I've met and interviewed Brian Williams. He's a lovely guy. Personable, funnier than expected and smart. He is also irrelevant.
There's nothing wrong with Brian Williams. He is a smooth, professional news anchor. He's not offensive, biased or fake. He plays it straight - and that's his problem.
It's not him. It's us. We're not interested in someone regurgitating the news to us and taking a half hour to do it. We don't need a professional news anchor to tell us what the news is. This isn't 1955. I've got all the news in the world at my fingertips, what do I need this guy to tell me what he thinks is important? Who cares what Brian Williams thinks is important?
In the old days, you needed these authority figures to sort out the news for you and tell you what was important and weed out the riff-raff. But these aren't the old days. I have a mind of my own. I don't need to borrow a news anchor's. And if I were to borrow one, that's not the first place I would look.
In the new media (whatever the hell that means; basically, what I'm saying is "in this day and age"), news is broken down into three subsets.
1. The Collectors
Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, blogs that break stories, etc. These are our original sources. They are vital. Without these sources, there is nothing for anyone else to report.
2. The Aggregators
Websites like Google News, digg.com, reddit.com, Huffington Post, Yahoo, AOL News and even your local paper (they aggregate the national and international stories that they do almost no original reporting on). This is where we get a majority of our information. It's quick, it's easy, and often times, it's personalized.
If you like news from a right-wing perspective, you go to Drudge. If you like news from a moderate or left-wing perspective, you go to Huffington Post. If you want it down the middle, you go to Yahoo. You want gossip, go to Perez Hilton. You want news and video from a progressive perspective, go to Crooks and Liars or Think Progress.
Everyone has their niche. Everyone has an audience they serve well.
3. The Interpreters
Commentators that analyze the news from their (your) perspective. Fox News Channel, Keith Olbermann, Air America, Rush Limbaugh. Some blogs also fall in this category (unsurprisingly, blogs are often hybrids that cross many different boundaries).
These are people that help bring the news to you in a way you agree with. They inform you, but they also excite, enrage and impassion you. Their purpose is analysis/entertainment. Some people call this category infotainment. I prefer (my former co-host) Ben Mankiewicz's name for it - entermation.
So, where do traditional news anchors fit in here? Nowhere.
How often do television reporters break stories these days? Almost never. Most of them are actors reading the news pretending to be real reporters. I'm amused at how other TV reporters feign outrage at Katie Couric becoming the CBS prime time news anchor. Why, do you fancy yourself a journalist? Really, when is the last time you broke a story?
Most of the people on local news are former models and pretty boys with three brain cells between them. Are we supposed to be impressed? Look on TV, does it look like they are making their decisions based on looks or intelligence? Is it just a coincidence that all the pretty people wound up with the jobs on TV?
I understand there are exceptions and I actually picked Brian Williams as my example because I think he is one of the exceptions. He is an awfully bright guy who gets the news. But so what? Even he doesn't bring anything to the table. There's no value added.
Let me recount a recent conversation with my dad by way of example. He recently turned 70 and used to watch the evening news every single night. My mom would have to drag him away from it to get him to sit down for dinner.
Me: Dad, do you still watch the evening news?
Dad: No, never.Me: Well, where do you get your news?
Dad: I already got it, online.
Me: Don't you want to see how the anchors are reporting it?
Dad: Are you kidding? I already got the news, why would I waste my time watching them retell the same stories for half an hour?
Me: So, is there anyone whose opinion you trust to bring you the news?
Dad: Yes, Keith Olbermann.
My dad was a conservative Republican who got his news the old fashioned way until about five years ago. First, he lost faith with the people who were supposed to bring him the news. One day when we were both still Republicans, he turned to me and said, "I think this Bill O'Reilly guy is full of crap."
I was really surprised by that, but my dad said he had been watching for awhile and noticed the guy kept lying and exaggerating and making a general ass out of himself.
Then he soured on Fox News Channel all together. He was still on board for the other news channels, but things did not appear to be what they were before. Then I introduced him to the internet.
He said to me recently, "But I don't understand, everything is right here, why would anyone go anywhere else for news?" That's it in nutshell. After the different websites you visit have already aggregated the news for you, why do you need the networks to re-aggregate it? You don't. It's a waste of time.
They do too little and take way too long to do it. Half an hour is an eternity and all you get is the stories they have selected in their infinite wisdom as the important ones. Useless.
