, clearly you took away a much more spiritual message from Sen. Kennedy’s funeral than I did, and I applaud your using it as a teaching moment for your kids.
my wife & i recently decided not to spend time watching commercial television or listening to commercial radio.
there are many rewarding alternatives in the media as well as personal alternatives.
we were both born in the 50s so the kennedys , the beatles , …… were influential in our world view.
sen kennedy was one of my few heros that i did not have the opportunity to meet.
i am joyful for his triumphs & saddened by his suffering.
we watched the funeral mass and that was about all.
we have lost a great voice.
– peace to you -