(Bloomberg) — Persuading the American public to tune in to the Capitol insurrection hearings came down to one thing: making them more like a limited-edition Netflix show.
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The tightly scripted episodes have so far stayed close to two hours in length and are free of the meandering questioning typical of Washington hearings. Participation even by the nine committee members has been strictly limited, with opening statements read from a teleprompter.
Hours of videotaped testimony from some witnesses have been edited down to snippets. The excerpts, and footage of the attack produced in part by a documentary filmmaker, have been woven into the presentation with the aid of a retired network TV executive.
So elaborate is the portrayal that the third hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, had to be postponed due to technical difficulties.
That’s a big contrast from the marathon Watergate hearings in 1973 that elicited surprising details and took unexpected turns. The chairman, North Carolina Democratic Senator Sam Ervin, and his southern drawl became a familiar presence in American living rooms all summer.
The bipartisan Jan. 6 committee plans to contain its presentation to seven hearings that have so far given the audience a one-sided account. There’s been hardly any testimony going against the committee’s central thesis — that former President Donald Trump fraudulently perpetrated a stolen-election lie that contributed to, or even prompted, the violence at the Capitol.
The lack of contrary viewpoints has drawn criticism that the effort is unbalanced and unfair. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a web post called it “a show trial worthy of Joseph Stalin.”
“There is a sense of fairness and due process which is central to American freedom and independence,” Gingrich wrote. “The Jan. 6 Committee has violated every aspect of due process, presumption of innocence and impartial search for truth.”
But making sense of a story that has been the subject of past hearings and investigations and that most viewers already know a lot about led organizers to borrow techniques refined by modern television to capture and keep viewer attention.
TV Producer
“Telling the story in an organized and well-edited way is so much more effective than giving the raw story,” said David Steinberg, a writer and TV producer.
Steinberg, who isn’t involved in the Jan. 6 hearings, called them “really well-produced,” filled with subtle techniques to keep viewers engaged. Unlike typical congressional testimony, where people often give long-winded answers, the hearings were edited into short, compelling clips for maximum effect, he said.
The organizers even end each session by teasing highlights of the next hearing, just like TV shows that say “Next time on…”
On Tuesday, the committee tweeted a video from Vice Chair Liz Cheney that served as a commercial of sorts for Thursday’s hearing.
Joe Lockhart a former White House press secretary for Democrat Bill Clinton who is now a public relations strategist, said the organizers are trying to break through to a weary public by packaging the hearings in a concentrated barrage of episodes released during a single month, similar to the way premium channels such as HBO, Apple TV and Netflix market television series.
“They structured this for the way we watch television now, and it’s in episodes,” Lockhart said.
News Coverage
Cayce Myers, an associate professor of public relations at Virginia Tech who specializes in media history, said the organizers appear to have kept an eye on encouraging follow-on news coverage to draw attention to their work in an oversaturated media environment.
“Packaging the hearings in this new way seems to be an attempt to create digestible news stories that have the ability to create sustained viewer interest,” Myers said.
But Myers said there could be drawbacks. “It provides fodder for Republicans who claim these hearings are nothing more than a political event.”
That’s precisely what Trump says. In a 12-page statement released Monday he criticized the committee for broadcasting hearings without witness cross-examination or rebuttal evidence in what he said was an effort to distract from skyrocketing inflation and other problems.
“This is merely an attempt to stop a man that is leading in every poll, against both Republicans and Democrats by wide margins, from running again for the Presidency,” Trump said.
GOP Refusals
Democratic Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, who served as a House manager for Trump’s second impeachment trial where he was charged with inciting the riot, dismissed complaints that the hearings are too one-sided or too slick.
“The hearings have been incredibly compelling,” Neguse said. “They’ve been meaningful. They’ve been substantive.”
Neguse and others also note that Republicans opened the door to this when the Senate refused to approve a House-passed bill creating an independent commission to look into the insurrection.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi then passed a bill to create the House select committee. And when she refused to seat two Trump supporters selected by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy for five minority party seats, McCarthy yanked all of his picks. That meant he and his colleagues no longer had a say. The two Republicans now on the panel — Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — are Pelosi choices, not his.
Since, McCarthy and several other Republicans are among those who have been subpoenaed to testify to the committee but are balking at complying. How much their voices might have added to what’s being shown in the public hearings is uncertain.
“The committee’s been very clear that they intend to release all the transcripts of every deposition,” Neguse said. “So I think the American people will be able to reach their own conclusions.”
(Updates with item on committee tweet in 13th paragraph. An earlier version of the story corrected the size of committee.)
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