This is no time for Democrats to entrust the future of the republic to some Capitol Hill fraternity brother. Democrats, if you care about preserving democracy, hire professionals to manage your Jan. 6 presentation and media presence. From outside the Beltway. And pay them.
The Jan.6 committee needs to tell a compelling story, not simply regurgitate dry facts.
It seems they’ve already looked into it. Vanity Fair:
The January 6 committee is apparently not taking any chances with their media strategy on Thursday, when the first in a series of public hearings will air in prime time. Veteran network executive James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, “has joined the committee as an unannounced adviser,” Axios reported Monday. The committee tapped Goldston, whose storytelling expertise breathed life into programs such as Nightline, to shape the cache of material that the committee has amassed over the past year, which reportedly includes more than 140,000 documents and disclosures from over 1,000 depositions and interviews. Thursday’s prime-time hearing, which Goldston is producing, is said to feature both live witnesses and pre-produced video—including clips from some depositions. Goldston “plans to make it raw enough so that skeptical journalists will find the material fresh, and chew over the disclosures in future coverage,” while also getting the attention “of Americans who haven’t followed the ins and outs of the Capitol riot probe,” Axios’s Mike Allen reports.
ABC adds some background:
Tapping Goldston, who was president of ABC News from 2014 to 2021, is an effort to bring storytelling drama to the high stakes story of the attack on the Capitol, which aimed to subvert the certification of the election of President Joe Biden following the November plebiscite. The hearings will look to attract and inform both journalists and citizens who have closely followed the Capitol riot probe as well as viewers who may not be aware of the specifics of the 11-month investigation.
[…]
Goldston was named president of ABC News in 2014 after spending a decade producing prime-time specials and investigative reports for the network. He departed in 2021 after 17 years, saying it was “time for a change” following the election cycle. Since leaving ABC in 2021, Goldston has started his own production company with Kapital Entertainment.
David Roberts of Vox cautions that facts alone won’t change minds. Stories can.
Roberts continues:
If Dems want the public to draw from the committee report a particular narrative, a particular set of meanings, a particular set of responses/reforms, they have to SAY SO, again & again, in every medium, in one voice. They must tell the story, not just the facts.
In a word, they must *politicize* the hearings — they must make it clear that this is a political issue, a political fight over basic questions of law & democracy, to be addressed through democratic politics. Letting the right’s (inevitable) accusations of politicization …
… cow them into some pretense of “just the facts” objectivity, into relying on the public to pull the story out of the facts on its own, would mean they lose again & this moment will disperse & fade just like the impeachment(s).
No minds will be changed on the right. They have their narrative. Dems need to create a narrative that can capture swingy tuned-out voters. That requires some drama & moral clarity, but even more, it requires repetition, repetition, repetition.
“Enrique Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys, and four other members of the far-right group were indicted on Monday for seditious conspiracy,” reports the New York Times. It seems Democrats will begin their story of intrigue with testimony from a documentary filmmaker and the first Capitol Police office injured in the Jan. 6 riot:
… Nick Quested, a British documentarian who was filming the group with its permission during the riot, and from Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who was injured, according to videotape of the incident, by a rioter who had been in a conversation moments earlier with one of the Proud Boys indicted on the sedition charge.
The men had already been indicted for attempting to obstruct certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Quested was filming the Proud Boys with their permission before and on Jan. 6, including a planning meeting held in with Stewart Rhodes*, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers militia, in underground garage the night before.
Ms. Edwards, a well-respected Capitol Police officer, is believed to be the first officer injured in the attack, and suffered a concussion during the assault.
Other officers around the building recall hearing Officer Edwards on the radio calling for help — one of the first signs that day that the mob violence was beginning to overwhelm the police. Months after the attack, Officer Edwards continued to have fainting spells believed to be connected to her injuries.
Now, let’s hope the veteran of Nightline can make their story must-see TV. A lot is riding on bringing the guilty to justice.
*Rhodes’ trial for seditious conspiracy is scheduled for late September.
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