I've mentioned several times in this space about my love for ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, but I can always find a reason to say it again: I love this show! I mean, both Kornheiser and Wilbon rank several places higher than most of my family on my Kidney Donation short-list. I don't want to overstate the issue, but spending an afternoon eating pizza and watching PTI makes me understand how Cartman felt when he got own his own amusement park. Soooooooooo happy.As I was describing (yet again) to my wife how much I love the show, something occurred to me regarding all the other other millions and millions talking-head shows bouncing around my digital cable box: why don't any of them employ a stat boy?
If you've never seen PTI (and if you haven't, what's wrong with you?), this is what I'm talking about: after a half hour of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon debating the day's sporting events, Tony Reali (Stat Boy) comes on and corrects any factual errors that they may have made during the course of the show. The conceit is that any two people -- experts or no -- will have trouble keeping facts straight over the course of thirty extemporaneous minutes. Add into the mix that Tony Kornheiser has apparently stopped watching sports altogether, and the need for error correction becomes self-evident.
PTI's use of an ombudsman is a nod to Kornheiser and Wilbon's newspaper roots. These are old-school guys for whom getting the facts straight actually, you know, mean something. For instance, last week when Wilbon mistakenly said that Bob McAdoo was taken first overall in the 1972 NBA draft, Stat Boy was there at the end of the show with the information that, no, he was taken second, thank you very much.
Does this matter to any human being outside the McAdoo family and the four or five NBA fans still left in North America? Of course not. But it shows a fundamental respect for the truth. Kornheiser and Wilbon know that even though their's is a debate show, centered on opinion, that opinion is meaningless unless it's built on the foundation of truth.
PTI's respect for the truth has always struck me as being something quaint, like when my grandmother insisted on giving me $10 on my 23rd birthday. Unnecessary, but still kind of nice. When we start to deal with political shows, however, adherence to fact is not only important, but absolutely necessary.
Here's my reasoning why:
1. With political shows, we're not dealing with Bob McAdoo's draft position or the number of times the Bears have made the post-season since 1985. We're dealing with actual stuff that actually matters. Things like rockets being fired (and I don't mean Yao Ming losing his job)! Things like sabers being rattled (and I don't mean Jocelyn Thibault looking bad in practice)! Things like brave patriots dying (and I don't mean Tom Brady... oh, you get the point)!
2. It's nearly impossible for anyone to be error-free during an hour of unrehearsed speaking. Even if Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann were hit with gamma radiation and turned into giant-brained, super-intelligent Leaders, the odds would still be against them being able to present accurate information. This is not a knock on them personally, just the realities of being a human being: people goof up.
And it's not like we're talking about RBIs or OBP here. These guys are talking about great swaths of human knowledge -- a typical show for each of them will swing from the environment to the war to health care and Brittney Spears. Assuming they sleep like normal people and granting them each an hour of smug mugging in the mirror each day (c'mon, you know they both do it), there's no way they'd have nearly enough time to learn everything that needs to be learned about the subjects they're supposed to speak about intelligently.
3. People worship these guys. If the general populace is going to be making decisions based on what Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann tell them, it's very important that they get the facts straight. Again, the worst thing that could happen if Kornheiser and Wilbon screw-up is that maybe somebody hesitates on buying an Al Harris jersey. O'Reilly and Olbermann, however, can sway elections.
So, here's the question: why don't either of these guys use a Stat Boy? Why not set aside one minute at the end of every show to devote to fact-checking? If these shows are so dedicated to unvarnished truth and no-spin zones, then, hell, howsabout taking the same steps that two sportswriters managed to take and show some respect for the truth?
And if they don't do it, why should we keep watching?
(By the way, before you accuse me of being liberal or conservative -- with icy derision dripping from your commenting fingers -- I put O'Reilly and Olbermann in the title on purpose. They occupy opposing positions on the political spectrum, but they both suffer from the same disregard of the truth. Since not a single similar talking-heads political show employs an ombudsman, feel free to filter this post through your own one-sided political glasses!)
