I think I accidently binge-watched C-span this past week. This should really not come as a surprise to me (and it probably isn’t to many of my friends), but it kind of is surprise. Generally, C-span is filled with Senate hearings and political speeches that make even me want to cringe after a while. So, despite the fact that I am an aspiring politics major, I prefer to not watch C-span. Instead I watch the news or read political blogs, which is fine except for the fact that the news and blogs do not show you everything and they only focus on the major things. C-span, on the other hand, shows you everything.
That’s the problem with C-span, you say. That’s why no one watches it, you say. Well I say, you are only half correct. No one watches C-span because it does show you everything and that is actually very boring. However, I also think that the fact that C-span shows you everything is not a problem. See, C-span remains an unbiased observer into the going-ons of our government. It does not exist to entertain. If it does entertain you, either you are far too excited by the government (like me) or it is actually showing something interesting for a change. C-span is an important component in government transparency. They show citizens of the United States the unedited footage of what is actually happening within our government. It helps us, as citizens, know exactly what is happening within our capitol.
Take the Democrats’ sit-in this past week. One of the reasons it was so interesting is because Paul Ryan (and other members of the majority party) deemed it unnecessary for the House cameras to be on. This action was perfectly within their rights. When the House in recess (which it was during majority of the sit-in), it is up to the majority to decide whether the cameras should be turned on or not. Generally, nothing interesting is happening, so letting the Speaker of the House turn off the cameras is not a problem. But, during the sit-in, it seemed like Ryan was denying citizens a right to government transparency. The fact that when the Periscope feed cut out, no one knew what the Democrats were doing exactly is slightly unsettling, since they are our elected officials and they were holding a demonstration within our capitol building. C-span actually had interesting footage, for once, due to the fact that Republicans did not want people to see what the Democrats were doing. If the cameras had been on, then C-span may not have seen such a large increase in their viewership.
The week before this, the Senate filibustered over the same two bills which wasn’t nearly as interesting because C-span was allowed to use the Senate cameras (also a filibuster and a sit-in are two very different things). People took note and were happy about it, but no one really had the desire to watch another 15-hour long filibuster. It wasn’t until the Democrats did something maybe slightly illegal and the Republicans didn’t want us to watch, did we suddenly want to watch what they were doing. We wanted to know what was going on on the floor because people in the government did not want us to know. This is one of the reasons why I watched about three or four hours of the Democrats sit-in this past Wednesday and Thursday.
We may hate C-span, but we definitely need it. Otherwise our government will suddenly become a mysterious force that shapes our lives. Oh wait, isn’t it already? Maybe we should watch some more C-span, so instead of just knowing that we can know what is happening on the House floor we actually do know what’s happening. Think on it.
