Where’s the White House Highlight Reel?
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Watching today’s White House press conference (starring Robert Gibbs, as usual), I couldn’t help but notice the amount of knifefighting over what the President said four days ago, and what the Secretary of Health and Human Services said three days ago, and what Robert Gibbs said in June, and so forth. Much of the debating was with Ed Henry, but similar questions came from other reporters as well.
For all its supposed embrace of new media, press conferences sure haven’t changed much. Why can ESPN pull up highlight reels of someone in the Super Bowl from two years ago within 10 seconds of them making a big play, but the White House can’t have someone pulling up video of the President speaking about health insurance reform last Saturday?
A little of this is about technology, and a lot of it is about anticipation and preparation. It’s not technically hard to have “highlight reels” and subject matter experts and video technicans working a behind the scenes system to provide video of (say) the President’s innaugural address when a question gets popped on it. Sure, it might take five seconds, or 30, but it’s feasible. All that’s really needed facing the press is a couple big televisions, really. And no doubt a lot of this could be done digitally. This would be a great college class experiment.
Anticipation and preparation are something different. A modest staff would have to “study the game tapes” of the President, Vice President, Cabinet members, Generals, and so forth and work with “producers” to anticipate what clips would be most useful to support Gibbs or the relevant person during a government press conference. Then, if there’s a question about (say) yesterday’s speech – pop! – there’s the relevant highlight. Obviously, this idea could be applied beyond the White House to the State Department, CENTCOM, and so forth.
No more debates about what exact word the President used in a speech four days ago, Robert Gibbs, Ed Henry, and everyone else. While you’re debating it, a 14 year old is in his basement watching the YouTube clip and laughing at the old-fashioned process of a White House press conference.
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It’d be a lot harder for Gibbs or any of his predecessors in the dark arts of White House Press Secretaryship to spin what the president did and didn’t say if they relied on this technology you proposed. Which is probably why we should immediately amend the Constitution to require it. I’d also be in favor of genetically engineering press secretaries whose noses grows if they tell a lie, although they’d probably only last on the job for a week before needing to visit a plastic surgeon for a rhinoplasty.
What’s going to start happening if the White House doesn’t do something like that is that the reporters will. They’ll have the clips on their laptops or smartphones, and will just be like, “Mr. Gibbs, I’m going to play a clip for you and I’d like you to respond” – Sort of a spontaneous Meet the Press moment.
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