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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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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.
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
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.
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
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
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).
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?
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