What's Wrong With the TV News

MBCook writes "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."

Comments

Very very simple to answer...

[yroJJory]

What's wrong with TV news? It receives Nielsen Ratings. That means they are not treated as informational, but rather as entertainment and require audience share (in the eyes of those who watch the "bottom line").

And I'm not the only one who thinks this. There are papers about this very subject.

Hate to respond to my own post, but...

[ChePibe]

Might I recommend highly the Newshour with Jim Lehrer to all readers?

The program features actual experts. That don't yell over each other. Each has time to form a response to questions. It's amazing, astounding, the best TV news available, period.

Reporting Is Expensive, Pundits are Cheap

[EXTomar]

One of the major problems with TV reporting is that the costs of doing real news worthy reporting for a 5 minute on air segment is astronomical compared to just calling up some "expert" to talk about what they think happened. And as it turns out, the pundit probably scores better for most demographics (ie. they look better, sound better).

We saw this happen (again) with the run up to the Iraq War where it would have taken months of reporters actually doing the research and tracking leads to develop a story that many people would find uncomfortable if not right hostile. The alternative is that they call up some retired military guy and ask him "What do you think is going on?" Almost every news source in the US opted for the cheaper pundits than the expensive reporting and we got exactly what we paid for.

Then don't watch American News!

[Phoenix666]

Watch BBC news coverage of America. They're far worthier of that appellation than any outlet in the United States, and they also mostly don't give a crap which political party or corporation they might offend by reporting the facts. As an additional plus, they are the one media operation that Rupert Murdoch can't buy and subvert.

It seems many other Americans agree, because the BBC news seems to have grown from being on only one channel (BBC America) morning and night, to four.