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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)."
I'll sum it up in one name.
Paris Nicole Spears
Seriously, I really don't give a fuck. If I did I would purchase tabloids. How about some substantive reporting on actual world events? Or if you still have time to fill, some factual information on the presidential candidates. Like, maybe some stories on what they actually believe and have a record of voting for, so the public will be more informed and can make better decisions. Not stories analyzing who is ahead by 3% in the latest poll in what states or who has the best chance of winning. That only breeds bandwagoning subject to the control of the media. This is of course exactly what they want though, which is why we will continue to see no stories with real factual content, and simply sound bites.
The internet is much better as a news vehicle because I can actually find stories with real content which complexly explore the issues. Apparently the news networks think that no one's attention span is greater than 1 minute and 30 seconds, so they mandate that no stories should be covered in depth. Occasionally there are multi-hour specials on certain things, but apart from that, there is rarely regular substantive coverage of important goings on.
You can read more in one hour, than a newscaster can speak in one hour intelligibly.
So news is all soundbites.
The guys making decisions are few, and they are all political animals. Even the more liberal ones like Jon Stewart use their airtime to make political points. Television has become prescriptive, a way for the rich and powerful to tell us what to think. It's more noticeable in the U.S., I think, because both major parties have converging interests when it comes to issues like Al Qaeda, Iraq, etc. Big network TV in the U.S. is bordering on propaganda. I can recall one attempt by the Canadian Conservative government to play along, banning images of Canadian military caskets from the media. Thankfully there was a public outcry, and the decision was soon reversed. Unlike the Republican government, the Conservatives have a minority government and must make concessions to the Opposition on a regular basis. This is not a problem in the U.S., and I don't expect that we'll see a more empathetic viewpoint on major network television before Bush is out of office.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
People should call into Stewart to suggest that he come back on the air and does a straight news show until the writers return.
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I don't care if Nicole Ritchie had a loose bowel movement today. Or any of that "believe and achieve" bullshit. News is news. If I wanted this brand of news, I would turn on MTV.
For quite a few years now, the only place I have gone for objective reporting on real American news is the BBC and Reuters. So I suppose the world hasn't gone mad. Only American media has.
The game.
We are once again experiencing the century-old practice of Yellow Journalism. In fact, I would say that media's role in how the Spanish-American War was sold to the public is disturbingly parallel to that of the invasion of Iraq, just with Karl Rove at the helm instead of William Randolph Hearst. What we think is this new medium of "infotainment" is simply an update of sensationalism.
Unfortunately, history and civics education in the US are so atrocious that I would not expect many Americans to remember any of this, making us doomed to repeat mistakes from a hundred years ago.
When rehashing a poll, showing a live feed from a local station, or summarizing whatever happens to be in the latest tabloid can make the money?
Seriously, folks. Think about it.
There could be dozens of reporters, embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Long-term. Providing up-to-date information, first-hand insight, and actually getting to know the areas they are in.
But, sadly, this would cost actual money (one could make various political arguments on each side of this as to why it is or is not covered, but let's focus on the bottom-line here). So, instead of, you know, covering these things in an in-depth fashion, the media might, every once in a while, drop in a guy for a 24-48 hour stint with the primary purpose of getting a nice quick video snap of something interesting. Whooptey-freakin'-doo. They'll spend the rest of the time sitting in hotels, out-sourcing reporting to heaven only knows who (and sometimes it appears the reporter doesn't even know). So rather than getting the look from someone who could have some expertise in the area, we get something filtered through Lord only knows who that's working as a stringer.
Then, instead of more reports, or an in-depth report, we get a short report followed by commentary from someone whose whole qualification on this matter - and all others - is the fact that he/she has an opinion on the matter. It's the same on all the networks, every last one of them. Why pay for reporters to go out and do expensive foot work when you can get short snippets from outsourced reports and then fill air time with someone blathering on about them?
