One clear indication that we simply do not have enough news for 24 hour news channels is the increased hype given to the weather these days. Yes, there is dangerous weather. However, I think we need to make a distinction between bad weather and natural disasters. The Asian tsunami of last December was a natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. A storm front is not a natural disaster, even if it does spawn some tornadoes. Forecasts of rain should not call for extended coverage on any news channel.
Local broadcasters also have to realize that snow in the forecast doesn't warrant more than 1 minutes of air time. It snows every year. Get used to it. One foot of snow in Denver does not mean that the Washington metropolitan area had better brace itself for a blizzard of Biblical proportions.
24 hours news channels are unwatchable. I re-discovered that basic fact of life this past weekend while holed up in Pennsylvania with access to cable tv. CNN Headline News, which has always been nothing more than a 1/2 hour news broadcast repeated over and over (the only interesting bits being the sports updates and the "Hollywood Minute"), is as vapid as ever. CNN itself apparently believes that running file footage while morons talk qualifies as "news." Fox hardly even pretends it's a news channel, instead presenting the most saccharine "patriotic" fluff pieces alongside scare stories and unhinged commentators. MSNBC is beneath notice.
Imagine what would be possible if any of these news channels took their mission to inform seriously. Imagine an actual investigation into the Bush administration's criminal activities rather than trotting out a "liberal" and a "conservative" to debate whether anything actually happened.
One of the great lessons of the past 20 years is that conservatives learned much earlier than liberals that the media has no interest in truth. Ironically, conservatives took to heart the French poststructuralist ideas that there is no truth, that we live in a reality based on competing interpretations -- readings if you will -- of the text of lived experience. Rather than the truth, they understood, the consumer wants to be entertained.
Entertainment can go a long way toward disarming allegations of wrongdoing. You've been accused of a misdeed? Get a partisan talking head to argue either that it's a lie or that what you did wasn't even a misdeed. Put the news in question by attacking the institutions that produce it. Turn the entire episode into a circus for the consumption of the audience. CNN's "Crossfire" mastered that technique, as did the McLaughlin Group and a host of other Sunday talk programs. "Crossfire" was already in decline when Jon Stewart fired the coup de grace into its quivering body, pleading with them to just "stop it. Because you're hurting America."
5 comments:
Articulate and insightful as ever, Mass. Can't you combine your blogs into a dissertation?
Fox news is "fair and balanced."
That's "fair" as in somewhere between tolerable and heinous.
And "balanced" as in somewhere between fact and fiction.
As for the public wanting to be entertained-- If they're going to give us bread and circuses, I wish they'd improve the quality of both.
Hence why the only channels I peruse when, and if, I turn on the TV are HBO or MTV. I only turn on the TV to have my mind numbed. Education is best left to the internet.
I don't know about you, but I'm headed to the Giant to get all of the milk, bread and toilet paper that I can. Doesn't the grocery store call the media to help out with bad sales? Or am I the only one who believe this stuff? Great post.
MA: I am a firm believer in collusion between the grocery chains and local media. I also hate the "could there be snow in your forecast?" teaser they run before hitting commercial.
Cookie: in DC I have not the cable, so I don't have those options. At home, I generally watch only college football or pbs kids with my son...
cupcake: bread and circuses exactly. Hence the success of dreck such as fear factor. as for the dissertation...the pressure is building.
Wow. All the ladies love you, man.
No, seriously, I liked the post. Especially this part: "there is no truth, we live in a reality based on competing interpretations."
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