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What's Wrong With the TV News
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jan 02, 2008 09:13 PM
from the not-enough-capes-spaceships-and-pie dept.
from the not-enough-capes-spaceships-and-pie dept.
MBCook writes "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."
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What's wrong with TV news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Paris Nicole Spears
Seriously, I really don't give a fuck. If I did I would purchase tabloids. How about some substantive reporting on actual world events? Or if you still have time to fill, some factual information on the presidential candidates. Like, maybe some stories on what they actually believe and have a record of voting for, so the public will be more informed and can make better decisions. Not stories analyzing who is ahead by 3% in the latest poll in what states or who has the best chance of winning. That only breeds bandwagoning subject to the control of the media. This is of course exactly what they want though, which is why we will continue to see no stories with real factual content, and simply sound bites.
The internet is much better as a news vehicle because I can actually find stories with real content which complexly explore the issues. Apparently the news networks think that no one's attention span is greater than 1 minute and 30 seconds, so they mandate that no stories should be covered in depth. Occasionally there are multi-hour specials on certain things, but apart from that, there is rarely regular substantive coverage of important goings on.
Re:What's wrong with TV news? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you expect? TV is designed for the lowest common denominator. Why? It's simple. Most people don't watch TV to be educated. They watch to be entertained. Having an active mind while staring at the TV screen is an alien concept to many.
Case in point: The decline in educational content on channels such as Discovery and TLC.
Parent
Re:What's wrong with TV news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it shouldn't only matter what "most" people watch TV for. Some people watch TV to be enriched in some way, at least some of the time. I do. Or rather, did. There should be stations to cater to that, but there is this endless obsession with being #1 so everyone tries to capture the largest market share. Which means they're all competing over the same piece of pie, while there are other smaller pieces that nobody is trying to get at all. Doesn't that seem a little stupid?
A strong leader of the Discovery channel, with real vision, could have accepted that they weren't going to compete with idiot TV, and that they shouldn't try to. They should compete to bring a more specialized product to market for a smaller, hopefully more educated customer base. Not every restaurant has to be McDonalds.
Anyone who believes the market solves everything care to explain why this happens in so many arenas?
Cheers.
Parent
Re:What's wrong with TV news? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear what you're saying but that seems a bit circular to me. I don't think there's inherently anything about TV that precludes it from having smart people watch it except for the fact that they don't cater to that audience. Reading books is a form of passive entertainment too, and I don't read the best selling thrillers that dominate the best seller lists, but there are books out there that cater to me, and I buy them.
I think we could both be brought back into that market if someone put in the effort. Long tail and all that.
Cheers.
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Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
People should call into Stewart to suggest that he come back on the air and does a straight news show until the writers return.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Interesting)
He's coming back, and I can't wait, but I think Stewart's version of straight news would be too depressing.
What I find so ironic is that this strike knocked my two main sources of news off TV, thus reducing the amount of coverage I've heard about it to what NPR did (which has died down now that the strike has been on for so long). A few weeks ago I realized I didn't even know if the strike was over or not and I had to go look it up.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, interesting article.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
1. He doesn't consider mainstream news relevant to his life. (Kurt Cobain, etc)
2. He doesn't think the mainstream news will report anything that doesn't grab at gut-level emotions.
Well, he's probably right about both. But his complaints seem to come from the fact that, rather than understanding what the show is and not taking a job there, he tried to make it into something it isn't. The guy should have stayed with NPR if he didn't want to write news copy for the express purpose of selling ads - that's the glory of Welfare Radio. No meaningful bottom line.
Mostly because anything on the TV, Jon Stewart included, is designed to put you into enough of a trance to mindlessly watch advertising. It feeds the bottom line that keeps everyone employed and the bosses in stock options.
Jon Stewart isn't any better or worse than Dateline.
Dateline is a newsy show designed to appeal to emotion, not logic.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a newsy show designed to appeal to a liberally-oriented laugh track, not logic.
If you get your news from either source, you have no idea what's going on. The audiences are equivalent.
