In the past week, I've been fortunate enough to come across people explaining things in Egypt that I hadn't known before. For instance, in the car yesterday, I heard part of an interview Terry Gross did with Thanassis Cambanis, a journalist who has covered the Middle East for some time, and he explained some of the internal rifts within the Muslim Brotherhood, the way Egyptians think about Mohamed Elbaradei, and what effect it might all have on the transition to some kind of new government. Cambanis knew a lot about Egypt, the discussion was really interesting, and afterward I felt more informed than I had been before I got into the car.
If you were, say, a producer at a cable network, and you were planning your coverage of this issue, wouldn't it be a good idea to have more of that? Explanation, I mean. This sort of thing happens all the time: a new issue arises, and even those of us who are pretty well informed about public affairs quickly learn how little we know, whether it's about a foreign country, the stock market, health-care reform, or whatever. And there's a great need for explanation in these early phases of the new issue's emergence, along with the breaking news that comes from those covering the changing events themselves.
Yet we still don't get nearly enough of that; instead, we get a lot of the same old talking heads giving their barely informed take on things. Tell me: Is there a human being on the planet who would actually benefit from hearing what Newt Gingrich or John McCain has to say about Egypt?
Now the producer of the program might say, "We need some zip, some zazz, some zing!" And that's why they bring on the usual suspects, who are supposed to provide interesting discussion. But you can find people to explain things who are also interesting to listen to.
