August 14th / 16th, 2009
"TV News Has Become Distorted"
At the height of the Michael Jackson media circus, networks were so
desperate to saturate their airwaves with all things Jacko, that one morning,
Today Show pretty boy Matt Lauer treated us to an extended tour inside the
Neverland mansion. But here’s the rub. The house was empty. So Matt and his
videographer moved from room to room, offering up such newsworthy tidbits as, “
and here, on this wall is where Michael’s big screen TV was mounted”.
Throughout the Michael marathon, there were rare moments when news
programs covered other stories, but most of those dealt with Farah Fawcett. It’s
no wonder that comedy central’s Jon Stewart was prompted to create a special
award for the worst in what he called, “obitertainment”.
Ironically, though, it was the passing of another celebrity that helped
bring clarity to the phenomena of modern day news media hype. On the night
when Walter Cronkite died, CNN ran a series of interviews that the late
anchor had done with Larry King. One was from May 1, 2001 in which Larry asked
Walter, “Are you disturbed over the tabloidization of the news?”
CRONKITE: “Absolutely, very much so. We’ve always had sensationalism in
the press. A lot of people think this is something new. It’s not new. Look
at the files from 1830, 1850, even from the time of the Revolution, they
were terrible. Newspapers are far more responsible today than they were in
those days, right up through World War I. Broadcasting is reasonably
responsible, but the trouble with broadcasting as I see it, is we get hold of
these stories that are really not important to the future of democracy, the
death of Princess Di, the O.J. Simpson story, John Kennedy’s accident at Martha
’s vineyard, and we cling to these stories so long. We wear them out, we
wear them to death. And they’re not that important. There’s so little time
on the air to report the important news that makes a difference, whether we’
re going to live or die in this democracy of ours. Whether we’re going to
succeed or fail in our education and our healthcare, all these things. That’
s what we should be taking our time with. But we spend all that time
going over the same things over and over again, and we rush to these stories.
With John Kennedy’s accident, my gosh, within a half hour, one of the
networks found a pilot who piloted a plane similar to the one Kennedy was in, and
we saw that guy on the air for 24 hours, telling how that accident could
have happened. He had no more idea how that accident happened than I did”.
Yes, it’s enough to make you want to turn the channel. The only problem is
that you can’t escape this kind of hyped up coverage, no matter where you
turn, and it’s not just during the mourning of a celebrity or in a time of
crisis. Today’s news is manufactured in such a way as to guarantee
continual content on a daily basis. Take for instance Steve Doocy, FOX news
channel’s morning anchor who, in criticizing Obama’s plans for used cars and
healthcare reform, opined, “a government that can’t run a cash for clunkers
program, can’t run one seventh of our U.S. economy (healthcare). The next
day at a town hall meeting covered by FOX, an angry citizen stood up and
repeated the anchorman’s talking points verbatim. Then, that next morning, FOX
reported on the town hall comment as though it was breaking news. Jon
Stewart calls this,“the Crank Cycle”, in which a TV anchor or talk show host
delivers a talking point. The constituent repeats it. Then the host covers
the constituent’s words, proving the original talking points.
To be fair, the “Crank Cycle” varies in degree and political persuasion
according to which network you’re watching. But FOX news and its stable of
right wing hosts is hands down the worst offender. The half truths they spew
have helped to support an illegal war, justify torture and violations of
first amendment rights, and will probably help defeat the only chance we’ll
ever have to reform healthcare and curb abuses by insurance companies.
In his book, ‘The Last Lone Inventor’, Evan Schwartz recounted a
conversation that Philo Farnsworth (inventor of television) had with his wife
while driving up the California coast one day in 1926. Farnsworth said, ”
Television will become the world’s greatest teaching tool. Illiteracy will be
wiped out. As news happens, we will watch it live. No longer will we have to
rely on people interpreting and distorting the news for us…”
If Philo Farnsworth had only known how his technology was going to be
abused, he probably would have destroyed all of his notes before the first TV
set could be manufactured. That’s because the very thing he invented to
prevent distortions has turned out to be an instrument of distortion.
Sadly, there’s no reason to believe that the quality of electronic
journalism will improve any time soon. Gone is the era when news was accurately
reported, delivered in an unbiased fashion, and presented in its proper
perspective relative to the conditions of the world on that day.
As Cronkite said, we need to cover what is important. Celebrity deaths are
not important, and healthcare reform is. Journalists have an obligation to
give less attention to the former and more to the latter. But they also
have an obligation to get it right, and they have no business trying to
obstruct public policy by inciting the public with misinformation. Farnsworth
was right about one thing. Television is a teaching tool. The problem is, it’
s now teaching us not to watch it anymore.
|