(By the way, take two: in the interest of being my own ombudsman, I wanted to share this post by one of the creators of Moonlight completely eviscerating my auteur theory post from a few weeks back. Yes, I felt a little like Ed Rooney limping onto the bus at the end of Ferris Bueller's Day Off when I finished reading it, but he made several good points that I think people should know about. There, see, I am now officially better than Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly!)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-29-2008 @ 11:52AM
chgosaint said...
Giddy with joy thinking of O'Reilly at the end of his show being told that he didn't get one fact 100% correct, 25% were half-truths, and 75% were made up b.s.
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4-29-2008 @ 12:08PM
JW said...
Sounds kind of like Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfield. They have a Halftime Report in which Andy Levy corrects everyone that said something incorrect. They should put O'Riley and Olbermann on the same show for an hour and see how well that goes.
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4-29-2008 @ 12:47PM
Katie said...
Yes, Red Eye is a wonderful is not surreal show airing on Fox at the middle of the night that takes this ombudsman idea into action. Granted, though, it is half-correction, half comedy routine, but it gets the job done
By the way, could someone from TVS do an article on Red Eye? I started watching it over the summer on occasion and I'd like like to know who else out there actually watches it. It's always seemed like some bastard child between the E! Network and Fox News, and I crave another culture nerd's opinion on it
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4-30-2008 @ 10:46PM
MIke said...
Katie,
You're absolutely right about "Red Eye" on Fox News. I found the show a few weeks ago while drunkenly surfing channels in the middle of the night, and I unequivocally love this show. It has been added to the daily recording list with the Daily show and Colbert. See, even though the three shows have immensely differing views on politics I can still appreciate them all equally. What the Republicans and Democrats need to learn is that comedy has no political affiliation.
4-29-2008 @ 12:50PM
Bash said...
You just explained in a long post what the opposite of "truthyness" is.
I think it isn't explained often enough.
I think I will watch "outfoxed" again. Such a nice explanation on how you can use "sources tell us" and "people are now saying" to make sh*t up and get away with it because nobody is checking on the facts anyway.
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4-29-2008 @ 1:27PM
Jake said...
A couple of things, first, politics isn't about truth, its about changing the status quo. Fox knows this and puts people on their air space that can bend the "truth", i.e. facts, to support their arguments for making the country more conservative (changing the status quo). Politics isn't about stats that can be fact checked or referenced at the end of the show by a stat boy. That's not to say that it can't, but that's not the goal in politics. And actually, Olbermann does issue "editorial corrections" on his show the next day. There is also a show called Verdict with Dan Abrams on MSNBC that goes through misstatements of the candidates and pundits. But these shows are rare, as the media really tends to get swept up more in the "story" of politics. And it's the party's/candidates job to make sure the media is telling their story. not their opponent's. But that brings us to Colbert and his sheer brilliance of truthiness. He's tapped into the fundamental idea of spin in politics, that you can always spin something said or a fact to suit your political agenda. He does it so outrageously to get laughs, but others do it in a serious way. Finally, EsPN orginial programming sucks, and PTI, while perhaps the least offensive of these shows, is substandard ranting by two sports writers that have at best a peripheral knowledge of what is actually going on in sports. And stat boy Tony Reali is a tool.
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4-29-2008 @ 1:41PM
RetUSMCGunny said...
As I recall, Bill O'Reilly has Laurie Dhue as his ombudsman, but I actually can't recall the last time I saw her on the show...I believe she has a slot in the Thursday show.
Red Eye with Greg Gutfield is a great show, just too bad it comes on so late and a lot of people don't catch it. Their use of Andy Levy as ombudsman is part factual correction, part comedy relief is clever.
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4-29-2008 @ 2:43PM
BStu said...
First off, Olbermann spends most of his show interviewing. When he isn't, he's scripted. Its a different format than PTI where they are at least trying to seem spontanious in their banter, and I tend to buy into the idea that while they prepare for the questions that they do answer organically. As such, there is more opportunity to get details wrong, so they have Riali around to keep them honest. A scripted show shouldn't need that because things should be vetted ahead of time.