There are a few good reporters on the ground in Iraq - they're called bloggers, and the reader automatically understands and accepts there's a bias to their reports. But for the most part, the mainstream television media has become a sick joke - whether it's CNN, Fox or MSNBC.
What's wrong with TV news? They have to sell commercial time, so they air only the most sensational stories. Or the spice real news up to be sensational in order to sell commercial time. What's wrong is they claim to be in the business of providing news when they're really in the business of selling commercial time to advertisers. And the need for many viewers to watch these commercials are the reason for the sensational news.
Slashdot is about as guilty. See repeated stories of "bricking" where no devices were irrecoverably harmed, that is, "bricked".
Question everything
JibJab had a pretty good piece about it, What we call the news.
News, or rather, reports about events that moved the world or had some serious impact for national and international developments, got replaced by patched together stories about some celebrities doing some crap. Now, what kind of "news" is that? What kind of "information" is that? Who the fuck cares whether some blonde bimbo shits into the pool of her ex? But we don't get to hear that some countries in Africa are fighting over their border, which can and does have some impact in our lives, even if it only leads to more expensive coffee.
Sit down for the next news and watch carefully what you get to hear. How much is about politics, how much about technology, how much about tabloid news (i.e. celebrities and other petty, meaningless, pointless and mindless rubbish)? You'll notice that the last category takes up a sizable portion if not the majority of the "information" you get.
Then, watch politics closely. How much is national, how much international? And how much of the national news is more than thinly veiled election advertisment?
How much is actually information, and how much is just something "inciting", something to speak to your heart rather than to your mind?
That's what's wrong with the news. It's not about information anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But to play devil's advocate here, what's wrong about Nielsen Ratings? After all, it tells us (to a fair degree of accuracy) what people are willing to watch and what they aren't. Turns out local news that start the program with weather alerts, sports analysis, and a human interest story, are doing a lot better than the ones that will be discussing the most recent UN resolution on global poverty or the likes. Give people what they want, and if it's celebrity death matches that they want, so be it. Internet has more than filled the information niche that was unavailable to us 10 years ago. I have never felt more informed than today.
The heartbreak comes from the fact that our common citizens are willing to settle for so much less. Have you seen the voting turnout percentages? It fits appropriately with the quality of television media as a source of any relevant information. This country is so big (population and geography wise) that we are largely detached from each other on certain levels. To be trivial for a second, all stats point to this country having a religious majority, yet I don't think I know a single person that has gone to a church since childhood, if ever. At the same time, any brand or product that wants national recognition will have to be equally appealing to my type and to those whom I may not have anything in common with. I can't blame the media for trying to do the same: appeal to as many people without alienating anyone. Thus we have reality TV shows about ex-football players who have to dance with dead celebrities in order to save us from a zombie attack!
And stay tuned to find out which popular breakfast cereal could probably give you anal leakage, and kill your mother. After the weather report, with Al.
Slashdot has nothing on dupes compared to the headline news ...
... 'Will we get snow tomorrow?' I'm guessing you could've told me in the time you toyed with telling us before every commercial break, making us think it's going to be on right after the commercials, but saving it for the LAST thing. I'm surprised they haven't tried 'Are tornados coming and should you run for your life? Find out next!'. Nope, we can go straight to the article, discover the article summary was completely inaccurate and/or misleading, without having to sit around for 45 minutes.
Well, so long as it involved interns and politicians. I can't remember how many times the news seemed preoccupied with Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky, or whatever mostly unimportant event that got covered each day with slightly new 'breaking' information. If you want that, you have to go to Digg to see what each 'breaking' website has on the latest Apple rumors.
At least Slashdot doesn't do the completely useless teasers
It's crap like this why I don't watch the TV news anymore. I do listen to news on the radio, and they do the same thing, but I get traffic reports every 10 minutes, which is important in the Washington, DC area -- I just don't listen to it for 2 hrs straight, or I know I'll hear the same stories repeated.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It is worth noting that our group was composed mainly of biology majors. Apparently this journalism chick was worried about her own job prospects, and for very good reasons.
