I was stuck in an airport lounge Saturday morning, sitting in Lubbock, Texas, waiting for the fog to clear in Houston so I could go home. The TV was babbling away. It was CNN's airport channel. I have no idea what happened in Iraq, because CNN didn't see fit to tell me what was going on. I heard two things, repeated over and over: CNN is the most trusted name in journalism (promo, with booming voice and imposing music). And Alec Baldwin yelling at his daughter on the phone.
Alec Baldwin yelling. A story with no civic or social value, appealing only to our inner Gladys Kravitz, a story that had been on the Today show 24 hours earlier.
Then, over the weekend, came the next idiotic nonstory: Sheryl Crow and the toilet paper. One square per toilet visit! Looney-tunes liberals on the loose! But did anyone actually read her blog item? She was leg-pulling. Clear unless you're either a complete moron or work in TV "news."
24-hour television news has created a terrible vacuum into which the worst possible garbage is pulled. Celebrity trash. Shouting heads. Political demagogues masquerading as journalists. Result: Fewer people today can name the vice president, their own governor, or the president of Russia today than in 1989. And the best-informed Americans are the ones who watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Somewhere a TV news channel executive is feeling good about bumping the Nielsen numbers. He, she or it should feel ashamed about trashing the brand, not only of the channel/network, but of journalism itself.
Comments
Vox populi vox dei
And yet...for a hundred years or more we've been giving people a worthy diet of current affairs, perhaps because that's what news creators were interested in and perhaps because that's what they thought people should have. Now we have better ways of measuring what people want it turns out there's more demand for celebrity drivel than for geopolitics.
Don't get me wrong: I think democracies would function better if people could name their local representative, and that the world would just be a nicer place to live in if conversations touched on the votes for the next French president more than on the votes for American Idol. But I'm not persuaded that the popularity of Alec Baldwin shouting is the fault or even the responsibility of the CNN guys who decided to give their audience what most of them wanted rather than what the producers thought they should have. That "they'll get it off the Internet anyway" is something of a spineless cop-out doesn't make it any less true.
I agree that the quality of
I agree that the quality of TV news has declined.
I heard of one case during 9/11 coverage, where a reporter cut in to mention that J-Lo and Ben Affleck had split up. I am sure tired of hearing about Anna Nicole Smith's baby drama, Britney Spears' rehab, etc.
On the other hand, maybe we should blame society for watching this junk.
People seem to care more about the recent episode of American Idol than they do about current world affairs.
Not to mention the fact that there is not a news station around that is not spinning the news one way or another. Our local news stations seem to be attempting to scare us into watching.
So what can we, the supposed minority who care about unfiltered, unbiased, relevant news do about it?
Pablum
Rather than telling us what they think we should know, they're telling us what they think we want to know. Exactly the wrong direction for news. We can get the Anna Nicole stuff done better from Eonline or any of the tabloids.
Cronkite must be disgusted.
Cheney, Purdue, Putin. My
Cheney, Purdue, Putin. My two-year-old could name two out of three (ask Bock). But we also shield her from CNN (and any channel with advertising -- don't get me started on youth consumerism).
God bless dot calms and the ability to scan headlines. Oh, and Perez Hilton. At least I'm in pursuit of celebrity trash news when I hit up that site.