And if you're looking for someone to analyze the news, you're certainly not going to turn to the evening news. They're too scared of their own shadow to dare to interpret a damn thing. God forbid someone should call them liberal (or these days, conservative) for giving even the most obvious analysis.
Now that my dad has crossed over to the progressive side (or was pushed there by George W. Bush (you couldn't get my dad to say an unkind word about George H. W. Bush; yes, there are still those kinds of conservatives/moderates/new progressives)), he gets his analysis from the Dynamic Trio - Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
After The Daily Show gets done skewering the politicians, are you really going to turn over to the stodgy old news shows for their dry, insipid and out of touch "analysis." What's the point? I already have the news and I've already heard someone take it apart. Why would I want a boring, lifeless version of it reiterated to me?
That's why Charlie Gibson is the leading anchor on television and Katie Couric is in last place. Look at the demographics. Of course, the much, much older audience for broadcast news is going to prefer someone like themselves (sorry Charlie) and not some whipper-snapper like Couric telling them about light and happy news. The old guys will do better in this antiquated format all the way until they run out of audience. No young anchor is going to magically bring in a younger audience when that audience finds the program itself irrelevant.
Watch The Young Turks Here (We're in the Entermation Business)
Editor's Note: Air America would like you to know that my dad also listens to my show, and finds it brilliant. Though I do get the occasional, "You should be more funny like that Colbert guy. He is very talented." Thanks, Dad. I appreciate that.
Follow Cenk Uygur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
Your article is an interesting synopsis of the news spectrum.
I think the TV news falls under the categories of aggregators and interpreters depending on the program. Certainly a lot of local TV news is gathered by the local stations.
Before declaring the internet as the only credible news source, its limited expanse must be seriously considered even in this day and age. There are far too many people who aren't sufficiently computer literate to obtain news on a computer. There are many who aren't connected to the internet and of those who are, there are too many with the slow dialup connection which almost prohibits viewing videos or large web pages. Even with broadband, our internet providers don't have the bandwidth for us to see TV quality video on our computers.
Network TV news deteriorated to the point where I don't watch any programs with loyalty except for 60 Minutes. NBC turned me when they staged the explosion on a Silverado pickup truck back in the 90s. Dan Rather turned me off CBS Evening news since the late 90s. ABC's major losses were Peter Jennings, Jeff Greenfield and Ted Kopel. ABC turned Nightline into a compilation of sappy infotainment occasionally garnished with a serious news story.
The major source of news for me is the internet but I am not ready to bid farewell to TV news despite my cynical outlook on those programs and the wimpy nature of network news divisions. TV quality images are appealing. Some TV news coverage is interesting but ultimately I spend more time on the internet for the news I wish to know about.
Like it not, TV is still a major news source for many. Don't discount newspapers, magazines, and radio. They are far from extinction and painfully adapting.
Even after everyone in America, practically speaking, can obtain news from the internet with ease, TV will continue to be a source of news in some form. So don't schedule a funeral for TV news.
ABC, CBS & NBC have gone back to being bland.
Web sites provide the news. Read the site which panders to your bias or Google or Yahoo if you are attempting to be objective & informed. There isn't much reason to watch TV news in 2007.
My News and analysis sources:
Huffington Post
NPR
PBS
Keith Olbermann
Chris Matthews
Yahoo.com
The Economist
Newsweek
Atlantic Monthly
Several science and engineering periodicals
20 to 30 books/year
In the March or April issue of Men's Vogue Magazine there was an interview that Williams gave and he discussed being at the WH. He was there with several other journalists as well as non-journalist Russert. Bush let something drop in conversation and it stunned every person in the room. Bush's staff became absolutely apoplectic and the "media" had to promise all present that NOTHING they heard could be reported or discussed, not even to their wives.
This only further affirmed what I had been thinking for the last 6 years--the media has not been doing its job, they are merely syncophants and stenographers.
You couldn't pay me to watch these horrid, inflated egotists.
You've been getting it just right ever since I started listening to you on Air America.
This post hits the spot-I don't even listen to NPR anymore, unless I'm in the car and want a break from the iPod. You've captured the essence of why that is for me.
As long as we're reorganizing the media, let's send Katie Couric to the Food Network. "$40 a Day: The Green Zone" is about her speed.
Tim Russert? Back to Buffalo he goes. Let him ask loaded questions to bump shop operators and managers of tanning parlors.
Last but definitely not least, David Broder. Shuffleboard instructor in St. Petersburg, Florida, sounds about right.