The Press Box - Watching the Coverage of the Invasion of Ukraine

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Bryan and David break down the cable news coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. They discuss first impressions of videos and photos being aired, talk through the type of cable news coverage we’re seeing in comparison to the papers, and then specifically dissect CNN’s coverage of the events.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emmy Award-winning producer, actor and comedian Larry Wilmore is back on the air, hosting a podcast where he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the world of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. Check out Larry Wilmore, Black on the Air on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox Thursday. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. We are talking to you the morning after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

an invasion. The New York Times is calling a full-scale attack now. There are reports from several outlets that the Russians want to take the Ukrainian capital of Kiv in order to replace President Vlomir Zelensky and his government. The New York Times is using the word decapitate to describe that effort. David, at times like last night and this morning, you and I are sitting in front of a TV, like just about everyone else. What are some of your first impressions from watching the news? Oh, man.

It's, well, I mean, it's heartbreaking and it's sort of paralyzing, you know, in its way to be watching this. It's, it's, I think you and I can probably agree. There's a lot of, like, news spectacles that we've become sort of veneer, like we've become, if not cynical about them pretty weathered to over the past five, ten years of our lives, right? I mean, I don't think either of us prepping for this podcast feel any shivers up our spine during like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. see or anything, you know, or anything. You know, there's not, there's not a lot of big moments that get you, but it's impossible to sort of prepare yourself for the way you're going to feel when that Chiron goes across the screen, right?

That like, like the feeling that the television or the concrete version of the joke of the tweet that we talked about earlier this week when it's just like, when, you know, Joe Biden canceled his weekend plans and suddenly it's real, right? It's real, real. watching it on TV has been it's sort of a mixed bag I think that there's this real feeling of uncertainty that comes with any conflict situation like this

I mean especially something that could escalate I mean that we all have some sort of some sort of grasp of the scope you know even though it's unknowable it could be well know it could be really big but it's frankly like we still have a very limited amount of information you know, and you really see in some ways how thin the coverage is when it goes wall to wall

on an event this significant, you know? I mean, there's people around the world. On paper, there's a lot of information, but there's just so little information in the way that we're used to having news, serious news delivered. Yes. And I noticed that myself last night and even this morning because what people like you and I want to see in in a moment like this is pictures on the news. Yep. We crave the picture. We want to see the CNN or NBC or network correspondent standing there in Kiev at night.

So we can see what it looks like there. We want to see the correspondence fanned out around the country. We want to see pictures. As we saw last night, I believe it was a photo. It was a video shown on lots of networks of the Russian tanks. right, moving unimpeded down the highway or hearing that air raid siren that was on NBC and a bunch of other networks last night in Kiev. And at the same time, I'm watching it. And it's almost like when you and I have talked about with natural disasters, I'm like, I understand the gist of what

is happening here, but so many of these pictures are almost out of context. And it's kind of for the moment anyway, just a picture rather than a picture that comes with an explanation. Can I take one step further than that. I'm watching CNN right now, and they're showing the sort of like Verite footage of people in Kharkiv cramming the subways. Yep. There's a, there's a, I mean, there's a real value to that, you know, with an explanation, which I have it on mute, so I assume, I can only assume we're getting one as part of the broader story. There was footage earlier today I saw of people lining up to the, at the ATM at the bank and seemingly pretty good spirits, but all trying to get their, you know, get money out. Those sorts of things,

and the scenes that you describe, the tanks rolling in, there is real value to that. But specifically to your point about reporters on the street, unless the point is to, if a reporter's reporting on the, you know, from a balcony in Kiev, and it's like a serene nighttime view, unless the point is to convey a moment of serenity,

it's actually not helpful to have all these people scattered around because some of them are in or on the street in Ukraine, some of them are in Moscow, you know, some of the people that are kind of scattered all over the place. And if you're reporting on a background where nothing of interest is happening, where people are milling about smoking cigarettes, it gives you the exact opposite impression, then this is a country at war, right?

Then this is it. So it's, it's, I understand why they're there. I'm not saying, you know, pull them out. And these are the people that have some of the best information to be conveying to us, certainly more than a lot of people that are cramming the studios. But, you know, it's, you're right. It's not informative. Just that it might be a good shot.