The sad part is that so many of you with-whiners don't realize that the same blame you're pointing onto others applies to you as well.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that, now, network news is little different from MTV. Stephen King put it very well in one of his recent articles (http://cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/12/28/yir.2007/index.html?iref=newssearch/ [cnn.com]). Instead of a sober statement regarding someone's death, followed by controlled commentary, editorial, and discussion of their impact, it now degenerates into a media circus like something that belongs in a pop magazine - it goes on endlessly, long after any intelligent person ceases to care. Even Anna Nichole Smith, someone who was about as important as Tiny Tim (blessings be upon his Holy Yukelale) and Charro, is STILL a major factor in the news. My only consolation is that the "golden age" of culture is an illusion brought on by the fact that we tend to forget that Murrow, Cronkite, and others were usually sidelined by pure garbage - we just don't remember the garbage for long. And the Golden Age of radio, for all of it's moments, was primarily filled with works of fiction that make modern sitcoms look like Masterpiece Theater. The first half of the 20th century seems to be filled with literary masterpieces, but most of the actual books printed at that time were even worse than what we have today. Conversely, there are many works being printed today that will certainly get more respect from future generations than they can hope for today.
I have a theory. Most people, meaning the vast majority who have no significant neural defects, only believe they can't handle culture. People are conditioned, not by government but by their peers, to believe that science, history, technology, and literature are beyond them. In school, I constantly saw ghetto kids slowly gain an understanding of computers (under my tutelage), then desperately hid it from their peers (to whom any form of academic achievement by one of their own had racial overtones). Later I saw that most people seem to feel that anything beyond them was simply beyond them, not understanding that no one learns "geek" subjects without effort. Some people have a stronger sense of wonder, a more powerful curiosity, that drives them to learn and grow more than others, but I really don't believe there is much that is beyond the average person, if they only paid enough attention to develop an interest in higher culture. People like to be comfortable. They like to have limits, no matter what they say. Regrettably, most people will accept imaginary limits of their own making rather than risk the crushing reality of the real thing, a choice that cripples them worse than any failed undertaking ever could.
That's why the media is the way it is. That's why the lowest common denominator is so low. That's why the masses prefer prolefeed to actual information. They have conditioned themselves to do so, and continue to do so until it (whatever "it" happens to be at the time) becomes sufficiently widespread as to be socially acceptable to their self-imposed caste.
On a final note, I don't care what anyone says about Spears in her post-career phase, I would still tap that ass, no question.
Parent
You hit a pet peeve of mine there (Score:5, Insightful)
You've hit a pet peeve of mine there, and I don't know if it's even racial.
The thing is, it's not only ghetto kids. A lot of white adults too seem to have jumped on some sort of a "computers are too complicated, I don't have time for that nerdy crap" bandwagon. Even as more and more jobs require at least elementary computer skills, it's become more and more unfashionable to admit having even those minimal skills.
And it's not just believing that they can't handle it, and giving up without even trying. A lot do try, see that they can, then try even harder to hide that from their peers. I've seen people who _can_ handle a computer when they're alone, turn into helpless illiterates when there's a witness there.
We scared off the normal people, if you will. It's become a thing of pride to be as far from nerdy as possible.
In fact, in some circles it's become fashionable to be stupid. Cue a downward spiral as each member tries to not end up in the upper 50% of their group.
It's kinda funny. Human culture for _millenia_ respected intelligence. If you look as far back as the ancient Egyptians, a little known fact is that they actually had a phonetic set, but it was seen as a thing of _pride_ to be smart and educated enough to use the hieroglyphs. A relatively common form of flattery was to address a letter "to your scribe", meaning, basically, "I know that you can read it yourself and are your own scribe." The Greeks and Romans took pride in being able to read, write and master such subjects as administration, law, rhetoric and philosophy. (Which back then was _the_ science.) Etc.
Even the middle ages, weren't that dark a time in that aspect. There still were plenty of people trying to do alchemy, astrology and philosophy, which back the was what science _was_. Sure, it looks like ignorant and pointless compared to the modern scientific method and the later figures of the Renaissance, but nevertheless, those people were trying to figure out how the world works. Or there were advances in technology that we don't even learn about these days. The physics of the great gothic cathedrals and their mess of buttresses, are nothing short of amazing when you consider that they didn't even have a proper notation for that. Sure, it's trivial nowadays to calculate the vectors and see why it works, but that someone came up with that back then, it's amazing.
And again, noone considered it shameful to be seen in the company of an astrologer or alchemist. It was a thing of pride, in fact, and even kings and bishops made sure to have one around.
If you look as late as the 19'th century and early 20'th, the explosion of science was partially because people actually took advantage of the increasing opportunities to get an education. We have a whole category of "absent minded scientists", which were really nerdier than most people on Slashdot nowadays, and noone thought it was a social disgrace to be seen with one.
