I was mildly surprised to learn that someone whose views I respect tended to disregard whatever an “analyst” or journalist or news host would say on TV but pay rapt attention whenever an elected or former pol would talk, because I have the exact opposite approach.
I figure the pol is giving some safe, ass-covering, appeal to future voters that may or may well not reflect his or her actual position, while the reporters are fleshing out the stories they’re currently putting together and when pressed for their opinions, give more frank and honest assessments containing often real insights beneath surface of their stories.
I utterly fail to see why anyone pays attention to anything purporting to be TV news. That’s not to say that Fox is equivalent in all ways to MSNBC or whatever other outlet, but rather the entire undertaking is a poor means of getting any information.
I’m with Marshall McLuhan on this. The nature of the media is just as important as the content, and this has become more and more true as we’ve progressed from radio to TV to the internet. TV news is a format with its own demands. It offers only a passive way of absorbing information, no matter how carefully curated.
I read, almost exclusively. I can honestly say I have seen less then five minutes of TV news or video in years. The only time I subject myself to video for news purposes is when it’s something that MUST be seen - George Floyd’s murder, the 1/6 insurrection. But the rest of the time I read.
It’s not passive. I absorb information actively and at my own pace, which is quite a bit faster than it can be dished out verbally by a talking head or pol. I can switch and read different versions of news events much more quickly than I could watch several different programs.
Addressing the question of pols or talking heads, I will read what pols have said and the proclamations their offices put out. But I rarely care what a talking head has to say. I’ve never given a thought to what a Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow has to say unless it’s something they’ve written.
I occasionally see clips embedded here on the SD that are journalists or analysts talking about a recent article they’ve written. And I think, “Ugh, am I glad I read that and don’t have to listen to them prattle on.”
While I do listen to some podcasts, I again often find myself faced with someone who’s written something that I’ve already read. Usually, I skip the podcast in that case.
Short answer to the OP - neither. I see no point in subjecting myself to what the TV creators want me to absorb in their format, in their allotted time frame.
I think that they serve somewhat different purposes. In terms of actually getting information about the subject I would most likely prefer a talking head to a politician because they may be less likely to be biased (see below), but hearing politicans comment, will tell me more about where the two parties are thinking. Is the Republican pol trying to shift the fact that a number of Immigrants were chopped up and used as fertilizer on rampant socialism or is he embracing it as a good thing, both are factually incorrect but the first means that there is less of a chance of there being legislation that gives tax breaks for farmers recycling their employees.
It should also be pointed out that talking heads vary as far the bias of there own. If a debate on climate change features a talking head from Green Peace vs a Vice president of Exon, then I’d probably rather hear politicians, but if they a university professor of Economics from Dartmouth and a Geology professor from MIT, then I might be more interested.
The politician. Not because I care very much about what they have to say. Rather, I care that they said it, because I want to compare against what they say and do in the future. Talking heads invent their own narrative about what they think was said, which is invariably distorted and often ass-backwards.
That said, I prefer reading. And while I have enormous antipathy toward social media, there is one thing it gets right–it acts as an easily verifiable record of what a politician (or anyone) said about a thing. There’s no need to ever reference someone else’s claim about what the person said.
I like talking heads because they can be brutally honest sometimes in a way that politicians never can be. Every time I turn on Deadline White House I get to hear Nicolle Wallace calling Trump the “disgraced, twice-impeached, indicted ex-President”. I’m looking forward to seeing how she adds to it as more indictments roll in.
I saw an example of a politician not being able to say something just today. On MSNBC they were interviewing some White House Policy Advisor about the upcoming debt ceiling situation. I heard them ask the same question at least three times. They really wanted to know about the 14th Amendment. They kept asking. The politician kept not answering. That was frustrating to watch and when the question was asked for the third time in a few minutes I stopped watching. They had to know they were going to get asked about it but it wasn’t in the talking points so they couldn’t say anything. I think these kinds of interviews should end at the point where the politician answers the question they think you should have asked instead of the question you actually asked. I know this would make most interviews about one question long. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
I think the awfulness of American political news is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I always get the impression that journalists and presenters are trying so hard to not appear biased or rude, that they are waaay too deferential to the politicians and let them get away with spewing a whole pile of crap.
It’s not like that everywhere.
I don’t think people in other Western countries are as cynical about the media, and journalists feel more free to do more confrontational and substantive interviews.
(Although, here in the UK, standards are certainly slipping, with a BBC that now often leaves right-wing talking points unchallenged, and the rise of FOX GB News giving a forum for politicians who don’t want to appear on an actual news channel. But we still have a long way to fall).