When that vetting process fails, Olbermann has called attention to it in the show. Usually in the popular "Worst Person" segment which ensures that it gets seen by casual viewers. He's used this both for when he's gotten the facts wrong AND when he feels he acted journalistically irressponisble. I think this fulfills this need in a reasonable manner. Given the nature of the material, if errors come up, the can't be caught on the fly the way PTI does. Anything that could be, should have been caught ahead of time.
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4-29-2008 @ 4:07PM
Scott said...
...Because O'Reilly would need an hour and a half of factual corrections for every hour he was on the air. And he'd be yelling at and arguing with the "stat boy" all the way through. In fact, forget it--he'd have the guy's microphone turned off 45 seconds into it.
Olbermann goes out of his way to point out his own mistakes, either later in the show or as a "worst person" segment on a following show.
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4-29-2008 @ 4:16PM
Richie said...
The problem is that Olbermann and O'Reilly aren't news reporters, they're commentators. They constantly editorialize, which is the worst possible thing you can do in journalism. That's how they get away with being inaccurate.
Although it makes more sense in Olbermann's favor, because his show is atleast comedic in general, whereas O'Reilly's is just an hour of him passing gas through his mouth.
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4-30-2008 @ 12:45AM
No1Dad said...
O'Reilly and Olbermann should not be taken serious as reporters because that's not their job. Their job is simply to get ratings by pandering to a particular segment of the cable news audience (hyperpartisan left and right), sell commercials and raise the stock prices of Newscorp and GE.
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4-30-2008 @ 9:20AM
Brian said...
I just wanted to chime in and say I am a loyal ATH/PTI watcher. I record them every day and usually start watching as soon as I get home from work. I tried recording several daily type shows like Colbert but always found myself falling behind. Yet somehow I always make time for those two shows. Fear the 'Drow!
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4-30-2008 @ 9:29AM
Zachary Pruckowski said...
This wouldn't work at all. O'Reilly (and everyone else) would drag the guy on at the end to make one or two minor nitpick (hey you got a few years wrong there, off by 1-2), and leave a lot unchallenged.
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4-30-2008 @ 4:00PM
sitruc said...
I agree with those who say it wouldn't work since their egos are too big to allow any type of defeat. What scares me the most is your fanboism for PTI. I've never read or seen anybody get that excited for PTI. I guess you're their audience. Wilbon and Kornheiser have been around for a while and the WaPo is my home paper, but their knowledge is limited and on national shows they play characters more than they comment. I'm not sure Tony K has ever watched and we know he doesn't watch sports now. Does Kornheiser even write anymore. Wilbon has a slightly off-base article in the Post every now and then.
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4-30-2008 @ 5:12PM
Jay Black said...
Let me clarify my feelings on PTI: I travel 200 days a year (when I'm not blogging, I'm making with the ha-ha as a stand-up comic): ESPN is the one constant that I have anywhere in the country. The even broadcast it in North Dakota.
When I get to a hotel, I usually put ESPN on and leave it on. Like a dog, I just like having the background noise. After a while, I guess I grew into an insufferable fanboy. I still contend that they're the closest to any family's two coolest uncles: funny, likable, opinionated, and ill-informed. What's not to love about that?
5-02-2008 @ 2:41AM
sitruc said...
No problems. I admit ESPN is one of those channels I always have on if not at least for background noise and moving pictures. I watch PTI regularly. I don't even watch it for the topics anymore. I watch to complain. I want to see how much I disagree with them or how off-base they are. This may sound strange, but in general, I wish the network personalities on ESPN were more open to sports. I like all sports. I don't feel the need to rip one sport when talking about another. I don't like how sports' shows divide fans. It's one thing in politics, but sports? Why can't a football fan like soccer? I don't know where this post is going anymore, but I refuse to edit it. In conclusion, drunk uncles make parties interesting.
5-14-2008 @ 12:02AM
johnson said...
the difference is that bill does his thing and keith is desperate to move out of his shadow and continually defines himself as being in opposition to bill as opposed to just being keith...what a sad cack sukka.
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