So where did we go wrong? How did it become fashionable to be the most stupid of one's peers?
How many potentially brilliant minds are we losing to that fashion? E.g., the ghetto kids you mention, some of them could become great scientists, and one or two might even discover the next great thing. But they don't, because their peers would mock any kind of academic interest or achievement.
How much is this costing us, as a society? And how long until it bites us all in the arse?
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if you had a real news service available you would not be so ignorant about culture. Cobain and Nirvana led grunge rock which pushed the last creaky vestiges of glam rock and such off the stage. Cobain's suicide was the 90s equivalent of Sid Vicious's murder of Nancy Spungin followed by his own suicide.
The sudden death of Anna Nichole Smith was certainly a news story, but it wasn't breaking news and it was never justification for the saturation coverage it received.
And yes, there were plenty of other stories being dropped, but if you read the article you would have seen that the lack of a story on Cobain was only one of the examples where coverage was lacking, and a minor one at that. NBC wasn't passing up a story on Kurt Cobain to do indepth coverage of the rise of the Taleban or such. They were passing it up in favor of their usual vaccuous crud.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
The best way to look at why things show up on TV is to look at the justification for a current affairs show on a new bra for women.
These segments are considered prime for any show for two reasons. The first is that women are genuinely interested in a new bra, potential for them is more comfort or whatever it is a woman wants. The second is directed towards men and is, of course, the female breast. About 98% of straight males will watch one of these segments on the off chance that they will see a decent set of flesh mounds or perhaps a missed-editing nipple.
So why is Paris Hilton to news shows? Because we get to see her fleshy self. Now personally I hate the woman, so this doesn't apply to me, but a lot of people (perhaps people outside of the computer industry?) don't particularly care if she's ugly, or if she's loose enough to fit a pineapple into the sweet spot (thank you South Park!), they just care about the potential for tits.
Ok so its not a very noble reason, but lets face it, not much about the human race is.
Note: Statistic is not backed up, an advertising friend of mine told me this sometime ago
This is my $0.02 AU, ignore at will.
Parent
Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
The Daily Show may be a fake news show but much of the damning parts are simply juxtaposed video clips of the same person saying two completely opposite things. That's what keeps me watching, is the memory the show seems to have about public record. So many "journalists" seem happy simply to be talking to their subjects or about their subjects that they don't call them on obvious bullshit. It's a fake news show insofar as it's not purely a news program, but it's also not as though they have actors playing Bush, Cheney, Rice, Craig, etc. in skits.
The Daily Show is returning on Monday (1/7/08) without its writers.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the show's memory regarding public statements, that used to be called Journalism. I think the only thing funnier than the show itself is the media reaction to it. The "real" journalists you see participating in the show do so because they like what he is doing, and can see the irony of a show that presents heavy editorial comment framed by humor in order to reach an audience that the major news networks have effectively lost.
It works. South Park and The Daily Show (after Stuart took it over) were the two main things that made Comedy Central grow and evolve, while it's siblings (the other comedy-based networks that few notice anymore) utterly failed. The History Channel became the Aliens and Biblical Prophecy Channel, The Discovery Channel became the Sharks, Blood, and Disasters Channel, and the Learning Channel, so promising at first, has effectively become the authoritative source of Medical Freaks and Wedding Planning. Meanwhile the Comedy Channel has gone from a dirt-broke cable backwater that mostly featured stand-up comedians in comedy clubs, old sitcoms, and a few forgettable homebrew series... to an utterly foul-mouthed travesty of toilet humor, sex humor, and tragedy humor dominated by high production values, social commentary disguised as comedy, a whole mess of puerile garbage with too many saving graces to be ignored, and some of the most controversial, hilarious, foul, and intelligent programming currently on television.
Saturday Night Live, at it's height, was usually just very very funny. In Living Color had some serious intelligence that slowly collapsed under it's own ghetto-targeted humor. Mad TV dabbled in commentary, but was mostly just shock humor. Meanwhile, the first decade of the 21st century has seen a network that rallies under the banner of the First Amendment in a way rarely seen. They really are the court jesters of this country (and beyond).
Incidentally, I have a running bet going with a few people that, very shortly after leaving office, if the show still stands, Bush will finally make an appearance on The Daily Show. He's had every other living president (sometimes more than once), and even the sitting VP's wife, so it's a fair chance.
