Why Does Commercial News Suck?

This week, I watched the same piece of information reported on commercial TV and PBS. At 6:30, NBC's Brian Williams went into shocked-and-breathless mode to announce that American life expectancy had hit a whopping 77.9 years. Then at 7:00, I heard Jim Lehrer calmly announce the same fact and put it in context. While this is the highest life expectancy the US has yet achieved, it falls behind 40 other nations. The context changes everything. If you were watching Brian Williams, you'd be popping the champagne corks. If you were watching Jim Lehrer, you'd be contemplating moving to Costa Rica--one of several third world countries with longer life expectancies than the US.

The Brian Williams sound bite--which sounded like a press release from the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984--would be like Agence France-Presse touting the French economy's 1% growth rate. France's economy has indeed been growing steadily since World War II, but the central issue is why France's growth is so much slower than peer countries like Ireland, Sweden, and the United States. At least in France, for all its problems, they debate the real issues. Here, for lack of information and context, we don't.

Why not? There are a few theories:

1) People love fake news. No, I'm not talking about The Daily Show; I'm talking about FOX. Many Americans want to hear good news, and that's what FOX gives them. Tune in to FOX, and you'll hear, for example, that we're winning in Iraq. And as the older commercial networks try to compete with FOX, which has better ratings, many have slipped into an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em strategy where they try to give people just as much fake news.

2) Self-interested corporate media. This one's a tad conspiratorial for my taste, but here's how it goes. The commercial networks are run by giant corporations which have never been more profitable. They need to keep people feeling either satisfied or powerless so nothing really changes. GE owns NBC. It pays Brian Williams's paycheck. It's also in the healthcare business. I know because I use their dental plan. So if word got out that the US had third world levels of life expectancy while spending far more than even its fellow wealthy countries on healthcare, people might dump the corporate healthcare system that GE's profiting off of (those profit margins are a big reason we pay more than everyone else). So GE's news division's job isn't to keep people informed, but to keep people happy--to "manufacture consent," as Noam Chomsky puts it.

I'm more sympathetic to theory #1 than #2, but I'd love to hear what readers think. And one caveat: pundits love to say it's either A or B--just watch The McLaughlin Group--when, in fact, it can be both. For example, are we in Iraq because of the oil or because of naïve neo-con theories about freedom or because the evangelicals think they're bringing on Armageddon and the Second Coming? I'd say all three. For Cheney, it's about oil; for Bush, it's about Jesus; and for Wolfowitz, it's about neo-conservative ideology. They don't all have to agree on the reasons, they only have to agree on a policy.

So what do you all think?

Comments

[trysty29]

thank goodness someone has finally said what I've been saying for years. All the major news outlets are owned by private corporations. If you think this gives us unbiased news, you have got to be kidding me. If I hear any more about the liberal news media, I think I will go crazy. Check and see who owns each one, and who they contribute to. Yes, they give some to Democrats, but always two to three times more to Republicans. Why? Because the CEO's and board of directors are mostly Republican. The free press is pretty much dead and buried. They throw a bone now and then to keep up appearances. Does anyone but me remember Bush's first visit to the press room in the White House after his first election? New rules were laid down. All questions for the first time had to be submitted beforehand, or you wouldn't be called on. He wanted to know what was coming and have an answer prepared. Only Helen Thomas dared to go off script. She has been there since the Nixon admin. Seats were awarded by seniority. She was in the front row. When called on, she didn't ask the prepared question, but a real zinger. Bush's response was to narrow his beady eyes, lean forward, and say "Your question has been duly noted." He then moved on to the next question. Guess what happened to Helen Thomas? The next time he came, she was reduced to standing against the back wall. Her traditional seat had been removed. The message to the press corps was loud and clear. Why else could he have got away with flouting the constitution the way he has with barely a whimper from the news media?

[luziannagirl]

Sorry if a version of this posts twice.

Why does commercial news suck?

1)The public has ceded its commons, including commonly owned airwaves, to commerical interests and self-serving leaders

2)Commercial interests are driven by their bottomline, and ratings drive the bottomline

3)Viewers have a biological, evolutionary-based cognitive shortcut for sex and horror--if it bleeds, it leads, if it has tits, it gits (airtime that is)

4)Real journalism frequently threatens that bottomline by exposing corporate fraud and crime

5)Real journalism is expensive.