It might make for good TV. It's certainly not informative in any real way. Okay, let's talk about that shot because that was on virtually every network last night. Keeve at night, as you said, relatively serene with an air raid siren kind of coming off once in a while. I agree with you. Part of it's like getting a dateline, right? Part of it is an announcement to viewers that we are in the place where the news is happening. We are in the country where the news is happening, if not exactly at the spot that the news is happening.

I will defend it on a couple of fronts. One is it's not like the Russians sent a note saying, hey, here is where we are going to be bombing tonight. And the networks decided to go someplace else, right? They are trying to figure out what is happening in real time just like we are, right? just like anybody is. You know, we don't know the answer to the question of what is happening. So we are going to station our correspondence here. We're going to show this.

I do think I will just push back slightly on, you're right, when you show a serene downtown nighttime image, there is something that is slightly misleading about that if there are tanks rolling in and missiles falling somewhere else. But I also think there is probably a fairly accurate depiction of what an invasion looks like, but conveyed by that picture too. I heard Clarissa Ward talking about that on CNN today. She was talking about there's this whole kind of fog of war where people are walking around on the streets, right?

It's not like, you know, it's not a video game, right? This is, this is something that's, it's a complicated story. So it is, you're right. In some case, I guess there is a sense where maybe you're not telling viewers everything. But again, I think you are conveying something of the sense of what is happening and what at least parts of the country are like at that moment. I mean, I just think that, you know, this is obviously a visual medium, right? And it's more so now than it ever has been in the past, despite the fact that television has existed for decades and decades.

Because social media, as we've talked about this before, is sort of like laid bare just the kind of inadequacy of television news, right? To like, we have, we can see videos on Twitter that CNN can't license, can't put on the, or is not airing for whatever reason. Maybe they're not true, you know, like, you know, maybe they're whatever. or else social media just aggregates the important videos without the 45 minutes of filler, like on an election night or something like that. So we see the 45 seconds we need to see. I just think it's important to convey this the terms of engagement. I mean, in terms of engagement, it sounds like I'm being coy, but to actually convey what the problem, like what's happening here in real terms. I mean, is, I mean, the problem is, well, first and foremost that

Russia has like rolled their tanks across, you know, and flown their helicopters over over the borders, you know? I mean, that's like that in and of itself is like, and just one of the most like mind-boggling things that's happened in our lifetimes. But then also like there's, you know, they're showing. And so like air that footage. Like let that be with an arrow pointing at it. This is when a war crime was committed. This is when, you know, like all, like every pack that anyone ever, has ever, has ever, the Russia's ever signed is broken. But also, they're putting up maps, which are helpful with, like, explosion, you know, with cartoon explosions on them showing everywhere where explosion has been reported.

But without footage of any explosions, it's not, I think that it feels like we're, so much of how we experience the world has moved past the sort of surreal, right? We get to see concrete videos of things when they happen. And we're not dependent on the description of the descriptions by news anchors and foreign correspondence and stuff to convey to us. like we expect to see it, you know, and when you, when you don't see it or when you see something that sort of conveys the opposite. I think that that's, I think that there's an inherent, there's an inherent issue there. But I mean, maybe I'm overblowing it. No, I know, I do. I think

you're really hitting on something really interesting because I was sitting there watching CNN and MSNBC last night with my laptop on my lap. And I was going back and forth to New York Times and the Washington Post homepages. And the New York Times very much on purpose seemed a step slow, right? The New York Times is not interested in, hey, an explosion happened. Did you hear that without any context at all? They may, you know, in the course of a news article, say explosions were heard in the capital of Kiev, but what they're really interested in, right, is a full-blown context and trying to figure out, give you like hard information about what is happening and convey the stakes of what is happening. Whereas television news definitely wants to do

that too, but they are also serving a very different need of viewers, which is like, you want to watch something right now. You want a picture that's on continuous loop. You want sights and sounds. We're trying to figure that out. We're trying to figure out what's happening. But in the meantime, we will give you the sights and sounds. And, you know, again, it's a, it's a big tradeoff, right?