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get my news from the Daily Show; it's just gratifying to hear someone on TV, pretending to report the news like they all do, who isn't lying to my face! Or pointing out when someone is lying! At least when they lie, it's clearly in the context of a joke!
And I always know, that if anyone on the TV is going to be the first to tell the truth about something, it's going to be the Daily Show. It's always the Daily Show. And that really pisses me off. I don't "watch it for the news". You can't get news from the TV anymore. And you talk to people who only get their news from the TV, like most people still do, and it's like being on another planet! They're completely brainwashed! Try to tell them what's going on, and it feels like you're screaming into the darkness!
I mean, I read this from the article:This isn't even true! I knew before the war, for example, that it was all premised on bullshit, maybe because I had an Internet connection? I forget how I knew; I just remember knowing a long time. I knew for at least a year beforehand. What am I, Nostradamus? I knew for at least a year that these people on TV were staring straight at us, carefully omitting things about Iraq that were true, saying things about it that weren't true, i.e. lying! How can they not know they're lying? I know they're lying! Lots of us knew they were lying! Lewis Black from the Daily Show knew they were lying! "I knew they didn't have weapons of mass destruction. How did I know that? I was just sitting on my fuckin' couch!" [youtube.com] And then they wonder and bellyache about young people "getting their news from the Daily Show"!
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Re:Call Jon Stewart (Score:4, Funny)
I only "get the joke" because the studio audience is laughing.
So, it MUST be funny. Therefore I laugh.
I've noticed it's like that with a lot of "comedy" type shows. Has been ever since the days of black and white TV.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the Newshour on PBS is still decent. Not, you know, Edward R. Murrow decent, but still. 60 Minutes also occasionally does a good bit.
And there's always the Daily Show. Except when the f*%#ing writers feel like striking. Someone should let them know that "fairness" and "consideration" are secondary to my fix!
Re:What's wrong with TV news? (Score:5, Funny)
I had to quote that just so I could isolated it from the rest of your post and make sure I had read it correctly.
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Re:What's wrong with TV news? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In other words, TV News... (Score:5, Funny)
Misleading Headlines, Irrelevant Stories, Flamebaiting Comments: you heard it here first!
Solomon Chang
But at least (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
You forgot the dupes ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, so long as it involved interns and politicians. I can't remember how many times the news seemed preoccupied with Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky, or whatever mostly unimportant event that got covered each day with slightly new 'breaking' information. If you want that, you have to go to Digg to see what each 'breaking' website has on the latest Apple rumors.
At least Slashdot doesn't do the completely useless teasers
It's crap like this why I don't watch the TV news anymore. I do listen to news on the radio, and they do the same thing, but I get traffic reports every 10 minutes, which is important in the Washington, DC area -- I just don't listen to it for 2 hrs straight, or I know I'll hear the same stories repeated.
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Who the hell is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who the hell is (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Who the hell is (Score:5, Funny)
He's the guy that sang the line "I don't have a gun," and then showed us he was being ironic.
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Re:Who the hell is (Score:5, Funny)
Nevermind.
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Re:Who the hell is (Score:5, Interesting)
For the most part I agree. Kurt Cobain had a decent following and was becoming very popular and influential (from what I understand). It really wasn't covered at all. You can make an argument for that (like you did, and I largely agree that celebrities shouldn't be covered). But ABC did decided to cover him... not through a real piece, or a little 1 hour documentary, but through insulting him as a joke for Andy Roony.
I get my news from John Steward, Steven Colbert, NPR, and the 'net. The first two are funny and cover a good mix of stuff. NPR does a pretty good job on the whole, with much better coverage of world events and more interesting in depth stories than I'd get from my other sources. The 'net supplements everything with tons of detailed coverage of the things that I care quite a bit about (like technology) that would include topics too esoteric for more mainstream coverage.
But many evenings I'll watch 15 minutes or so of news while I'm cooking or eating dinner. I watch NBC, ABC, or CBS. Local or national, whichever is on. It never ceases to amaze me just how BAD it is. The reporting on local events doesn't cover much, except to say there was a fire here or a robbery here. The national news tends to cover celebrity junk, or the war (which they cover very poorly, no matter which side you're on). The best thing I've seen in a long time was CBS's recent series on where our tax dollars went, and just how many earmarks and pork there was last year. But this was one little 5 minute segment on the evening news. It wasn't longer. They didn't call for action. Just a quick "congress is wasting your tax dollars, oh well."
