In approximately the 1970s, the major networks decided that their news programs weren’t making enough money, so they turned over management of the news to their entertainment divisions.  This had several consequences.

First, it meant that the news had to become entertaining, in order to attract viewers and advertisers.  News, told simply and honestly, it turns out, isn’t entertaining.  The only people who watched it were people who actually wanted to know things, learn things.

As a result, we went from “news” to “news stories.”  It literally became necessary for news programs to wrap every fact, every event, in a story.  Those stories, in addition, had to be entertaining.  And they had to have a consistent, coherent narrative.  Such a narrative, of course, as every fiction writer knows, must have a controlling theme.  The problem with this is that most raw news is random and disconnected, so news “writers” had to create the controlling narrative, themselves.

 Also, the development of news as stories to attract viewers and advertising dollars meant that network news programs began to compete with each other, which now no longer meant having the most complete and honest reporting of the news, but meant, instead, having the most entertaining or compelling story.

(As an aside:  Newspapers had wrestled with this same problem earlier in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, but newspapers never had the ubiquity, or public impact that television and radio have.  They were simply to slow and cumbersome, and readers always had the ability to self-select what and how much of their content to consume.)

In contemporary news “coverage,” we can see that the media develop their story, and its controlling narrative early and are reluctant to change it.  They also have an incentive to make that narrative as compelling as possible.

Which brings me to modern politics and the Presidential election. 

Note that there is a tendency to call it a “race,” rather than an election.  An election is a story about a choice, in which it is important to know what is relevant to that choice.  A race is about who’s winning and losing.  As such, it is in the interest of the news to make the race as exciting as possible.  The really important parts of electing the President – such as the actual state of the economy and it’s effect on the country as a whole, or issues of race, gender, health care, and so on – are useful in elections, but aren’t particularly relevant to the question of who’s winning, unless they can be presented in dramatic tones, with less emphasis on the facts and more on how people feel about them, which is circular because people will feel about them according to how dramatically they’re reported and what the stories are.

The controlling narrative of this election was decided long ago, at least as long ago as 2016, when the choice was between Trump and Clinton.  Now, the news networks will try to tell you that the issue is competence, but that is, at best misleading, at worst a lie.  Competence requires a narrative definition, because the actual definition is simply the ability to do the job the way it’s supposed to be done.

So, instead, we talk about age, on the one hand, and bluster on the other.  When the news talks about Biden, it presents his age, not as a marker of his experience and his accomplishments, but as a question of his competence, despite the fact hat he is only 2 years older that Trump, whose age is never reported on.  When Biden is showing his age – his gait is slower, his voice is raspy and his stutter is ore apparent, for example – the questions are about his competence.  Or more accurately, about how the public should view his competence, because those who actually work with him all the time, both domestic and foreign, have no doubts about his ability to do the job.  When Trump blusters and lies and rambles his way through incomprehensible word salads, the reporting is not about his competence, it’s about his power over his party and his base.  We are told the lie that power is, itself, competence, without enough emphasis on the source of the power or its potential use and potential danger.

Trump is the more dramatic of the candidates, which means that he better suits the news networks need for dramatic story-telling.

We need, also, to understand that it is in the interest of the entertainment news to keep the race close.  The story of a runaway winner lacks drama in an election.

If this election were being reported simply and honestly on the most important issues, there is no reason for it to seem so close.  In terms of accomplishments with regard to economic issues, infrastructure issues, issues of individual rights and freedoms, issues of health care, issues of international relations, and the future of the American democratic republic, there should be no reason for it to be this close an election.

The question the news media want you to ask is “do you want the old guy or the obnoxious guy?”

What we should be asking is, “do we want the candidate whose record shows that he will at least try to advance policies that will benefit us as a nation, or the candidate whose promises nothing more than the power of gaslighting, narcissistic posturing, retribution against his perceived enemies and virtual dictatorship founded on his own ego and the allegiance of Christian nationalists and neo-fascists.

We need to start seriously tuning out the 24-hour news/opinion/punditry narrative and focus on the real issues.  Stop worrying about Biden’s age.  He’s only one part of the whole picture.  What do you want to accomplish over the next four years?  Which candidate is more likely to try to do those things?  No candidate is going to be able to do all of it.  Who are you electing to Congress?  Who are you electing locally or state-wide?  The U.S. government is a vast, interconnected system.  It is not supposed to be one man.  And it is especially not supposed to be an egotistic, irrational, power-obsessed, would-be dictator who seems to believe that it IS supposed to be one man and that man is himself.

The news-as-entertainment media are not going to easily abandon their chosen narrative.  We must change the narrative ourselves, and show them that their narrative is both wrong and irrelevant.