A Media Theorist Looks at Today's Impeachment: Tape Recorder, Telephone, and Television

"It started with a phone call," Brian Williams just aptly said on his MSNBC show, The 11th Hour, about what ignited today's impeachment of Donald Trump by the House of Representatives.  That phone call, as everyone knows, was the one in which Trump tried to extort Volodymyr Zelensky, President of the Ukraine, to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son - "arms for dirt," as Former Federal Prosecutor Glenn Kirschner characterizes the price (dirt on the Bidens) that Trump was attempting to exact from Zelensky for release of crucial U. S. weaponry to the Ukrainians.

Fortunately, for those who value decency, the phone call was leaky.  It was overheard, and then became known to the world via a whistleblower's good work.   The Nixon tapes in 1974, which resulted in Nixon's resignation in order to avoid impeachment, became the phone call in 2019 which made Trump's impeachment unavoidable unless he too had resigned, which he never would.

And in the aftermath of that phone call, television took front and center stage, including through the historical vote for impeachment tonight.   Traditional media, telephone and television, bringing a President to the edge of removal, just as the tapes had done to Nixon.

I think it's significant that, with all the attention Twitter and social media correctly receive as vehicles and conduits of politics today, it was two traditional media, which arose much earlier than social media, that carried the ball in Trump's impeachment.  Which is evidence of a point I often make: new media rarely obliterate older media.  Instead, though the newer media get most of the attention, the older media continue to do their job.

Tape recording, telephone, television.  Older media, with venerable values.  Just like democracy itself and its victory today.





Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music