"Case in point: The decline in educational content on channels such as Discovery and TLC."
Funny you should say that and talk about "lowest common denominator" because today's TLC show is about the anatomy of sex.
Anyway I don't think the problem is the Internet, but underutilization of broadband. Here's most of America with cable TV and usually a fat pipe between head-end and customer. Use your imagination on that.
Sorry but the failure to cover that story was pretty much right on. It wasnt of any significant importance. I was a fan of his but even can realize the fact that it was pop icon news and nothing more.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Isn't that about as much an oxymoron as "reality TV"?
-- Alastair
For Pete's sake, people, remember who is the customer in the "TV transaction".
It's NOT the viewers. It's the ADVERTISERS.
The advertisers pay the stations to wave their products in front of X number of eyeballs. The television shows (and yes, that includes news shows) are simply the bait to keep X at the highest possible number. The programs are NOTHING MORE THAN BAIT. Since the presence of bait+advertising is zero-sum (ie more bait means less minutes of advertising to viewers), then the ONLY tactical goal of the studio is to make a show that will keep a person watching even when the bait is taken away (commercial breaks).
Keep that in mind at all times, and you'll find that watching TV, while occasionally entertaining, quickly becomes repulsive.
-Styopa
Not as bad a Paul though.
He's a one man demonstration of what was wrong with the record industry. Forty years of crap, #1's via payolla (but only one per disk).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What's wrong with TV news in two words: FAIRNESS DOCTRINE.
It really is as simple as that. In 1987 news media was crippled. And that was the beginning of the end.
That's the beauty of Lou Dobbs, he doesn't have to be anything other than the train wreck that he is to get ratings. You watch his show and you get the feeling he thinks he has it because he's some towering intellectual giant (or O'Reilly for that matter). Whatever, they both press people's buttons and that gets ratings. They're like guests on Jerry Springer with million-dollar paychecks and nice suits, but still totally unaware how much the media bigwigs are laughing at them while they rake it in.
Immigration is a complex issue and I don't pretend to have an easy solution. All I know is that if I was born dirt poor in some rural wasteland in Mexico with a family and no opportunity, I'd be cutting your lawn or washing your dishes right now. The way Lou talks you'd think the first thing he'd do if he woke up a dirt poor illegal in East L.A. tomorrow is turn himself in. Heh, just not buying it. If I thought for one second he would feel the same way if it was a bunch of white Irishmen sneaking across the border I'd take back every bad thing I'd ever said about him.
Sorry, but "better than O'Reilly" doesn't get you over the bar.
Yes, this is known as Newspeak. The real understanding of the problem is when you see just how widespread this is and that it's not just limited to the newsrooms. Look at what has happened throughout the years to words like "conservative" or "liberal" and how many times within one lifetime they change meanings.
Odd that the demands made to reporters are to find an emotional appeal, and coincidentally enough that's also the same thing you would look for if your goal was to manipulate people. Hmm, what are the chances of that? And how we love our entertainers! The doctor who cures cancer is going to be a rather anonymous figure one month later, but if someone can sing and dance and act we need to know every last detail of their personal life.
For all the talk of diversity, it's amazing how the only form of diversity we don't care about is that of worldviews.
What these all have in common is that they are about group identity. Lots of lovely "us against them" dynamics can be found here, with a hint of "divide and conquer". To whom would such a thing be useful?
And this one is called "lip service", in this case to the concept of individuality. None of the $underdog vs $large_group conflicts are ever the sort that could truly change or disrupt $social_order aka $business_as_usual. Instead, they're all nice and sanitized and safe and they fit rather neatly within the boundaries of mainstream thought. Any "debate" presented is about which prescribed point of view (typically along a one-dimensional continuum such as left vs. right) more accurately describes the subject and is therefore phony.
