Q&A; WITH TABITHA SOREN : Helping MTV’s Young Fans Access Politics

Smart, cynical about politicians but not apathetic. That’s how MTV political reporter Tabitha Soren describes her audience . It’s also a good description of Soren herself.

A former reporter and anchor covering state politics for an ABC - TV station in Burlington , Vt . , the 25-year-old Soren has won praise from TV critics for her informed questioning of the presidential candidates about young people’s issues on MTV’ s “Choose or Lose” coverage of the 1992 campaign.

MTV’s coverage has been aimed at getting the MTV generation registered to vote and motivated to go to the polls. In the last presidential election, less than 34% of eligible 18-to-24-year-olds turned out to cast ballots.

Soren, who is under contract to MTV through November, 1993, traveled the country covering the campaigns and in the process became something of a celebrity. Last weekend she interviewed President Bush aboard his campaign train .

Question: Why do you think that President Bush decided to talk to you?

Answer: One reason may be that, independent of MTV, a young voter in Florida recently asked him, “Why won’t you go on MTV?” His answer was that he was not a “mod MTV kind of guy”--which is the last thing young people want to hear. Using a ‘60s word like mod --that’s sort of saying he’s out of touch with young people. Young people have voted Republican in the last three elections. They grew up during a Republican dynasty, and that is how they formed their values. With the presidential race getting so close and seeing the numbers of young people getting registered, maybe (Bush’s strategists) thought this could be an easy constituency to win over.

Q: Do you think President Bush is out of touch with young people?

A: He hasn’t talked about young people’s issues enough for young people to even be able to tell. His big things are the line-item veto, capital-gains taxes, public- or private-school vouchers--all of these are things within issues that young people care about, like the economy and education. But there aren’t a lot of 20-year-olds that have capital gains.

Q: What are the issues that your audience is interested in?

A: They’re interested in the economy, the economy and the economy. When I go to colleges to talk, to encourage them to register to vote and to vote, students will ask their “I’ll ask this in front of an audience” serious, political questions. Then, afterward, they all come up to me and want to know how I got my job. They’re getting ready to graduate, and they don’t have job prospects. It makes me feel a little guilty about having a job.

The economy is No. 1 on their minds. But they’re also concerned about the environment. They want the homeless problem solved, they want to find a cure for AIDS, they want the deficit eliminated. Young people are the ones who are going to be stuck with that deficit. . . . Ross Perot wants to eliminate the deficit, and he says he is running on behalf of young people. Before he withdrew from the race in July, it was hard to find young people who weren’t for him.

Q: How were you regarded when you first started out in the New Hampshire primary?

A: Nobody had ever heard of MTV News; they didn’t know we had a news department. We’d walk up to the candidates, camera rolling, and say, ‘We’re trying to get more young people to vote.’ When you say that, most candidates--hopefully, even without a camera rolling but certainly with one rolling--would look pretty bad if they didn’t talk to you. I think they found it novel.

Each one of the Democratic candidates had their little thing they did to make them look hip for MTV. Jerry Brown had on a suit when we asked to talk to him, but he changed into a turtleneck and flannel shirt for the interview. Gov. Bob Kerry walked up to me and said, ‘I want my MTV.’ ” And Pat Buchanan said, ‘I hope you aren’t going to ask me about any of that hard-rock music because I can tell you right now I don’t like it.’ Buchanan seemed surprised when I kept asking him questions about his ‘America First’ agenda--questions about music were not on my mind.

Q: Why do you think you and MTV News have received so much attention from other news organizations during the election?

A: I think we’ve energized a lot of young people with our coverage, and perhaps we’re forcing the politicians to talk about young issues in ways they weren’t before. Our coverage is fair and unbiased. But the whole point behind ‘Choose or Lose’ is advocacy journalism--getting young people to vote, regardless of which candidate they vote for. There are a lot of voter-registration groups--Rock the Vote, Project Vote and others--that are using celebrities and others to make voting trendy, make it cool. As silly as those words sound, getting young people excited about voting--something so basic to this country--is very important. If we don’t vote, how do we expect politicians to listen to our concerns?

Q: If young voters don’t turn out to vote in greater numbers, will you consider that a referendum on your coverage?

A: I don’t think it will be a referendum on our coverage, but I will be very disappointed. This is what my life has been consumed with for the past 10 months.

Q: How has it been for you to become a celebrity yourself, being interviewed by other TV reporters at the Democratic convention, appearing on “The Tonight Show’ and being parodied on “The Ben Stiller Show”?

A: We were helped a lot in gaining credibility because other news organizations did stories on us early on. But being interviewed at the Democratic convention--I took that as a sign of slow news at the convention! Being on “The Tonight Show”--that made me petrified. I was already sick with the flu and a 102-degree temperature, and I was so nervous before the show I got sick to my stomach. It’s not something you say, “Oh, no big deal.” But I’m not going to get used to it--because after the election, it’s going to be over.

As far as being parodied, I don’t mind that because the people doing it don’t seem to have seen our coverage, so how can I be offended?

Q: Why do you think alternative media--from MTV News to Larry King--have gained prominence during this campaign?

A: I think what we do is supplemental. I tell people all the time to read books and newspapers because you just can’t get all the information you need from television. But I do think that political information has expanded. Movies like “JFK” are forcing the government to reopen files on the Kennedy assassination; rap groups like Public Enemy are addressing the issue of race much more directly than the evening news.

Q: Are young voters today cynical?

A: They’re cynical, but they’re not apathetic. That’s the difference. They haven’t voted, perhaps, because they grew up in an era first of government deregulation and, later, an era when many people feel alienated from Washington. But college freshmen today demonstrate and protest at the grass-roots level about issues like civil rights and abortion. They’re worried about jobs, but they’re also the ones who want to cure homelessness and feed the people in Somalia. They just want to know that someone in Washington is listening to their concerns.