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For a variety of reasons, I have watched ABC's World News Tonight a good deal in the last few months, and you get a pinch of news with some good, and usually unimportant, feature stories in the last segments. It is sort of like a program at war with itself: news or soft features? Let's do both, but skip over them lightly.
Diane Sawyer's recent trip to China was a great star turn, but how many times do we need to see her making nice with Chinese school kids? Why, just because the anchor is there?, did China dominate four or five nights? The stories were interesting and some more than merely that, but so what? The news was squeezed from the program like juice from an orange.
Tony Bourdain does killer travel shows on the Travel Channel, but he doesn't know news from a crepe. We got night after night of Sawyer pretending feature stories were news, skipping right over the issues of human rights violations and repression of the populace. If any serious news program goes anywhere in the world, shouldn't it bring back some serious news?
As one who has worked as a daily journalist and in news management, I am coming to see media, and news, as a great beast. Propaganda seeps into stories, and coverage decisions, like hot water through a tea bag. "Objective" reporting has created a giant hole through which the government and mega corporations can spread their message, whether valid or not, to the world, while opening the door for flat out distortion in Fox News and right wing radio.
We’ve had a debate in the United States for more than 30 years over whether the national media is biased in favor of Democrats or so called liberals. What a waste. The biggest, most dangerous tilt of news outlets is in favor of the powerful and of official sources of news. The so called “establishment”, those who have wealth, power and influence, gets its way with the media like a John with his Saturday night “friend”.
There is a vast public relations (PR) machine that constantly tries to shape the news you see and read. And, they are largely successful. The effort to “balance” stories with opposing points of view means that the PR crowd gets to insert disinformation into news stories day after day. Plus, there is an inherent bias from editors, reporters and producers to stay on the good side of power, which often means if there is any doubt whatsoever, the point of view favored by the powerful gets the most play.
We need media that stand for something. Truth is too elusive a concept to be a working premise. There is no way in the rush of daily reporting to find out what is truth and what is a pack of lies. What happens most often is that a reporter hears something that seems to be true based on his experience and knowledge, so that goes in the story, right or wrong.
We need people in it who are smart enough to have a point of view, but careful enough not to impose their views on the public. And, we need to restore the idea that there are serious issues in our lives which merit intense and focused attention. The public, in my view, is dying for news outlets willing to stand up and be counted, rather than taking partisan stances as lackeys for ideologues.
What would this mean? Perhaps, to a degree, a return to the older style crusading journalism of the early part of the 20th century when newspapers were willing to undertake campaigns to expose wrong doing. They had a point of view and it was oriented to the needs of ordinary citizens, the voting public and were willing to beat the drums for that view. Objectivity and an enlarged sense of “professionalism” drove those efforts from the media.
If the news is mainly dictated by drama and official sources, many important stories are simply missed or given small play. The biggest one M.I.A. right now is the story of income inequality in America. How did it happen? What is the impact on our country? Is there anything that can be done to change it? Why is one person’s work “worth” ten million a year and someone else in the same building, working for the same company, makes barely enough to pay the bills? How much would a billionaire pay to have his garbage carried out if no one else would do it? Is it worth it a million dollars a year to have a clean house, if that’s what he has to pay?
Another example of missed played stories from just this week: the TSA announced that, finally, it is able to check all passengers names of aircraft on watch lists. While we were debating and fighting about intrusive searches, the TSA was, for nine years, not doing its job thoroughly in probably the MOST important area of its responsibility. These, and many other, stories get small attention because they are not "breaking" or don't have enough drama or conflict. This is wrong.
We have a lot of energetic, hard working publications, cable news channels and television networks. They feed from the same trough, however: the news agenda is still largely set by the AP and by the New York Times. The Internet has widened the circle a little, so that a story, like X-ray scanners, that generates a lot of noise can get its short moment of attention. Yet, if one were to track the arch of the naked scanner stories, the totality of the rise and fall of that issue would reveal that most media outlets treated it with a strong dose of contempt. Maybe some of this was push back against the new, more democratic outlet of the Internet. I strongly believe, however, that it was because the “protest” side was lacking in official sources, especially after the TSA, in a smart political move, said pilots would no longer have to go through screening. The TSA removed the strongest voice against scanners with one step and helped to shutdown the momentum of the protest efforts.
If America wants to get its news from “safe” propaganda outfits like Fox News, then look out. This is just the beginning. Any real news will be buried in partisan blather. We will lose any sense of what news was once and be unable to make any determination of fact and fiction. Getting your news from an outlet that “agrees” with your views is like drinking alcohol around the clock. First, it might feel good, but later it will leave a very, very bitter taste and a really bad hangover.
Doug Terry 12.3.10
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