These kinds of patterns are literally everywhere in mass media. They are not at all limited to this one example. You should draw your own conclusions as to what this means. One idea is that modern "democracies" accomplish with propaganda (sometimes called anonymous authority) the same degree of control that despots of old accomplished with the sword (overt authority); with the second method the people knew very well that control was being exerted.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
As a Brit who has traveled extensively in the USA (visited 48 of 50 states) since 1975 and worked for an American Company for 20+ years I have seen US TV News really dumb down over the years.
Lets take this example.
At the time of the first Gulf War, many National Guard Units were being called up. I was on Holiday in New Orleans and the TV News had around 50 minutes (including ad breaks) devoted to the departure of National Guard units to bases where they were replacing the troops who were on their way to the Gulf. Note the coverage was all about the NG units not the regular forces leaving to fight. Lots of weeping relatives and yellow ribbons were shown.
At the end of the News, there was a 15 second piece about the Resignation of Maggie Thatcher ( British PM). Given the Britain was sending many thousands of soldiers/sailors & airmen to the gulf to fight alongside the US forces, I felt almost insulted by the coverage given.
The coverage of the Current US Election(Iowa etc) is quite widespread on UK Broadcast Media (TV & Radio). We are aware of the implications that a change in the occupant of the White House can have on Global stability etc. I wonder how many US citizens are equally aware given the predominance of coverage of 'Celebrity' has on US TV. I was in the US a couple of months ago and was amazed at the amount of time given to what I call Celebrity PAP rather then serious news items. This is IMHO dumbing down.
Personally, I don't give a about the antics/sex/drug/etc habits of so called Celebrities. But I'm at the age where I can be a member of the 'Grumpy Old Men' club (Excellent BBC TV Series).
Don't you really mean "agree with my world view", because only a total tool would think Reuters in unbiased, last year once again had them caught out several times. Don't also forget that it is thanks to Reuters that the RIAA and the like can just publish their press-releases with whatever they want because Reuters (and other press agencies) have made it their business to simply publish press-releases and NEVER EVER investigate, but still insisting these copied press-releases are "real" news.
As for the BBC, if you think the BBC is unbiased, you are insane. Don't mistake, "ooh they don't say the same as fox news" with unbiased. True unbiased reporting requires taking NO position. Not left, not right. Not hard line, not bleeding heart.
Today the weather was cold. BIASED! By whose standards?
Today the temp reach a low of -4 during the midday. Unbiased?
No, it is the "low" that does it. Some might consider it a high.
Today, at 12:00 the temperature at the bilt (dutch met office) reached -4 celcius. That is unbiased.
Now look at the BBC and Reuters again and read the texts carefully and see just how many times the BBC/Reuters takes a position, trying to convince you.
I see the claim of unbiased reporting attached to the BBC so often I think most people just don't understand the meaning of the word.
Unbiased reporting means reporting the facts, not opinions. Note that at no point does the original author of the story we are discussing EVER seem to want to report JUST the facts, he is upset because NBC did not want to report his OPINION!
As brutal as it may be, the number of iraq casualties is a fact. The number of which qualify as civilian is already an opinion. That people should care about it at all, that is even more of an opinion. Unbiased reporting is extremely rare, stuff like "the coldest day of 2007" is about it. Note that the BBC like almost everyone else now has weather segments that become a part of the SHOW, complete with "LIVE REPORTING".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You've hit a pet peeve of mine there, and I don't know if it's even racial.
The thing is, it's not only ghetto kids. A lot of white adults too seem to have jumped on some sort of a "computers are too complicated, I don't have time for that nerdy crap" bandwagon. Even as more and more jobs require at least elementary computer skills, it's become more and more unfashionable to admit having even those minimal skills.
And it's not just believing that they can't handle it, and giving up without even trying. A lot do try, see that they can, then try even harder to hide that from their peers. I've seen people who _can_ handle a computer when they're alone, turn into helpless illiterates when there's a witness there.
