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Day Three of the O-Watch

Thursday, January 22, 2009

A SCANT 60 HOURS or so into Obama Time we can review some “Multimedia Captures” of the new era. Those are what in the ancient days of separately siloed, single-medium outlets we might refer to as “Snapshots” or even - if we were in radio - “Eavesdroppings”, to quote a witty broadcast to which I once contributed. There are a few mixed morsels to savor.

** CAPTURE 1:

 

THE BRAND NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE of the country now at risk of no longer being the world’s lone superpower gave what the press widely called a “somber” speech, and actually acknowledged the “fear that America's decline is inevitable”. Meanwhile, half-way across the globe, official state-controlled TV in China - a nation most likely to challenge the US's position - faded him out.

 

Barely had President Barack Obama uttered his phrase recalling that America had “faced down fascism and communism”, when hair-triggered switchers at China Central Television cut fast to the studio - where a less adroit anchor and a nonplussed analyst had suddenly and uncomfortably to “fill”, in the ungainly jargon of the trade.

 

 

                                   

                       

 

Why is it, by the way (and I ask simply as a bemused viewer and listener these days), that American radio hosts cover great public events like this so much better and with more self-discipline than American TV anchors do? In the visual medium, from the top-rating network coverage at NBC through to top-rating news-cablers CNN, why is it felt necessary to cover the images “wall to wall” with verbiage, most of it vapid?

  

   

 

** EVERY WEEK CONNECTICUT'S NPR STATION, WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO) AIRS A DISCUSSION BASED ON THIS COLUMN - Fridays at 7.35 am, and Saturdays at 4.45 pm.**

 

Listen to THE MEDIA BEAT podcasts by clicking HERE.

     

 

  

** CAPTURE 2:

 

ON THE WEB, IT WAS at exactly one minute past noon (though before the late-running, and now famously flubbed, oath of office was taken) that the new White House website appeared – and the clutzy old Bush site was archived, disappearing from general view. (And that’s not just a piece of cyber-slang. The old site went literally into the National Archives of course.)

 

With determinedly on-message obviousness, the Obama Presidency’s homepage proclaimed: “CHANGE has come to America” (a screen-capture, above left).

 

The new style is generally a welcome and very professional improvement on its predecessor. An earlier edition of THE MEDIA BEAT had to wince at George W Bush’s supposed attempts at blogging (remember his ill-fated “Trip Notes” from his - as it turned out - equally ill-fated Middle East visit a year ago?) 

 

Tellingly enough, Bush’s first-term website developer Jimmy Orr says about his Democratic successor Macon Phillips and his staff that “These guys get it. It's not about formal language. It's about speaking like a person”.

 

Though certainly colloquial, the site’s opening content was all too obviously well-considered and crafted – all the posts ostensibly date-stamped 12:01pm January 20th were clearly written well in advance. But some, by contrast, were deliberately behind the times. For over 24 hours, and despite the flurry of new-broom activity from the Obama team, visitors who clicked on “Executive Orders” in the new Briefing Room page received the message: “The President has not yet issued any Executive Orders.”

 

To all intents and purposes, though, he certainly had. 

 

  

 

** CAPTURE 3:

 

IT WAS LEFT TO THE FIFTH ESTATE, in this case good old-style news agencies represented notably by the Associated Press, to bring into the public domain Obama’s first major diktat, aimed at changing the entire political landscape. It comprised not just his suspension, through Justice Department moves, of the 21 currently proceeding Guantanamo Military Commissions, which was initiated during the evening of the 20th, but his actual plans - via Executive Order - for closing down the whole camp (pictured above right).

 

The AP (the perpetually resourceful reporter Jennifer Loven, in fact) yesterday got hold of a draft of the new Oval Office's Order - to be signed as early as today, perhaps. In it, the Obama Administration (yes, we'll get used to that phrasing) posits in gratifyingly simple and clear terms that:

 

" ... prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo and closure of the facility would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice”.

 

You can say that again – as many acute journalists and diplomatic observers around the world have indeed been saying, for seven years now.

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