Learning to pundit
It is late and I am at my kitchen table, over-caffeinated again. This weekend I got to be part of the general election coverage, which is my Carnegie Hall / Champions League Final. I imagine it might be for some people who read this, so some thoughts:
It really is as cool as you'd think it is
TV studios are just objectively cool places. Having people you admire in the same room as you, chatting about something super niche you are all engrossed in, is thrilling. Being part of something of national importance is a monumental privilege. And the loveliest woman does your makeup (thank you Margaret).
I was so anxious I had The Leaving Cert Dream
If you know, you know.
Learning to pundit
It took me a while to work out what role I was there to fill, and then, what I wanted to do with that.
In the run up to the election I did media stuff on data on digital campaigns, and I regularly share expertise on tech / democracy stuff. I have also been an advocate in various guises. These scenarios I understand, I know the part.
This was different. As best I can tell from my paltry 36 hours of experience (of which about 10 mins were on camera), the role of the pundit is to:
1) Fill time between interesting things happening
2) Take these emerging interesting things and put it in context for people; translate, compare, explain, elucidate with stories / anecdotes
3) Shape the narrative; predict, speculate, provoke, and, if you've skin in the game, spin
My learning curve on contextualising live information was steep. A thing happens, a question flys your way, under lights, with all of your aunties watching at home, and all those notes you prepared offer no shield from the silence that will descend if you do not start talking.
For me it was a shock result from Galway East that happened just as I was introduced on Friday evening; what was my view? I am not an expert on Galway East. My view was the data I had on social media use. Words came out of my mouth, but I cannot for the life of me tell you what they were. I wasn't there alone so luckily the other person picked up the slack.
These are scenarios where a handful of brilliant people in Ireland have the constituency level detail - and data - to contextualise the results; how someone did the last time, who their cousin is, what side of the Wicklow Mountains they are from. I am a data person, but that is not my data.
Others then are able to shape the narrative with this information; what it signals we might expect in the outcome, whether that independent would be good at propping up a Government. Here my brain can only really go big picture, looking at us in comparison to other places where I have worked, for example. This isn't what I am used to doing media interviews on, but I realised that this was part of the expectation - and also an extraordinary opportunity and platform.
Luckily, I got another chance; they asked me to come back after midnight. The producer gave me a brief but deeply insightful debrief. Next time, I came armed not with data, but with two things.
A set of insights / knowledge nuggets that were in my zone of expertise, and that I could drop in response to emerging events (like FG were charged more for ads, Hutch got Million views on TikTok, 2% is the threshold for state party funding, 22% is how many women there were last time, and this is not very good).
And some ideas; a set of bigger picture theories to test against live information that would come in, like the one I wrote about last night. I called and texted friends and colleagues. I ducked out to an election watch party at a friend's house. I got my head out of the data and into the meaning of this incredible moment.
Using the platform
And I decided that I wasn't going to try suppress my reaction, and be in pure technocratic expert mode. Nor could I slip into advocate mode. But somewhere in between these is a space for value-based and fact-grounded positing of ideas.
I am not sure any of my contributions will stand the test of time, or indeed the resolution of the ongoing count. But it felt good knowing they were grounded in my values.
I am also extremely grateful that the brilliant presenters I was on with were not only open to this, but actively set me up to contribute once they understand where I felt I could.
Because my last insight is that:
It is (the very best kind of) chaos
There are 43 count centres dialling in, two TV studios and a radio centre, a massive operations centre, scores of rotating panelists, maps and AR systems, stage managers shushing gossiping ex-Taoisigh, careers being born and brutally cut short live on air. Let me just fix your hair. Hutch just arrived in the RDS. Someone somewhere is trying to capture count centre results read out half in English and half in Irish above whooping cheers. There are no results and then there are too many results and no-one has slept and a fire alarm just went off in Donegal and we are back in Five, Four, Three.......
Who needs Christmas?