We scared off the normal people, if you will. It's become a thing of pride to be as far from nerdy as possible.
In fact, in some circles it's become fashionable to be stupid. Cue a downward spiral as each member tries to not end up in the upper 50% of their group.
It's kinda funny. Human culture for _millenia_ respected intelligence. If you look as far back as the ancient Egyptians, a little known fact is that they actually had a phonetic set, but it was seen as a thing of _pride_ to be smart and educated enough to use the hieroglyphs. A relatively common form of flattery was to address a letter "to your scribe", meaning, basically, "I know that you can read it yourself and are your own scribe." The Greeks and Romans took pride in being able to read, write and master such subjects as administration, law, rhetoric and philosophy. (Which back then was _the_ science.) Etc.
Even the middle ages, weren't that dark a time in that aspect. There still were plenty of people trying to do alchemy, astrology and philosophy, which back the was what science _was_. Sure, it looks like ignorant and pointless compared to the modern scientific method and the later figures of the Renaissance, but nevertheless, those people were trying to figure out how the world works. Or there were advances in technology that we don't even learn about these days. The physics of the great gothic cathedrals and their mess of buttresses, are nothing short of amazing when you consider that they didn't even have a proper notation for that. Sure, it's trivial nowadays to calculate the vectors and see why it works, but that someone came up with that back then, it's amazing.
And again, noone considered it shameful to be seen in the company of an astrologer or alchemist. It was a thing of pride, in fact, and even kings and bishops made sure to have one around.
If you look as late as the 19'th century and early 20'th, the explosion of science was partially because people actually took advantage of the increasing opportunities to get an education. We have a whole category of "absent minded scientists", which were really nerdier than most people on Slashdot nowadays, and noone thought it was a social disgrace to be seen with one.
So where did we go wrong? How did it become fashionable to be the most stupid of one's peers?
How many potentially brilliant minds are we losing to that fashion? E.g., the ghetto kids you mention, some of them could become great scientists, and one or two might even discover the next great thing. But they don't, because their peers would mock any kind of academic interest or achievement.
How much is this costing us, as a society? And how long until it bites us all in the arse?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, that much is clear. And I'm certainly not proposing to stop people from getting what they want.
The question was, sorta, when did people start wanting to be stupid, and why? When did it become fashionable to have the intellectual and cultural horizon of a midget in a well?
I'm not even as much asking about the news, as such. That is IMHO effect, rather than cause. As you were saying, people get the news they want to get. And I could even live happily with them getting some brainless entertainment -- news or otherwise -- for a couple of hours a day, if they still used their brains the rest of the time.
But that's just my problem: when they turn off that TV or log off from those gossip sites, they go on to try to be even _more_ stupid IRL. For some people, when they take a break from their circle of RL friends and turn on the TV, their IQ actually goes up one notch. On those TV news they might even accidentally learn that there's a war in Iraq, or that some weird place called Africa even exists, or some trivia. But then they go to their RL circle of friends and it's time for another round of, "oh, I'm too stupid for computers... and I'm too stupid for geography too, and I'm too stupid to have an opinion about Iraq, and generally, little old me has trouble even figuring out which shoe goes on the left foot in less than 2-3 tries. Each day."
Even that gossip and trivia they heard about on TV, are promptly discarded unless they're in the commonly-agreed fashionably brainless set, so as not to make their friends feel inadequate.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Technically true - most countries thought there was a possibility that Iraq had a few "WMDs" - like a few chemical grenades and no useful delivery system, but they didn't think that these constituted a threat to anybody. Hussein had to accept inspections, the US controlled the air space, his economy was severely restricted. Most countries thought he was not a problem, and most countries were right about that, as we now know.
Saddam kept acting like he had something to hide.
Yep, he was a scumbag, as we all realize. He probably wasn't all that bright, either. Having said that, pointing to the non-cooperation of a known scumbag, after you've killed around 100000 people and wrecked an entire country's infrastructure is a rather lousy excuse.