On Thursday night, the podcast host Charlamagne tha God got into a testy exchange with Anderson Cooper on the latter’s CNN show, which culminated in both men using the word “bulls**t” in an accusatory way – heady stuff for primetime news viewing.
The debate was a perfect embodiment of the behind-the-screen tussle between new and legacy media for pre-eminence in this election. Kamala Harris has already done a lengthy sit-down interview with Charlemagne. On Friday, it was announced that Donald Trump is to sit down with former wrestling-guy-turned-podcast-phenomenon Joe Rogan, whose mellow persona is offset by a stupendous set of biceps which are certain to intimidate Trump and cause him to make strange observations.
Cooper was annoyed at Charlemagne’s assertion that CNN had not held Trump fully accountable for his words. It is hard to dislike Cooper, or at least the news-anchor persona he shares on television. During the recent hurricane in Florida, he presented his show from some pier near Tampa Bay, cowering under a flimsy anorak. Rain, hail and wind pelted him and ominous waves crashed over the railing as he told us the weather was really quite dangerous. It was compelling and utterly distracting: all across the US, hundreds of thousands of viewers must have wondered if they were going to witness the demise of good old Anderson on national television and found themselves yelling: get out of there you absolute loon. But Cooper has a long record of plonking himself into the front line of stories.
Also on Thursday night, on a Fox News show, CNN’s arch competitor stars were sifting through the analysis of their rival channel’s Town Hall debate involving Harris, also hosted by Cooper – he’d dried off and ditched the anorak. They seized on a comment by David Axelrod, the former Obama senior adviser and now a CNN regular. They professed amazement that even The Ax had described Harris’s answers with the phrase “word salad city”. Axelrod had indeed used that phrase, but only in the context of a long, nuanced answer which was a genuine attempt to explore the strengths and weaknesses of Harris’s speaking style. The Fox hosts whipped the explosive phrase and flogged it for all it was worth.
Fox has long gone full-Maga in its coverage of the election. One of the braver decisions by the Harris campaign was to sit down for an interview with Bret Baier, the veteran Fox host. Baier has a reputation for being one of the fairest-minded and even handed Fox presenters.
In January, on a viciously cold night in Des Moines, a small group of people stood in the forlorn lobby of a vast arena waiting for taxis which would not come. This was after a Fox Town Hall with Trump, hosted by Baier. The Trump campaign had come up with a clever wheeze to organise their ground game by creating “precinct captains” who were responsible for marshalling a certain number of voters. They were issued little naval caps to distinguish them. One precinct captain, in his cap, spotted Baier exiting the place and wanted to chat. It was after midnight and it felt like the end of the world outside. But Baier was decent: behind the TV host is a person. In his sit-down with Harris, he was presumably under pressure to come out guns blazing and he did. It was a confrontational 20 minutes, one of the key television moments of the election.
The pro-Trump slant on Fox’s coverage is often jaw-dropping. CNN is frequently accused of an equally obvious left-leaning pro-Democrat bias. And it’s true that the channel is, through its presenters, often scathing towards the Trump campaign. But in presenters like Jake Trapper and Kaitlan Collins, they have plenty of talented journalists who direct uncomfortable questions at Harris’s and, before that, Joe Biden’s campaign.
The trouble for both networks is that their audience has become limited to those who share their political sensibilities and ideologies. Many Americans readily claim to have abandoned both, and mainstream news in general. Tuesday’s revelation by Barack Obama, that he “doesn’t watch cable news any more” must have broken a thousand tiny executive hearts. How does the great man get his news? Or does he just read Thoreau, shoot a lonely basketball in the back yard, and pretend to rake the leaves so he can enjoy a sneaky smoke? These are the questions no news network has answered.
The struggle for the market share is treacherous. And the most senior hosts on Fox and CNN are rewarded with lavish contracts to front their shows in what is a viciously competitive game – flick back 10 quick years and you’ll find the cast of stars was very different. The struggle to gain new viewers has become more difficult than ever, with CNN weathering a crisis in recent years.
At a certain level, the entire US election is an insane, round-the-clock 12-month, multibillion dollar television gameshow in which everyone, including would-be and former presidents, has a role. This year’s trend of both campaigns’ strategy of cherry-picking podcasts whose creators have attracted huge listener ships of key demographics is a new departure. But it’s just an extension of the gamification of the great political madhouse in which nobody seems to truly listen to anyone else any more.