And we could say that about all of television news probably, right? Like every time, you know, it's like airing an unedited interview with a politician when the politician is lying, you know, like that, you know, as opposed to airing excerpts and letting your correspondent put it into context, right? Like TV, live TV news is often just completely context-free. And yeah, it's very, very stark in a moment like this. You know, let me lodge another complaint. You know what feels really inadequate right now? The NFL halftime show set up some of the networks have gone to, the news networks have gone to. I don't need to see four people at a table presenting prepared statements, right?

Like people from think tanks and, you know, with military backgrounds. Like I, this is a point in time where like if, I mean, the anchor or trusted anchors can give us their prepared statements, you know, can report the news that's going on. But like, I want to hear like conversations, you know, I want to hear people react to the news as it's happening. I think that, I think that it's, you know, it's tough. Like, it's, it's tough to find the, the voice that, the, the, the voice that. exact voices that you want to hear comment on this. And that's another reason why social media is great, because you can find the Twitter account

that you sort of think is right and follow that the whole way through, right? You might, the television commentator you might most enjoy or appreciate might be on the channel that you otherwise don't like to watch, like whatever, there's a million ways to do this. But I don't know, I just feel like when they're not on the street, despite my complaints about the on the street reportage,

when they're not on the street, I feel like I'm getting even less information, you know? I don't need people to explain to me what's going on, what may or may not be going on in Putin's head, like ad nauseum, right? I mean, I think that that's like an important component of this, but like I don't need everybody's opinion on it, right? So, I mean, it's, I don't know. It just seems like there's a lot of, like, it feels like news, television news is in so many ways set up for opinion, right? And this is a situation where like, I'm interested in the facts. So your ideal is Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, whoever happens to be on the anchor desk at that time, toggling between correspondence on the facts.

field and lightning the ex-generals and the pundits and the people who are beaming in from home? What's your, what's your ideal here? Yeah, I mean, I think first of all, Jake Tapper kind of, or Don Lemon, I don't, I mean, Jake Tapper, I'm watching right now and he's, I think he's great. I think that, you know, well, that's a bad example for me. Lemon's obviously a legitimate news guy. Both of them are. But, I mean, I would turn on the TV this morning and was just sort of, sort of perplexed

that like Morning Joe was continuing. Just, I mean, specifically about Ukraine, but like that the format of Morning Joe is continuing, you know, unaltered sort of. I'm not quite sure that we need to stick with a regular host patterns and TV setups. I think playing it straight, I do. I mean, I think that having Tapper or whoever, as the anchor narrating what's going on and, you know, kind of assimilating information in the most direct way possible. and the more factual the better. I know that facts are really hard to come by at times like this. But I would rather have, I would rather have, you know, someone aggregate. I'd rather have like a Steve Kornacki

like aggregating reports live in front of me. No, no, no. I mean, that sounds comical, but I would rather have somebody like actually dealing with news rather than like just cycling and talking heads who may or may not be saying anything sort of pertinent to the moment. I don't know.

I guess I'm not, I guess I'm not making a lot of sense, but it does feel like the more, somehow the more voices here, the less adequate the coverage is. Well, this is something interesting about cable news, which is cable news has changed, and this is not, this is not breaking for anyone, but it has changed a lot since the original, let's say the early 90s conception of CNN, where it was a news gathering arm that happened to be on television. Fox and MSNBC come along and it has decided by all three less so CNN but by all three that

this is going to be about opinion and personality to your point about the Morning Joe thing that the way you want to get your news is with an opinionated anchor or team of anchors doing it. It's not going to be Bernard Shaw

doing the goal four. That went away. Now I do find it interesting that I've seen this a lot on Twitter. Everybody's like, man, CNN, I'm now, I like, CNN again. CNN, which had been such, you know, a network that did seemingly forever been trying, like, what is our in the late teens and early 2020s? What are we doing here? Right. They tried this

whole thing during the Trump administration with we are the network of truth, right? We speak truth to power, sometimes well, sometimes not so well. But this is what we tried to do. But it was hard for them because they weren't the left wing network. They weren't Fox News. So they were casting about. And And now, because they still have at least some of the news gathering apparatus that they had in their golden age, people are like, ah, CNN, this is the CNN I want. This is the thing. At this moment, this is the kind of cable news I want. What do you make of that? Yeah.

