HOUSE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS
Various Networks, 10:00 a.m. ET
These hearings, which begin today and are covered by various networks, are the fourth presidential impeachment hearings in history – and the third which I’ve made a point of watching devotedly on television. The most recent one before this, in 1998, was about Bill Clinton, who remained in office. Before that, it was the 1973 Watergate hearings, which led to the pre-impeachment resignation by Richard Nixon. And I wasn’t a TV critic then: I was watching purely as a civilian. Each event has been covered differently by television, because television has been different each time, evolving into a new animal. And we’ve come a long way. (Think of it: Our country’s very first impeachment hearings, against Andrew Johnson in 1868, weren’t televised at all!) Today’s first day of hearings, intended to set the stage for the testimony and narrative to follow, feature two witnesses: Bill Taylor and George Kent, both of whom are on the record responding with concern about the contents of the infamous Ukraine call and negotiations. I recommend sampling coverage from several different networks whenever you watch these hearings, bouncing from network to network to hear how the respective anchors and analysts characterize the proceedings before and after the interrogations. The hearings begin at 10 a.m. ET, and you may as well begin at the most objective source: C-SPAN 3, which will cover this governmental affair as it does all others, without comment. Then go to your favorite broadcast TV source, whether it be PBS (with PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff), CBS (led by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell), NBC (Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd), or ABC (George Stephanopoulos, David Muir, Jonathan Karl). Then, or in lieu of the broadcast networks, go to the cable news channels, such as MSNBC (anchored by Brian Williams and Nicolle Wallace), Fox News (with coverage anchored by Bret Baier, Chris Wallace and John Roberts), and CNN (across all its CNN family of networks). And keep switching among them: the questions and testimony will remain the same, but the reactions will be decidedly, and tellingly, different.