Chicken and Egg? Is Performance Public Service Because Constituency Thrives on it?


First, for those regular readers, this will come as no surprise, but yes, I did vote in all three elections this year, so I can lodge this editorial with a clean conscience.

I watched Donald Trump announce his candidacy for the 2024 Presidential cycle Tuesday night. Frankly, there were plenty of Trump-esque performance bellwether points, but he didn’t bring up “Steal the Vote” claims (however, he did explicitly indict China for meddling in the election). He also played to the seemingly capacity-filled, friendly ballroom audience at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. That said, Trump appeared cognizant of the image he had and fought to make his case as a more diplomatic person to the general public. He even cited the event as an “elegant” event.

However, what I took away was broader than the “Trump announcement.” When the newspaper started broadcasting the various municipal and other entities’ meetings at the start of the pandemic, we did that because the public was not allowed into the meetings. Other outlets started broadcasting the same meetings because they saw the popularity of the posts. Once the pandemic “ended,” the precedent had been set. Everyone came to expect the meetings to be broadcast and even went so far as to accuse me of violating their civil rights to access those meetings when I didn’t make it to a particular meeting. Breaking News: the meetings are back open to the public, so come on down and sit in the super comfy chairs so you can exercise your “rights.” By the way, while I’m stuck on this rant, finding advertisers that would help offset the expense of that content is resolutely zero. Nobody wants their business name affiliated with a meeting where their competition is mentioned or even having their business affiliated with a particular policy that customers don’t like. Having said that, I need to acknowledge that was an offer by the county mayor to help defray the costs of the county commission meetings; however, I didn’t feel it was fair to take compensation from one meeting unless I was going invoice all of them for the same service. But I digress…

I found a few audio files from when I “merely” recorded the meetings to write the article about the meeting. When you listen to those and then look at the videos, there is a whole Hawthorne Effect. Oversimplified, people act differently when they know they are being observed. Some of the officials that were in office are in office now, and you can make out a different cadence, inflection, and articulation in some. There’s clearly a very different dynamic psychologically when I’m just holding a discreet recorder in my hand that many would’ve struggled to see than me and others putting up microphones and cameras up in these meetings now. Is it a good thing? Is there more quiet accountability when officials have no idea how many are watching? Some meetings get huge watch numbers; some barely made a dent, but the changes in the presentation, if not substance, are palatable.

So why doesn’t this translate across the public sector? Do low-key people otherwise become animated because that makes “better TV” when there’s a camera or even a cellphone hoisted in their face? Do we in the media strive to take things out of context in the interest of making the same “good TV?” Do we, as an audience, allow ourselves to be swayed by “good TV” instead of quality public servanthood? I think the answer is largely, yes, to all of those questions. I think we need to be more discerning when we say we’re watching an elected official’s “performance.” Borrowing from the Oxford Dictionary: performance “1. an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other forms of entertainment.” Then, “2. the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task or function.”

We never watch some drama on TV and then do a “performance evaluation” on it. However, it’s not uncommon to have to endure “performance evaluations” at our various workplaces (though those have been reduced to “Did an employee come to work? If yes, please sign and return to HR”). Do we, as a constituency, base our choices on the right definition of “performance?”

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