My Civil Beat column this week took a slightly different look at the special legislative session and the passage of SB1 providing for marriage equality (“Hawaii Monitor: Crowds at Capitol Preempted Deeper Reporting“). If you’ve used up your free views and haven’t yet subscribed to CB, you can read a version here.
I tried to focus on the media coverage, which was really driven by the side show going on in the capitol rotunda, and what was lost as a result.
The dramatic crowd scenes at the State Capitol were unfortunately allowed to effectively frame the news coverage of the special legislative session. These were visual, dramatic, and relatively easy to cover.
But it easily devolved into implicit body counts, which side got more backers out on a given day. Emotional sound bites too easily filled in for reporting. One immediate result is that media coverage failed to convey the broad and diverse organizational support that has developed for same-sex marriage, and instead reinforced the perception of some opponents that they were speaking for a majority of the community.
But a look at the committee report filed by the House committees on judiciary and finance, which explains the reasoning behind the amended and final version of the bill, paints a very different picture.
In a comment yesterday afternoon, I added:
It seems to me in retrospect that the media covered the sideshow, the melee outside in the rotunda. I would guess that the real story here was the inside game. With two decades of work on the issue, it seems to me there must have been a very sophisticated and experienced team of lobbyists working behind the scenes, as well as insiders working on the strategy as the bill moved. I would enjoy reading that story. I wish Fred Methered had lived to enjoy this moment.
In any case, do take a look.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The media certainly missed that Christianity is not monolithic and requires rich interpretive skills to understand. It is a complex religion which requires humility, and it is sad that the New Hope adherents are so egregiously presumptuous in proclaiming their unique knowledge of God’s will.
I think your conclusion is too broad to apply to all media.
While I do not watch television, I do occasionally listen to the simulcast of the 6 p.m. news with Joe Moore, and I agree that TV coverage, due to its reliance on imagery and sound and the brevity of its stories, seemed to skate with superficial coverage that relied on images of mobs and sounds of shouting and noisemaking.
I do not think the same can be said of print media, at least not the reporting of most of the S-A writers, especially Derrick DePledge, in the main paper and in his blog. I think it was clear from that reporting that, for example, “I am a Christian” does not necessarily mean I am opposed to marriage equality, that many opposing pols would have opposed the bill no matter what changes were made, despite their contention to the contrary, and that Marcus Oshiro, who supported civil unions, exploited the special session by using the bill as a surrogate for the House re-org in January, over which he remains particularly habut.
So, I think that just as Christianity is not monolithic, the “media” is not, either, and the reality — of both the marriage equality issue itself and the media’s coverage of it — is a bit more nuanced. If only the opponents had seen that, also.
PS: The superficiality of at least one station’s coverage was demonstrated when Joe Moore — whose annoying, petty commentaries about UH football uniforms and theme music — drove me away from TV news years ago, followed up a live report from Manolo Morales with a question that could’ve been written by Bob McDermott himself (who lost — again — in court this morning), “Didn’t the voter education material stating that the amendment would give the legislature the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples only mean that the legislature could only define marriage that way?” Of course, Moore — like McDermott — ignores basic sentence construction, not to mention the term “legislative power” in the question, the legislative power otherwise conferred by the constitution, and the effect of the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling in Baehr v. Lewin, but, then, that’s typical of TV news, generally. Print media, by nature, was better able to explain these subtleties, which most of your readers already understand.
Thanks, Ian and OhiaForest both, for your perspectives.
I especially appreciate Ohia’s shout-out to Derrick DePledge, who works hard to give a broadened perspective when he covers politics. I respect his work.