Don't Stoop to Conquer

As a high school student with serious interests in journalism and politics, cable news has fascinated me for quite some time. Some of what we see on the news has merit, but most of it I find far more disturbing than informative.

Now, I am a fairly liberal guy. I wouldn't consider myself a "radical," but I'm plenty liberal enough for Bill O'Reilly to consider me a "loon."

And therein lies what bothers me most about this cable news culture that I've grown up in and been exposed to all my life. I was obviously not around back in the early days of television news, but could anybody imagine Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite calling people they disagree with "loons" or "pinheads" on live television? Heck, I could hardly picture Howard Beale or Ron Burgundy lacking that kind of simple decency in the pre-cable news era.

Unfortunately, the shortcomings of modern news don't end at Fox. With a quick turn of the dial, over to the left-leaning MSNBC, I still see things night in and night out that make me shudder.

Full disclosure: I'm a huge fan of Keith Olbermann and I share many of his political viewpoints. His special comment on prosecuting torture was one of the most well thought out, informative, and well-researched commentaries I've ever seen on television. Aside from the news, I also share many of his personal interests. I, like him, also happen to love baseball, read the Huffington Post, and spend way too much of my free time on Deadspin.

However, Olbermann is guilty of nearly as much self-promotion, and unconstructive drivel during his broadcasts as his foes over at Fox. He is practically shoving down the bar for civil discourse when he displays that cartoonish figure of Bill O'Reilly with an oversized head up on the screen and reads his quotes in an almost clownish voice.

While it's good to call the other side out on their lies and misinformation, there has to be a way to do it without stooping down to their level. The more the left continues to blur the line between news and entertainment, the less credibility they have. When that happens, they just begin to look like a mirror image of the very networks they are denouncing.

Since the days of Murrow and Cronkite, the news has turned into a for-profit business, and the profit motive has poisoned the content. It's easy to see why this happened: more controversy and screaming means more viewers. More viewers mean more advertisers. More advertisers mean more money.

But how do we fix this and break the cycle?

Unfortunately, I don't have a simple 10-point plan to offer to the media establishment. All I know is that if you put smart and entertaining hosts on television, they can get plenty good ratings without stirring controversy and making themselves look like fools. Rachel Maddow is a great example.

This is why, despite all of the craziness, fear-mongering, and name-calling that dominate today's most popular news shows, I'm hopeful that this trend can eventually turn around. If it does, people may just begin to get more informed, and our country will be much better off for it.

Comments

[sting7]

I wanted to know if anyone can confirm that there will be a protest against Elliot Carver(Rupert Murdoch) and Fox News at their headquarters in new york. I got an email saying they are expecting close to 5000 people in 2 weeksand its in support of president obama and proper reporting, plan to attend but need some confirmation. I remember the protest led by the rapper nas against clusterfox last year and think its time to remind fox to stop being unamerican

[spmcintyre]

There is one minor detail that was left out of this article. Olberman and O'Rielly are not jounalists. They are editorialists. Therefore, they are payed to give THEIR opinion about how they see view events reports on in the news. Cronkite was a journalist, his job was to tell us the facts, unbiased and complete. I would say that all 3 of them are doing or did the job they were supposed to do.

Keep this always in mind, most of the people that "report" on FOX or MSNBC are editorialists. You can tell who the actual journalists are, and they are not, O'Rielly, Olberman, Beck, Maddow, Hannity or Shultz.

[David Vines - Huffpost Blogger]

There is definitely a fair amount of validity to the "journalists" v. "editorialists" comparison that separates a lot of today's newsmen from TV news anchors of past.

First, to the question of if these guys are actually journalists: I don't know how much investigative reporting they actually do, but I'd say when Olbermann and O'Reilly sit down with Senator Barack Obama and ask him questions (mostly relating to policy) during the primaries, that kind of work qualifies them as a journalist. Since these guys are on TV all the time and spend seemingly all of their day in front of a camera on one show or another, its difficult to assess how much reporting they actually do on their own stories, but I think its fair to say that most of these guys do some work to that variety. For example, I know that Maddow did a lot of original reporting on the C Street Family when that story was thrust into the national spotlight about a month ago.

I do recognize that commentators like Olbermann and O'Reilly are completely different from the likes of Murrow and Cronkite to the extent that they share their personal opinions--something that was frowned upon before the cable-era. Now, I don't think that this is a bad thing. I think personal opinions have a place in modern-day news.

continued.­....

[David Vines - Huffpost Blogger]

...

One thing that I left out of the article was my admiration for Olbermann's "9/11 'TM'" Special Comment. Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PERKBFgg_I

That was brilliant, and it was needed. Somebody needed to call out RNC on their sickening 9/11 "tribute" video that was shown during their convention.

Calling out political scare tactics and calling out lies has a very important place in TV news, but I just think MSNBC needs to stick to that and not get all caught up in name-calling and childish disputes between them and Fox.

... Ha, hey look, I just wrote a whole new article. Hope that helped clarify my position on this.

[sciabattoni]

I stopped watching Olbermann even though I think he does a decent job when he has reporters give him some backstory / analysis, but he doesn't seem interested in hearing what he expects to hear and his fetish with Oreilly, FOX, etc. has become tiresome. Let it go and give me some news. The 8PM hour on FOX is far worse though, having devolved into a GE is the Antichrist hour.

Nice post intern!

[carpdd]

David
I find your assessment to be "spot on" , sorry couldn't help myself. I too wish Keith would keep the comedic subtext to a minimum and stay true to his ideals as an informative and humorous commentator, who has a basis in reality. As to the Fox gang , they obviously have a base on which they draw from and I am sad to say that there are wayyyyyyyy toooo many folks out there of like mind to their brand of opinion. (Even though mostly based on lies). I look forward to reading more of your articles and best of luck.

[Idea1013]

Such a refreshing message- and from a young voice. I hope your contemporaries take your message to heart, along with those in the media. I often find myself frustrated with the insults, name-calling and distortions, both from the press and those who comment on it (both in public and on sites like Huff). Reasonable discourse leads to reasonable solutions.

[alkamm]

My sympathies exactly! Keith Olbermann should trust his audience to let his enemies words speak for themselves rather than dress them in lilting baby talk designed to mock by tone rather than their clear execrable meanings. If the words don't speak badly enough, either omit them or find words they spoke that prove your point rather than dress them in mocking tones.
Liberals have to trust their audience, just as the right wing trusts theirs. Liberals need to have emotional intelligence as well as rational intelligence. The techniques of rabble rousing used by the right wing aren't despicable only in the hands and mouths of the right. Liberals need to raise rather than rouse the rabble, if that's what you call the common man.
Rachel is a very articulate spokesman for the sort of reasoned, if partisan, way she attacks the positions of those she opposes. We need less bloviating and more clear usefully reasoned impassioned debaters, and not mere posturing and sneering. Liberals need, in the words of Emerson, to use words poetically and not as a sort of sorcery that misuses innuendo and rhetoric to win arguments by dishonest manipulation.