The next time you hear about another round of layoffs at a TV news division, the closing of a bureau, the decision not to cover a foreign story with full force, remember this week of silliness in April.
Remember the millions of dollars, hundreds of staff and hours of coverage spent on a wedding in London when crises around the globe and here at home festered. Remember the unseemly pas de deux between the press and a reality TV show huckster peddling racially-fraught falsehoods, as both interviewers and the interviewee seek a bump in ratings.
And then please take a moment to remember the eight American soldiers and one contractor killed by an Afghan soldier at the Kabul airport in a war too easily forgotten. Remember the hundreds likely being killed in Syria and Libya, not to mention the death and unrest plaguing countries like the Ivory Coast, which almost never earn more than a mention on our most-watched newscasts.
Remember those who have the least amongst us, struggling after more than a year of unemployment, a long commute they can no longer afford, or the diagnosis of a medical condition that could kill them and bankrupt their family.
The networks couldn't ignore the devastating storms that killed hundreds in the South, but you had the odd juxtaposition of that news being delivered by anchors sitting in front of Buckingham Palace.
There's always the question, is the audience chasing the news or the news chasing an audience? I have nothing against the royals or their wedding. It is a legitimate news story, a big event for one of America's most stalwart allies. We have had a lot of bad news lately, and if you are someone who finds this diversion interesting and exciting, then I think that's great.
What bothers me is the hypocrisy. The idea that we can't afford to throw resources at an important foreign story, but can afford to spend this kind of money on a story like the royal wedding is just plain wrong. The idea that we can't break into regularly-scheduled programming for an address by the president is wrong as well. When the topic was the "Birther Story" (better referred from here on out by the first letters of those two words), the networks jumped right in.
As a journalist, you like to be the one asking the questions. But it's time that some of our news executives gave some answers of their own.
Dan Rather is the managing editor and global correspondent for Dan Rather Reports, which airs Tuesdays on HDNet at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET
Juan Cole: An Arab Spring for Women: The Missing Story From the Middle East
Johann Hari: Don't Be Fooled, Many Brits Will Cringe at the Royal Wedding Frenzy
The time of good journalism is passed. Even al jazzera and CCTV are stealing our news people. BBC is still better than any US news org.
I MISS DAN RATHER :)
Good job Mr. Rather and thanks for all you do.
We as a viewing audience need to encourage a move away from "infotainment" and back to "objective journalism." I am old enough to remember the days of "trustworthy" journalists. Sadly, we have too few journalists and too many "news readers" and talk-show hosts. The only solution to this problem is for viewers/listeners/readers to vote with their feet. Avoiding the infotainment and flocking to real news could make a difference. The question is: can we turn away from the sugar-coated information in this age of instant info in a constant 24/7/365 cycle? I hope we can.
The narcissistic and vainglorious super-majority celebrates the enforced poverty of our age - a world in which less than one percent of our defense budgets would put an end to hunger. Today, 20,000 more children will die of starvation - victims of our collective gluttony. (And, as I write the preceding, I can hear someone saying, "Whoah, dude! Buzz kill!")
In a bitter irony, even the message of Christ has been perverted into a "gospel of wealth" - so that the core message - feeding the poor, protecting the weak, loving our enemies, "selling everything" and following him - is now eclipsed by a falsely-individualized notion of salvation.
We have abandoned our identity as a people. Our great-grandparents would be sick if they saw the self-centered "bread and circuses" that are stealing the soul of an entire generation.
Falsely, we glorify selfishness as the "American Dream." It is not. This new, boorish, angry and willfully-ignorant America in no way resembles the sort of Frank Capra vision of "we the people" that yielded sufficient strength to defeat fascism and communism.
I pray we remember ourselves before it's too late.
"What bothers me is the hypocrisy. The idea that we can't afford to throw resources at an important foreign story, but can afford to spend this kind of money on a story like the royal wedding is just plain wrong." this could describe the general corporate attitude these days. Too expensive to staff schools with enough teachers at a living wage, but heck, give that Board of Ed a raise!
MarCan k Crispin Miller August 22, 1981 | 1:00 am
Here it is, days after the exchange of vows, and I’m still groggy from having watched television’s coverage of the royal wedding. I thought the sun would never set on it. First there were all those preliminary “specials,†and then the day itself went on forever, a seeming eternity of coverage. From the dead of the night into the afternoon, the stalwarts of the news stayed on the job, really covering the whole occasion, like soot. “You want something very, sort of, stirring,†Prince Charles had said (referring to the wedding music), and that’s what the networks gave us: London, teeming and jubilant, half-appeared behind the networks’ correspondents, who would not shut up or get out of the way, but worked for hours to replace or adorn the images with their own dead commentary. They were as tiresome as those other creatures of television, people who talk behind you at the movies.
"an informed public making reasoned decisions" is now in jeopardy. The American public is also, now, ratings driven.
about the problems in the world 24 hours a day. Then they want to blame you because you are happy
about something. He wants you to feel bad all the time about the problems in the world. You do not have to watch a wedding, a war, a problem in world until you turn on Dan Rather. Then he will mske you feel bad.
K T BOSE< Carlsbad CA