Iran, Onions, & 3-Hour Interviews

"I love onions. I love onions on my hamburger," said Gerald Ford to Steve Scully during a C-SPAN interview in 2000.

"Mr. President, I asked you about about Iran," said Scully confusedly.

"Yes," Ford replied, "onions."

And in this very moment, former U.S. President Gerald Ford was in fact having a stroke. On camera. Within moments he snapped out of it, and returned seamlessly to the interview, his medical emergency going unnoticed, even by his interviewer.

Steve Scully, Senior Executive Producer and Political Editor at C-SPAN recalled the moment with a strange wistfulness, his piercing blue eyes somehow managing to maintain an eerily intense eye contact with the entire class at once. Admitting that it wasn't until that evening that he realized the full gravity of what had transpired before him, he gave a slight chuckle at the event's sudden and unexpected turn to breaking news.

These days, however, he's much less likely to have such an experience, and works mostly in production at C-SPAN, doing very little reporting of his own. In truth, C-SPAN itself produces only 20% originally generated content, specializing mostly in long-form government feeds from the House, Senate and various other DC political hubs [interesting fact: Al Gore was the first person to appear on both the House and the Senate C-SPAN cameras].

Sure, the cable-funded channel does create some of its own interviews, but even these are long - many done in a 3-hour format. Sometimes it feels like you could go for 12, said Scully, and sometimes you're 20 minutes in and already diligently counting down the seconds remaining.

mock interview

Scully really emphasized his method of delivering news. By getting beyond what's being reported and taking it to the next step, he works on moving the story forward instead of rehashing what's already been overexposed. That's what a journalist does, he said (it would seem as if CNN and Fox have a severely warped definition of what "a journalist" is).

Despite what I'd thought about C-SPAN, Scully insists that there is a lot of thought that goes into what they decide to air on their station - it's not simply one direct feed after another. Those at C-SPAN do NOT work for the government, - something that, up to this point, I'd sort of assumed to be true.

They do, however, receive funding year after year, negating the need for advertisements - but also for any sort of demographic research, which I think is unfortunate. I believe that if C-SPAN looked a little more closely at their viewership, they could maybe close the gap between the long-debated divide of public interest being "what is in the public's best interest" versus "what the public is interested in".

Go ahead - Target the heck out of those retired grans and gramps lapping up their beloved 6 hour long pension hearings. At least a segment of the audience will be thoroughly entertained.

dream office

c-span radio