I mean, that's exactly where I turned when everything started happening. You know, I mean, I'm kind of toggling between them and, you know, well, I mean, whatever news source I can find that feels a little bit. you know, the Al Jazeera, the, all the CNN International. I mean, they're kind of duplicating coverage a whole lot in this moment. Yeah. But yeah, I checked Fox News to see if they were reporting it at all. They were, thankfully. And then kind of jumped right over to, you know, from MSNBC and that whole experience to CNN.

It feels like the right place to be, you know, trying to get your news at a time like this. Yeah. I do want to ask all those people that love CNN right now, whether they're going to want CNN in six months or a year, right? Are you going to be watching it when this isn't happening? Or are you then going to say, you know what? I prefer the opinionated thing because that's the issue right for CNN through all those things. Like we, you know, what do we want to do on the one hand? And what do we think that people are actually going to watch right on the other on the other?

Yeah. And they've clearly been caught between those two. things. By the way, I saw Jim Shuto kind of being like the opinionated anchor guy, but from Ukraine over the last several hours, which is so funny because he's doing, I think, a very good job of it, but it's like kind of the two poles of cable news fused in one. He is on the scene. He is across the world. He is in a war zone. But he is also being the kind of model of what we expect at cable news and seeing an anchor to be right now. I thought that was kind of weird. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously this is just a programming and marketing decision that in some ways the answer is really straightforward, right? I mean, they must be getting more viewers, more eyeballs, or feel like they can grow much more doing the opinion thing, right? But at a time like this, everybody wants, I mean, it's almost like CNN covering events such as this. It's almost like a,

you know, utility, you know? I mean, it's like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, it's no, it's not, that, that can't be monetized the rest of the time, although I guess, you know, we'd have to be kind of wishing for like more world calamities to hope that this would be like a permanent model, right? No, well, I mean, you just, well, I guess, I, I think maybe different than that, just hoping people would watch this kind of coverage when it wasn't a story necessarily of this magnitude. Oh, sure. Would watch that news gathering approach versus I'm watching the charismatic man or woman on television who is kind of reading, you know, it's kind of doing a bit.

I did appreciate a couple of CNN things. You mentioned the subway station. I'm not sure there's the same one you're talking about, but CNN's Clarissa Ward was in a subway station that people were using as an air raid shelter. Yeah. It was really amazing visual because the first thing you saw her, so, standing on steps, and it looked just like a, and I think she said this, a rush hour subway station. And then you were like, oh my gosh, everybody's sitting down in there and actually hiding in there because their fear of bombardment.

The other one was CNN's Matthew Chance, who's been on the air a lot since last night, last night, American time. And he said he had this encounter at an airport where there had been some fighting. And he gets to the airport and he says to the troops he finds there, do the Russians or the Ukrainians, control this airport and the person tells him the Russians are in control the airport. And he says, okay, where are the Russians? And this guy says, we're the Russians. And he realizes he's been talking to this special forces officer the whole time. And then did, I think, a quick little live news thing from there. But that was that was pretty amazing to watch. I also, David, we talk about CNN.

I also find it really interesting. If there is one very popular thing you can say on Twitter, it is a cable news sucks that we do not like cable news. We find it misinforms us as much as it informs us that it messes with our priorities, right, by putting that breaking news thing on the screen even when there is absolutely no breaking news. Yeah. And then at a time like this, you see everybody go, you know what I'm watching right now

endlessly? Cable news. that thing that sometimes annoys me has in this moment become essential, or at least I am essential in the sense that I have not stopped watching it since last night. You find that interesting? Yeah, I mean, but also our options are limited, right? I mean, it's like you can, you can hate it, but there's only so many, you know, news cameras out there in the world covering this stuff, right? So even if you knew with 100% uncertainty

that everything that came out of some anchor's mouth was going to be a lie, or even if it was going to be inaudible, you know? I mean, if your TV didn't have sound, like you would still go to these stations just to see you to take in because it's like this is the only chance you're going to have to get first-hand visual information

confirmation of what you're otherwise reading about or whatever else. You know, your options are pretty limited, but it's true. A lot of these, CNN, a lot of these, A lot of stations are doing a really good job covering this, and they're different ways. And you see, it's not just CNN. You do see the value overall.