Want change?

1)Push for meaningful campaign finance reform to remove corporations from stranglehold on government

2)Push for meaningful personal ethics requirements for elected and appointed leaders to expose backroom deals

3)Find out more about "the commons", join a watchdog group, and insist on transparency, accountability, competency, and inclusiveness in their managment, and using comprehensive cost-benefit analysis formulas instead of those designed to benefit select groups. Push for a return to some form of The Fairness Doctrine in media.

4)Push for greater public awareness and intelligence (long term solution) by paying public schoolteachers a living professional wage

5)Intelligence tests for major Presidential candidates.

Well, 1-4 anyway.

In meantime, triangulate your news & info via PBS, NPR, the Internet, some of Air America, and the handful of surviving decent newspapers. And get a shortwave radio to hear what folks are saying outside the 6'oclock Bubble-head bubble.

[Danielth]

Who are you kidding? Most of the media has a very definite leftwing bias. I will agree that FOX News leans right with its opinion shows, but I don't see what's wrong with giving rightwingers a voice.

Also, Brook misunderstands the incident he analyzes. The U.S. has a lower life exceptancy that many other countries because (among other reasons) it has a high crime rate and poor health habits.

[nickyboy1]

Leftwing bias has been gone since early 80's. . . long gone dear. . . the lion's share of the bias today is right wing, very obviously right wing.

[goodsnservices]

I blame journalism schools. They've all gone soft in the head. For instance, in the service of pursuing objectivity, they've instilled the opposite; by giving equal time and weight to "both sides of every issue" regardless of merit, they have fostered the idea in the public that the loudest opinions expressed are more valid than scientific facts. Fox is just a venue for spouting the loudest uneducated opinions. It is popular because it resonates with uneducated but opinionated people.

[kidgonebad]

I think this is ultimately an issue of entertainment and the 24-hour news cycle. people are, in general, not too informed. and their tolerance for hard news is limited. so the hyper, colorful, dramatic and edutainment version fits their tolerance. even jon stewart has to have his shtick for 20/30-something audiences to tune in. just that with the daily show, you at least get a very intelligent host who actually provides context and insights, albeit laced with humor and sarcasm. the bottom line is that with a 24 hour, hyper-competitive media circus/war at stake, the big news outlets have left themselves little choice but to go with the flashy subject matter, the on-air cat fights, the sexy anchors and everything else, just to keep us engaged. and don't just blame fox, CNN is as guilty as the rest.

[Newsguy]

I was in the news business for a long time, TV and print. I think commercial newsrooms get into a lazy mode. If the press release says life expectancy is 77 years, it probably doesnt have the context. Pressure is to just do a rewrite job on the press release and don't bother to do any research. Also, the pressure is to get the copy out as quickly as possible.

[ljsfolly]

Reality TV with all of it's crap about forcing people to do things like live in the same house with strangers along with "living" on islands with the same and all of the other things reality can come up with we realize at some level is phoney. Fox is the same thing as government TV with the channel spewing out whatever Bush and Cronies want us to hear. It's phoney to most of us, gospel to others. With the advent of all the cable news channels we have to have 24 hours a day filled with something and so we end up with some real news and much of the same crap over and over like we need to hear it repeatedly to believe it or they have to fill time somehow. With all the flap about the Move-On ad the war and death was put away somewhere until they ran out of people making their statements about how it "affected" the administration. This has happened so often with whatever the talking heads can come up with so they can avoid talking about reality, the bloody and awful war that is claiming our soldiers and all of our tax money and resourses for the next generation at least. That children are losing health benefits has yet to be front page or a real topic of the news on any channel. Like so many others I have turned to not a news channel but comedy channel and the Daily Show.

[Queenofthedamned]

As someone who's worked in network owned television groups for 30+ years, I can say that the answer is more A than B--if there are overarching corporate directives to color the nightly news on ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox Broadast networks, owned groups and affiliates, I've never seen, nor heard any indication of that and I'm sure I would have, Newsies being the biggest gossips in what is a very small workplace universe.
The most likely reason for the NBC v. PBS disparity is that PBS has more, smarter, more curious, dedicated Journalists (note the use of the capital)as producers/editors, etc.
Those of us on the commercial side don't do context--we extract what we believe to be the most salient "nugget" for the broadcast, zip that into the script and move on to the next story--"storycount" (more is better)being paramount to keeping the "show" moving so as not to bore the sheep and thereby keep them in the pen for at least 5 minutes of each quarter hour that Neilsen measures the "show."
Commercial news outfits have as their primary objective, make money--journalism, with its implicit call to strive for balance, fairness, context and the mission to communicate facts critical to the enlightenment of the citizens of an informed democracy, has other priorities.
While one objective need not be exclusive of the other, the reverence for "shareholder value" to Wall Street presently supercedes everything else. Fox gives its customers what they want--if its lies, propaganda or the new and improved Father Coughlin show, that's fine--they're in it for the dough, too.

