Politics & Power Quote by Don Hewitt

Hewitt is basically calling time on a media habit that still defines American politics: treating party conventions as television property. Coming from the producer who built 60 Minutes into a weekly civic event, the line lands less like a moral plea and more like a veteran’s diagnosis of a corrupt business model. Conventions used to be messy, consequential gatherings where deals got cut and nominees could actually change. By the late 20th century, they’d hardened into stage-managed pep rallies because cameras rewarded choreography, not uncertainty. The press didn’t just cover that evolution; it financed it with attention.

The sharpness is in the self-indictment. “Let’s give” implies the networks took something in the first place: narrative control, airtime, the right to frame politics as a broadcast spectacle. “Tack it on afterward” is producer-speak for post-production, and that’s the point. Hewitt wants a clean separation between the performance (politicians doing politics, however synthetic) and the journalism (reporters analyzing what mattered, what was spun, what was hidden). He’s arguing for less live pageantry and more edited scrutiny, the opposite of the ratings-driven logic that made conventions feel “newsworthy” even when nothing could happen on camera.

The subtext is almost weary: if the convention is already a scripted commercial, the honest move is to treat it like one, not pretend it’s a democratic cliffhanger. It’s also a warning about complicity. When the media insists the show is the story, politicians learn to write for the lens, and the public gets spectacle where accountability should be.