And you can, of, it's easy to hate on news, just like it's easy to hate on sportscasters or whatever else. But at the end of the day, it's, they, there is a, there, I mean, when necessary, they do contribute to the greater good. Well, and you talked about cynicism at the beginning of this segment. It's, I think there's cynicism that's, that kind of cynicism that's ingrained in journalists like us, but there's also cynicism because the news is often covered cynically. That contributes to the cynicism.

Yeah. Cable news creates a lot of this, and it's worth noting that too. Well, there was, I mean, just as a totally an aside, but right after Biden spoke the other night, this is what, two days ago or whatever, there was a kind of a minor kerfuffle online and on TV about how the R&C immediately tweeted a picture of him walking away from the podium after his speech and tweeted like that's what weakness looks like or whatever whatever it said. I mean, first of all, what just a piece of shit tweet that was, but the fact that like not just that was tweeted, but that it was covered, the way that it was covered on TV, what kind of fits into a mold of sort of cynicism about politics.

politics, right? And the same people that were covering that. Body language coverage, you know, reliance on a visual as opposed to what Biden is doing about. Yeah, I mean, and just in general, like, pointing at the steady de-evolution of the Republican Party is not particularly meaningful unless there's some sort of deeper message or like there's real substance there. The point just being that the people that were kind of pointing at that tweet and wondering, you know, what had befallen the grand old party are now just covering. the war, right? They're not, politics has certainly

taken a back seat. And I think that's what's sort of refreshing about what we're watching, at least on some of these channels. Dave Weigel pointed this out on Twitter, is that what Trump would do is he would have all the reporters come into the Oval Office and then he would do his spiel from the desk inside the Oval Office

and then his minders would shoe the reporters out so that no one ever got the visual of Donald Trump walking away from the podium. they were just shoot out so that like visual was taken off the table oh that's great so it's just

and so if the RNC is talking about the RNC is really just talking about the way presidents are stage managed by their handlers which is very funny two small things before we wrap up here one is that since we were kids the idea of seeing

news anchors on television at a time when they're not supposed to be on television has been this like in a time In a time slot when they're not supposed to be in a time slot. In a time of day. Yeah. It's been this subliminal cue that something really important or in this case really bad is happening. Yeah.

It's exactly the same as it was with like Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw when we were kids as it is with Jake Tapper today as we sit here and talk. I find that just very funny on a very, on a very, very small level. Also, you nodded at this earlier. The retired generals are back on television. Yeah. I saw Wesley Clark today. I saw David Petraeus today. That's the name I haven't heard in a long time on television doing a combination of military analysis and also talking like my contacts are telling me in the field that this is happening to try to untangle some of those stories you've talked about that are not that clear. Kind of a very, very interesting feature of cable news at a moment like this. It is. I mean, there's like I said, I mean, it's, like I said, I mean, it's, it's easy to sort of poo-poo the sort of the think tank class in general. Certainly some of those are the sorts of people who are giving us some of our best information

at this point. But I think it's just the volume that gets me at the end of the day, right? It's like if you wanted to know, if there was, whatever, if there was a story you were reporting on, if there was something happening in the world that you wanted to know about, if it's anything from war to the NBA trade deadline, the whatever, you generally are going to have one or two people in your life or news sources that you trust, right? Like, you're going to follow, on the trade deadline, you're going to follow Woj and Shams, right? Like, that's, that's who you're paying attention to. You may, in a time of great need or great boredom, just go to Hoops

hype and just, you know, take in every single thing that's available because you want to, but you understand that, like, you don't, like, you know that's not your best source of information, right? So, I just feel like these networks in an effort to fill time are potentially just filling time with insufficient, inadequate, less than ideal sources of information. That's all. Not everybody can be the best. Not everybody can have a point of view that's actually that important to what's going

on. And I guess I would just presume, I would just want them to be a little bit more decisive, a little bit more, you know, to curate, I guess, what we see a little bit more. But I know that at a time like this, that's, I mean, honestly, too much to ask, you know. And it's, it's just happening. It's happening so quickly.

And it's just such a big deal, you know, in some sense, what are you going to do? He is David Schumacher. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. David and I are going to stay close to the mics. We're back with more soon.