[srobert]

PBS's audience is also more smarter :)

[Canukistani]

I think that to a large extent, this is a question of giving people what they want. Many people (not all, thankfully) resent being made to think or to work at understanding anything. They want simple answers served up in easily digestible, bite-sized morsels. If the presentation requires them to think too much, they change stations to see what OJ is doing or whether American Idol is on yet.

You can bet that if the networks were receiving thousands of angry calls every day complaining about the pap they dwell on hour after hour and demanding real discussion of serious issues, they'd start offering a little more substance. I don't think it's happening. This tripe is easier for them to present (what skill does it take?) and it's what a majority of their viewers want. If you want it to change you have to demand more.

[nickyboy1]

You are so right about the skills - what skill does it take? They don't need professional journalists - anyone can do what passes for journalism today. Maybe they'll start hiring para-professionals for this job like they do in corp. Less education, lower wages.

[Canukistani]

Yes, and this cycle can feed itself in another way too. The next question becomes, why should anyone bother with all that journalism education when that just leaves them overqualified for the job they want? And then, why should those courses be offered when there aren't enough students enrolling in them? As with most things in today's interconnected society, this doesn't stand alone.

[Garytoo]

The news programs are vehicles to sell automobiles, razors, beer, and other products.

The news readers, generally, are caught up in their own celebrity and seduced by bizarrely inflated salaries.

To watch network news with the hope of learning what's happening in the world is analogous to attempting to back a semi-truck into a parking space using a fun house mirror.

[salvarsan]

Reagan eliminated the broadcast Fairness Doctrine in 1987. That, more than any other bit of deregulation, assured the decadence of the medium.

[DanielJP]

When it comes to WAR exporting guns and violence America is number one. When it comes to healthcare life expectency and taking care of it's eldery, education and honesty in our leaders, this country is THIRD WORLD.
Soon America will set the record and become the worlds first FOURTH WORLD NATION and the stature of liberty will no longer be holding a tourch but an exit sign for educated people

[werenotgonnatakeit]

If "conspiracy theories" are such dismissable fantasies, then why do we have laws AGAINST various types of conspiracy, and why do we even have THE WORD "conspiracy".

Corporations are not "conspiring" against anyone. It's business, pure business. Wake up, sheeple!

[WilliePilgrim]

Keep in mind that these days the news is not about the act of civic responsibility in presenting news as an acknowledgement for their having been given, in the form of an FCC permit, the license to print money. Now with cable news, who are not bound by their need to get the FCC license, or anything else, really now that the fairness doctrine has been dumped, we see that it's all about viewership and selling advertising under the disquise of telling us critical informatio­n...yeah, like OJ's latest encounter with a legal system that has all the earned respect of drunk at a party wearing his underpants on his head. Watching news has more to do with our monkey ancestry, the brains of which we carry around almost unchanged despite their potential to do so much more, watching and waiting for the next "chatter worthy" event to tickle our neo-cortex­...even if it's all false and comes with the built in smirks and "knowing eyeball rolling" from the likes of credentibility challenged news readers like Bill O'Reilly, Rick Sanches, Shawn Hannity or any of them, for all we can tell, or at least from some person who one would think actually knew something about which they're reporting.­..though they almost certainly don't.

[shushubef]

Well, you asked what I think, so...

I won't watch Brian Williams, because, you are right, he only gives the headlines he thinks "America" wants to hear, without relevant comment or context. I've watched both Katie and Charles, and choose to watch Charles Gibson, because he provides more context and makes sure that the "earth-shattering" stories are actually that, "earth-shattering"; otherwise, it's just news.

PBS IS better, but I do not always make the time to watch news and relevant context for an hour. That's why some of us still READ! lol