Shadowboxing great for sports TV, but bad for democracy

Most days after work, I sit in my favorite chair, pet my dog and watch “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN. The show is pretty simple. Two reporters, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, make fun of each other’s male pattern baldness and argue about sports. They debate whether Jessica Simpson’s presence caused Tony Romo to lose in the playoffs, whether defensive back Adam “Pacman” Jones (a guy who single-handedly made an innocuous nickname sound sinister) means it when he says he’s sorry this time, and whether a bear falling onto a trampoline constitutes high comedy. It’s not exactly “Masterpiece Theatre,” but Kornheiser is pretty funny, and I’m a sucker for college football highlights on top of dry wit.

So for the last few years I’ve continued to watch “PTI” with impunity, never fearing that it could be, as Jon Stewart once quipped “bad for America.” Then last week, something terrible happened. In the middle of a Kornheiser riff about Aaron Rogers’ chances to be the next Brett Favre, I came to a realization that caused my work as a political scientist to collide with my enjoyment of mildly amusing television — “Pardon the Interruption” has ruined American politics.

Just as it did on ESPN, the “PTI” style of television — take an event, put people on two sides of it and let them go at it — took over the news this election season. It didn’t matter what the issue was. During the primary season, CNN invariably would designate commentators as a “Clinton supporter” or an “Obama supporter.” The Clinton supporter would make an argument for Clinton’s point of view, and the Obama supporter would disagree. The general election coverage was virtually identical — just replace “Clinton supporter” with “McCain supporter” and you’ve got a Tuesday night on “Anderson Cooper 360.”

While annoying, this approach to politics also suggests that there are no durable facts, only opinions. Of course, this is not true. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That’s fact, not opinion. John McCain had more foreign policy experience than Barack Obama — fact. Yet night after night these issues were treated as if they were open to debate. They’re not, and they shouldn’t be treated as such. Newspapers separate opinion pieces from news for a reason. Television used to do the same thing.

This style of media coverage also insinuates that there are always two — and only two — sides to any issue. Although it would be easier if this were the case, many, if not most, issues have more than two sides. Staying in Iraq isn’t an either/or issue and there is no clear liberal or conservative view on this. There are dozens of shades of gray, but you wouldn’t know this from watching “Hannity & Colmes.”

It’s pretty common to hear that American politics is increasingly polarized, that Republicans and Democrats live in two different worlds. There are many reasons for this polarization, but pitting a Democrat against a Republican every night on television is not helping. It reinforces the notion that Democrats and Republicans live in different worlds and that they have no better chance of quality deliberation than Mike Tyson does with Evander Holyfield.

The mass media have always prided themselves on fairness. This used to mean presenting the facts and allowing citizens to cull through them and form their own opinions. The new interpretation of fairness seems to be presenting two inaccurate, stereotypical and biased sides and letting the people choose one of them. Unfortunately, two unreasonable positions do not equal one reasonable one.

Perhaps the news media should realize that the “Pardon the Interruption” formula works well for two smart, funny guys who make careers out of debating the future of a defensive back named after a 1980s video game. But it doesn’t work when you’re debating whether we should pull troops from Iraq, how we should solve the worst economic crisis we’ve seen in 50 years or who should be the leader of the free world.

• Christopher A. Cooper is director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.