I remember once, a few years ago, Charlie Gibson did some little piece that was probably supposed to be fluff for Good Morning America. And in the middle of the piece he just asked this really insightful hardball question to the person. It made the Daily Show because it was such a perfect "gotcha" moment. And it just makes you wonder... Charlie seems like a nice guy but if he can do that kind of reporting, why is he just doing fluff on the morning show... competing with the likes of Regis and Kelly (who don't pretend to be news).
Every now and then, I'll hear a fantastic report on NPR. It will tell me more than I ever knew about some event that I'd already heard about earlier from other outlets; and I'll gain a real understanding. It may be just some little human interest type story, but something that's actually interesting about a little town or business and what's going on there. The "Grandma Smith's cat traveled 80 miles to come back home" type stories get, at most, a 5 second mention to fill time in a group of little tidbits.
And then, once in a long time, one of the reporters on Morning Edition will say something funny. Something I didn't expect, and hilarious. Not some bad joke anyone could have written. Not some forced line. Something that's actually funny. Like a few months ago when there was some story about Moree Eels, and they broke out into a version of "That's Amore" (which got posted in the comments here on /.) that made me just break out laughing. They're willing to take a few risks now and then that no TV network will.
To say nothing about their other programming. Where is network TV's version of All Things Considered, Science Friday, Talk of the Nation, or any of NPR's other news-type programs.
At this point, watching the main networks is just kind of depressing, making me pitty how bad they have become. You'll see people like Rather talk about trying to be Cronkite, and you just wonder how little Cronkite or some of those other older authoritative voices would think of how bad things are now.
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The trouble with TV (why print rules) (Score:5, Insightful)
So news is all soundbites.
Big Media a Political Tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big Media a Political Tool (Score:5, Insightful)
The world is like a ship in a huge storm
- the rudder is broken, and the mast just broke also, the ship cannot be steered any more
- the captain and crew are totally drunk or stoned
and the news media are there to make the passengers think they are on a holiday cruise
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Re:Big Media a Political Tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Having an agenda but refusing to acknowledge it has got to be the most aggravating, shameless forms of intellectual dishonesty to grace our public airwaves.
Drive By Media indeed!
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Kurt Cobain on the TV (Score:5, Funny)
Very very simple to answer... (Score:5, Informative)
And I'm not the only one who thinks this. There are papers about this very subject. [amazon.com]
We already know this (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, history and civics education in the US are so atrocious that I would not expect many Americans to remember any of this, making us doomed to repeat mistakes from a hundred years ago.
Journalism and Journalism Majors (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a study done on mid-level news markets about eight or nine years ago, and what they found is that reporters have a lot in common with one another. They tend to rent, not to buy. (This is quite understandable, as "two weeks notice" doesn't happen in news; more often a person finds out of Friday that they don't need to come back on Monday.) They tend to live in the city rather than suburban or rural areas. (Again, understandable given the commute.) They tend to be single rather than married (stability issues again) and use certain services more than others-- transit, fitness centers, and so on. The upshot was that the necessary living patterns for reporters-- again, not big-city reporters, but mid-market types-- meant both that a certain point of view was attracted to the lifestyle, and that the point of views of the people involved would necessarily change.
And that viewpoint-- we're not talking political here, though it does play a role-- agrees with 2% of the wider US population. Two percent.
Or in other words, the viewpoints of 98% of the population are foreign to the average reporter. Moreover, the average reporter is your typical person, which by and large means the vast majority of them are, basically, lazy. How many of you just get through your day, doing the basic minimum that your job requires? Well, imagine what that's like as a reporter, when you don't have somebody breathing down your neck to report the facts, but instead have them breathing down your neck to "find the emotional center." That reporter's going to find the emotional center, and is almost certainly going to do so using a mental template (Insert Issue A into Slot B and add Cute Kid/Pet/Quip at end.) You end up with lazy reporting.
Lazy reporting gets you those stories about farmers that always seem to imply that they must be hicks, or slow, or obsessed with "weird things" because they aren't smart/hip/normal enough to move to the city, like "real people." Or the ones that as what [X racial group] thinks about a subject, as if a vast group of people who share a few alleles must have similar opinions. Or, in the most common template of them all, the good little underdog against the evil corporation/city council/religious group.
Why do I get my news online? Because a well-done story, linked back to source documents and complete transcripts, is yards and away from "San Francisco tiger mauls two and kills one; blood and guts at eleven" (past teasers and grainy footage and the obligatory Horrified Bystander.) I know what news is, and I don't confuse it with reality-entertainment.
