Tag: Susan Swain

“From this day forward,” Mr. Gore said at the time, “every member of this body must ask himself or herself, how many Americans are listening to the debates which are made?” Since that day, when C-Span debuted with four employees, the network has become a mainstay in American politics. We spoke with Susan Swain, one of C-Span’s two chief executives, about the birth of the network, Washington’s initial resistance to being caught on camera and how the network has adapted to the social media age. This meant that any time you were interested, you could watch what your member of Congress had to say. The compromise was that the House of Representatives, the speaker’s office, would control the cameras that were on the floor of the House. The Senate finally acquiesced and it’s a classic story of American politics. Television loves pictures, so they would do more stories about the House. C-Span’s relevance comes in the form of not only all of the events that we cover every day but within minutes after we televise them, they are digitized and stored on our video archives. That means a member of Congress can pull a clip from their hearing and send it out to constituents. What we have documented over the years is that when people are nominated to the Supreme Court they go into their committee hearings expressing their open mind to the concept, and then once they get inside that chamber of nine, they manage to be convinced by the others there that it would be detrimental to the institution. We keep hoping that as the generations change and younger appointees come in who are very familiar with media and even social media, that the attitude will change.