Deep analysis in an instant

Thank you, Los Angeles Times, for hosting this commentary in a town hall format that will provide greater interaction with readers and allow my winning personality to come across -- provided it’s not filtered by elitist editors. Now, let’s have the first question that I will ignore and instead spew my own message.

As a member of the elitist media yourself, how can you claim to have any credibility when it comes to commenting on coverage of the presidential election?

Thank you for that. And if you have ever protected the public from media or helped feeble old ladies cross a street in rush-hour traffic, as a former Boy Scout I salute you.

Any thoughts about Charlie Gibson’s recent interviews of Barack Obama and John McCain on ABC’s “World News Tonight”?

I think about them regularly. MSNBC lists to the left and Fox tilts to the right. As a real nut about fairness, I prefer the balanced blather of CNN.

How do you think Tom Brokaw did as moderator of Tuesday’s second presidential debate?

I applaud the clarity of this question, believing as I do that the media’s faster-and-faster crowd is gaining too much stature with the public. Look, the 24-hour news cycle has shrunk to about 24 seconds, and surveys show that most Americans, especially those under 30, have lost faith in traditional media and prefer the Internet as a primary news source. Extreme speed is what’s hot, transforming not only the news business but also newsmakers by forcing everyone to make decisions on the run. CNN’s election coverage is a metaphor for the perils of this speed surge. It doesn’t call what it does “in-depth instant news” for nothing.

An especially notable cable-news speed moment came at a GOP candidates forum early in the primary season, when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Rudy Giuliani: “What would you do in the eyes of Muslims to repair America’s image? Mayor Giuliani -- 90 seconds.” And to the next candidate: “How do you repair the image of America in the Muslim world -- 30 seconds to respond.”

Do you agree that Gwen Ifill went AWOL as moderator during the recent vice presidential debate?

My position remains clear on that: When you leave, say where you’re going so no one will worry if you don’t return. And did you know that cable news swamis have found a way to speed up even “live” reporting?

They do it with tarot cards, reporting news before it happens. In other words, they spend much of their time speculating or predicting how events will turn out.

How will Bob Schieffer do moderating Wednesday’s Obama-McCain debate?

Yes he will. Another example of CNN’s pedal to the metal is its weaving of focus group responses through live debate coverage. Or as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer titled this screwball exercise Tuesday: “A couple of squiggly lines going up and down at the bottom of your screen.” Color coded for gender too.

Running below live debate pictures of McCain and Obama on Tuesday, these squiggles represented second-by-second responses of 25 undecided (at this late date?) voters. Each had been provided a “perception analyzer” with knobs that could register pleasure or displeasure with what was said at that moment.

In other words, instant, instinctual and visceral, in the time it takes Sarah Palin to wink. Recognizing this as in-depth journalism, MSNBC presented its own focus-group squiggles Tuesday, with three lines instead of two, after the debate.

All of this recalls the equally goofy sweat tests that a TV news consultant developed in the 1970s to measure audience responses to local newscasts. The Physiograph 6-B, as it was called, wired people with electrodes to measure their galvanic skin responses to images on a screen, probing their nervous systems to detect boredom, enthusiasm, arousal and dislike.

Where is the news business going?

It definitely will get there. CNN has upped the technology this millennium. In addition to continuous squiggles, CNN viewers watching on high definition Tuesday could see side panels with a running scoreboard showing second-by-second opinions of reporters and pundits regarding when they thought a candidate was “scoring points” or was “missing opportunities.”

Let’s see, squiggly lines for one set of instant responses, a running scoreboard for another.

And somewhere in all of this, Obama and McCain were having something described euphemistically as a debate.

It mattered not if you were distracted, though, for, as always, reporters and pundits opined about it afterward on the broadcast networks and cable channels.

On CNN, there were a dirty dozen of them, swiftly gaveling down verdicts varying from “fascinating” to “flat,” “interesting” to “nothing new,” all of it instantaneous and worthless.

Is there any merit to televised debates when the candidates don’t answer the questions?

I continue to endorse this being asked. These cable news rockets have another role as well: counseling candidates how to persuade voters. Where is it written that journalists are meant to advise candidates what to do instead of just reporting what they do? Nowhere. But here, among many others who did it, was Gloria Borger, CNN senior analyst and contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, just before Tuesday’s debate:

“If I were advising these candidates, which I’m not, I would say to them: ‘Say “I have a plan,” over and over and over again, and “this is my plan.” ’ “

Not that McCain or Obama should actually have a plan for governance, she appeared to say, only that, what -- each should pretend to have one? Because, above all, this was theater, and that included the speedaholic coverage. As it played out, I probed my nervous system and detected extreme dislike.

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Former Times television critic Howard Rosenberg is the author, with Charles S. Feldman, of “No Time to Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-Hour News Cycle.” He can be reached at howardrosenberg@notimetothinkbook.com.