Re:Journalism and Journalism Majors (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, this is known as Newspeak. The real understanding of the problem is when you see just how widespread this is and that it's not just limited to the newsrooms. Look at what has happened throughout the years to words like "conservative" or "liberal" and how many times within one lifetime they change meanings.
Odd that the demands made to reporters are to find an emotional appeal, and coincidentally enough that's also the same thing you would look for if your goal was to manipulate people. Hmm, what are the chances of that? And how we love our entertainers! The doctor who cures cancer is going to be a rather anonymous figure one month later, but if someone can sing and dance and act we need to know every last detail of their personal life.
For all the talk of diversity, it's amazing how the only form of diversity we don't care about is that of worldviews.
What these all have in common is that they are about group identity. Lots of lovely "us against them" dynamics can be found here, with a hint of "divide and conquer". To whom would such a thing be useful?
And this one is called "lip service", in this case to the concept of individuality. None of the $underdog vs $large_group conflicts are ever the sort that could truly change or disrupt $social_order aka $business_as_usual. Instead, they're all nice and sanitized and safe and they fit rather neatly within the boundaries of mainstream thought. Any "debate" presented is about which prescribed point of view (typically along a one-dimensional continuum such as left vs. right) more accurately describes the subject and is therefore phony.
These kinds of patterns are literally everywhere in mass media. They are not at all limited to this one example. You should draw your own conclusions as to what this means. One idea is that modern "democracies" accomplish with propaganda (sometimes called anonymous authority) the same degree of control that despots of old accomplished with the sword (overt authority); with the second method the people knew very well that control was being exerted.
Parent
Yeah, read this yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's not new. You can go back to Aleister Crowley complaining about the press (and he was a "celebrity" who constantly ended up in the press) being a bunch of hacks with an agenda - and that was back in the late 1800's. Hitler said the same thing except he blamed it all on the Jews.
Some years back former CIA director William Casey publicly said that ALL the mainstream media was either owned (through fronts) or controlled by the CIA. He wasn't joking when he said it.
I see nothing on the air to discredit that statement. Quite a few people have pointed out that large numbers of (supposedly) "ex"-CIA analysts are doing the writing and editing for most of the major media - even including some of the (supposedly) left wing "alternative" media. The excuse is that CIA analysts are good at producing concise, condensed recaps of analytical material - which makes them great journalists.
Except as General Gogol said, "Nobody ever leaves the KGB."
And once you get beyond the CIA, you've got corporate interests - and beyond, corporate stupidity - and beyond that, personal incompetence and stupidity.
How "news" could survive that chain of barriers without being completely useless is beyond me.
Look at today - we've got a bit of "news" coming out of India that supposedly Benazir Bhutto was shot with some kind of laser gun!
Right. I'll buy that for a dollar. More disinformation to confuse the matter, so that anybody who thinks she was killed by the Pakistani government looks like a "conspiracy nut".
They have to sell commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot is about as guilty. See repeated stories of "bricking" where no devices were irrecoverably harmed, that is, "bricked".
There is some hope in Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
The Australian Broadcasting Commission, ambiguously referred to as the ABC, is entirely funded by the government and therefore has no interest in ratings. The news and current affairs coverage is usually top-notch, although occasionally it demonstrates a slight left-wing bias.
I switch to Channel Ten, and I see Sandra Sully cutting to some recycled footage while talking about some cloning technology, and concluding the story with "Of course, human cloning is still many years away." Then, they use computer effects to duplicate Sandra Sully, and the two Sandras say in unison.. "or is it?".. followed by 15 minutes of someone rambling on about "Entertainment News", followed by a cut to the loud and annoying weatherman who spends more time advertising charities than talking about the weather, then cut back to Sandra Sully who will engage in some useless banter with the sport guy. And the sports report is just a veiled advertisement for the sports programme they have on later that night, and then they do some "Australian Idol" news, and finish up to pictures of the beach.
ABC is at least a safe haven of real journalism. I'm not even sure the people working at Channel Ten are even journalists.
Kurt Cobain Suicide importance (Score:4, Insightful)
There Is No Audience (Score:4, Interesting)
Those stats are from 2006. After another year, that probably means there's only 25M or fewer viewers. Half the number from 1982. But the rates are much faster than they inummerately describe (they watcht too much TV to be good at math). 1M of 25M is a 4% drop in 2006; the 1M drop in 1983 was a 2% drop. And since the US population was about 230M in 1982, but 300M now, we're talking about a drop from about 22% to about 8% of the population tuning in. Which is a drop to almost one third, in case you're wondering.
