Sunday news shows set political agenda, launch Web debates

— -- On Sunday morning, the faithful gather to receive the word. Not at church, but in front of the television.

The Sunday morning news shows are such a staple of presidential politics that it's more remarkable when a candidate has not appeared on them than otherwise. Each week, congressional leaders, campaign strategists and administration officials sit down for interviews under the lights of Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, Fox News Sunday and State of the Union. Combined, they're watched by close to 10 million people — including virtually all the political apparatus of Washington — in what George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC's This Week, calls a "civic ritual."

The ritual is largely unchanged since NBC's Meet the Press, the oldest show, went on the air in 1947. Watch a Meet clip from 1956 of diplomat Claire Booth Luce dodging questions about her political plans and it's not that different from, say, Obama chief of staff Jack Lew refusing to call the health care mandate a tax earlier this month during a grilling by Fox News' Chris Wallace.

What has changed is the rest of the political conversation. This year, in what Stephanopoulos dubs "the full Twitter election," the cascade of instantaneous, incremental news — driven by Twitter, news sites such as Politico and the Huffington Post, and the constant churn of communication from political campaigns — has cast the Sunday shows into the role of quote factories and meme generators, a jumping-off point for a week of political haggling. The Sunday shows provide not the last word in politics but the opening remarks.

"They used to be the place where you went to hear very important people discuss very serious issues and be cross-examined by serious journalists. Now that function is something that happens in political discourse in all kinds of ways, especially digital," says Alex Jones, head of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

University of Virginia political scientist and frequent cable talker Larry Sabato watches the Sunday shows and often tweets about them at the same time. "Those morning chat shows used to dominate the Sunday evening news and the Monday news cycle," he says. "In this rapidly moving Twitterverse, there are three or four news cycles just on Sunday."

In May, for example, on Meet the Press, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, called Obama's attacks on Bain Capital "nauseating," a comment out of step with the Democratic line. Booker's hasty backtracking went out on Twitter two hours later, and his rebuttal video was up on YouTube by dinnertime.

On July 15, amid a Democratic-fanned controversy over when Mitt Romney left Bain, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie went on two shows to say the Republican nominee had "retired retroactively," and by noon (as the Obama campaign happily reported), "#retroactively" was the top trend on Twitter.

They're still standing

The news cycle for all media has been obliterated by the digital revolution: newspapers and magazines no less than broadcast TV, but the Sunday shows are unique for their role in national politics. They provide a predictably timed, deep well of news from the most prominent people in public affairs, a heap of information and commentary that can be sliced and diced by news outlets and by the campaigns for days.

Snippets of the Sunday shows turn up in campaign ads — not just the guests but the hosts, as Bob Schieffer discovered when he saw himself in an ad that ran during the Face the Nation broadcast July 15. The hosts are, of course, media stars: Politico runs a weekly feature called "Turn the Tables" interviewing them.

"All the networks and cable channels are talking about what got said on Meet the Press and Face the Nation… and all the infinite number of Internet outlets often use these things as a jumping-off point for what they're going to be commenting on," says Robert Thompson, a TV and popular culture professor at Syracuse University. "These shows are kind of the host organisms for all kinds of parasitic organizations."

The programs' journalists say social media have enhanced the Sunday shows rather than drowned them out. Twitter is "more of an adjunct and a booster charge for the shows as much as a competitor," Stephanopoulos says. "It becomes a way for us to get our news out, too."

Shows set the agenda

Vice President Biden said on Meet the Press May 6 that he is "comfortable" with same-sex marriage. Biden seemed to have gotten ahead of the president, who had not endorsed the idea. Three days later, he did.

"You can look at any traditional or new media you want, that's impact," host David Gregory says of the Biden interview. "Beyond traditional media impact, there was tremendous social media impact. I don't think one displaces the other."

Not only do the shows have websites, blogs and online-only features, but the hosts (except for Fox's Chris Wallace) all have Twitter accounts. The shows ask for viewer questions via Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Face the Nation has held an on-air Google Plus "hangout."

Social media "allows us to engage much more with viewers and see trends about what people are talking about, what people are interested in. It allows us to have more of a direct dialogue with viewers," says Betsy Fischer Martin, Meet the Press executive producer.

"You have viewers who are still avid viewers but who want to be able to interact," host Gregory says. "The change from passivity to interaction is really different. The people we are talking to are talking back."

Another aspect of the Sunday shows that has changed little since 1947, and is often criticized, is the diversity of guests. There is little: A 2011 study from five Hispanic advocacy groups showed that interview guests on four Sunday shows (CNN was not included) were white (87%) and male (85%). The panelists for roundtable discussions, where the news organizations have greater latitude of choice, were gender-equal, though 83% white, according to the same study.

That largely reflects the realities of Washington, says Candy Crowley, host of CNN's State of the Union. "If you want to talk about why decisions are being made and what decisions are being made, you need to talk to the power structure," which is overwhelmingly white, she says. "Except for the president, and I've asked him constantly about coming on."

Diversity of viewpoint is also scarce, says media critic Jay Rosen, author of the blog PressThink. "There hasn't been a new idea imported into Sunday morning television, as far as I can tell, in 25 years," he says. "They're a good bulletin board for the political class to work out its own interpretation of what's happening. They're a good way to find out what conventional wisdom is."

That's because, he says, guests spout talking points without restraint or challenge. Recently on This Week, for instance, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley used the phrase "Swiss bank account" — a key Democratic criticism of Mitt Romney — nine times in less than 15 minutes. Host Terry Moran had to point out he had asked O'Malley about Obama's responsibility for the economy, not to attack Romney.

The interviewers say they want to give guests their say, even if it sometimes sounds as if "they were reading from the same piece of paper," Face the Nation's Schieffer says. "We're not trying to get people to say what they didn't mean to say, we're trying to get people to say exactly what they mean."

Change looks unlikely

Schieffer readily refers to his show as "old-fashioned," in a good way. "We are still the place where people can come, sit down and say more than the first paragraph of whatever it is they have to say," he says. Calling the shows too Beltway-focused is "ignoring what the political process is. … What are they proposing as an alternative? That these people not come on television? How else are we supposed to find out what they're all about?"

Regardless of the prevalence of talking points, Sunday shows make news. CBS' Jan Crawford reported on Face the Nation that Chief Justice John Roberts switched sides to uphold the Obama administration's health care overhaul. David Plouffe previewed the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney last October when he said on Meet the Press that Romney has "no core." And then there are the perceived gaffes, such as Biden's same-sex marriage comment.

Sunday guests "make news either because you break new ground on something or you screw up," Crowley says. "Do they make news that's going to last 48 hours? No. Nobody makes news that lasts 48 hours anymore."