Live Speeches

[adam & doctor drew]

I see the cable nets often going to Clinton/Obama/McCain and others giving live speeches, often for minutes at a time.

isn't this essentially a free political ad?
what would they charge a politician who wanted 4-5 minutes of live air time to spout their "message"?

I have a hard time believing these speeches are "news."
they'll mostly be saying the same old thing to people who already support the candidate.

[Produce man]

It's so we can laugh at them.

[overthehill]

Sure, they sometimes amount to a one minute ad...

But the ability to pop-in live and pop-out (back to studio) is what cable news nets do best--cover anything superficially...and do some whiz-bang TV eye candy.
While I like most of CNN's news coverage, the CNN election big screens are nothing more than TV Eye Candy that makes watching TV ON TV hard for the viewer.

it leaves the impression or perception that "we can do it all" from everyplace. Although it's not politics, CBS Sports does the same thing with the NCAA basketball tournament coverage--we're live, we're everywhere and we have golly-gee whiz bang technology that enables us to do it! Let's jump here. No, there! No, over here!

The CAPABILITY to go live does not equate to doing good broadcast journalism.

[Sultanosurf]

Would you prefer C-SPAN, where you get 25 minute droning diatribes?

No, it's not a free ad, it's news. Especially when you have McCain responding to the NYTimes or Obama commenting on more wins over the weekend. Where it gets problematic is dumping out of Hillary mid-sentence to take Obama. But that's also part of what happens when it's live.

[The Mockingbird]

Actually, I think it's great that places like CNN take political speeches live. Honestly, I'd prefer as few layers between myself and the newsmaker as possible. It's very easy to take a :15 second sound bite out of context. With a speech, I feel like I'm getting more insight into the candidate.