That one third still watching TV is probably mostly the same people as a quarter century ago, now glued to sets in their nursing homes, unable to change the channel. And the stats don't even address the number of people who now don't just mainline the nightly news as the gospel truth, but also cross-reference with the Internet, including actually discussing the news on blogs.
The news has never been a good business for the broadcasters. It was just jammed into their commercial offerings to justify their use of the public airwaves and all kinds of other subsidies they get, and to make the rest of the "messages" (advertisements and the propaganda disguised as "news") more respectable. The rest of their programming makes more money in the ads that's their only real product. So they'll be glad to call it quits once no one is interested in holding them to any kind of "public service" any more.
As soon as about an hour or so of actual news is clickable YouTube on my bigscreen TV that my friends have all recommended, I'll be happy to let them get away with finally just canceling their shabby efforts.
Remember who is the customer (Score:5, Insightful)
It's NOT the viewers. It's the ADVERTISERS.
The advertisers pay the stations to wave their products in front of X number of eyeballs. The television shows (and yes, that includes news shows) are simply the bait to keep X at the highest possible number. The programs are NOTHING MORE THAN BAIT. Since the presence of bait+advertising is zero-sum (ie more bait means less minutes of advertising to viewers), then the ONLY tactical goal of the studio is to make a show that will keep a person watching even when the bait is taken away (commercial breaks).
Keep that in mind at all times, and you'll find that watching TV, while occasionally entertaining, quickly becomes repulsive.
Reporting Is Expensive, Pundits are Cheap (Score:5, Informative)
We saw this happen (again) with the run up to the Iraq War where it would have taken months of reporters actually doing the research and tracking leads to develop a story that many people would find uncomfortable if not right hostile. The alternative is that they call up some retired military guy and ask him "What do you think is going on?" Almost every news source in the US opted for the cheaper pundits than the expensive reporting and we got exactly what we paid for.
Then don't watch American News! (Score:5, Informative)
It seems many other Americans agree, because the BBC news seems to have grown from being on only one channel (BBC America) morning and night, to four.
A non American view of the US News (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets take this example.
At the time of the first Gulf War, many National Guard Units were being called up. I was on Holiday in New Orleans and the TV News had around 50 minutes (including ad breaks) devoted to the departure of National Guard units to bases where they were replacing the troops who were on their way to the Gulf. Note the coverage was all about the NG units not the regular forces leaving to fight. Lots of weeping relatives and yellow ribbons were shown.
At the end of the News, there was a 15 second piece about the Resignation of Maggie Thatcher ( British PM). Given the Britain was sending many thousands of soldiers/sailors & airmen to the gulf to fight alongside the US forces, I felt almost insulted by the coverage given.
The coverage of the Current US Election(Iowa etc) is quite widespread on UK Broadcast Media (TV & Radio). We are aware of the implications that a change in the occupant of the White House can have on Global stability etc. I wonder how many US citizens are equally aware given the predominance of coverage of 'Celebrity' has on US TV. I was in the US a couple of months ago and was amazed at the amount of time given to what I call Celebrity PAP rather then serious news items. This is IMHO dumbing down.
Personally, I don't give a about the antics/sex/drug/etc habits of so called Celebrities. But I'm at the age where I can be a member of the 'Grumpy Old Men' club (Excellent BBC TV Series).
Hate to respond to my own post, but... (Score:5, Informative)
The program features actual experts. That don't yell over each other. Each has time to form a response to questions. It's amazing, astounding, the best TV news available, period.
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Re:Hate to respond to my own post, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Might I recommend highly the Newshour with Jim Lehrer to all readers?
The Newshour is decent only relative to competition. True, they are willing to devote 15 or 20 minutes to a topic and don't yell over each other. However, they rarely ask tough questions and never force tough answers. Politicians know it is a safe place to spin.
If you look at the composition of guests on the Newshour your realize they are as bad as anyone else, just better behaved. The "experts" tend to be from the usual corporate funded think tanks. If anything, being in DC, it is worst than most shows in booking the standard power elite stooges. You can count on one hand the number of guests who might actually rock the boat or say something outside the Washington defined limits of the topic.
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